BENNY MORRIS

'Benny Morris' (born in 1948) is an Israeli historian and unofficial leader of the New Historians, a group of scholars who dispute the mainstream historical view of the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Known for his work on the history of Palestinian refugees and his refusal to perform reserve duty in the West Bank, Morris was widely seen as an Israeli sympathizer of the Palestinian cause, and his work was very often cited and praised by pro-Arab writers. Since the outbreak of the Second Intifada, Morris has appeared to become more critical of the Arab leadership, and has criticized "pro-Arab propagandists" for highlighting certain parts of his work while ignoring others. He states that the Palestinian refugee problem and the collapse of the Camp David peace talks were a product of Palestinian-Arab decisions.

Contents

Background

Work

''The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949''

''The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited''

Criticism of Morris work

Criticism of Morris political views

Books by Morris

References

See also

External links

Background

The son of Jewish immigrants from England, Morris was born in Kibbutz Ein HaHoresh. He received his doctorate from the University of Cambridge. For a number of years, he was the diplomatic correspondent of the ''Jerusalem Post''.
Morris is currently professor of history at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Be'er Sheva. In 2005, he taught at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Work

''The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949''

In his 1988 book ''The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949'', Morris argues that the 700,000 Palestinians who fled from their homes in 1947 left mostly due to fear of being caught in the crossfire, Israeli actions, or fear of Israeli actions, but not as the result of an expulsion plan. This was at the time a controversial position, as the official position in Israel had been that the Palestinians left voluntarily or after pressure and encouragement from Palestinian or outside Arab leaders.
At the same time, Morris says he documented atrocities on the part of Israelis, including suspected cases of rape, torture, and ethnic cleansing.
The book shows a map of empty Palestinian villages, and explains why the villagers left; 228 villages were evacuated due to attack from Jewish forces. In 41 villages, he writes that the inhabitants were expelled by military forces; in another 90 villages, that the inhabitants panicked because of attacks on other villages, and fled. In six villages, he writes, the inhabitants left under instructions from local Palestinian authorities. He was unable to find out why another 46 villages were abandoned.

''The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited''

In his 2004 book ''The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited'', he changes his perspective, and places the major responsibility for the creation of Palestinian refugees on militant Jewish organizations. According to Morris, these groups killed more Palestinians than previously thought. He also writes that expelling Palestinians was a goal that was shared with main Jewish leaders at the time. In ''The Birth'', Morris argues that Israeli leaders wanted as few Arabs in the areas they were conquering as possible for demographic reasons.

Criticism of Morris work

Morris has been criticized by other historians for allegedly fabricating events.
Efraim Karsh, professor of War Studies at King's College London, has repeatedly stated that Morris fabricated his data about atrocities, stating that other historians who examined the same documents came to different conclusions. Karsh's criticism of Morris and the New Historians is laid out in his ''Fabricating Israeli History: The New Historians''. Since the publishing of the book Karsh and Morris have engaged in a lengthy and heated dialogue on these issues, which has often involved personal insults, and has sometimes been characterized as a feud.
:''Further information: Criticisms of the 'transfer principle' theory.
Morris has also been attacked from the opposite pole, by Norman Finkelstein in chapter three of his ''Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict'' (2001), in which he argues that Morris repeatedly bent his interpretation of evidence to find Israeli government officials and the IDF innocent of crimes against Palestinians, by juxtaposing quotes from Morris' book, with full quotations from the source Morris cited.^[1]

Criticism of Morris political views

Morris was once considered a representative of the radical left; he was accused of being an "Israel hater" and was boycotted by the Israeli academic establishment. But his disillusionment with the peace process has caused him to increasingly make statements commonly associated with the right-wing, while still claiming to belong to the left.

Books by Morris

★ ''The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949'', (Cambridge University Press, 1989)

★ ''The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited'', (2004)

★ ''Israel's Secret Wars: A History of Israel's Intelligence Service'', (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991)

★ ''Israel's Border Wars 1949-1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation, and the Countdown to the Suez War'', (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993)

★ ''1948 and after; Israel and the Palestinians'', Clarendon Press, Oxford (1994)

★ ''Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1999'', (Alfred A. Knopf, 1999)

★ '', (Am Oved Publishers, 2000)

★ ''The Road to Jerusalem: Glubb Pasha, Palestine and the Jews''. New York: I.B. Tauris, 2003

References

1. Finkelstein, Norman. Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict. (London: Verson, 2003), 53-60.

See also

★ Avi Shlaim

★ Anita Shapira

★ 1948 Palestinian exodus

★ Causes of the 1948 Palestinian exodus

External links

★ Survival of the Fittest? - interview w/Benny Morris

★ Camp David and After: An Exchange (1. An Interview with Ehud Barak) by Benny Morris, ''The New York Review of Books'' August 9, 2001

★
★ Continued

★ "Benny Morris and the Reign of Error" - Efraim Karsh, ''Middle East Quarterly''

★ Benny Morris essay regarding a nuclear Iran - ''Jerusalem Post'', January 18, 2007

★ Israel Revisited Benny Morris, Veteran 'New Historian' of the Modern Jewish State's Founding, Finds Himself Ideologically Back Where It All Began, by Scott Wilson, Washington Post Foreign Service, March 11, 2007

★ 'New Historian' Shifts from Old View of Israel Israeli "new historian" Benny Morris was online Monday, March 12, at 2 p.m. ET to discuss his books and changing views that have driven him away from the critical perspective of Israeli history that he helped create.