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{{Short description|Israeli historian (born 1948)}}
{{refimprove|date=Februrary 2007}}
{{pp|small=yes}}
{{EngvarB|date=February 2018}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=February 2023}}{{Infobox academic
| name = Benny Morris
| native_name = {{Script|Hebrew|בני מוריס}}
| native_name_lang = he
| image = Benny morris.jpg
| alt = Benny Morris wearing light blue open-necked shirt, looking left of camera and appearing to speak
| caption = Morris in 2007
| birth_date = {{birth date and age|df=y|1948|12|8}}
| birth_place = ], Israel
| education = {{ubl|] (])|] (])}}
| thesis_title = The British Weekly Press and Nazi Germany During the 1930's
| thesis_url = https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?did=137&uin=uk.bl.ethos.466257
| thesis_year = 1977
| discipline = Historian
| school_tradition = ]
| workplaces = ]
}}
'''Benny Morris''' ({{langx|he|בני מוריס}}; born 8 December 1948)<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G2-2699200100.html |title=Morris, Benny 1948– |access-date=6 October 2013 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131011080656/http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G2-2699200100.html |archive-date=11 October 2013 }}</ref> is an Israeli historian. He was a professor of history in the Middle East Studies department of ] in the city of ], Israel. Morris was initially associated with the group of Israeli historians known as the "]", a term he coined to describe himself and historians ], ] and ].<ref name="Israel Revisited, Washington Post">{{cite news |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/10/AR2007031001496_4.html |title=Israel Revisited |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=11 March 2007 |access-date=6 October 2013 |first=Scott |last=Wilson |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131024043826/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/10/AR2007031001496_4.html |archive-date=24 October 2013 }}</ref>


Morris's 20th century work on the ] and especially the ] has won praise and criticism from both sides of the political divide.<ref name=Shlaim>Shlaim, Avi. "The Debate about 1948", ''International Journal of Middle East Studies'', Vol 27, No. 3 (1995), pp. 287–304.</ref> Despite regarding himself as a ],<ref name="Cohen2015">{{cite book|author=Hillel Cohen|title=Year Zero of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1929|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dW25CgAAQBAJ&pg=PA253|date=22 October 2015|publisher=Brandeis University Press|isbn=978-1-61168-812-2|pages=253–}}</ref> he writes, "I embarked upon the research not out of ideological commitment or political interest. I simply wanted to know what happened."<ref>Morris 2004, p. 3.</ref> One of Morris major works is the 1989 book ''The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1948'' which based on then recently declassified Israeli archives, demonstrated that the ] were in large part a response to deliberate expulsions and violence by forces loyal to Israel, rather than the result of orders by Arab commanders as had often been historically claimed.<ref name=":5">{{Cite journal |last=Abdel-Nour |first=Farid |date=May 2013 |title=From Critic to Cheerleader: The Clarifying Example of Benny Morris' ‘Conversion’ |url=https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/10.3366/hls.2013.0058 |journal=Holy Land Studies |language=en |volume=12 |issue=1 |pages=25–41 |doi=10.3366/hls.2013.0058 |issn=1474-9475}}</ref>
'''Benny Morris''' (born in 1948) is an ]i historian, member of the ] school, a group of scholars who dispute the mainstream historical view of the origins of the ]. Known for his work on the history of ]s and his refusal to perform reserve duty in the ], 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 ], 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.


Scholars have perceived an ideological shift in Morris's work starting around 2000, during the ]. Morris's perspective has been described as having become more conservative and more negative towards Palestinians, viewing the 1948 expulsions as a justified act.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Pappé |first=Ilan |date=2009 |title=The Vicissitudes of the 1948 Historiography of Israel |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/jps.2010.xxxix.1.6 |journal=Journal of Palestine Studies |volume=39 |issue=1 |pages=6–23 |doi=10.1525/jps.2010.xxxix.1.6 |issn=0377-919X |jstor=10.1525/jps.2010.xxxix.1.6 |hdl-access=free |hdl=10871/15209}}</ref><ref>Shapiro, B. (2015). The strange career of Israeli 'New Historian' Benny Morris. ''Palestine - Israel Journal of Politics, Economics, and Culture, 20/21''(4), 154-160.</ref><ref name=":5" />
==Background==
The son of ]ish immigrants from Great Britain, Morris was born in ] ]. His father, Ya'akov Morris, a diplomat who at one time was the Israeli ambassador to New Zealand, and other times at the Consulates in India and New York, came to the Middle East from Ireland in 1947. He was also an author; among his writings are ''Pioneers from the West: A History of Colonisation in Israel by Settlers from English-Speaking Countries'' (1953) and ''Masters of the Desert: 6000 Years in the Negev'' (1961), the latter containing an introduction by David Ben-Gurion. Benny Morris received his doctorate from the ]. For a number of years, he was the diplomatic correspondent of the '']''.


==Biography==
Morris is currently professor of history at ] in ]. In 2005, he taught at the ].
Morris was born on 8 December 1948 in ] ], Israel, the son of Jewish immigrants from the United Kingdom.<ref name=Shavit>Shavit, Ari. "Survival of the fittest":{{cite web |url=http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=380986&contrassID=2 |title=Part I |access-date=15 May 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080515210330/http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=380986&contrassID=2 |archive-date=15 May 2008}}, {{cite web |url=http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=380984 |title=Part II |access-date=7 June 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080607060238/http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=380984 |archive-date=7 June 2008 }}. '']'', 9 January 2004.</ref>


His father, Ya'akov Morris, was an Israeli diplomat, historian, and poet,<ref>Wilson, Scott. {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171108015233/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/10/AR2007031001496_pf.html|date=8 November 2017}}, '']'', 11 March 2007.</ref> while his mother, Sadie Morris, was a journalist. According to '']'', Benny Morris "grew up in the heart of a left-wing pioneering atmosphere."<ref name=Remnick/> His parents moved to ] when Morris was a one-year-old. He later accompanied his parents to New York, where his father was an envoy in Israel's foreign service.<ref>, ]</ref>
==Work==
===''The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949'', 1988===
Morris argues that the 700,000 Palestinians who fled their homes in 1947 left mostly due to Israeli military attacks, but also due to fear of impending Israeli attack, fear of being caught up in fighting, and expulsions, but not as the result of an expulsion policy. This was at the time a controversial position, as the official position in Israel had been that the Palestinians left voluntarily or after pressure and encouragement from Palestinian or outside Arab leaders. At the same time, Morris documents atrocities by the Israelis, including suspected cases of rape, torture.


Morris served in the ] as an infantryman, including in the ], from 1967 to 1969. He saw action on the ] front during the ] and served on the ] during the ]. He was wounded in 1969 by an Egyptian shell in the Suez Canal area and was discharged from active service four months later, but continued to serve in the ] until 1990. He completed his undergraduate studies in history at the ] and received a doctorate in modern European history from the ].<ref name="Professor Benny Morris">{{cite web |url=http://www.torahinmotion.org/users/professor-benny-morris |title=Professor Benny Morris |publisher=Torah in Motion |access-date=6 October 2013 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131002075508/http://www.torahinmotion.org/users/professor-benny-morris |archive-date=2 October 2013 }}</ref>
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.


Morris served in the ] as an army reservist, taking part in the ] in a ] unit.<ref name=Remnick>Remnick, David. {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090213193205/http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2008/05/05/080505crbo_books_remnick?currentPage=1 |date=13 February 2009 }}. '']'', 5 May 2008.</ref> In 1986, he did reserve duty in the ]. In 1988, when he was called up for reserve duty in ], he ] on ideological grounds, as he viewed Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories as a necessity and did not want to take part in suppressing the ]. He was sentenced to three weeks in military prison and was imprisoned for 19 days, with the remaining two deducted for good behavior. He was subsequently discharged from reserve service.<ref name="Israel Revisited, Washington Post"/>
===''The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited'', 2004===
In the 2004 update of the 1988 book, ''The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited'', Morris changes his perspective, and places 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.


