Grabbe-Israeli New Historians.pdf

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7 March 2012

ISRAEL AND PALESTINE:

THE INNER-JEWISH DEBATE AND THE NEW HISTORIANS

Lester L. GrabbeUniversity of Hull, England

The following essay is a survey of the debate that has arisen in Jewish circles--bothIsraeli and international--over the question of Israel and Palestine. It particularly focuses onhow history has been the centre of support for one side or the other and how the perception ofZionism and Israeli history changed, especially in the late 1980s. One of the catalysts of thischange was the New Historians, and much of the subsequent debate has revolved around theNew Historians, whether their own publications, the publications of their critics from boththe right and the left, and their own increasingly ascerbic interaction as time went on.

In the debate on a Palestinian state the question of national identity--Palestinian andIsraeli--has been an important factor in motivating each side. Historical perceptions have astrong influence on the concept of national and ethnic and other sorts of identity. On theJewish side, Zionism has a fundamental set of founding myths based on perceptions of whathappened in past history (myth in this context means a symbolic narrative that explains the present; whether the narrative is true according to critical historical study is not relevant).Likewise, the Palestinians have their own foundational myths, but this article will focus on theJewish side of things.

Finally, I should point out that I am not an expert on modern Israeli history. Myspecialty concerns the history of ancient Israel and of the Jews in what is referred to as theSecond Temple period (e.g., Grabbe 2004, 2007, 2008). But within that broad area have been revisionist debates in recent decades of which I have been a part (including thefounding and chairing of the European Seminar in Historical Methodology and the editing ofnine conference volumes, with another several in the process of editing). Thus, the concept ofhistorical revisionism is no stranger to me, and I find a number of interesting parallels in thedebate over modern Israeli history with discussions in my own areas.

The Israeli New Historians

In the late 1980s several books appeared, questioning some of the founding Zionistmyths. One of these authors was Benny Morris, who wrote an article in 1988 referring tohimself and some of the others as the New Historians (Morris 1988b). What characterizedthis group (who all produced books with challenging theses about 1988) is that they weremostly born around or after 1948, obtained their research degrees from outside Israel, and


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were not part of the Israeli university establishment (Morris and Segev were journalists,Shlaim taught in the UK, with only Pappe in an Israeli university department). Otherindividuals have subsequently been associated with the group. Those usually included in thisdesignation are the following:1

Benny Morris (1948-): Professor of History in the Middle East Studies Department, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beersheba. When growing up, he spent several years in theUSA and writes fluent English. He did his undergraduate studies at the Hebrew University, but his doctorate was earned from Cambridge. He was a paratrooper in the 1967 Six Day Warand was wounded in 1969 by an Egyptian shell at the Suez Canal; however, when called up asa reserve officer at the time of the First Intifada in 1988, he refused to serve and spent severalmonths in prison. He worked as a journalist ( Jerusalem Post ) for many years, but claims thathe lost his position in 1991 when his newspaper was taken over by Conrad Black. He appliedunsuccessfully for academic posts for a number of years and obtained his present position only because of the intervention of Ezer Weizman (president of Israel, 1993-2000). His 1988 book,The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949 , put the Arab refuge issue onthe agenda for debate. His recent1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (2008) has been widely acclaimed.

Avi Shlaim , FBA (1945-): Professor of International Relations at Oxford. He was born inIraq, before his family moved to Israel. He went to study in England at 16. He did an

undergraduate degree at Cambridge and a PhD at Reading. Two books have been widelycited: Collusion across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement and the Partition of Palestine (winner of the 1988 Political Studies Association's W. J. M. Mackenzie Prize);The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (2001). His recent collection of essays, Israel and Palestine (2009), was heavily criticized by Benny Morris.

Ilan Pappe (1954-): Professor in the College of Social Sciences and International Studies atthe University of Exeter; director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies and co-directorof the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies. He did his undergraduate studies at theHebrew University, and his PhD at Oxford. He taught at the University of Haifa (1984-2007),during which time he also ran as a Communist candidate for the Knesset (he has sinceresigned from the Communist party). He controversially supported an academic boycott of

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1Factual information for most of the following can be found onWikipedia ,though full references are not always available there. Further information is found in their books and in the other publications cited below and in the bibliography.


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Israeli universities, that caused some of his colleagues to call for his resignation. His book, Britain and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (1988), made him one of the New Historians, but hisrecentThe Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006) has attracted considerable criticisms.

Tom Segev (1945-): journalist. He did an undergraduate degree in history and politicalscience at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; a PhD in history, Boston University. He wrotetwo noted books that appeared in English in 2000,One Palestine, Complete: Jews and ArabsUnder the British Mandate andThe Seventh Million: Israelis and the Holocaust . However,his more recent book,1967: Israel, the War and the Year That Transformed the Middle East,

Metropolitan Books (2006), has been heavily criticized by Michael Oren and Benny Morris.

Simha Flapan (19111987): journalist and politician. Fled Poland for Palestine beforeWorld War II. Edited New Outlook magazine, which was dedicated to the promotion of Arab-Jewish relations. His book,The Birth of Israel: Myths And Realities , published the year hedied, enlisted him in the ranks of the New Historians.

Baruch Kimmerling (1939-2007): was Professor of Sociology at the Hebrew University,Jerusalem, though often included among the New Historians. He did his undergraduatestudies and his PhD at the Hebrew University. His obituary stated that he was probably thefirst Israeli academic to analyse Zionism in settler- immigrant, colonialist terms. He describedhis homeland as being built on the ruins of another society (Guardian [26 June 2007]). Of

his nine books, he is perhaps best known for Zionism and Territory: The Socioterritorial Dimensions of Zionist Politics (1983) and (with Joel S. Migdal) Palestinians: The Making ofa People (1993; enlarged edition 2003).

