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Haganah (Hebrew: "The Defense", ההגנה HaHagana) was a Jewish paramilitary organization in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine from 1920 to 1948, which later became the core of the Israel Defense Forces.

Origins[link]

The predecessor of Haganah was Hashomer (Hebrew: השומר‎; "The Watchman") established in 1909, itself a successor of Bar-Giora, founded in 1907. The Bar-Giora consisted of a small group of Jewish immigrants who guarded settlements for an annual fee. At no time did the group have more than 100 members.^{[citation needed]}

1920 and 1921 Arab riots[link]

After the 1920 Arab riots and 1921 Jaffa riots, the Jewish leadership in Palestine believed that the British, to whom the League of Nations had given a mandate over Palestine in 1920, had no desire to confront local Arab gangs which frequently attacked Palestinian Jews.^{[citation needed]} Believing that they could not rely on the British administration for protection from these gangs, the Jewish leadership created the Haganah to protect Jewish farms and kibbutzim. In addition to guarding Jewish communities, the role of the Haganah was to warn the residents of and repel attacks by Palestinian Arabs. In the period between 1920–1929, the Haganah lacked a strong central authority or coordination. Haganah "units" were very localized and poorly armed: they consisted mainly of Jewish farmers who took turns guarding their farms or their kibbutzim.

Following the 1929 Palestine riots, the Haganah's role changed dramatically. It became a much larger organization encompassing nearly all the youth and adults in the Jewish settlements, as well as thousands of members from the cities. It also acquired foreign arms and began to develop workshops to create hand grenades and simple military equipment, transforming from an untrained militia to a capable underground army.

1931 Irgun split[link]

Many Haganah fighters objected to the official policy of havlagah (restraint) that Jewish political leaders (who had become increasingly controlling of the Haganah) had imposed on the militia. Fighters had been instructed to only defend communities and not initiate counter attacks against Arab gangs or their communities. This policy appeared defeatist to many who believed that the best defense is a good offense. In 1931, the more militant elements of the Haganah splintered off and formed the Irgun Tsva'i-Leumi (National Military Organization), better known as "Irgun" (or by its Hebrew acronym, pronounced "Etzel").

Haganah Ship Jewish State at Haifa Port (1947)

1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine[link]

During the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, the Haganah worked to protect British interests and to quell Arab rebellion using the FOSH, and then Hish units. At that time, the Haganah fielded 10,000 mobilized men along with 40,000 reservists. Although the British administration did not officially recognize the Haganah, the British security forces cooperated with it by forming the Jewish Settlement Police, Jewish Supernumerary Police and Special Night Squads, which were trained and led by Colonel Orde Wingate. The battle experience gained during the training was useful in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.

1939 White Paper[link]

By 1939, the British had issued the White Paper, which severely restricted Jewish immigration to Palestine, deeply angering the Zionist leadership. David Ben-Gurion, then chairman of the Jewish Agency, set the policy for the Zionist relationship with the British: We shall fight the war against Hitler as if there were no White Paper, and we shall fight the White Paper as if there were no war.

In reaction to the White Paper, the Haganah built up the Palmach as the Haganah's elite strike force and organized illegal Jewish immigration to Palestine. Approximately 100,000 Jews were brought to Palestine in over one hundred ships during the final decade of what became known as Aliyah Bet. The Haganah also organized demonstrations against British immigration quotas.

World War II participation[link]

In the first years of World War II, the British authorities asked Haganah for cooperation again, due to the fear of an Axis breakthrough in North Africa^{[citation needed]}. After Rommel was defeated at El Alamein in 1942, the British stepped back from their all-out support for Haganah^{[citation needed]}. In 1943, after a long series of requests and negotiations, the British Army announced the creation of the Jewish Brigade Group. While Palestinian Jews had been permitted to enlist in the British army since 1940, this was the first time an exclusively Jewish military unit served in the war under a Jewish flag. The Jewish Brigade Group consisted of 5,000 soldiers and was deployed in Italy in September 1944. The brigade was disbanded in 1946^{[citation needed]}. All in all, more than 30,000 Palestinian Jews served in the British army during the war^{[citation needed]}.