After publishing ''The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem'' in 1987, Morris considered leaving Israel, because he found that no university in Israel would hire him ("the establishment turned its back on me"). It was ], then Israel's president, who convinced him to stay.<ref name=":3">{{Cite interview |last=Morris |first=Benny |interviewer=Amira Lamm |title=Benny Morris: "The 1948 War Was an Islamic Holy War" |url=https://www.meforum.org/2769/benny-morris-1948-islamic-holy-war |issue= |publisher=Middle East Quarterly |date=Summer 2010 |quote="I was burned at the stake," says Morris. "Shabtai Tevet claimed that the things I wrote served the needs of the PLO; it questioned all the myths in the accepted Zionist narrative. The establishment turned its back on me." Morris, holding a doctorate in history from Cambridge University, found that no university would hire him. It was Ezer Weizman, then Israel's president, who finally gave Morris an official seal of approval. Weizman heard Morris say in an interview that he was considering leaving Israel, and he invited him for a chat. "So he shouted for his office director, 'Shumer,' and Aryeh Shumer flew in. Weizman told him: 'We need to find a job for this fellow.' I then lived a fifteen-minute walk from there, and when I opened the door to my apartment the phone was ringing. It was Braverman phoning, the president of Ben Gurion University. And he said, 'Don't worry Benny, you have a job.' And I have been there ever since."}}</ref>
===''Righteous Victims, a history of the Zionist-Arab Conflict 1881-2001, 1999===
Focuses on the central components of the conflict in the political and military spheres, not giving much attention to other aspects, such as the economic and cultural ones. Based largely on secondary works, a synthesis of existing research on the various subjects and periods covered. Morris adds ''"a history of this subject, based mainly on primary sources is, I suspect, beyond the abilities of a single scholar. There are simply too many archives, files, and documents. Nonetheless, parts of the present book-the coverage of the 1948 war and the decade after it, and of certain episodes that occurred during the 1930s and the 1982-85 Lebanon War-are based in large measure on primary sources."'' Re-published by "First Vintage" in 2001 with a new final chapter.


From 2015–18, Morris served as the Goldman Visiting Israeli Professor in ]'s Department of Government.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://pjc.georgetown.edu/research |access-date=3 September 2015 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150905211958/https://pjc.georgetown.edu/research |archive-date=5 September 2015 |title=Faculty and Research &#124; Program for Jewish Civilization &#124; Georgetown University }}</ref>
==Criticism of Morris work==
{{PoV}}
:''Further information : ]


He lives in ] (Li On) and is married with three children.<ref name="Professor Benny Morris"/>
], professor of War Studies at ], 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.


==Journalism career==
Morris has also been attacked from the opposite pole by ]. In chapter three of his '']'' (2001) he argues that Morris repeatedly bent his interpretation of evidence to find Israeli government officials and the IDF innocent of crimes against Palestinians. He supports his view by juxtaposing quotes from Morris' book with full quotations from the sources Morris cited.<ref>Finkelstein, Norman. Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict. (London: Verson, 2003), 53-60.</ref> Finkelstein also argues that the evidence '... Morris adduces does not support his temperate conclusion and that the thruth lies very much closer to the Arab view.'. Instead Finkelstein suggests 'that Morris's own evidence points to the conclusion that Palestine's Arabs were expelled systematically and with premeditation.'<ref>Finkelstein, 1995, p.52,53</ref>.
After graduation from the University of Cambridge he returned to Jerusalem and worked as a correspondent for '']'' for 12 years.<ref> {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130609002637/http://www.jpost.com/Jerusalem-Report/Jewish-World/An-evolving-historian|date=9 June 2013}}. Robert Slater. ''The Jerusalem Post'', 26 December 2012.</ref> He covered the ] for ''The Jerusalem Post'', a war he also fought in as a reservist.<ref name=Remnick/>


While working at ''The Jerusalem Post'' in the 1980s, Morris began reading through ], at first looking at the history of the '']'', then turning his attention to the origins of the ]. Mainstream Israeli ] 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 there had been expulsions in some cases.<ref name="Israel Revisited, Washington Post"/> Another event that Morris revealed for the first time based on his archive study was the contacts between the Israeli officials and the Lebanese ] figures, including ], in the period 1948–1951.<ref name=dks>{{cite news|author=David K. Shipler|title='48 Israeli Tie to Phalangists Revealed|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1983/07/03/world/48-israeli-tie-to-phalangists-revealed.html|access-date=25 January 2022|date=3 July 1983}}</ref> The related news reports were also published in ''The Jerusalem Post'' in 1983.<ref name=dks/>
==Morris's political views==
Morris was once considered a representative of the radical left; he was accused of being an "Israel hater" and was boycotted by the Israeli academic establishment. But his disillusionment with the peace process has caused him to increasingly make statements commonly associated with the right-wing{{Fact|date=September 2007}}.


==Political views==
According to ']': ''"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."''<ref>The Economist, 'Nations and narratives', ] ]. </ref>
=== 2004 ''Haaretz'' interview ===
In 2004, '']'' published an interview with Morris conducted by ] that has generated significant controversy. Morris told Shavit that his views changed in 2000 after the ] of ] and the outbreak of the ]. He had originally viewed the ] as a legitimate uprising against foreign occupation, and was imprisoned for refusing to serve in the occupied territories as a reservist. In contrast, he has characterized the Second Intifada as a war waged by the Palestinians against Israel with the intention of bringing Israeli society to a state of collapse. According to Morris, "The bombing of the buses and restaurants really shook me. They made me understand the depth of the hatred for us."<ref name="Shavit" />


Morris said that Israel was justified in uprooting the Palestinian ']' after the Arabs attacked the infant state, and that proportion should be employed when considering the "small ]" committed by Israel.<ref name="Shavit" /> In the interview, Morris stated that:
Benny Morris describes himself as being from the left. Comparing him with ], he says he always voted Labor or Meretz while as far as he knows Pappé voted Israel Communist Party . He also says he is a Zionist but underlines that his adversaries see in him solid Zionist convictions (as Pappé) or solid anti-Zionist convictions (as the establishment Zionists) .


<blockquote>There is no justification for acts of rape. There is no justification for acts of massacre. Those are war crimes. But in certain conditions, expulsion is not a war crime. I don't think that the expulsions of 1948 were war crimes.
Benny Morris views 2000's intifada as a ''"political-terroristic assault on Israel's existence (and also as an offshoot of fundamentalist Islam's ongoing assault on the West, in which Israel, unfortunately, figures as a front-line outpost)"''. He is very critics towards Avi Shlaim who, according to him, ''"moved steadily to the left--or is it, really, to the right? After all, he shares his anti-Israeli analysis with European neo-fascists and the Islamic jihadists, who openly advocate Israel's destruction in the name of medieval religious values."
There 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 ]—the annihilation of your people—I prefer ethnic cleansing.<ref name="Shavit" /></blockquote>


Morris criticised ] for not fully carrying out such a plan, saying: "In the end, he faltered. ... If Ben-Gurion had carried out a large expulsion and cleansed the whole country ... If he had carried out a full expulsion—rather than a partial one—he would have stabilized the State of Israel for generations." Morris also said: "I feel sympathy for the Palestinian people, which truly underwent a hard tragedy. I feel sympathy for the refugees themselves. But if the desire to establish a Jewish state here is legitimate, there was no other choice. It was impossible to leave a large fifth column in the country. From the moment the ] was attacked by the Palestinians and afterward by the Arab states, there was no choice but to expel the Palestinian population. To uproot it in the course of war."<ref name="Shavit" />
==Books by Morris==
*''The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949'', (], 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)
*'']: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation, and the Countdown to the Suez War'', (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993)
*'']'', 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


He sees the Jews as the greater victims, as they are "a small minority in a large sea of hostile Arabs who want to eliminate us." According to him, "Arab people gained a large slice of the planet. have ]. The Jewish people did not have even one state. There was no reason in the world why it should not have one state. Therefore, from my point of view, the need to establish this state in this place overcame the injustice that was done to the Palestinians by uprooting them."<ref name="Shavit" />
==References==

<references />
Morris told Shavit that he still describes himself as being ] because of his support for the ], but he believes his generation will not see peace in Israel.<ref name=Shavit/> 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."<ref name=Shavit/> On the subject of "people the Palestinian society sends to carry out the terrorist attacks," he calls them "serial killers" and "barbarians who want to take our lives".<ref name=Shavit/>

In the same interview, Morris called Israeli Arabs "a time bomb," claiming that "their slide into complete Palestinization has made them an emissary of the enemy that is among us. They are a potential fifth column." On the subject of the potential expulsion of Israeli-Arabs, he stated that "in the present circumstances it is neither moral nor realistic. The world would not allow it, the Arab world would not allow it, it would destroy the Jewish society from within. But I am ready to tell you that in other circumstances, apocalyptic ones, which are liable to be realized in five or ten years, I can see expulsions. If we find ourselves with atomic weapons around us, or if there is a general Arab attack on us and a situation of warfare on the front with Arabs in the rear shooting at convoys on their way to the front, acts of expulsion will be entirely reasonable. They may even be essential."<ref name=Shavit/>