The New Historians have been criticized by two lots of critics on opposite ends ofthe spectrum. There are the pupils of the old Zionist historians (labelled by Morris as theOld-New Historians), which includes the following (cf. ben David 2010):

Anita Shapira (1940-): holds the Ruben Merenfeld Chair for the Study of Zionism at TelAviv University. She was born in Warsaw but did her undergraduate degree and her PhD atTel Aviv University. In 2000, she was appointed head of the Chaim Weizmann Institute forthe Study of Zionism and Israel, and in 2008 the director of the Israel Democracy Institute.Her main book, Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force, 1881-1948 , has been widely praised.

Efraim Karsh : (1953-): Professor of Middle East and Mediterranean Studies at King'sCollege London, and director of the Philadelphia-based think tank, the Middle East Forum.

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His undergraduate degree was in Arabic and Modern Middle East History, the HebrewUniversity, Jerusalem, and he earned an MA and PhD in International Relations, Tel AvivUniversity. He seems obsessed with castigating the New Historians, surprisingly BennyMorris in particular.

Yoav Gelber (1943-): Professor of History, University of Haifa. He did his BA, MA, andPhD all in world and Jewish history at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. He has writtenextensively on the history of the Israel Defence Forces. His main work in English is Palestine1948: War, Escape And The Emergence Of The Palestinian Refugee Problem (2006). Hecalled for Ilan Pappes removal from the University of Haifa when the latter appealed for anacademic boycott of all Israeli universities. He has, however, excepted Benny Morris from hisgeneral criticism of the New Historians, and the latter has thanked him for advice andinformation in more than one of his books.

Michael B. Oren (1955): Israeli ambassador to the USA (2009-). Grew up as Michael ScottBornstein in the USA. He did a BA at Columbia University and received a PhD in NearEastern Studies from Princeton, 1986. He has been visiting professor at several USuniversities. Especially known forSix Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern

Middle East (2002), which used sources in Arabic as well as Hebrew and English.

Sela, Avraham (c. 1950-): the A. Ephraim and Shirley Diamond Professor of International

Relations, Hebrew University, Jerusalem. BA (1971), MA (1974), PhD (1986) in the MiddleEast and international relations at the Hebrew University. Officer in the research division ofthe Israel Defence Force Intelligence Branch (1970-1986). Participated in the Israeli-Egyptian peace talks (late 1970s) and in the Israeli-Lebanese military talks (mid-1980s). Main booksareThe Decline of the Arab Israeli Conflict: Middle East Politics and the Quest for RegionalOrder (1998) and (with Shaul Mishal)The Palestinian Hamas: Vision, Violence and

Adjustment (2000).

From the other side, on the left, are a number of Jewish critics who have taken theNew Historians to task, especially Benny Morris (ben David 2010), not to mention severalPalestinian reviewers such as Edward Said and Nur Masalha:

Norman Finkelstein (1953-): the son of Holocaust survivors, he has had a chequeredacademic career. He did his undergraduate degree at Binghamton University and a PhD inPolitical Science at Princeton University (1988). He taught at a number of institutions(Brooklyn College, Rutgers University, Hunter College, New York University), before beingassistant professor at DePaul University (2001-2007). But he was denied tenure, which he

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blamed on the famous lawyer Alan Dershowitz, with whom he had a highly publicizedexchange. He resigned from DePaul, who defended their decision to withhold tenure (thoughhe apparently received a financial settlement from them). In 2008 he was refused entry intoIsrael and banned for a further ten years. Two of his books areThe Holocaust Industry:

Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (2000); Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuseof Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History (2005).

Shlomo Sand (1946-): Professor of History, Tel Aviv University. Born in Austria ofCommunist parents, though he later left the Communist party. His undergraduate studieswere in history at Tel Aviv University, with his PhD from cole des Hautes tudes enSciences Sociales, Paris. His recent book,The Invention of the Jewish People (2009), has been very controversial, not only because of the subject matter but also because his expertiseis in modern French history, not ancient Judaism.

Debunking Zionist Myths

It is generally accepted that there were a number of views about the origin of Israelwidespread among the Israeli populace in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. These are oftenreferred to as founding myths, not to label them as necessarily false but to depict theirsymbolic importance to the concept of Israeli identity and nationhood. The New Historiansattacked a number of these as either false or at least in need of qualification or correction. It is

probably not surprising that most or all these are well articulated in the best-selling novel, Exodus , by Leon Uris (1958). Some of these founding myths are the following (cf.Rapaport 2005; Shlaim 2007):

Palestine was by and large empty, waiting to be settled by a homeless people: a landwithout a people for a people without a land. Although this quotation was notuttered by any early Zionist, it has been invoked more recently.2

Palestinians had no collective identity apart from the other neighbouring Arabs.Segev (2000a: 102-9) shows that the 1920s already saw two rival nationalistmovements, the Zionists and the Palestinians (including both Muslims andChristians).

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2The phrase was apparently invented by a Christian Restoration clergymanabout 1843 (cf. Muir 2008); however, it had become current in Zionist circles by the end ofthe 19th century (Shapira 1992: 42).


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The Jewish David was fighting against the Arab Goliath, and its victory bordered onthe miraculous. Although subsequent study shows a complicated situation, by June1948 the two sides were roughly equal in manpower and the Israelis generallysuperior in military hardware (cf. Morris 2008: 196-207). Especially important was

the disunity of the Arab leadership but also the Jewish sense of having their backsagainst the wall. The refugee problems was created by the Arab leadership. In his 1988 book (1988a;

2nd edition 2003) Morris showed that there was a variety of factors, includingdeliberate expulsion by military force or threat, though he argues it was not a unified plan from the start but developed during the fighting (Pappe and Shlaim have arguedthat there was a consistent plan from the beginning). In his book,1948 (2008),Morris now believes, based on further archival research, that Israeli commanders,witnessing growing Palestinian flight in late 1948, decided to encourage it, with Ben-Gurions connivance. He still rejects the idea that any overall expulsory policydecision was taken by the Yishuvs [new Jewish state] executive bodies in the courseof the 1948 war (Romano 2008).