On May 14, 1941 the Haganah created the Palmach (an acronym for Plugot Mahatz — strike companies), an elite commando section, in preparation against the possibility of a British withdrawal and Axis invasion of Palestine. Its members, young men and women, received specialist training in guerilla tactics and sabotage.^[2] During 1942 the British gave assistance in the training of Palmach volunteers but in early 1943 they withdrew their support and attempted to disarm them.^[3] The Palmach, then numbering over 1000, continued as an underground organisation with its members working half of each month as kibbutz volunteers, the rest of the month spent training.^[4] It was never large — by 1947 it amounted to merely five battalions (about 2,000 men) — but its members had not only received physical and military training, but also acquired leadership skills that would subsequently enable them to take up command positions in Israel's army.

1944 Lord Moyne assassination[link]

In 1944, after the assassination of Lord Moyne, (the British Minister of State for the Middle East), by members of the Lehi, the Haganah worked with the British to kidnap, interrogate, and in some cases, deport Irgun members. This action was called The Saison, or hunting season, and was directed against the Irgun and not the Lehi^{[citation needed]}. Future Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek was later revealed to be the Jewish Agency liaison officer with the British authorities and he had passed on information that led to the arrest of many Irgun activists.^[5]

Many Jewish youth, who had joined the Haganah in order to defend the Jewish people, were greatly demoralized by operations against their own people^{[citation needed]}. The Irgun, paralyzed by the Saison, were ordered by their commander, Menachem Begin, not to retaliate in an effort to avoid a full blown civil war. Although many Irgunists objected to these orders, they obeyed Begin and refrained from fighting back. The Saison eventually ended due to perceived British betrayal becoming more obvious to the public and Haganah youth becoming increasingly vocal in their opposition to the policy^{[citation needed]}.

Jewish Resistance Movement[link]

The Saison officially ended when the Haganah, Irgun and the Lehi formed the Jewish Resistance Movement, in 1945. Within this new framework, the three groups had different functions, which served to drive the British out of Palestine and create a Jewish state.

The Haganah officially withdrew from the Jewish Rebellion on 1 July 1946, but "remained permanently unco-operative."^[6] British estimates of the Haganah's strength at this time were a paper strength of 75,000 men and women with an effective strength of 30,000.^[7]

Post World War II[link]

Haganah fighters in 1947

After the war, the Haganah carried out anti-British operations in Palestine, such as the liberation of interned immigrants from the Atlit detainee camp, the bombing of the country's railroad network, and sabotage raids on radar installations and bases of the British Palestine police. It also continued to organize illegal immigration.

On May 28, 1948, less than two weeks after the creation of the state of Israel on May 15, the provisional government created the Israeli Defense Forces which would succeed the Haganah. It also outlawed maintenance of any other armed force. The re-organisation led to several conflicts between Ben Gurion and the Haganah leadership, including what was known as The Generals' Revolt. The disbanding of the Palmach was particularly bitter.

Famous members of the Haganah included Yitzhak Rabin, Ariel Sharon, Rehavam Zeevi, Dov Hoz, Moshe Dayan, Yigal Allon and Dr. Ruth Westheimer.

The Museum of Underground Prisoners in Jerusalem commemorates the activity of the underground groups in the pre-state period, recreating the every day life of those imprisoned there.