Morris called the Israel–Palestinian conflict a facet of a global ] between ] and the Western World in the ''Haaretz ''interview, 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...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."<ref name=Shavit/>

In response, ] commented on Morris' justification for the expulsion of the Arabs in 1948 by contrasting (the more recent) "citizen" Morris with (the earlier) "historian" Morris, and noting that, at times "citizen Morris and historian Morris worked as though there is no connection between them, as though one was trying to save what the other insists on eradicating."<ref name="Shavit" />

Morris later denied the term "ethnic cleansing" with regard to the actions undertaken by Jewish forces in Israel during the year 1948. He said that possibly, the term might apply in a limited or partial context to Lod and Ramla. He says that according to historical records, approximately 160,000 Arabs remained within the territories of Israel post-1948 and that while many were indeed expelled, a significant number managed to return and retained their status as citizens of the newly established Jewish state.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Morris|first=Benny|title=Israel Conducted No Ethnic Cleansing in 1948|date=2016-10-10|url=https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2016-10-10/ty-article/.premium/israel-conducted-no-ethnic-cleansing-in-1948/0000017f-db91-d3a5-af7f-fbbfa2270000|website=Haaretz|access-date=2023-10-23|quote=Prof. Daniel Blatman distorts history when he says the new State of Israel, a country facing invading armies, carried out a policy of expelling the local Arabs.}}</ref>

=== Israeli government ===
In July 2019, Morris has sharply criticized the restrictions under the Netanyahu government of access to historical documents related to the 1948 Palestinian Arab exodus, referring to them as "totalitarian."<ref>{{cite news |title=Benny Morris: Israel's Concealing of Nakba Documents Is Totalitarian |first=Benny |last=Morris |url=https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-israel-s-concealing-of-documents-on-the-nakba-is-totalitarian-1.7495203 |newspaper=Haaretz |date=7 July 2019 |access-date=26 May 2020 }}</ref> At the same time, Morris pointed out that much of the criticism of this policy is hypocritical, because the archives of the Arab states remain entirely closed.<ref>{{cite interview |last=Morris |first=Benny |interviewer=Niram Ferretti |title=Covering and uncovering history: An interview with Benny Morris |url=https://www.linformale.eu/covering-and-uncovering-history-an-interview-with-benny-morris/ |publisher=L'informale |date=August 21, 2019 |quote=The first thing I would say is that those who say this are completely hypocritical, because when you look at Arab archives they are ''all'' closed. They haven’t opened anything. So, here they are criticizing Israel for having opened certain documents and then having closed them again while the Arabs and the Palestinians have closed everything and have been hiding everything from researchers.}}</ref>

In August 2023, Morris was one of more than 1,500 U.S., Israeli, Jewish and Palestinian academics and public figures who signed an open letter stating that Israel operates "]" and calling on US Jewish groups to speak out against the occupation in Palestine.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://sites.google.com/view/israel-elephant-in-the-room/home|title=Elephant in the room|website=sites.google.com|access-date=16 August 2023|archive-date=1 December 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231201142642/https://sites.google.com/view/israel-elephant-in-the-room/home|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/15/us-jewish-groups-statement-occupation-israel-palestine-netanyahu|title=US Jews urged to condemn Israeli occupation amid Netanyahu censure|first=Chris|last=McGreal|date=15 August 2023|newspaper=The Guardian}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=In Israel and the U.S., 'apartheid' is the elephant in the room|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/08/11/israel-palestine-apartheid-israel-scholars/|date=11 August 2023|publisher=WAPO}}</ref> In an October 2023 interview, he stated that he does not consider Israel an "apartheid state", but that when signing the letter mentioned above he meant to refer to Israel's occupation of the West Bank as "an apartheid regime based on nationalism".<ref>{{Citation |title=Benny Morris: An Apartheid State?, Judicial Overhaul, Gaza Occupation and other matters |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8B64JSRKG_o |access-date=2024-02-16 |language=en}}</ref>

Morris is critical of the ], calling it "counterproductive" because it will not assure Israel's security. He called some of the settlers "right-wing fanatics", who are violent towards their Palestinian neighbors.<ref name=":4">{{Cite interview |last=Morris |first=Benny |interviewer=Coleman Hughes |title=Israel and Palestine Origins with Dr. Benny Morris |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wv8F4NLr4E0 |access-date=July 9, 2024 |date=February 11, 2023}}</ref> According to him, Israel should have withdrawn from the ] immediately after the ], allowed the Jordanians to reoccupy the territory.<ref name=":4" />

=== Statements on Iran ===
In an ] piece in '']'' 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."<ref>{{cite news |last=Morris |first=Benny |date=18 July 2008 |title=Using Bombs to Stave Off War |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/18/opinion/18morris.html?ref=opinion |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130530090848/http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/18/opinion/18morris.html?ref=opinion |archive-date=30 May 2013 |access-date=6 October 2013 |newspaper=]}}</ref> In an interview with the Austrian newspaper '']'' in May 2008, Morris argued that a ] on Iran may have to be used as a last resort to stop the Iranian nuclear program.<ref>{{cite web |date=18 May 2008 |title=Letzte Chance ist eine israelische Atombombe |url=http://derstandard.at/?url=/?id=3325698%26sap=2%26_pid=9470796 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091015232947/http://derstandard.at/?url=%2F%3Fid%3D3325698%26sap%3D2%26_pid%3D9470796 |archive-date=15 October 2009 |access-date=6 October 2013 |publisher=Derstandard.at}}</ref> Morris reiterated this view in an op-ed in ''Haaretz'' in June 2024, writing, "If Israel proves incapable of destroying the Iranian nuclear project using conventional weaponry, then it may not have any option but to resort to its nonconventional capabilities."<ref>{{Cite web |date=2024-07-01 |title=Benny Morris: Israeli historian calls for nuclear strike on Iran |url=https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-historian-benny-morris-calls-nuclear-strike-iran |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240701135314/https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-historian-benny-morris-calls-nuclear-strike-iran |archive-date=2024-07-01 |access-date=2024-07-09 |website=] |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=Morris |first=Benny |date=2024-06-30 |title=To Survive, Israel Must Strike Iran Now |url=https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-06-30/ty-article-opinion/.premium/to-survive-israel-must-strike-iran-now/00000190-69e8-d01f-abbe-7de8d2260000 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240704124008/https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-06-30/ty-article-opinion/.premium/to-survive-israel-must-strike-iran-now/00000190-69e8-d01f-abbe-7de8d2260000 |archive-date=2024-07-04 |access-date=2024-07-09 |work=]}}</ref>

=== Israel's future ===
In a 2019 interview with ''Haaretz'', Morris took a pessimistic view of Israel's future, arguing that the Palestinians would not compromise and that ultimately "a situation in which we rule an occupied people that has no rights cannot persist in the 21st century, in the modern world". He claimed that as soon as the Palestinians did have rights, Israel would no longer be a Jewish state, and that it would descend into intercommunal violence with Jews ultimately becoming a persecuted minority and those who could emigrating. According to Morris, "the Palestinians look at everything from a broad, long-term perspective. They see that at the moment, there are five-six-seven million Jews here, surrounded by hundreds of millions of Arabs. They have no reason to give in, because the Jewish state can't last. They are bound to win. In another 30 to 50 years they will overcome us, come what may."<ref>{{Cite web |last=Aderet |first=Ofer |date=2019-01-22 |title='Israel Will Decline, and Jews Will Be a Persecuted Minority. Those Who Can Will Flee to America' |url=https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/2019-01-22/ty-article-magazine/.premium/israel-will-decline-and-jews-will-be-persecuted-those-who-can-will-flee/0000017f-e552-d9aa-afff-fd5a159f0000 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |archive-url=https://archive.today/20220809230859/https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/2019-01-22/ty-article-magazine/.premium/israel-will-decline-and-jews-will-be-persecuted-those-who-can-will-flee/0000017f-e552-d9aa-afff-fd5a159f0000 |archive-date=9 Aug 2022 |website=]}}</ref>

==Published works==

===''1948 and After''===
'']'' (1990) is a collection of essays dedicated to the Palestinian exodus of 1948 and subsequent events. It analyses ] and ] policy during the exodus, the ] report of July 1948 on its causes, Yosef Weitz's involvement in the events, and some cases of expulsions that occurred in the fifties.