The British tried to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state. Shlaims study(1988) showed that the British agreed to a secret arrangement between the Jews andking Abdullah of Jordan to prevent a Palestinian state.

The Arabs had a coordinated plan for the destruction of the nascent Jewish state. Infact, there was a variety of aims among the Arab leadership, with the Jordanian

leader wanting only to establish control over territory assigned by the UN partition plan to a Palestinian state. The fight by the Jews was an example of purity of arms. The studies by Morris but

also others (e.g., Gelber 2006) showed that a number of massacres were perpetrated by the Jewish troops, and there are documented cases of rape (often followed bymurder of the victim). In fact, more atrocities were committed by the Jewish side because they were the stronger militarily. And the Arab regular armies committed nomassacres of civilians or prisoners of war.

The failure to make peace since 1948 is entirely the fault of the Arabs who refuse toallow Israel to exist. Shlaim (2000) and Pappe have argued that various Arabapproaches were made but rejected out of hand by Ben Gurion. Morris and manyothers do not agree with the overall judgment, and this remains a very controversial point.

A term that was coined to designate some of the critics was post-Zionist, on theanalogy of post-modernism (Silberstein 1999; cf. Avineri 2007). Many of those who holdthis position are, unsurprisingly, academics Like post-modernism it is not easy to define

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because not all hold the same views, but many hold that the Zionist project ended once thenation of Israel had been established. They reject the Zionist narrative: rather than being aJewish state, Israel should be a state of all its citizens, including the Israeli Arabs. It is alsocommon to question the founding myths, thus making it customary for critics of the NH to

label them post-Zionist. Shlaim and Pappe indeed use that label for themselves; however,Morris denies that he is anything but a Zionist. Some cynically interpret post-Zionist tomean anti-Zionist. Some of the post-Zionists would probably not be unhappy with thedesignation anti-Zionist (Morris calls both Shlaim and Pappe anti-Zionist [2004b]), but itshould strictly not carry that connotation, and many post-Zionists vehemently deny that theyare anti-Zionist.

The On-going Debate

The New Historians and their Critics

As noted above, the debate began in the late 1980s, partly because of a developingopenness in Israeli society but especially because of the opening of archives relating to 1948under the 30-year embargo rule, not only in Israel but in the US, Britain, and the UN. In anAmerican journal Morris used the term New Historian to characterize himself and the others(Morris 1988b). As so often, the question of newness was relative: Morris has since admittedthat he gave insufficient credit to the work being done by a number of others in related areas

of historical studies (2007: 7). And Derek Penslar has pointed out that there was an earlier phase of revisionism in the early 1970s, preceding the New Historians in the late 1980s(1995: 126-31), but he goes on to show the importance of what the New Historians did(1995: 131-40).

Several of the writings of the New Historians were widely read in academic andeven popular circles, especially Morriss 1988 work on the refugee problem. As Morris hasargued (Morris ed. 2008: 6-7) the New Historians did not initiate the debate and made only asmall portion of the change of attitudes (long-term historical processes and a traumatichistorical reality [in the First Intifada] were infinitely more important), but the NewHistoriography represented a concern already becoming widespread. In any case, togetherwith other trends they helped to initiate a broad debate and also became a lightning rod forthose unhappy with the new questions, with many reviewers, journalists, and academicsattacking the New Historians, some accusing them of being unpatriotic and providingammunition for Israels enemies.

As result of the debate, attempts were made to reflect more radical views in school

textbooks, including use of the Arabic word for the Israeli victory in 1948 (naqba disaster),

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already from 1999 (Hirsch 2007: 247-49). There are indications that the writings of the NewHistorians were a factor in the change. Then, in 2009 not only the Arabic word the Naqba, butalso the expression ethnic cleansing, were actually used in textbooks for 11th and 12thgraders produced by the Zalman Shazar Centre, but the Minister of Education under the

Netanyahu government had the texts withdrawn after some criticisms by history teachers(Kashti 2009). The plan was to make some edits and then consider whether to reintroducethem into the classroom. Campaigner Nurit Peled-Elhanan, professor of language andeducation at the Hebrew University, has issued a book, Palestine in Israeli School Books (2012), claiming that the Palestinians were uniformly presented in a negative way in schooltextbooks; she used the term racism to describe the results of her research (Sherwood 2011).Long-term change of attitude was demonstrated by a study conducted in the summer of 2008 by Rafi Nets-Zehngut (Teachers College, Columbia University) and Daniel Bar-Tal (Tel AvivUniversity) on the Israeli-Jewish collective memory of the Israeli-Arab/Palestinian conflict.This found that 47 percent of those interviewed believed that expulsion of Palestinians took place, versus those accepting the Zionist narrative (which claims Palestinians left of their ownaccord) who were only 41 percent.

Further books from the New Historians continued to fuel the debate, which was beneficial to society but not always to the individuals concerned. Morris lost his job with the Jerusalem Post when it was taken over by the conservative Conrad Black in 1991. He triedwithout success to get an academic post in Israel and also the USA and remained unemployed

from 1991-97. However, the Israeli president Ezer Weizman was interested in his work,called him in for a talk, and then intervened on his behalf. Morris was offered an academic post at Ben Gurion University of the Negev where he continues to teach.

Anglo-Saxon readers of the debate may be surprised--perhaps even shocked--by theadhominem comments, sometimes viciously worded. I am told this is not unusual in Israelischolarly interchange, though it tends to be foreign to American and especially Britishscholarship which generally frowns on unparliamentary language. Carlin Romano (2008)refers to the belligerence with which Israeli historians tear one anothers work to shreds andwryly comments, The past, historians say, is another country. Israeli history is anothergalaxy.