Pal-Heib Unit[link]

Some Bedouins had long standing ties with nearby Jewish communities. They helped defend these communities in the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine. During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, some Bedouins of Tuba formed an alliance with the Haganah defending Jewish communities in the Upper Galilee against Syria. Some were part of a Pal-Heib unit of the Haganah. Sheik Hussein Mohammed Ali Abu Yussef of Tuba was quoted in 1948 as saying, "Is it not written in the Koran that the ties of neighbors are as dear as those of relations? Our friendship with the Jews goes back many years. We felt we could trust them and they learned from us too".^[8]

See also[link]

• History of Israel

Notes[link]

Further reading[link]

• Bregman, Ahron. Israel's Wars: A History Since 1947. London: Routledge, 2002. ISBN 0-415-28716-2.
• Niv, David. The Irgun Tsva'i Leumi. Jerusalem: World Zionist Organization (Department for Education and Culture), 1980.
• "Text of the British White Paper Linking Jewish Agency to Zionist Terrorism in Palestine," The New York Times, July 25, 1946, p. 8.
• Zadka, Dr. Saul. Blood in Zion, How the Jewish Guerrillas drove the British out of Palestine. London: Brassey's, 1995. ISBN 1-85753-136-1.
• Jim G. Tobias, Peter Zinke. Nakam - Jüdische Rache an NS-Tätern. Konkret Literatur Verlag, Hamburg 2000. 173 Seiten, ISBN 3-89458-194-8 (German, about 1944-1947)
• Bergman, Ronen. Kollek was British informer. Ynet news. March 29, 2007. [1]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Haganah

• Hagana website
• The Haganah, from the Jewish Virtual Library
• Lexicon of Zionism: Haganah (Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
• The Haganah: History of the Israeli Underground Defense force, by the ZIIC
• From Hashomer to the Israel Defense Forces Armed Jewish Defense in Palestine, by Me'ir Pa'il

Benny Morris
Born	(1948-12-08)8 December 1948 Ein HaHoresh, Israel
Residence	Israel
Nationality	Israeli
Alma mater	Hebrew University of Jerusalem University of Cambridge
Occupation	Historian
Known for	One of Israel's "New Historians"

Benny Morris (Hebrew: בני מוריס‎‎; born 8 December 1948^[1] in Ein HaHoresh, Israel) is professor of History in the Middle East Studies department of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in the city of Be'er Sheva, Israel. He is a key member of the group of Israeli historians known as the "New Historians".

Morris's work on the Arab-Israeli conflict and especially the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has won praise and criticism from both sides of the political divide. He is accused by some academics in Israel of only using Israeli and never Arab sources, creating an "unbalanced picture".^[2] Regarding himself as a Zionist, he writes, "I embarked upon the research not out of ideological commitment or political interest. I simply wanted to know what happened."^[3]

Biography[link]

Morris was born in Kibbutz Ein HaHoresh, the son of Jewish immigrants from the United Kingdom.^[4] His father, Ya'akov Morris, was an Israeli diplomat, historian, and poet.^[5] According to The New Yorker, Benny Morris "grew up in the heart of a left-wing pioneering atmosphere".^[6]

His parents left their kibbutz and moved to Jerusalem when Morris was a year old, so that Morris could spend more time with them: kibbutz life had entailed a degree of separation.^[7] In the wake of his father's diplomatic duties, the family spent four years in New York when Morris was nine, and another two years there when he was 15.

Morris served as a paratrooper in the Israel Defense Forces during the Six-Day War. He was wounded in 1969 by an Egyptian shell at the Suez Canal, and was released from the army four months later. He completed his undergraduate studies in history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and received a doctorate in Anglo-German relations from the University of Cambridge.^[7]

Journalistic career and military refusal[link]

After graduation from the University of Cambridge he returned to Jerusalem and worked as a correspondent for the Jerusalem Post for 12 years.^[7] In 1982, he covered the Lebanon War, and also served as a reservist, taking part in the siege of Beirut in a mortar unit.^[6] In 1986, he did reserve duty in the West Bank. In 1988, when he was called up for reserve duty during the First Intifada, he refused to serve and spent three weeks in jail.^[7]

It was while working at The Jerusalem Post in the 1980s that Morris began reading through Israeli government archives, at first looking at the history of the Palmach, then turning his attention to the origins of the Palestinian refugee problem. Mainstream Israeli historiography at the time explained the 1948 Palestinian exodus from their towns and villages as having been driven by fear, or by instructions from Arab leaders. Morris found evidence that, in fact, there had been expulsions, which he made public in 1988 in The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1949.^[7]