===''The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1948''===

In his 1989 book, Morris retraces the stages of the ]. He meticulously examines the fate of each abandoned Palestinian village, the reason for its depopulation, and its subsequent fate. Morris also considers Israel's decision to bar the refugees' return and the international context. This book laid the foundation for Morris' reputation as the preeminent historian of the ].<ref name=":3" />

=== ''The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited'' ===
Published in 2004, the book documents new archival material revealed during 25 years since Morris' earlier work. His work considers what happens in urban communities, such as Jerusalem, Jaffa and Haifa.

===''1948: A History of the First Arab–Israeli War''===
{{main|1948: A History of the First Arab–Israeli War}}

Morris demolishes misconceptions and provides a detailed account of the ] that caused the creation of the modern state of Israel. The book has been described as "the most definitive study of the first Arab-Israeli war."<ref name=":2" />

===''One State, Two States''===
Morris contends that there is no ] to the Middle East crisis, and that the ] is not viable because of Arab unwillingness to accept a Jewish national presence in the Middle East and cultural differences including less Arab respect for human life and ].<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/books/review/Goldberg-t.html|title=Book Review - 'One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict,' by Benny Morris|first=Jeffrey|last=Goldberg|date=20 May 2009|newspaper=The New York Times|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170508131109/http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/books/review/Goldberg-t.html|archive-date=8 May 2017}}</ref> He suggests the possibility of something like a ] in the form of a Palestinian confederation with Jordan.<ref name=Goldberg>Goldberg, Jeffrey. {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170203032924/http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/books/review/Goldberg-t.html?_r=1&ref=books |date=3 February 2017 }}, ''The New York Times'', 20 May 2009.</ref>

===''The Thirty-Year Genocide, Turkey's Destruction of its Christian Minorities, 1894-1924''===
{{main|The Thirty-Year Genocide}}
The book describes the ]/Turkish ] of the ], ] and ] communities by the successive Ottoman, ]' and ] regimes, in which some two million ] were murdered by their Muslim neighbors.

===List of publications===
* ''The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1949'', Cambridge University Press, 1988. {{ISBN|978-0-521-33028-2}}
* '']'', with ], New York, Grove Weidenfeld, 1991. {{ISBN|978-0-8021-1159-3}}
* '']: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation, and the Countdown to the Suez War'', Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1993. {{ISBN|978-0-19-829262-3}}
* '']'', Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1994. {{ISBN|0-19-827929-9}}
* ''''. New York: ]. 2001 {{ISBN|978-0-679-74475-7}}
* '']'', 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'', ], 2004. {{ISBN|978-0-521-00967-6}}
* ''Making Israel'' (ed), University of Michigan Press, 2008. {{ISBN|978-0-472-11541-9}}
* '']'', 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}}
* '']: Turkey's Destruction of Its Christian Minorities, 1894-1924'' (co-authored with ]), Harvard University Press, 2019. {{ISBN|978-0674916456}}
* '']: Master Spy'', Yale University Press, 2022. {{ISBN|978-0-300-24826-5}}
==Praise and criticism==
Morris has won praise and criticism from both sides of the political divide.<ref name="Shlaim" /> Some commentators criticised Morris for being reluctant to accept the implications of the evidence he presents in his work.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Ufheil-Somers |first=Amanda |date=1996-12-21 |title=The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict After Oslo |url=https://merip.org/1996/12/the-palestinian-israeli-conflict-after-oslo/ |access-date=2023-12-22 |website=MERIP |language=en-US}}</ref><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":0">{{cite book |author=Shlomo Ben-Ami |title=Scars of War, Wounds of Peace |publisher=Phoenix (Orion Books) |year=2005 |isbn=0-7538-2104-4 |edition=PAPERBACK |page=43}}</ref><ref>]. (1998) "New History, Old Ideas" in ''Al-Ahram weekly'', 21–27 May.</ref>

=== Avi Shlaim ===
], retired professor of international relations at the ], 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. Shlaim writes that 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. 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.<ref name="Shlaim" />

=== Shlomo Ben-Ami ===
], a historian and former Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs, praised Morris' book ''The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited' (2008)''. He called it "the single most important work on the thorniest moral and political issue underlying the Israeli-Palestinian conundrum" and suggested it is likely to become "the most definitive study of the first Arab-Israeli war."<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal |last=Ben-Ami |first=Shlomo |date=September 1, 2008 |title=Review: A War to Start All Wars: Will Israel Ever Seal the Victory of 1948? |url=https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/review-essay/2008-09-01/war-start-all-wars |journal=Foreign Affairs |volume=87 |issue=5 |pages=148-156 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20181121212127/https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/review-essay/2008-09-01/war-start-all-wars |archive-date=November 21, 2018}}</ref>

However, Ben-Ami criticised Morris' drawing of an "awkward symmetry" between the ] and the "]" of Jews from the Arab world. Like ], he was also unconvinced by Morris' characterization of the 1948 conflict as an Islamic Jihad.<ref name=":2" />

In his own book ], Ben-Ami observed that Morris' "thesis about the birth of the Palestine refugee problem being not by design but by the natural logic and evolution of war is not always sustained by the very evidence he himself provides: 'cultured officers ... had turned into base murderers and this not in the heat of battle ... but out of a system of expulsion and destruction; the less Arabs remained, the better; this principle is the political motor for the expulsions and atrocities' ".<ref>{{cite book |author=Shlomo Ben-Ami |title=Scars of War, Wounds of Peace |publisher=Phoenix (Orion Books) |year=2005 |isbn=0-7538-2104-4 |edition=PAPERBACK |page=43}}</ref>

=== Efraim Karsh ===
], professor of Mediterranean Studies at ], 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... tells of statements never made, decisions never taken, events that never happened ... at times 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." In addition he claimed to expose a serious gap between Morris' text and the original diary of Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel.<ref> {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050515233711/http://www.meforum.org/article/466 |date=15 May 2005 }}, ''Middle East Quarterly''; see also ''Fabricating Israeli History: The New Historians''.</ref>

], professor of Middle East Studies in the Department of War Studies at King's College London, writes of Karsh's criticism, "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 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".<ref name=KarshLightness>Karsh, Efraim. {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120302065654/http://www.meforum.org/207/the-unbearable-lightness-of-my-critics |date=2 March 2012 }}, ''Middle East Quarterly'', Summer 2002.</ref>

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."<ref>{{Cite journal|url=https://www.meforum.org/90/undeserving-of-a-reply|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20060816061306/http://www.meforum.org/article/90|url-status=dead|title=Undeserving of a Reply|first=Benny|last=Morris|date=1 September 1996|archivedate=16 August 2006|journal=Middle East Quarterly|via=www.meforum.org}}</ref> ], Dean of ], argues "thirty of references actually refer to writings by Shlaim and Morris, and fifteen others cite primary sources, and the rest refer to studies by major historians...."<ref>], {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080312163618/http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/courses01/rrtw/Shapira.htm |date=12 March 2008 }}, ''The New Republic'', 29 November 1999.</ref>

Morris elsewhere argues that Karsh "belabor 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 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.{{'"}}<ref>Morris, Benny. "Review of 'Fabricating Israeli History: The "New Historians".' by Efraim Karsh", ''J. Palestine Studies'' 27(2), p. 81–95.</ref> Commenting on the ''Revisited'' version of Morris'work, Karsh states that in "an implicit acknowledgement of their inaccuracy, Morris has removed some of ''The Birth''<nowiki>'</nowiki>s most inaccurate or distorted quotations about transfer."<ref>{{cite book|last1=Alexander|first1=Edward|last2=Bogdanor|first2=Paul|title=The Jewish Divide Over Israel|chapter=Benny Morris and the Myths of Post-Zionist History|publisher=Transaction|year=2006}}</ref>