Critics of the New Historians (henceforth, NH) have been of two sorts. There have been those who seemed to criticize aspects of their work while still accepting some or many oftheir conclusions (though this was sometimes expressed as, the NH are not saying anythingnew). Anita Shapira of Tel Aviv University wrote a couple of articles in the early 1990s inwhich she took the NH to task but seemed not to be all that far removed from Benny Morris.

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In her widely praised 1992 book she traced the attitude of the early Zionists toward power as being in a defensive mode but, after the Arab riots of 1936, developed into the offensive-aggressive ethos known from the 1948 war. Yet in this study she recognized how thePalestinian Arabs were either ignored or caricatured negatively. Yoav Gelber of Haifa

University has also been critical of the NH, though he expressly excluded Morris from hiscriticisms. Indeed, in his review of Morriss1948 he was not convinced that the Arab attackon the incipient state of Israel was jihad (as Morris has more recently argued), but he reviewedthe book overall with sympathy and respect.3

Gelber noted that a distinction should be drawn between historical revision and anideological negation of the Israeli narrative and the claims it reprsents (2004: 47), withMorris and Shlaim mainly representing the former but Pappe, Flapan, Kimmerling, and Segevthe latter. Interestingly, Morris pointed out that several critics had tacitly accepted some ormany of the NH criticisms (Morris 1991: 110; Penslar 1995: 145 n. 40). Pertinent to that,Shapira is referred to as a revisionist by Rebecca Stein (1996). Similarly, Michael Oren has been referred to as a revisionist in his generally acclaimed book on the 1967 war (Oren2002), although he has made critical remarks about some of the NH, such as Segev (Oren2007).

A criticism of Morris by some Orientalist scholars, such as Avraham Sela, was thatMorris did not make use of Arabic sources ((Shlaim 2007: 135). Morriss argument was that

the archives of the various Arabic countries were still closed to researchers. He also askedwhether using the available Arabic sources referred to by his critics would have changed his picture of the exodus of Palestinians in 1948. Sela conceded that they probably would nothave changed the picture, but that to ignore them nevertheless creates or at least gives theimpression of an unbalanced account. Curiously, those on the right (like Karsh) or on the left(like Pappe and Shlaim) who have used the Arabic sources have also produced problematicaccounts (see next section on Pappe). Romano summarizes the discussion:

Rogan and Shlaim, writing in 2001, saw no immediate prospect for declassificationof their [the Arab states who attacked Israel] key documents because Arab scholarswould find no support for critical revisions of their historiography. While the Israelihistorian Anita Shapira has pointed out that Jordan opens its archives to a limited

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3See Landes 2009 which quotes extensively from the review. I have not seenthe full review itself which was in the journal Azure that was inaccessible to me.


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extent, materials that would resolve factual disputes . . . are not available. [Romano2008]

Morris himself put succinctly the problem with Arabic sources:

There is simply no Arab documentation of the sort historians must rely on. Whatexists in Arabic or translated from Arabic into Hebrew or English are some Arab political and military memoirs, newspaper clippings, chronicles and histories. Muchof this material . . . is slight, unreliable, tendentious, imaginative and occasionallyfantastical.4

Less justified seems to be the charge that Morris relied on the biased records of theIsrael Defence Force (Pappe 2004; Masalha 1991). First, this seems to me incorrect: from allI can tell he has used a variety of archive sources (British National Record Office, US National Archives, United Nations Archives, as well as the Israel State Archives, the CentralZionist Archives, the Hagana and Israel Defence Forces archives, etc.). Furthermore, anyhistorian knows that most sources have biases or problems but you must use them critically.It is clear that a variety of material was available in the Israeli archives, including transcriptsor summaries of Arabic station broadcasts, records of Israeli cabinet meetings (which arecustomarily transcribed verbatim, unlike British ones), and reports by international observers.Morris himself has discussed the bias of various types of Zionist documents for 1948 (Morris

1994; 1995). But we also have the fact that Morriss recovery of information on atrocities,rapes, and the explusion of Palestinians from their homes came not from oral testimony butfrom the archives. Morris responds to similar charges of the Palestinian Masalha in thefollowing way:

Masalha charges that Birth [of the Palestian Refugee Problem ] and1948 [and After: Israel and the Palestinians ] are based . . . predominatly . . . on official Israeli archivaland non-archival material . . . [and Morriss] work . . . rests on carefully released partial documentation. . . In writing Birth and1948 , I used the state archives ofIsrael, Britain, and the U.S., the archives of (Yishuv) political parties, and private papers collections, some memoirs, and some secondary works. Masalha misleads hisreaders when he speaks of carefully released partial documentation. Israelsdeclassification policy is relatively (relative to Britain, for example) liberal, and the

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4Beinin 2004, quoting Morris 1990: 42-43 (Morris 1990 was unavailable tome).


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revelations in Birth and1948 are proof of this. I was able to see a great deal ofmaterial, much of it highly sensitive. Unfortunately, much military material andcabinet protocols do remain closed, inevitably hampering the researcher. But I believeI saw enough material, military and civilian, to obtain an accurate picture of what

happened even if I did not always get all the detail I could have wished regarding a particular locality on a particular date. [Morris 1991: 109-10]

Rather different, at least in tone if not in substance, are another set of critics, such asEfraim Karsh of Kings College London. A rather ill-natured exchange between Karsh andMorris has gone on for 20 years and more. Recently, Morris has catalogued a long list ofspecific views where Karsh has misrepresented what he actually believes (Morris 2011a;2011b), but Karsh insists that Morriss support for Israel is all feigned. However, Ian Lustick,(Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania) has noted

Instead of applying clear methodological standards and consistent rules ofinterpretation in a hardnosed manner and without political intent, Karshs treatmentof sources and evidence is almost wholly determined by a passionately delivered political argument. The resulting inconsistencies and contradictions are breathtaking.. . .