Morris coined the term "New Historians" to describe himself, and historians Avi Shlaim and Ilan Pappe. All three were attacked by the Israeli right, accused of being antisemites and Arab lovers, and compared to Holocaust deniers.^[7]

When Conrad Black bought the Post in 1990, Morris was one of the Israeli left-wing journalists. He continued to write as a freelance, producing Israel's Secret Wars, co-written with Ian Black of The Guardian, and Righteous Victims, a history of the Arab–Israeli conflict. In 1996, he told a journalist that he was thinking of moving to America to find work; when this appeared in an article, he was invited to talk to Israel's president, Ezer Weizman, who reportedly interrogated Morris for an hour about 1948, to find out whether he was a good historian and a good Zionist. Satisfied that he was both, Weizmann found him a job as a history professor at the University of the Negev in Beersheba.^[7]

Political views[link]

Critics on the Israeli right have alleged that Morris's first book betrayed Arab sympathies and have criticized his work as biased for that reason. Morris responds that they failed to read his book with moral detachment. They assumed that, when he described Israeli actions as cruel or as atrocities, he was condemning them. In fact, he writes, he not only fails to condemn, but in many cases supports Israeli actions during 1948. That support does not stop him from wanting to describe them.^[4]

His work has been cited and criticized by Arab writers for failing to use the evidence he found of forced evictions of Palestinians in 1948 from their homes and land.^[8] His views seemed to harden in 2000 after the Palestinian rejection of President Clinton's peace accords and the beginning of the Second Intifada:

My turning point began after 2000. I wasn't a great optimist even before that. True, I always voted Labor or Meretz or Sheli and in 1988 I refused to serve in the territories and was jailed for it, but I always doubted the intentions of the Palestinians. The events of Camp David and what followed in their wake turned the doubt into certainty. When the Palestinians rejected the proposal of [prime minister Ehud] Barak in July 2000 and the Clinton proposal in December 2000, I understood that they are unwilling to accept the two-state solution. They want it all. Lod and Acre and Jaffa.^[4]

Morris still describes himself as left-wing because of his support for the two state solution, but he has said that his generation will not see peace in Israel.^[4] He has said, "I don't see the suicide bombings as isolated acts. They express the deep will of the Palestinian people. That is what the majority of the Palestinians want."^[4] 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."^[9] On the subject of Israel's Arab citizens, Morris has argued:

The Israeli Arabs are a time bomb. Their slide into complete Palestinization has made them an emissary of the enemy that is among us. They are a potential fifth column. In both demographic and security terms they are liable to undermine the state. So that if Israel again finds itself in a situation of existential threat, as in 1948, it may be forced to act as it did then. If we are attacked by Egypt (after an Islamist revolution in Cairo) and by Syria, and chemical and biological missiles slam into our cities, and at the same time Israeli Palestinians attack us from behind, I can see an expulsion situation. It could happen. If the threat to Israel is existential, expulsion will be justified...^[4]

Morris has called the Israel–Palestinian conflict a facet of a global clash of civilizations between Islamic fundamentalism and the Western World, saying, "There is a deep problem in Islam. It's a world whose values are different. A world in which human life doesn't have the same value as it does in the West, in which freedom, democracy, openness and creativity are alien.^[4] He also says "Revenge plays a central part in the Arab tribal culture. Therefore, the people we are fighting and the society that sends them have no moral inhibitions."^[4]

When a Haaretz interviewer called the 1948 Palestinian exodus "ethnic cleansing", Morris responded, "[t]here are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing. I know that this term is completely negative in the discourse of the 21st century, but when the choice is between ethnic cleansing and genocide—the annihilation of your people—I prefer ethnic cleansing."^[4]

Morris endorses the creation of a Palestinian state, as reducing the urge for violence against Israelis. But he thinks Israel needs take measures to protect her citizens in the meantime:

"We have to try to heal the Palestinians. Maybe over the years the establishment of a Palestinian state will help in the healing process. But in the meantime, until the medicine is found, they have to be contained so that they will not succeed in murdering us.