=== Norman Finkelstein and Nur Masalha ===
Morris has also been criticised by ] and ]. They argue that Morris's conclusions have a pro-Israeli bias, in that he has not fully acknowledged that his work rests largely on selectively released Israeli documentation, while the most sensitive documents remain closed to researchers, and has more broadly treated the evidence in Israeli documents in an uncritical way, and not taking into account that they are, at times, apologetic. In relations to specific work on the ], they assert that Morris minimised the number of expulsions, with Finkelstein noting than many events classified by Morris as "abandonment" or "military assault on settlement" were actually expulsions, and that when the conclusions of Morris' evidence are harsh for the Israelis he has tended to give them a less incriminating spin.<ref>N. Finkelstein, 1995, ''Image and Reality of the Israel–Palestine conflict'', Verso, London, {{ISBN|1-85984-339-5}}</ref><ref>N. Finkelstein, 1991, "Myths, Old and New", ''J. Palestine Studies'', 21(1), p. 66–89</ref><ref>N. Masalha, 1991, "A Critique of Benny Morris", ''J. Palestine Studies'' 21(1), p. 90–97</ref>

In a reply to Finkelstein and Masalha,<ref>Morris, 1991, "Response to Finkelstein and Masalha", ''J. Palestine Studies'' 21(1), pp. 98–114</ref> 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 review critical of ]'s book ''A History of Modern Palestine''<ref>Pappe, Ilan. ''A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples'' Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004. {{ISBN|978-0-521-55632-3}}</ref> for '']''.<ref name="Politics by Other Means">{{cite magazine|last1=Morris|first1=Benny|title=Politics by Other Means|url=https://newrepublic.com/article/61715/politics-other-means-0|magazine=The New Republic|date=22 March 2004|access-date=29 January 2017|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170517090405/https://newrepublic.com/article/61715/politics-other-means-0|archive-date=17 May 2017}}</ref> 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".<ref name="Politics by Other Means"/> Replying, Pappé accused Morris of using mainly Israeli sources, and disregarding Arab sources, which – Pappé alleged – Morris "cannot read".

=== Michael Palumbo ===

Michael Palumbo, author of ''The Palestinian Catastrophe: The 1948 Expulsion of a People from Their Homeland'',<ref>Palumbo, Michael. ''The Palestinian Catastrophe: The 1948 Expulsion of a People from Their Homeland''. Quartet Books, 1989, {{ISBN|0-7043-0099-0}}</ref> reviewing the first edition of Morris's book on Palestinian refugees, criticises Morris's decision, which Palumbo thinks characteristic of ] generally, to rely mainly on official, "carefully screened" Israeli sources, especially for radio transcripts of Arab broadcasts, while disregarding unofficial Israeli sources such as transcripts from the ] and ], many of which point to a policy of expulsion.<ref>Palumbo, Michael. " {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100331123841/http://www.ameu.org/uploads/vol23_issue4_1990.pdf |date=31 March 2010 }}", originally published in ''The Link'', September – October 1990, Volume 23, Issue 4 p. 4</ref> 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 ] atrocities,<ref>Palumbo, Michael. " {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100331123841/http://www.ameu.org/uploads/vol23_issue4_1990.pdf |date=31 March 2010 }}", p. 7</ref> as well as oral testimonies of Palestinians and Israelis, which can be reliable if their substance can be independently verified.<ref>], ], ''Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the claims of memory,'' Columbia University Press, 2007 p. </ref> Palumbo commends<blockquote>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.<ref>Palumbo, Michael. " {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100331123841/http://www.ameu.org/uploads/vol23_issue4_1990.pdf |date=31 March 2010 }}", p. 4</ref></blockquote>

=== Baruch Kimmerling ===

In an article in HNN, Baruch Kimmerling discusses Morris' ] in which Morris states:<blockquote>if he was already engaged in expulsion, maybe he should have done a complete job. I know that this stuns the Arabs and the liberals and the politically correct types. But my feeling is that this place would be quieter and know less suffering if the matter had been resolved once and for all. If Ben-Gurion had carried out a large expulsion and cleaned the whole country - the whole Land of Israel, as far as the Jordan River. It may yet turn out that this was his fatal mistake. If he had carried out a full expulsion - rather than a partial one - he would have stabilized the State of Israel for generations... Even the great American democracy could not have been created without the annihilation of the Indians. There are cases in which the overall, final good justifies harsh and cruel acts that are committed in the course of history.</blockquote>

Kimmerling describes Morrris's views as "shocking" and says that Morris "has abandoned his historian’s mantle and donned the armor of a Jewish chauvinist who wants the Land of Israel completely cleansed from Arabs" He criticizes the analysis of Morris as misunderstanding the impact of the refugee problem on the current conflict, and the magnitude of an even larger refugee population.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web |last=Kimmerling |first=Baruch |date=January 26, 2004 |title=Benny Morris's Shocking Interview |url=http://hnn.us/articles/3166.html |url-status=bot: unknown |archive-url=https://archive.today/20130901144338/http://hnn.us/articles/3166.html |archive-date=1 September 2013 |access-date=22 Dec 2023 }}</ref>

=== Yoav Gelber ===
] has praised Morris's 2008 book on the origins of the 1948 Israeli-Arab war, stating that "In general, however, ''1948'' is a praiseworthy achievement of research and analysis, the work of a historian unwilling to rest on his already considerable laurels." On the other hand, Gelber criticised Morris for granting too much importance to the militant Islamic rhetoric of the period.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Gelber |first=Yoav |year=2008 |title=The Jihad That Wasn't |url=https://azure.org.il/article.php?id=475&page=all |journal=Azure |issue=34}}</ref>

==Awards and recognition==
* 2008: ] in the History category for ''1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War''<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/awards/national-jewish-book-awards/past-winners?category=30756|title=Past Winners|website=Jewish Book Council|language=en|access-date=21 January 2020}}</ref>


==See also== ==See also==
{{Portal|Biography|Israel}}
*]
* ]
*]
*] ** ]
*] ** ]
* ]
* ]
* '']'', Morris' 2008 book

==References==
{{Reflist}}


==External links== ==External links==
{{commons category|Benny Morris}}
*
{{wikiquote}}
* by Benny Morris, '']'' ] ]
*
**
* Morris, Benny. , , '']'' 9 August 2001;
*, '']''
*] ]] * {{dead link|date=October 2016 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}
* Benny Morris, Veteran 'New Historian' of the Modern Jewish State's Founding, Finds Himself Ideologically Back Where It All Began, by Scott Wilson, ] Foreign Service, ] ] * Benny Morris, Veteran 'New Historian' of the Modern Jewish State's Founding, Finds Himself Ideologically Back Where It All Began, by Scott Wilson, '']'' Foreign Service, 11 March 2007
* Israeli "new historian" Benny Morris was online Monday, ], 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. * Israeli "new historian" Benny Morris was online Monday, 12 March, at 2&nbsp;pm. ET to discuss his books and changing views that have driven him away from the critical perspective of Israeli history that he helped create.
* {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090213231513/http://lnx.whipart.it/letteratura/4781/Benny_Morris_Fiera_Libro_Torino.html |date=13 February 2009 }} {{in lang|it}}
*
*
* Vol 21(1), p.&nbsp;98–114 :Morris Response to Finklestein and Masalah
* , ], November 2007
* '']'' 8 May 2008
* {{YouTube|qTWxfdVHJWU|Benny Morris debates with Norman Finkelstein}} On RT CrossTalk 21 May 2010
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{{New Historians}}

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Latest revision as of 19:18, 5 November 2024

Israeli historian (born 1948)

Benny Morris
בני מוריס‎
Benny Morris wearing light blue open-necked shirt, looking left of camera and appearing to speakMorris in 2007
Born (1948-12-08) 8 December 1948 (age 76)
Ein HaHoresh, Israel
Academic background
Education
ThesisThe British Weekly Press and Nazi Germany During the 1930's (1977)
Academic work
DisciplineHistorian
School or traditionNew Historians
InstitutionsBen-Gurion University of the Negev

Benny Morris (Hebrew: בני מוריס; born 8 December 1948) is an Israeli historian. He was a professor of history in the Middle East Studies department of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in the city of Beersheba, Israel. Morris was initially associated with the group of Israeli historians known as the "New Historians", a term he coined to describe himself and historians Avi Shlaim, Ilan Pappé and Simha Flapan.

Morris's 20th century work on the Arab–Israeli conflict and especially the Israeli–Palestinian conflict has won praise and criticism from both sides of the political divide. Despite 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." One of Morris major works is the 1989 book The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1948 which based on then recently declassified Israeli archives, demonstrated that the 1948 exodus of Palestinian refugees were in large part a response to deliberate expulsions and violence by forces loyal to Israel, rather than the result of orders by Arab commanders as had often been historically claimed.