While condemning Morriss entire oeuvre, Karsh studiously avoids coming to

terms with the massive amount of documentary evidence Morris adduces . . . . These pin-prick and unsustainable attacks on Morris are illustrative of the nature of Karshs book--an exercise in the scoring of debating points, all proclaimed as knock-out blows.5

In his review of Karsh, Joel Beinin comments, Karshs main line of attack is tangential to the bulk of Morriss work. . . . By returning the debate to the arena of intellectual history, Karshconstructs a defense . . . that avoids engaging Morriss archival discoveries (Beinin 1998:448).

In his initial criticism of Morris, Karsh scored a point by drawing attention to amistaken quotation of the former (Morris 2011c; Lustick 1997). Morris had quoted BenGurion as saying in a letter to his son, We must expel Arabs and take their places. This was

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5Lustick 1997a: 162-64. For Karshs response, see Karsh 1997, followed by arely by Lustick (1997b).


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undermines him as a scholar (Rapaport 2005). Beinin sees a connection between Morrissracism and his near exclusion of Arab testimony; he concludes by the condemnatorystatement that Morris has joined the ranks of those who shed no tears (Beinin 2004). Therewere similar reactions to Morriss 2009 book,One State, Two States: Resolving the

Israel/Palestine Conflict , which gave a very pessimistic view of Palestinian intent (though agood deal of space is given over to critiquing the one-state solution that Pappe argues for).

Yet several critics expressed some puzzlement after this. They seemed to expectMorris to change his historical views, but this did not happen. His main work that appearedfollowing the interview was his1948 in 2008. This has been widely praised. Although Segev(2010) found fault with it (partly because Morris was not more judgmental), Shlaim was quitelaudatory, noting

. . . I must confess, I had low expectations of Morriss new book on the 1948 war. Iexpected it to be history with a political agenda, to display prejudice against the Arabsand partiality towards the Jews. But I was in for a pleasant surprise. This is BennyMorris at his best: immensely well informed, thorough, careful in the use of evidence,thoughtful and thought-provoking. [Shlaim 2008].

Particularly interesting was a review of Roane Carey (2008) which accused Morris of being aracist but then openly admitted that his study of the 1948 war was fair and objective; she

found political bias only in the last chapter of Some Conclusions. Even the journalist thelate Avi Isserof who harshly criticized specific examples of the book also went on tocharacterize it as follows: There is probably not a better book about the war in English. . . .Therefore, it will probably be the definitive work for some time to come, just as RighteousVictims rightly earned an honored place as a balanced and comprehensive treatment of theconflict as a whole (2008a). In his review of the book Romano (2008) refers to Morrissadmirable willingness to state facts as he sees them and apportion blame to both sides.

Yet Morris had already argued strongly that ones political views should not affectones historical work. He claims that his books have arisen not out of political motives butsimply out of a desire to know what happened. Research turns up information and should be presented without concern for political fallout but letting the chips fall where they may. Inthis he differs from some of the other NH who are explicitly political in their aims. Here ishow he has assessed the situation (Morris 2004b):

I believed, and still believe, that there is such a thing as historical truth; that it existsindependently of, and can be detached from, the subjectivities of scholars; that it is the

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historians duty to try to reach it by using as many and as varied sources as he can.When writing history, the historian should ignore contemporary politics and struggleagainst his political inclinations as he tries to penetrate the murk of the past. Pappe--and, implicitly, my Zionist critics such as Anita Shapira and Shabtai Teveth--have

argued that no one is capable of abandoning his educational, ideological, and political baggage, and that I, too, have been motivated, consciously or subconsciously, by my politics and have reflected (according to Pappe) my solid Zionist convictions or(according to the establishment Zionists) my solid anti-Zionist convictions.

The dangers of letting politics determine history can be seen in the work of AviShlaim. For example, in a thoughtful review of Avi Shlaims Israel and Palestine , MichaelRubner (Professor Emeritus of International Relations, Michigan State University) comments,

The essays in this compendium highlight at least two problematic tendencies of Israelirevisionist historiography: placing the lions share of the blame for the persistence ofthe conflict on Israel, and being intolerant toward scholars who do not share therevisionists interpretations of the evidence and their sense of certitude. The urge tocastigate Israel and to underplay the culpability of the Palestinians is most vividlyexemplified in Shlaims treatment of the reasons for the breakdown of the Oslo peace process. [Rubner 2012]

In a sympathetic aside to ShlaimsCollusion across the Jordan (1988), Morris pointed outthat only one of the parties to the collusion was pilloried, viz. the Jewish state and itsleaders. King Abdullah of Jordan, on the other hand, was treated as a wise and peace-seekingleader, in spite of the fact that Abdullah did a great deal to stifle Palestinian nationalism butlittle or nothing to make peace with Israel in 1949-51: all this was somehow exempted fromthe moral fervor that characterized Shlaims treatment of Israel (Morris 2009b).