"Something like a cage has to be built for them. I know that sounds terrible. It is really cruel. But there is no choice. There is a wild animal there that has to be locked up in one way or another." This was said in the context of Palestinian terrorists and suicide bombers during the Second Intifada.

In the end, he says, the Jews, in their restored existence as a national state, are the greater victims, past and potential:

"...that's so for the Jewish people, not the Palestinians. A people that suffered for 2,000 years, that went through the Holocaust, arrives at its patrimony but is thrust into a renewed round of bloodshed, that is perhaps the road to annihilation. In terms of cosmic justice, that's terrible. It's far more shocking than what happened in 1948 to a small part of the Arab nation that was then in Palestine."

"...We are the greater victims in the course of history and we are also the greater potential victim. Even though we are oppressing the Palestinians, we are the weaker side here. We are a small minority in a large sea of hostile Arabs who want to eliminate us. So it's possible than when their desire is realized, everyone will understand what I am saying to you now. Everyone will understand we are the true victims. But by then it will be too late."

Morris wrote in the Irish Times, "There was no Zionist 'plan' or blanket policy of evicting the Arab population, or of 'ethnic cleansing'" and "the demonisation of Israel is largely based on lies—much as the demonisation of the Jews during the past 2,000 years has been based on lies. And there is a connection between the two."^[10] Morris has criticized David Ben-Gurion for not carrying out such a plan, saying "In the end, he faltered... If he had carried out a full expulsion—rather than a partial one—he would have stabilized the State of Israel for generations."^[4]

In an op-ed piece in The New York Times in July 2008, Morris wrote, "Iran's leaders would do well to rethink their gamble and suspend their nuclear program. Bar this, the best they could hope for is that Israel's conventional air assault will destroy their nuclear facilities. To be sure, this would mean thousands of Iranian casualties and international humiliation. But the alternative is an Iran turned into a nuclear wasteland."^[11] In an interview with the Austrian newspaper Der Standard Morris argues for a pre-emptive nuclear strike on Iran as the only alternative left to stop the Iranian nuclear program.^[12]

Selected book summaries[link]

1948 Palestinian exodus Main articles 1948 Palestinian exodus 1947–48 civil war 1948 Arab-Israeli War 1948 Palestine War Causes of the exodus Nakba Day Palestine refugee camps Palestinian refugee Palestinian right of return Present absentee Transfer Committee Resolution 194 Background Mandatory Palestine Israel's declaration of independence Israeli-Palestinian conflict history New Historians Palestine · Plan Dalet 1947 partition plan · UNRWA Key incidents Battle of Haifa Deir Yassin massacre Exodus from Lydda Notable writers Aref al-Aref · Yoav Gelber Efraim Karsh · Walid Khalidi Nur Masalha · Benny Morris Ilan Pappe · Tom Segev Avraham Sela · Avi Shlaim Related categories/lists List of depopulated villages Related templates Palestinians This box: view talk edit

The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947—1949 (1988)

In his first 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; fear of impending attacks; and expulsions. He argues that there was no centralized expulsion policy as such, but expulsions were ordered by the Israeli high command as needed. This was a controversial position when Morris first wrote of it; the official position in Israel was that the Palestinians had left voluntarily, or under pressure from Palestinian or other Arab leaders. At the same time, Morris documents atrocities by the Israelis, including cases of rape and torture. The book shows a map of 228 empty Palestinian villages, and attempts to explain why the villagers left. In 41 villages, he writes, the inhabitants were expelled by the IDF; in another 90, residents fled because of attacks on other villages; and in six, they 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 his updated The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (2004), Morris answers critics of the first version and adds material from the opening of new Israeli government archives. He writes that the contents of the new documents substantially increase both Israeli and Palestinian responsibility for the refugee problem, revealing more expulsions and atrocities on the Israeli side, and more orders from Arab officials to the Palestinians to leave their villages, or at least to send their women and children away. Morris writes that his conclusions are unlikely to please either Israeli or Palestinian propagandists, or "black-or-white historians".^[13]