Scholars have perceived an ideological shift in Morris's work starting around 2000, during the Second Intifada. Morris's perspective has been described as having become more conservative and more negative towards Palestinians, viewing the 1948 expulsions as a justified act.

Biography

Morris was born on 8 December 1948 in kibbutz Ein HaHoresh, Israel, the son of Jewish immigrants from the United Kingdom.

His father, Ya'akov Morris, was an Israeli diplomat, historian, and poet, while his mother, Sadie Morris, was a journalist. According to The New Yorker, Benny Morris "grew up in the heart of a left-wing pioneering atmosphere." His parents moved to Jerusalem when Morris was a one-year-old. He later accompanied his parents to New York, where his father was an envoy in Israel's foreign service.

Morris served in the Israel Defense Forces as an infantryman, including in the Paratroopers Brigade, from 1967 to 1969. He saw action on the Golan Heights front during the Six-Day War and served on the Suez Canal during the War of Attrition. He was wounded in 1969 by an Egyptian shell in the Suez Canal area and was discharged from active service four months later, but continued to serve in the military reserve until 1990. He completed his undergraduate studies in history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and received a doctorate in modern European history from the University of Cambridge.

Morris served in the 1982 Lebanon War as an army reservist, taking part in the Siege of Beirut in a mortar unit. In 1986, he did reserve duty in the West Bank. In 1988, when he was called up for reserve duty in Nablus, he refused to serve on ideological grounds, as he viewed Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories as a necessity and did not want to take part in suppressing the First Intifada. He was sentenced to three weeks in military prison and was imprisoned for 19 days, with the remaining two deducted for good behavior. He was subsequently discharged from reserve service.

After publishing The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem in 1987, Morris considered leaving Israel, because he found that no university in Israel would hire him ("the establishment turned its back on me"). It was Ezer Weizman, then Israel's president, who convinced him to stay.

From 2015–18, Morris served as the Goldman Visiting Israeli Professor in Georgetown University's Department of Government.

He lives in Srigim (Li On) and is married with three children.

Journalism career

After graduation from the University of Cambridge he returned to Jerusalem and worked as a correspondent for The Jerusalem Post for 12 years. He covered the 1982 Lebanon War for The Jerusalem Post, a war he also fought in as a reservist.

While working at The Jerusalem Post in the 1980s, 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 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight. 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 there had been expulsions in some cases. Another event that Morris revealed for the first time based on his archive study was the contacts between the Israeli officials and the Lebanese Kataeb Party figures, including Elias Rababi, in the period 1948–1951. The related news reports were also published in The Jerusalem Post in 1983.

Political views

2004 Haaretz interview

In 2004, Haaretz published an interview with Morris conducted by Ari Shavit that has generated significant controversy. Morris told Shavit that his views changed in 2000 after the Palestinian rejection of President Clinton's peace accords and the outbreak of the Second Intifada. He had originally viewed the First Intifada as a legitimate uprising against foreign occupation, and was imprisoned for refusing to serve in the occupied territories as a reservist. In contrast, he has characterized the Second Intifada as a war waged by the Palestinians against Israel with the intention of bringing Israeli society to a state of collapse. According to Morris, "The bombing of the buses and restaurants really shook me. They made me understand the depth of the hatred for us."

Morris said that Israel was justified in uprooting the Palestinian 'fifth column' after the Arabs attacked the infant state, and that proportion should be employed when considering the "small war crimes" committed by Israel. In the interview, Morris stated that:

There is no justification for acts of rape. There is no justification for acts of massacre. Those are war crimes. But in certain conditions, expulsion is not a war crime. I don't think that the expulsions of 1948 were war crimes. There 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.

Morris criticised David Ben-Gurion for not fully carrying out such a plan, saying: "In the end, he faltered. ... If Ben-Gurion had carried out a large expulsion and cleansed the whole country ... If he had carried out a full expulsion—rather than a partial one—he would have stabilized the State of Israel for generations." Morris also said: "I feel sympathy for the Palestinian people, which truly underwent a hard tragedy. I feel sympathy for the refugees themselves. But if the desire to establish a Jewish state here is legitimate, there was no other choice. It was impossible to leave a large fifth column in the country. From the moment the Yishuv was attacked by the Palestinians and afterward by the Arab states, there was no choice but to expel the Palestinian population. To uproot it in the course of war."

He sees the Jews as the greater victims, as they are "a small minority in a large sea of hostile Arabs who want to eliminate us." According to him, "Arab people gained a large slice of the planet. have 22 states. The Jewish people did not have even one state. There was no reason in the world why it should not have one state. Therefore, from my point of view, the need to establish this state in this place overcame the injustice that was done to the Palestinians by uprooting them."

Morris told Shavit that he still describes himself as being left-wing because of his support for the two-state solution, but he believes his generation will not see peace in Israel. 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." On the subject of "people the Palestinian society sends to carry out the terrorist attacks," he calls them "serial killers" and "barbarians who want to take our lives".

In the same interview, Morris called Israeli Arabs "a time bomb," claiming that "their slide into complete Palestinization has made them an emissary of the enemy that is among us. They are a potential fifth column." On the subject of the potential expulsion of Israeli-Arabs, he stated that "in the present circumstances it is neither moral nor realistic. The world would not allow it, the Arab world would not allow it, it would destroy the Jewish society from within. But I am ready to tell you that in other circumstances, apocalyptic ones, which are liable to be realized in five or ten years, I can see expulsions. If we find ourselves with atomic weapons around us, or if there is a general Arab attack on us and a situation of warfare on the front with Arabs in the rear shooting at convoys on their way to the front, acts of expulsion will be entirely reasonable. They may even be essential."

Morris called the Israel–Palestinian conflict a facet of a global clash of civilisations between Islam and the Western World in the Haaretz interview, 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...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."

In response, Ari Shavit commented on Morris' justification for the expulsion of the Arabs in 1948 by contrasting (the more recent) "citizen" Morris with (the earlier) "historian" Morris, and noting that, at times "citizen Morris and historian Morris worked as though there is no connection between them, as though one was trying to save what the other insists on eradicating."

Morris later denied the term "ethnic cleansing" with regard to the actions undertaken by Jewish forces in Israel during the year 1948. He said that possibly, the term might apply in a limited or partial context to Lod and Ramla. He says that according to historical records, approximately 160,000 Arabs remained within the territories of Israel post-1948 and that while many were indeed expelled, a significant number managed to return and retained their status as citizens of the newly established Jewish state.

Israeli government

In July 2019, Morris has sharply criticized the restrictions under the Netanyahu government of access to historical documents related to the 1948 Palestinian Arab exodus, referring to them as "totalitarian." At the same time, Morris pointed out that much of the criticism of this policy is hypocritical, because the archives of the Arab states remain entirely closed.

In August 2023, Morris was one of more than 1,500 U.S., Israeli, Jewish and Palestinian academics and public figures who signed an open letter stating that Israel operates "a regime of apartheid" and calling on US Jewish groups to speak out against the occupation in Palestine. In an October 2023 interview, he stated that he does not consider Israel an "apartheid state", but that when signing the letter mentioned above he meant to refer to Israel's occupation of the West Bank as "an apartheid regime based on nationalism".

Morris is critical of the Israeli settlements, calling it "counterproductive" because it will not assure Israel's security. He called some of the settlers "right-wing fanatics", who are violent towards their Palestinian neighbors. According to him, Israel should have withdrawn from the West Bank immediately after the Six-Day War, allowed the Jordanians to reoccupy the territory.

Statements on Iran

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." In an interview with the Austrian newspaper Der Standard in May 2008, Morris argued that a pre-emptive nuclear strike on Iran may have to be used as a last resort to stop the Iranian nuclear program. Morris reiterated this view in an op-ed in Haaretz in June 2024, writing, "If Israel proves incapable of destroying the Iranian nuclear project using conventional weaponry, then it may not have any option but to resort to its nonconventional capabilities."

Israel's future

In a 2019 interview with Haaretz, Morris took a pessimistic view of Israel's future, arguing that the Palestinians would not compromise and that ultimately "a situation in which we rule an occupied people that has no rights cannot persist in the 21st century, in the modern world". He claimed that as soon as the Palestinians did have rights, Israel would no longer be a Jewish state, and that it would descend into intercommunal violence with Jews ultimately becoming a persecuted minority and those who could emigrating. According to Morris, "the Palestinians look at everything from a broad, long-term perspective. They see that at the moment, there are five-six-seven million Jews here, surrounded by hundreds of millions of Arabs. They have no reason to give in, because the Jewish state can't last. They are bound to win. In another 30 to 50 years they will overcome us, come what may."