Morris further describes the differences between himself and Shlaim with regard toresearching and writing history:

Shlaim once said that he believes historians should not merely describe and analyze but also act as judge and jury (or was it judge, jury, and executioner?)--that it istheir responsibility to pass moral judgment on the actions (and the thinking?) of their protagonists. He has a powerful confidence in his own moral compass. He oncewrote that I had lost mine. I do not believe that historians should moralize in theirhistoriography: it is a sign of hubris, and it is tedious. My belief is that historiansshould seek truth, not justice, and describe and analyze events, using as wide a range

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of sources as possible to try and work out why people acted as they did and what werethe consequences--and then let the reader judge, using his or her own moral compass,whether the protagonists were right or wrong, wise or unwise. [Morris 2009b]

Morris similarly points out why he came to certain conclusion differently from the pro-Palestinian Norman Finkelstein and the Palestinian Nur Masalha (and, incidentally, his Zionistcritic Shabtai Teveth!):

Finkelstein/Masalha/Teveth and I have different perceptions of the role of thehistorian. In tackling 1948, I set out tounderstand anddescribe a certain set ofcircumstances and a chain of events. Finkelstein/Masalha/Teveth are out to findculprits andlay blame , as if history is some sort of morality play or judicial proceeding. Finkelstein takes issue with my temperate conclusions, and charges thatI strove for a happy median. While I admit preferring temperance to intemperance,all I can say is that, coming to the subject of the exodus [of Palestinians from theirtowns and villages] without any preconceptions (or, for that matter, knowledge), Icollected evidence, tried to reconstruct what happened and why things happened asthey did, and then drew conclusions. If the conclusions are that the exodus occurred ina number of stages and was due to an accumulation of causes, it is because that is howthe process occurred, according to my understanding of the evidence; had I found aJewish master plan for expulsion, or traces of such a plan, and had the evidence in the

different areas at different times demonstrated that a policy of expulsion had beendecided upon and was being systematically implemented, then that would have beenmy finding and conclusion. [Morris 1991: 103-4, italics in the original]

Even more politically motivated is Ilan Pappe (see below).

Apart from political agendas, another reason for differences between the NH is anotheraspect of historical method. Morris has been meticulous in researching the archives; however,these are generally Israeli, US, or NATO. As already noted, others have criticized him for notusing Arab archives, and his response is that the official archives are not available. This brings us to the question of oral tradition. This is a very large subject, too large to treatadequately here (cf. Gorenberg 2007). But both the Zionist historians and NH such as Pappeand Shlaim make extensive use of reports by participants in the various conflicts, and it hasled to controversial and (to many historians) unacceptable conclusions. Morriss position isthat he avoids using interviews and even memoirs because these are often biased during a timewhen there is an on-going conflict. This oral testimony can easily be thinly disguised propaganda for one side or the other. It is much harder to contest the information in

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contemporary documents and official archives where these can be cross checked with otherdocuments and archives. A good example is the Tantura affair (below).

Unfortunately, Morriss statement that it is bad to allow political views to influence

ones scholarly work is borne out with some of Shlaims and Pappes writings. The result has been a sharp exchange of critical reviews, with Morris being especially harsh on his fellow NH. A review of Tom Segevs1967 (2007) in the New Republic cannot now be downloadedfrom the internet at the authors request; one cannot help wondering what was said! OfShlaim, Morris (2009b) praised the 676 pages of solid and well-written research of his first book (Shlaim 1988), and also his second book (Shlaim 2000) as the best, mostcomprehensive and generally fair-minded diplomatic history of the conflict between 1948 and1999 yet published (Morris 2000). But a collection of essays, Israel and Palestine , have been strongly castigated for their one-sidedness, in which the Palestinians are always defendedor excused for their actions, while the Israelis are always condemned. As Morris (2009b) putsit, The pieces are mostly an extended exercise in anti-Zionism, nothing more. MordechaiBar-On (formerly assistant to Moshe Dayan and later a Peace Now activist) has recognized thegeneral critique given by the NH to the Zionist depiction of events (cf. Bar-On 2007; Bar-On/Morris/Golani 2002), but he also was a participant in many of the high-level militarydiscussions in the years after 1948. He strongly disagrees with his friend Shlaim about theinterpretation of the facts (Rapoport 2005). For example, he agrees that the Israelis rejectedArab peace proposals but that the Arab proposals were unacceptable.

Morriss assessment of Ilan Pappe was even more negative. He entitled a review ofseveral of Pappes books, The Liar as Hero, and began with the statement, At best, IlanPappe must be one of the worlds sloppiest historians; at worst, one of the most dishonest(Morris 2011a). Morris took an entire page just to give examples of factual errors in Pappes book,The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006). Many of them seem trivial to a non-specialist, but Morris went on to give other examples of distortions to support a politicalagenda which look much more serious and inexcusable, if true. Unfortunately, otherreviewers confirm that they are true (see Black 2007; Frantzman 2008; Higton 2008; Israeli2008).

Pappe has followed a curious odyssey. He apparently claimed to have fought against prejudice and persecution for his political beliefs from an early time.6 Yet in spite of his PhD

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6These claims were apparently made in Pappe 2010, a work not available tome. I have taken the data from the summary and quotes in Morris 2011a.


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work (later published as Pappe 1988) and his supposedly radical views, he was able to obtaina post at the University of Haifa in 1984. As Morris pointed out, the academic establishment,which was heavily Zionist at that time, would not have given him the job if he had expressedanything very radical. His first book in fact says nothing about ethnic cleansing. Pappe joined

the Communist Party for a time and was a candidate for the Knesset for the Palestinian partyHadash in 1996 and in 1999. Yet he and Zionist colleague Yoav Gelber had a joint interviewin 1999, which was quite amicable even though they disagreed over many points (Derfner1999). There was a surprising lot of agreement over the facts, though their interpretationswere quite different.

Pappe came under attack from his own colleagues, however, some of whom called forhis resignation or dismissal (including Gelber). Pappe claimed that his colleagues becamedisenchanted with him because of his support for the MA dissertation of Teddy Katz (see nextsection). But according to Morris (2011a), Pappes colleagues say it was because of his callfor an academic boycott of Israeli universities, in particular his own University of Haifa.Although his colleagues called for him to resign, there was no formal action taken (in spite ofPappes claims of a disciplinary hearing), and he left voluntarily. Even Shlaim disagreed withhis political support of Katzs MA over the Tantura affair and especially with his call for anacademic boycott (Rapoport 2005). Pappe argues for the one-state solution to the Palestinian problem.