1948 and After (1994)

1948 and After: Israel and the Palestinians is a collection of essays dedicated to the Palestinian exodus of 1948 and subsequent events. It analyses Mapai and Mapam policy during the exodus, the IDF report of July 1948 on its causes, Yosef Weitz's involvement in the events, and some cases of expulsions that occurred in the fifties. Although Morris dismisses the claim that the Palestinians were systematically expelled due to orders from Israeli officials, he nevertheless cites an IDF Intelligence Report that concludes that 70% of the exodus was caused by Israeli forces and 'Jewish dissidents^[14]

The IDF report lists: 'the factors that precipitated the exodus in order of importance—

1. direct, hostile Jewish [Haganah/IDF] operations against Arab settlements.
2. the effect of our [Haganah/IDF] hostile operations on nearby Arab settlements
3. Operations of the Jewish dissidents [the Irgun Z'va'i Leumi and Lohamei Herut Yisrael]'^[15]

Collectively these 3 factors were considered to be responsible for causing 70% of the exodus, according to the IDF report. Furthermore, Morris states 'the report makes no mention of any blanket order issued over Arab radio stations or through other means, to the Palestinians to evacuate their homes and villages'^[16] despite as Morris states the IDF 'monitoring Arab radio transmissions'. Confirming as has been argued elsewhere, notably by Avi Shlaim in 'the debate about 1948' that the myth of the invading 'Arab armies' calling Palestinians to flee is totally unsustainable and without substance.

Righteous Victims (1999)

Righteous Victims: A history of the Zionist–Arab Conflict, 1881–2001 is based largely on secondary works and gives a synthesis of existing research on the various subjects and periods covered. Morris writes "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." ^[17]

Making Israel (2008)

Edited by Morris, this collection of articles was written by "traditionalists and revisionists who openly and directly lay out their key insights about Israel's origins".^[18] The articles can be downloaded from the website of the University of Michigan Press.^[19]

1948: A History of the First Arab–Israeli War (2008)

Morris gives a detailed account of the 1948 Palestine war. Yoav Gelber writes, "1948 is a praiseworthy achievement of research and analysis, the work of a historian unwilling to rest on his already considerable laurels." Gelber disagrees with some of Morris's analysis, in particular with the idea that the 1948 war was more a "clash of civilizations" between the West and Islam than a nationalist struggle. He also argues that Morris overestimates Israel's military strength, and disagrees with Morris about the aims of King Abdullah of Jordan.^[20]

One State, Two States (2009)

Morris contends that there is no two-state solution to the Middle East crisis, and that the One-state solution is not viable because of Arab unwillingness to accept a Jewish national presence in the Middle East. He suggests the possibility of something like a Three-state solution in the form of a Palestinian confederation with Jordan.^[21]

Praise and criticism[link]

Avi Shlaim, professor of international relations at the University of Oxford, and himself a New Historian, writes that Morris investigated the 1948 exodus of the Palestinians "as carefully, dispassionately, and objectively as it is ever likely to be", and that The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem is an "outstandingly original, scholarly, and important contribution" to the study of the issue.^[2]

Many of Morris's critics cling to the tenets of "Old History", the idea of an Israel born untarnished, a David fighting the Arab Goliath, Shlaim writes. He argues that these ideas are simply false, created not by historians but by the participants in the 1948 war, who wrote about the events they had taken part in without the benefit of access to Israeli government archives, which were first opened up in the early 1980s. Another group of Morris's critics, primarily Orientalists such as Avraham Sela, but also historians on the left such as Ilan Pappe, argue that he has relied too heavily on Israeli sources and hardly at all on the Arabs. Norman Finkelstein, Nur Masalha and others argue that Morris has been too soft on the Israelis, often ignoring the force of his own evidence.^[22] Efraim Karsh alleges that Morris has distorted source material, an allegation not accepted by other historians.^[23][24]