Published works

1948 and After

1948 and After: Israel and the Palestinians (1990) 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.

The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1948

In his 1989 book, Morris retraces the stages of the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight. He meticulously examines the fate of each abandoned Palestinian village, the reason for its depopulation, and its subsequent fate. Morris also considers Israel's decision to bar the refugees' return and the international context. This book laid the foundation for Morris' reputation as the preeminent historian of the 1948 War.

The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited

Published in 2004, the book documents new archival material revealed during 25 years since Morris' earlier work. His work considers what happens in urban communities, such as Jerusalem, Jaffa and Haifa.

1948: A History of the First Arab–Israeli War

Main article: 1948: A History of the First Arab–Israeli War

Morris demolishes misconceptions and provides a detailed account of the war between various factions that year that caused the creation of the modern state of Israel. The book has been described as "the most definitive study of the first Arab-Israeli war."

One State, Two States

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 and cultural differences including less Arab respect for human life and rule of law. He suggests the possibility of something like a three-state solution in the form of a Palestinian confederation with Jordan.

The Thirty-Year Genocide, Turkey's Destruction of its Christian Minorities, 1894-1924

Main article: The Thirty-Year Genocide

The book describes the Ottoman/Turkish destruction of the Armenian, Greek and Assyrian communities by the successive Ottoman, Young Turks' and Atatürk regimes, in which some two million Christians were murdered by their Muslim neighbors.

List of publications

Praise and criticism

Morris has won praise and criticism from both sides of the political divide. Some commentators criticised Morris for being reluctant to accept the implications of the evidence he presents in his work.

Avi Shlaim

Avi Shlaim, retired 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. Shlaim writes that 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. 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.

Shlomo Ben-Ami

Shlomo Ben-Ami, a historian and former Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs, praised Morris' book The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited' (2008). He called it "the single most important work on the thorniest moral and political issue underlying the Israeli-Palestinian conundrum" and suggested it is likely to become "the most definitive study of the first Arab-Israeli war."

However, Ben-Ami criticised Morris' drawing of an "awkward symmetry" between the Palestinian refugee crisis and the "forced emigration" of Jews from the Arab world. Like Yoav Gelber, he was also unconvinced by Morris' characterization of the 1948 conflict as an Islamic Jihad.

In his own book Scars of War, Wounds of Peace, Ben-Ami observed that Morris' "thesis about the birth of the Palestine refugee problem being not by design but by the natural logic and evolution of war is not always sustained by the very evidence he himself provides: 'cultured officers ... had turned into base murderers and this not in the heat of battle ... but out of a system of expulsion and destruction; the less Arabs remained, the better; this principle is the political motor for the expulsions and atrocities' ".

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... tells of statements never made, decisions never taken, events that never happened ... at times 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." In addition he claimed to expose a serious gap between Morris' text and the original diary of Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel.

Yezid Sayigh, professor of Middle East Studies in the Department of War Studies at King's College London, writes of Karsh's criticism, "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 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".

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." Anita Shapira, Dean of Tel Aviv University, argues "thirty of references actually refer to writings by Shlaim and Morris, and fifteen others cite primary sources, and the rest refer to studies by major historians...."

Morris elsewhere argues that Karsh "belabor 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 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.'" Commenting on the Revisited version of Morris'work, Karsh states that in "an implicit acknowledgement of their inaccuracy, Morris has removed some of The Birth's most inaccurate or distorted quotations about transfer."

Norman Finkelstein and Nur Masalha

Morris has also been criticised by Norman Finkelstein and Nur Masalha. They argue that Morris's conclusions have a pro-Israeli bias, in that he has not fully acknowledged that his work rests largely on selectively released Israeli documentation, while the most sensitive documents remain closed to researchers, and has more broadly treated the evidence in Israeli documents in an uncritical way, and not taking into account that they are, at times, apologetic. In relations to specific work on the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight, they assert that Morris minimised the number of expulsions, with Finkelstein noting than many events classified by Morris as "abandonment" or "military assault on settlement" were actually expulsions, and that when the conclusions of Morris' evidence are harsh for the Israelis he has tended to give them a less incriminating spin.

In a reply to Finkelstein and Masalha, 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 review critical of Ilan Pappé's book A History of Modern Palestine for The New Republic. 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". Replying, Pappé accused Morris of using mainly Israeli sources, and disregarding Arab sources, which – Pappé alleged – Morris "cannot read".

Michael Palumbo

Michael Palumbo, author of The Palestinian Catastrophe: The 1948 Expulsion of a People from Their Homeland, reviewing the first edition of Morris's book on Palestinian refugees, criticises 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 transcripts from the BBC and CIA, many of which point to a policy of expulsion. 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, as well as oral testimonies of Palestinians and Israelis, which can be reliable if their substance can be independently verified. Palumbo commends

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.

Baruch Kimmerling

In an article in HNN, Baruch Kimmerling discusses Morris' 2004 Haaretz interview in which Morris states:

if he was already engaged in expulsion, maybe he should have done a complete job. I know that this stuns the Arabs and the liberals and the politically correct types. But my feeling is that this place would be quieter and know less suffering if the matter had been resolved once and for all. If Ben-Gurion had carried out a large expulsion and cleaned the whole country - the whole Land of Israel, as far as the Jordan River. It may yet turn out that this was his fatal mistake. If he had carried out a full expulsion - rather than a partial one - he would have stabilized the State of Israel for generations... Even the great American democracy could not have been created without the annihilation of the Indians. There are cases in which the overall, final good justifies harsh and cruel acts that are committed in the course of history.

Kimmerling describes Morrris's views as "shocking" and says that Morris "has abandoned his historian’s mantle and donned the armor of a Jewish chauvinist who wants the Land of Israel completely cleansed from Arabs" He criticizes the analysis of Morris as misunderstanding the impact of the refugee problem on the current conflict, and the magnitude of an even larger refugee population.

Yoav Gelber

Yoav Gelber has praised Morris's 2008 book on the origins of the 1948 Israeli-Arab war, stating that "In general, however, 1948 is a praiseworthy achievement of research and analysis, the work of a historian unwilling to rest on his already considerable laurels." On the other hand, Gelber criticised Morris for granting too much importance to the militant Islamic rhetoric of the period.