The Tantura Affair7

The MA dissertation of Teddy Katz was being supervised by Kais Firro, a specialist inthe Druze Muslim sect, though Pappe was apparently something of a spiritual guide to thestudent. Katz focused on events in the Muslim village of Tantura (south of Haifa on thecoast) in May 1948. His study was apparently based entirely on interviews with Arabs and afew Israeli veterans: he did not research the archives. He concluded that there had been amassacre of about 250 Arab villagers which had then been covered up by the Israel DefenceForces. None of Katzs examiners were specialists in the 1948 war, but they gave thedissertation high marks.

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7A detailed summary of the data is given by Morris 2004a. Gelber (2006: **)covers much the same ground, sometimes giving more detail than Morris, but is perhaps less balanced.


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The study was written up in an article in the newspaper Maariv , which caused variousIsraeli veterans to protest that this was not only wrong but slandered their reputations. Theirside of the story was given in a further Maariv article, and they sued Katz for liable. In courtKatz temporily recanted but then reasserted his original position. Haifa University looked at

the dissertation again and found substantial discrepancies between written quotes and whatwas actually present on the interview tapes (Katz claimed some of these statements were madeafter the batteries of the tape recorder gave out). The University withdrew the MA that had been awarded, and required that the dissertatioin be revised. When it was resubmitted, theUniversity appointed five examiners, though again none was a specialist in the 1948 war, andtwo of them had edited a book that could be taken that they had a conflict of interest. Three ofthe examiners failed it, but the University decided to award a non-research MA, whichwould prevent his attempting to progress to PhD study.

Benny Morris (2004) listened to the taped interviews conducted by Katz, interviewedsome of the Israeli veterans (who denied a massacre but sheepishly acknowledged a forceddisplacement of the villagers) and one of Katzs more solid Arab witnesses (whomaintained that as a boy he saw 23 village men and a woman stood up against a wall and shot by Israeli soldiers). Morris came away with a deep sense of unease. However, his search ofthe archives found no trace of any massacre in British, UN, or Israeli sources. It would bevery unusual if no hint of the massacre could be found in any of the available sources, ofwhich there were a number, including several reports by a liaison between a nearby Israeli

village and surrounding Arab villages. Israeli intelligence reports monitoring Arab radio broadcasts in which a woman from Tantura reported that Jews had raped women in additionto acts of robber, theft and arson. Morris asks whether it is likely that a slaughter ofhundreds of villagers at the time would not have been mentioned by Arab radio broadcasts.

About a week after the battle the Israel Defence Force chief of staff asked the brigadecommander for a report because of reports of needless acts of sabotage at Tantura. Thereport affirmed that damage had been caused but explicit orders were issued forbidding arepetition; this sabotage was clarified by interviews with veterans to be the plundering ofabandoned Arab livestock by Jewish villagers. Morris is sceptical but could find no furtherexplanation in the sources. Morris asks, So what happened in Tantura? As things stand,there is no way to reach a clear determination. The lack of any mention of a massacre untilthe 1990s is surely worthy of attention. But, Morris notes,

But atrocities--war crimes, in modern parlance--appear to have occurred.Many of the Tantura dead, even if they only numbered 70-75 as Alexandroni [theIsraeli brigade] veterans would have it, were unarmed civilians or disarmed

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militiamen. A number of Alexandroni veterans said as much in undisputed interviews.We have . . . Makovskys diary [an Israeli soldier who was at Tantura but later killed]and Micha Vitkons statements, both to Katz and to Gilat [the lawyer acting for theveterans], that there was execution of prisoners by B Companys commander, Karni,

and there had been killing.

The Interpretation of Plan D 8

Another area where there is fierce debate among the NH is over the Plan D that wasdeveloped in the 1948 war. This was a military defence (not offence) strategy, devised inMarch 1948, to counter the expected invasion by armies from surrounding Arab states(assisted by local Palestinians). It gave local Israeli commanders authority over the Arabinhabitants of the areas conquered by Jewish fighters. In order to consolidate Israeli controlover strategic routes, borders, and areas, the local commanders could decide whether to leaveor expel the Arab inhabitants of their areas, in consultation with officers and advisers. Thiswas only a one small aspect of the plan, and it was explicitly stated that expulsion wouldnormally take place only when a village resisted.

Both Shlaim and Pappe, and even Kimmerling (Hebrew article cited in Gelber 2006:387 n. 2), have asserted rather dogmatically that it was a plan to expel the native Palestiniansand take over their land, and they point to it as clear evidence of an overall Israeli plan for

ethnic cleansing. On the other hand, Morris (2008: 116-21) has emphasized the context inwhich Plan D operated. He argued that because of circumstances Plan D was never formallylaunched by a decision of the military leadership. There are no references to animplementation of it, and it is seldom mentioned in military reports or paperwork of the time.A number of actions that coincided with elements of Plan D seem to have been undertakenwithout conscious knowledge of the documents contents. When one looks at the actual textof the document, it becomes clear that it is no master plan, nor did it have the aim ofremoving all Palestinians systematically from the conquered territories: Nowhere does thedocument speak of a policy or desire to expel the Arab inhabitants of Palestine or of any ofits constituent regions; nowhere is any brigade instructed to clear out the Arabs (Morris2008: 121). In this interpretation Morris is joined by Gelber (2006: 303-6) and others.

Norman Finkelstein and Shlomo Sand

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8For a summary and references, see Morris (2008: 116-21) and Gelber (2006:303-6).