Efraim Karsh

Efraim Karsh, professor of Mediterranean Studies at King's College London, writes that Morris engages in what Karsh calls "five types of distortion". According to Karsh, Morris "misrepresents documents, resorts to partial quotes, withholds evidence, makes false assertions, and rewrites original documents... [he] tells of statements never made, decisions never taken, events that never happened ... at times [he] does not even take the trouble to provide evidence..... He expects his readers to take on trust his assertions that fundamental contradictions exist between published accounts and the underlying documents.....he systematically falsifies evidence. Indeed, there is scarcely a document that he does not twist. This casts serious doubt on the validity of his entire work."^[25]

Yezid Sayigh, professor of Middle East Studies in the Department of War Studies at King's College London, writes of Karsh's criticism, "[t]his is not the first time that Efraim Karsh has written a highly self-important rebuttal of revisionist history. He is simply not what he makes himself out to be, a trained historian (nor political/social scientist)." (Karsh responds that he has an undergraduate degree in modern Middle Eastern history, and Arabic language and literature, and a doctorate in political science and international relations.) Sayigh urges academics to compose "robust responses [to Karsh] that make sure that any self-respecting scholar will be too embarrassed to even try to incorporate the Karsh books in his/her teaching or research because they can't pretend they didn't know how flimsy their foundations are".^[23] Ian Lustick, professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, writes of Karsh's attacks on the New Historians that, "however likely readers are to be impressed by the intensity of Karsh's pristine faith in Zionism, they are sure to be stunned by the malevolence of his writing and confused by the erratic, sloppy nature of his analysis. Errors, inconsistencies and over-interpretations there may be in some of the new Israeli histories, but nothing in them can match the howlers, contradictions and distortions contained in [Karsh's Fabricating Israeli History: The New Historians]."^[24]

Morris responds that Karsh's article is a "mélange of distortions, half-truths, and plain lies that vividly demonstrates his profound ignorance of both the source material (his piece contains more than fifty footnotes but is based almost entirely on references to and quotations from secondary works, many of them of dubious value) and the history of the Zionist–Arab conflict. It does not deserve serious attention or reply."^[26] Anita Shapira, Dean of Tel Aviv University, argues "thirty of [Karsh's] references actually refer to writings by Shlaim and Morris, and fifteen others cite primary sources, and the rest refer to studies by major historians...." ^[27]

Morris elsewhere argues that Karsh "belabor[s] minor points while completely ignoring, and hiding from his readers, the main pieces of evidence" and argued, "... Karsh, while claiming to have 'demolished' the whole oeuvre, in fact deal[t] with only four pages of Birth. These pages tried to show that the Zionist leadership during 1937–38 supported a 'transfer solution' to the prospective Jewish state's 'Arab problem.'"^[28]

Finkelstein and Masalha

From the other side Morris has been criticised by Norman Finkelstein^[29][30] and Nur Masalha.^[31] They argue that Morris's conclusions have a pro-Israeli bias, in that:

• Morris did not fully acknowledge that his work rests largely on selectively released Israeli documentation, while the most sensitive documents remain closed to researchers.
• Morris treated the evidence in the Israeli documents in an uncritical way, and did not take into account that they are, at times, apologetics.
• Morris minimized the number of expulsions: Finkelstein asserts that in the table in which Morris summarizes causes of abandonment, village by village, many cases of "military assault on settlement (M)" should have been "expulsions (E)".
• Morris's conclusions were skewed with respect to the evidence he himself presents, and when the conclusions are harsh for the Israelis he tended to give them a less incriminating spin.

Both Finkelstein and Masalha prefer the conclusion that there was a transfer policy.