Awards and recognition

See also

References

  1. "Morris, Benny 1948–". Archived from the original on 11 October 2013. Retrieved 6 October 2013.
  2. ^ Wilson, Scott (11 March 2007). "Israel Revisited". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 24 October 2013. Retrieved 6 October 2013.
  3. ^ Shlaim, Avi. "The Debate about 1948", International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol 27, No. 3 (1995), pp. 287–304.
  4. Hillel Cohen (22 October 2015). Year Zero of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1929. Brandeis University Press. pp. 253–. ISBN 978-1-61168-812-2.
  5. Morris 2004, p. 3.
  6. ^ Abdel-Nour, Farid (May 2013). "From Critic to Cheerleader: The Clarifying Example of Benny Morris' 'Conversion'". Holy Land Studies. 12 (1): 25–41. doi:10.3366/hls.2013.0058. ISSN 1474-9475.
  7. Pappé, Ilan (2009). "The Vicissitudes of the 1948 Historiography of Israel". Journal of Palestine Studies. 39 (1): 6–23. doi:10.1525/jps.2010.xxxix.1.6. hdl:10871/15209. ISSN 0377-919X. JSTOR 10.1525/jps.2010.xxxix.1.6.
  8. Shapiro, B. (2015). The strange career of Israeli 'New Historian' Benny Morris. Palestine - Israel Journal of Politics, Economics, and Culture, 20/21(4), 154-160.
  9. ^ Shavit, Ari. "Survival of the fittest":"Part I". Archived from the original on 15 May 2008. Retrieved 15 May 2008., "Part II". Archived from the original on 7 June 2008. Retrieved 7 June 2008.. Ha'aretz Friday Magazine, 9 January 2004.
  10. Wilson, Scott. Israel Revisited Archived 8 November 2017 at the Wayback Machine, The Washington Post, 11 March 2007.
  11. ^ Remnick, David. Blood and Sand: A revisionist Israeli historian revisits his country's origins Archived 13 February 2009 at the Wayback Machine. The New Yorker, 5 May 2008.
  12. 'Israel Will Decline, and Jews Will Be a Persecuted Minority. Those Who Can Will Flee to America', Haaretz
  13. ^ "Professor Benny Morris". Torah in Motion. Archived from the original on 2 October 2013. Retrieved 6 October 2013.
  14. ^ Morris, Benny (Summer 2010). "Benny Morris: "The 1948 War Was an Islamic Holy War"" (Interview). Interviewed by Amira Lamm. Middle East Quarterly. I was burned at the stake," says Morris. "Shabtai Tevet claimed that the things I wrote served the needs of the PLO; it questioned all the myths in the accepted Zionist narrative. The establishment turned its back on me." Morris, holding a doctorate in history from Cambridge University, found that no university would hire him. It was Ezer Weizman, then Israel's president, who finally gave Morris an official seal of approval. Weizman heard Morris say in an interview that he was considering leaving Israel, and he invited him for a chat. "So he shouted for his office director, 'Shumer,' and Aryeh Shumer flew in. Weizman told him: 'We need to find a job for this fellow.' I then lived a fifteen-minute walk from there, and when I opened the door to my apartment the phone was ringing. It was Braverman phoning, the president of Ben Gurion University. And he said, 'Don't worry Benny, you have a job.' And I have been there ever since.
  15. "Faculty and Research | Program for Jewish Civilization | Georgetown University". Archived from the original on 5 September 2015. Retrieved 3 September 2015.
  16. An evolving historian Archived 9 June 2013 at the Wayback Machine. Robert Slater. The Jerusalem Post, 26 December 2012.
  17. ^ David K. Shipler (3 July 1983). "'48 Israeli Tie to Phalangists Revealed". The New York Times. Retrieved 25 January 2022.
  18. Morris, Benny (10 October 2016). "Israel Conducted No Ethnic Cleansing in 1948". Haaretz. Retrieved 23 October 2023. Prof. Daniel Blatman distorts history when he says the new State of Israel, a country facing invading armies, carried out a policy of expelling the local Arabs.
  19. Morris, Benny (7 July 2019). "Benny Morris: Israel's Concealing of Nakba Documents Is Totalitarian". Haaretz. Retrieved 26 May 2020.
  20. Morris, Benny (21 August 2019). "Covering and uncovering history: An interview with Benny Morris" (Interview). Interviewed by Niram Ferretti. L'informale. The first thing I would say is that those who say this are completely hypocritical, because when you look at Arab archives they are all closed. They haven't opened anything. So, here they are criticizing Israel for having opened certain documents and then having closed them again while the Arabs and the Palestinians have closed everything and have been hiding everything from researchers.
  21. "Elephant in the room". sites.google.com. Archived from the original on 1 December 2023. Retrieved 16 August 2023.
  22. McGreal, Chris (15 August 2023). "US Jews urged to condemn Israeli occupation amid Netanyahu censure". The Guardian.
  23. "In Israel and the U.S., 'apartheid' is the elephant in the room". WAPO. 11 August 2023.
  24. Benny Morris: An Apartheid State?, Judicial Overhaul, Gaza Occupation and other matters, retrieved 16 February 2024
  25. ^ Morris, Benny (11 February 2023). "Israel and Palestine Origins with Dr. Benny Morris" (Interview). Interviewed by Coleman Hughes. Retrieved 9 July 2024.
  26. Morris, Benny (18 July 2008). "Using Bombs to Stave Off War". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 30 May 2013. Retrieved 6 October 2013.
  27. "Letzte Chance ist eine israelische Atombombe". Derstandard.at. 18 May 2008. Archived from the original on 15 October 2009. Retrieved 6 October 2013.
  28. "Benny Morris: Israeli historian calls for nuclear strike on Iran". Middle East Eye. 1 July 2024. Archived from the original on 1 July 2024. Retrieved 9 July 2024.
  29. Morris, Benny (30 June 2024). "To Survive, Israel Must Strike Iran Now". Haaretz. Archived from the original on 4 July 2024. Retrieved 9 July 2024.
  30. Aderet, Ofer (22 January 2019). "'Israel Will Decline, and Jews Will Be a Persecuted Minority. Those Who Can Will Flee to America'". Haaretz. Archived from the original on 9 August 2022.
  31. ^ Ben-Ami, Shlomo (1 September 2008). "Review: A War to Start All Wars: Will Israel Ever Seal the Victory of 1948?". Foreign Affairs. 87 (5): 148–156. Archived from the original on 21 November 2018.
  32. Goldberg, Jeffrey (20 May 2009). "Book Review - 'One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict,' by Benny Morris". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 8 May 2017.
  33. Goldberg, Jeffrey. No Common Ground Archived 3 February 2017 at the Wayback Machine, The New York Times, 20 May 2009.
  34. Ufheil-Somers, Amanda (21 December 1996). "The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict After Oslo". MERIP. Retrieved 22 December 2023.
  35. ^ Kimmerling, Baruch (26 January 2004). "Benny Morris's Shocking Interview". Archived from the original on 1 September 2013. Retrieved 22 December 2023.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  36. Shlomo Ben-Ami (2005). Scars of War, Wounds of Peace (PAPERBACK ed.). Phoenix (Orion Books). p. 43. ISBN 0-7538-2104-4.
  37. Said, Edward. (1998) "New History, Old Ideas" in Al-Ahram weekly, 21–27 May.
  38. Shlomo Ben-Ami (2005). Scars of War, Wounds of Peace (PAPERBACK ed.). Phoenix (Orion Books). p. 43. ISBN 0-7538-2104-4.
  39. Benny Morris and the Reign of Error Archived 15 May 2005 at the Wayback Machine, Middle East Quarterly; see also Fabricating Israeli History: The New Historians.
  40. Karsh, Efraim. The Unbearable Lightness of my Critics Archived 2 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine, Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2002.
  41. Morris, Benny (1 September 1996). "Undeserving of a Reply". Middle East Quarterly. Archived from the original on 16 August 2006 – via www.meforum.org.
  42. Anita Shapira, The Past Is Not a Foreign Country Archived 12 March 2008 at the Wayback Machine, The New Republic, 29 November 1999.
  43. Morris, Benny. "Review of 'Fabricating Israeli History: The "New Historians".' by Efraim Karsh", J. Palestine Studies 27(2), p. 81–95.
  44. Alexander, Edward; Bogdanor, Paul (2006). "Benny Morris and the Myths of Post-Zionist History". The Jewish Divide Over Israel. Transaction.
  45. N. Finkelstein, 1995, Image and Reality of the Israel–Palestine conflict, Verso, London, ISBN 1-85984-339-5
  46. N. Finkelstein, 1991, "Myths, Old and New", J. Palestine Studies, 21(1), p. 66–89
  47. N. Masalha, 1991, "A Critique of Benny Morris", J. Palestine Studies 21(1), p. 90–97
  48. Morris, 1991, "Response to Finkelstein and Masalha", J. Palestine Studies 21(1), pp. 98–114
  49. Pappe, Ilan. A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004. ISBN 978-0-521-55632-3
  50. ^ Morris, Benny (22 March 2004). "Politics by Other Means". The New Republic. Archived from the original on 17 May 2017. Retrieved 29 January 2017.
  51. Palumbo, Michael. The Palestinian Catastrophe: The 1948 Expulsion of a People from Their Homeland. Quartet Books, 1989, ISBN 0-7043-0099-0
  52. Palumbo, Michael. "What Happened to Palestine? The Revisionists Revisited Archived 31 March 2010 at the Wayback Machine", originally published in The Link, September – October 1990, Volume 23, Issue 4 p. 4
  53. Palumbo, Michael. "What Happened to Palestine? The Revisionists Revisited Archived 31 March 2010 at the Wayback Machine", p. 7
  54. Ahmad H. Sa'di, Lila Abu-Lughod, Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the claims of memory, Columbia University Press, 2007 p. 30
  55. Palumbo, Michael. "What Happened to Palestine? The Revisionists Revisited Archived 31 March 2010 at the Wayback Machine", p. 4
  56. Gelber, Yoav (2008). "The Jihad That Wasn't". Azure (34).
  57. "Past Winners". Jewish Book Council. Retrieved 21 January 2020.

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