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Benny Morris (born in 1948) is an Israeli historian, member of the New Historians school, a group of scholars who dispute the mainstream historical view of the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Known for his work on the history of Palestinian refugees and his refusal to perform reserve duty in the West Bank, Morris was widely seen as an Israeli sympathizer of the Palestinian cause, and his work was very often cited and praised by pro-Arab writers. Since the outbreak of the Second Intifada, Morris has appeared to become more critical of the Arab leadership, and has criticized "pro-Arab propagandists" for highlighting certain parts of his work while ignoring others. He states that the Palestinian refugee problem and the collapse of the Camp David peace talks were a product of Palestinian-Arab decisions.
Background
The son of Jewish immigrants from Great Britain, Morris was born in Kibbutz Ein HaHoresh. His father, Ya'akov Morris, a diplomat who at one time was the Israeli ambassador to New Zealand, and other times at the Consulates in India and New York, came to the Middle East from Ireland in 1947. He was also an author; among his writings are Pioneers from the West: A History of Colonisation in Israel by Settlers from English-Speaking Countries (1953) and Masters of the Desert: 6000 Years in the Negev (1961), the latter containing an introduction by David Ben-Gurion. Benny Morris received his doctorate from the University of Cambridge. For a number of years, he was the diplomatic correspondent of the Jerusalem Post.
Morris is currently professor of history at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Be'er Sheva. In 2005, he taught at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Work
The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949, 1988
Morris argues that the 700,000 Palestinians who fled their homes in 1947 left mostly due to Israeli military attacks, but also due to fear of impending Israeli attack, fear of being caught up in fighting, and expulsions, but not as the result of an expulsion policy. This was at the time a controversial position, as the official position in Israel had been that the Palestinians left voluntarily or after pressure and encouragement from Palestinian or outside Arab leaders. At the same time, Morris documents atrocities by the Israelis, including suspected cases of rape, torture.
The book shows a map of empty Palestinian villages, and explains why the villagers left; 228 villages were evacuated due to attack from Jewish forces. In 41 villages, he writes that the inhabitants were expelled by military forces; in another 90 villages, that the inhabitants panicked because of attacks on other villages, and fled. In six villages, he writes, the inhabitants left under instructions from local Palestinian authorities. He was unable to find out why another 46 villages were abandoned.
The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, 2004
In the 2004 update of the 1988 book, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, Morris changes his perspective, and places more responsibilities for the creation of Palestinian refugees on militant Jewish organizations. According to Morris, these groups killed more Palestinians than previously thought. In The Birth, Morris argues that Israeli leaders wanted as few Arabs in the areas they were conquering as possible for demographic reasons.
Righteous Victims, a history of the Zionist-Arab Conflict 1881-2001, 1999
Focuses on the central components of the conflict in the political and military spheres, not giving much attention to other aspects, such as the economic and cultural ones. Based largely on secondary works, a synthesis of existing research on the various subjects and periods covered. Morris adds "a history of this subject, based mainly on primary sources is, I suspect, beyond the abilities of a single scholar. There are simply too many archives, files, and documents. Nonetheless, parts of the present book-the coverage of the 1948 war and the decade after it, and of certain episodes that occurred during the 1930s and the 1982-85 Lebanon War-are based in large measure on primary sources." Re-published by "First Vintage" in 2001 with a new final chapter.
Criticism of Morris work
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- Further information : Causes of the 1948 Palestinian exodus
Efraim Karsh, professor of War Studies at King's College London, has repeatedly stated that Morris fabricated his data about atrocities, stating that other historians who examined the same documents came to different conclusions. Karsh's criticism of Morris and the New Historians is laid out in his Fabricating Israeli History: The New Historians. Since the publishing of the book Karsh and Morris have engaged in a lengthy and heated dialogue on these issues, which has often involved personal insults, and has sometimes been characterized as a feud.
Morris has also been attacked from the opposite pole by Norman Finkelstein. In chapter three of his Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict (2001) he argues that Morris repeatedly bent his interpretation of evidence to find Israeli government officials and the IDF innocent of crimes against Palestinians. He supports his view by juxtaposing quotes from Morris' book with full quotations from the sources Morris cited. Finkelstein also argues that the evidence '... Morris adduces does not support his temperate conclusion and that the thruth lies very much closer to the Arab view.'. Instead Finkelstein suggests 'that Morris's own evidence points to the conclusion that Palestine's Arabs were expelled systematically and with premeditation.'.
Morris's political views
Morris was once considered a representative of the radical left; he was accused of being an "Israel hater" and was boycotted by the Israeli academic establishment. But his disillusionment with the peace process has caused him to increasingly make statements commonly associated with the right-wing.
According to 'The Economist': "Mr Morris also said, in an interview that stunned his supporters, that Israel was justified in uprooting the Palestinian “fifth column” once the Arabs had attacked the infant state, and that the number executed or massacred—some 800, on his reckoning—was “peanuts” compared with, say, the massacres in Bosnia in the 1990s."
Benny Morris describes himself as being from the left. Comparing him with Ilan Pappé, he says he always voted Labor or Meretz while as far as he knows Pappé voted Israel Communist Party . He also says he is a Zionist but underlines that his adversaries see in him solid Zionist convictions (as Pappé) or solid anti-Zionist convictions (as the establishment Zionists) .
Benny Morris views 2000's intifada as a "political-terroristic assault on Israel's existence (and also as an offshoot of fundamentalist Islam's ongoing assault on the West, in which Israel, unfortunately, figures as a front-line outpost)". He is very critics towards Avi Shlaim who, according to him, "moved steadily to the left--or is it, really, to the right? After all, he shares his anti-Israeli analysis with European neo-fascists and the Islamic jihadists, who openly advocate Israel's destruction in the name of medieval religious values."
Books by Morris
- The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949, (Cambridge University Press, 1989)
- The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, (2004)
- Israel's Secret Wars: A History of Israel's Intelligence Service, (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991)
- Israel's Border Wars 1949-1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation, and the Countdown to the Suez War, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993)
- 1948 and after; Israel and the Palestinians, Clarendon Press, Oxford (1994)
- Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1999, (Alfred A. Knopf, 1999)
- Correcting a Mistake? Jews and Arabs in Palestine/Israel, 1936-1956, (Am Oved Publishers, 2000)
- The Road to Jerusalem: Glubb Pasha, Palestine and the Jews. New York: I.B. Tauris, 2003
References
- Finkelstein, Norman. Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict. (London: Verson, 2003), 53-60.
- Finkelstein, 1995, p.52,53
- The Economist, 'Nations and narratives', 2 November 2006.
See also
External links
- Survival of the Fittest? - interview w/Benny Morris
- Camp David and After: An Exchange (1. An Interview with Ehud Barak) by Benny Morris, The New York Review of Books August 9 2001
- "Benny Morris and the Reign of Error" - Efraim Karsh, Middle East Quarterly
- Benny Morris essay regarding a nuclear Iran - Jerusalem Post, January 18 2007
- Israel Revisited Benny Morris, Veteran 'New Historian' of the Modern Jewish State's Founding, Finds Himself Ideologically Back Where It All Began, by Scott Wilson, Washington Post Foreign Service, March 11 2007
- 'New Historian' Shifts from Old View of Israel Israeli "new historian" Benny Morris was online Monday, March 12, at 2 p.m. ET to discuss his books and changing views that have driven him away from the critical perspective of Israeli history that he helped create.