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Finkelstein and Sand (pronounced the German way, as Zant ) are not part of the NH/Zionist configuration but are part of the left-wing critics of Israel. Thus, ideologicallythey are in the same camp as Shlaim and Pappe. Finkelstein made his name originally as a

critic of those who were promoting Holocaust consciousness with his book,The Holocaust Industry . His parents had been through Auschwitz and survived, though many of his relativesdied in the Holocaust. But Finkelstein argued that many Jews were exploiting it in the mid-1960s to make out Israel and the Jews as victims and to deflect criticism from Israels humanrights abuses. He claims that American Jews made Holocaust a low-key affair until the US became an ally of Israel about the time of the Six Day War (he seems to begin with the premise that Holocaust should noted only in low-key way). In my experience, the Holocaustwas more widely known among Americans (through such media as Leon Uriss book Exodus and the follow-up movie) than Finkelstein allows.

Finkelstein has seen himself as a major supporter of Palestinian rights. His book, Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History (2005), defendsPalestinian rights, but it is primarily a reply to Alan Dershowitz. Both Finkelstein andDershowitz have launched very personal attacks on each other (cf. Goodman 2003).Finkelstein argues that past treatment of the Jews should not be used as justification fortreatment of Palestinians nor for keeping control of the West Bank. However, he did notwelcome the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign which began in 2005 (a call

by a couple of hundred Palestinian non-governmental organizations for sanctions againstIsrael in support of the Palestinian cause). Rather, in 2012 he accused it of being ahypocritical, dishonest cult with the real goal of destroying Israel. Finkelstein is in favourof the two-state solution.

Sand is one of the few radicals to have an Israeli university post, but this is probably because his specialty is modern French history, and he has written little on Israeli or Zionisthistory. His recent Invention of the Jewish People has sold very well in Israel as well as theEnglish-speaking world but has also attracted a huge amount of criticism. The reason is thatthe thesis of his book is that the idea of the Jewish nation and even Jewish identity is amodern invention. He claims that a large number of Jews in the Roman empire arose throughconversion; likewise, the bulk of European Jews originated as converts of the Khazarkingdom (ironically, precisely an argument used in some anti-Semitic quarters). He furtherconcludes that the descendents of the ancient Jews of Palestine are the modern Palestinians.

The question of ethnic identity is one much discussed at the moment, but this has notgenerally been to discount that the Jews had an identity as a people (or anethnos in the Greco-

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Roman world). Sand admits that he is dealing with an area outside his area of competence,and those of us who specialize in the history of the ancient Jews find seriously weakarguments in his book. The question of the Khazars is outside my area of knowledge, thoughit has been critiqued as problematic (Shapira 2009). Some specialists have argued that there

may have large numbers of converts in the Roman empire, but that is controversial. The problem is that estimating the number of Jews at the time is difficult. Also, many argue thatlittle conversion took place at the time. From the mid-second century CE, Roman lawactually forbade conversion because it outlawed circumcision for non-Jews. As MartinGoodman, a historian of Rome and Jews under the Romans, Roman sources refer to the Jewsas anatio , a nation (Goodman 2010).

Some Conclusions

The Israeli-Palestinian confrontation is a fraught situation into which history has beendrawn in as a weapon on both sides. The first generation of Israelis had participated in the1948 war of independence, and various national myths grew up, as one might expect, whichwere reflected in the writings and memoirs of participants in the events. The work of the NHin debunking a number of these myths is precisely the sort of revisionism exemplified inother areas of historicl research. Penslar (1995) brings in examples from the US and EasternEurope that show a very similar pattern.

Penslar also quotes the political scientist Pierre Birnbaum to show that the pattern instates with a strong public sector and close connections between research institutions and thegovernment (like Israel, France, and Germany) is for historians to support the state in theirwritings. On the other hand, in states (like the USA) with a decentralized educationalstructure, there is a more persistent tradition of critical and anti-establishment positions.There were external factors (such as the 1973 Yom Kippur war) and the general maturation ofIsraeli society that created the context for the debunking work of the NH.

The question is whether the rejection of the Zionist myths has not been replaced byPalestinian myths by some of the NH. Here is where my historians nose starts to twitch.Like most working historians, I accept the value of some of postmodernisms insights, but Ireject its radical relativism. The case for this position is well summed up in the book, In

Defence of History (1997), by the Cambridge professor of modern history Richard Evans. I believe there is such a thing as historical truth independent of the observer and the researcher.I reject the view that ones historical research can be harnessed as a support for politicalactivism. Of course, we all bring history into our rationale for our political views, but politicsshould be abandoned at the door of the study where historical research is done.

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Naturally, this represents an ideal, and critical scholarship has long taught us (long before postmodernism) that we are all subjective fallible humans. We can strive for theacademic ideal, and some do it better than others, but we all fall short. What looks to oneresearcher as common sense might look to his or her peers as blatant prejudice. This is why

the historical debating arena is so important. We must argue for our views, and they must beopen to criticism by our peers. We must given evidence and make clear the data on whichconclusions are based.

In my view, whatever one thinks of Benny Morriss political views (which many findabhorrent), he seems to be the best historian of those surveyed in this paper. Interestingly,though, the next best is probably Michael Oren who is not a NH, followed perhaps by YoavGelber who is also not a NH. On the other hand, while Shlaim and Pappe and others havedone some good work in the past, I think they have allowed their writings to be permeated bytheir political views. Some will no doubt agree with their political views, and there is noreason why they should not lay them out in their publications. But it seems that they haveceased to make the effort to do properly balanced historical research.

One may have sympathy with the plight of the Palestinians, but the historicalcriticisms of the Zionist enterprise are equally valid,mutatis mutandis , for the Palestinianendeavour. As Gershom Gorenberg asks, If a collective, politicized narrative obstructsIsraelis view of their past, why is building such a narrative positive for Palestinians? If

fragmentary testimony helps us understand how Palestinians experience 1948 and howmemory changes over time, might not Israeli testimony have the same value? (Gorenberg2007). Or, to use the English proverb, Whats sauce for the goose . . .!

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