In a reply to Finkelstein and Masalha,^[32] Morris answers he "saw enough material, military and civilian, to obtain an accurate picture of what happened", that Finkelstein and Masalha draw their conclusions with a pro-Palestinian bias, and that with regard to the distinction between military assault and expulsion they should accept that he uses a "more narrow and severe" definition of expulsions. Morris holds to his conclusion that there was no transfer policy.

Ilan Pappé

Benny Morris wrote a fiercely critical review of Ilan Pappé's book A History of Modern Palestine^[33] for The New Republic.^[34] Morris called Pappé's book "truly appalling". He says it subjugates history to political ideology, and "contains errors of a quantity and a quality that are not found in serious historiography". In his reply, Pappé accused Morris of using mainly Israeli sources, and disregarding Arab sources, which he cannot read. Pappé says Morris has held "racist views about the Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular" since the late 1980s. He also attributed Morris's perceived rightward drift since the late 1980s to political opportunism.^[35][36]

Michael Palumbo

Michael Palumbo, author of The Palestinian Catastrophe: The 1948 Expulsion of a People from Their Homeland,^[37] reviewing the first edition of Morris's book on Palestinian refugees, criticizes Morris's decision, which Palumbo thinks characteristic of Israeli revisionist historians generally, to rely mainly on official, 'carefully screened' Israeli sources, especially for radio transcripts of Arab broadcasts, while disregarding unofficial Israeli sources such as BBC and CIA transcripts, many of which point to a policy of expulsion.^[38] He says Morris failed to supplement his work in Israeli archives, many still classified, by U.N., American, and British archival sources that Palumbo considers objective on such issues as IDF atrocities,^[39] as well as oral testimonies of Palestinians and Israelis, which can be reliable if their substance can be independently verified.^[40] Palumbo says:

Morris' regard for documentation is indeed commendable, were it not for his tendency to choose sources which support his views, while avoiding those document collections which contain information inconsistent with his principal arguments. His decision not to use the testimony of Israeli veterans is unfortunate, since some of them have spoken candidly about Israeli atrocities and expulsion of civilians at Deir Yassin, Lydda–Ramle and Jaffa.^[41]

Published works[link]

• The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1949, Cambridge University Press, 1988. ISBN 978-0-521-33028-2
• Israel's Secret Wars: A History of Israel's Intelligence Services, New York, Grove Weidenfeld, 1991. ISBN 978-0-8021-1159-3
• Israel's Border Wars 1949–1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation, and the Countdown to the Suez War, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1993. ISBN 978-0-19-829262-3
• 1948 and after; Israel and the Palestinians, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1994. ISBN 0-19-827929-9
• Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist–Arab Conflict, 1881–1999. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 2001 [Original in 1999]. ISBN 978-0-679-74475-7. http://books.google.com/books?id=ZawVAQAACAAJ. 
• 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. ISBN 978-1-86064-812-0
• The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, Cambridge University Press, 2004.
• Making Israel (ed), University of Michigan Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-472-11541-9
• 1948: A History of the First Arab–Israeli War, Yale University Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-300-12696-9
• One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict, Yale University Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-300-12281-7

See also[link]

• History of Israel
• 1948 Palestinian exodus—Causes of the 1948 Palestinian exodus
• Exodus from Lydda and Ramla

References[link]

External links[link]

• Claremont Review of Books on Benny Morris and 1948
• Morris, Benny. Camp David and After: An Exchange (1. An Interview with Ehud Barak), continued, The New York Review of Books August 9, 2001;
• Benny Morris essay regarding a nuclear Iran, The 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.
• Benny Morris meets his readers at the International Book Fair of Turin (Italian)
• Review of Benny Morris' book "1948: The First Arab-Israeli War" in Jewish Literary Review
• 1 hour interview of Benny Morris about the 1948 war (2008)
• Journal of Palestinian Studies Vol 21(1), p. 98–114 :Morris Response to Finklestein and Masalah
• History in the (almost) making, Ynetnews, November 2007
• ISRAEL AT 60: From Dove to Hawk Newsweek May 8, 2008
• Benny Morris debates with Norman Finkelstein On RT CrossTalk May 21, 2010