"The Arabs Are Responsible"

For the past two decades, Benny Morris - a prominent Israeli and international academic, and a leading figure in Israel's Post-Zionism camp - has been advocating the notion that Israel's official version of history is filled with misconceptions and misleading myths. However, in a surprising recent interview, Morris now argues that others have misconstrued his thesis. He argues that the Palestinians, not Israel, are to blame for the ongoing conflict and for the current state of affairs.

In an interview with Yediot Ahronot, Morris clarified his positions regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (this interview followed a September 2001 lecture at UC Berkley's Theological Institute in which Morris first articulated these positions). Following are excerpts from the article, which included an interview with Morris:(1)

"The audience at UC Berkley's Theological Institute thought it knew what they were in for. They were promised a lecture on the peace process by Professor Benny Morris - an Israeli historian, well-known leftist, who had a hard time finding a niche in Israel's academia due to his extreme opinions, which reject [Israel's] official Zionist history. Berkley is still the stronghold of America's radical left [and] all the listeners who filled the lecture hall were sure that the lecturer would say exactly what they wanted to hear: that Israel is to blame for everything, that Israel is the aggressor and the evil perpetrator, that the Palestinians are the good guys..."

"Morris had different plans. He knew exactly what was in store for his audience: a surprise, a big surprise. [In the lecture] he told them that the Palestinians have been obstinately refusing to accept any compromise since the 1930's. They refused to accept the 1937 Partition Plan of the Peel Commission (a Jewish State on 20% of the Sharon and Galilee regions of territorial Palestine), they rejected the 1947 UN partition plan (an Arab state on 40% of the territory), they did not even want to hear about Sadat and Begin's [1979] Autonomy Plan (which was a part of the Camp David Accord and which was never implemented), and they rejected Bill Clinton's generous offer (which included 95% of the West Bank). To make a long story short, [Morris said that] the Jews always agreed [to various compromise offers] whereas the Arabs always refused to accept them, and the blame falls squarely on the Palestinians. They have been making historic mistakes for seventy years now, and there is a price for historic mistakes..."

"Yes, the Palestinians are to blame. And this is true not only because they rejected Ehud Barak's generous offer but also because they are unwilling to come to terms with Israel's existence here. They want to throw [the Jews] into the ocean, and anyone who holds a different opinion is mistaken. These are the words of the Historian."

"One has to go back in time thirteen years in order to understand how surprising [Morris'] statements are. Morris - a Jerusalem Post reporter at the time, a Cambridge University Ph.D, and a Kibbutz and [Israeli Defense Force] Paratroopers veteran - published his book The Birth of The Palestinian Refugee Problem in 1988. His book created an immediate outburst [of an acute debate in Israel]."

"Up until then, it was generally assumed that 700,000 Palestinians left their homes voluntarily during the 1948 War of Independence, following promises by their leaders that they will be able to return and plunder Jewish property when the war was over. According to what Morris wrote in his 1988 book, that never happened; these stories are nonsense. The leaders of the Yishuv [the Jewish Zionist community in pre-state Israel] believed in a transfer, and in their actions contributed much to the fleeing of the refugees. Some ran away to escape the battles, others left after the Jews made their lifes difficult, and still others were simply expelled. [According to Morris' 1988 book], the Palestinians did not leave and did not run away, these words are too soft. They were also not expelled - that word is too harsh. The Palestinians "were driven out."

"[After the book was published,] Morris became [Israel's] public enemy number one, and the price he paid was considerable. He was fired from The Jerusalem Post and he had a hard time finding a job in Israel's academia despite the success of his book outside of Israel..."

"In the heart of every Palestinian exists a desire that the State of Israel will not be here anymore."

"[Morris] is denying that his views have shifted. He claims that this was his opinion all along. However, no one knew it. Even when he expressed his opinion, the interviewers preferred not to quote him on that. 'It is not politically correct,' he says. Nevertheless, he admits, he has a lot of built up anger over the past two years against the Palestinians since they rejected Clinton's proposal. He says that Barak also made mistakes but that these were marginal. The bottom line is that Barak accepted Clinton's generous proposal which demanded [of him] to give up 95% of the West Bank, 100% of Gaza, and to divide Jerusalem."

"By the way, with regards to Jerusalem, Morris disagrees with Barak. Morris would not be willing to give up the Temple Mount."

Morris: "If there is a nation that deserves the title to the Temple Mount it is we. But injustice was perpetrated and two mosques were erected on the ruins of the [Jewish] Temple 1,400 years ago, and [now] the Arabs [also] have a claim to the Temple Mount. I accept a compromise in which both Jews and Arabs will control the Temple Mount. But why should the Palestinians have sole control over there? Why? What kind of justice is that?"

"In any case, everything shrinks when compared with Yasser Arafat's mistake [when he] rejected the Clinton proposal. "Both people - Israelis and Palestinians - are paying with their lives for [the Palestinian] mistakes" Morris says..."

"In Camp David and Taba the issue of the 'right of return' emerged; it was prominent [in the discussions]. The Israelis claimed that the Palestinian demand to allow millions of refugees to return into Israel destroys any possibility for peace, since this demand translates into the destruction of the state of the Jews. The Palestinian spokespersons tried to downplay the gravity of the dispute. Publicly they continued to demand the 'right of return,' while at the same time they were hinting [to the Israelis] that it would be possible to reach an agreement on this issue. In his book A Guide for the Wounded Dove, Yossi Beilin - who headed the Taba negotiation team in charge of the refugee issue - claims that he reached satisfactory agreements on this issue with the Palestinians."

"Morris, the one who brought this issue to public awareness, is very determined regarding this question. [He believes that] any mentioning of the right of return is a disaster, a recipe for the destruction of the State of Israel. Even if Arafat will agree that Israel will only recognize its responsibility in creating the refugee problem while the Palestinians give up the actual right to implement it, Israel must still object to such a proposal."

Morris: "If you recognize the responsibility, millions will demand their lands in return immediately thereafter. If the notion of the right of return will be recognized, there is also going to be an attempt to utilize that notion, and that will be the end of the State of Israel. [If that happens], there won't be a Jewish State here."

Yediot Aharonot (Y.A.): "In Taba it was proposed that Israel would recognize its responsibility in creating the refugee problem, but that the refugees will not be absorbed in Israel, except for a very small number on which Israel will decide. Do you think that this is also a bad idea?"

Morris: "The Palestinians told Beilin that they are willing to consider all kinds of formulas regarding refugees, but they lied to him. They will never back away from [the demand for] the right of return. They cannot come to their people in the refugee camps and tell them: 'We gave in on the right of return.' They are unable to do this."

Y.A.: "[But] Sari Nusaiba, head of the PA office of Jerusalem Affairs said it himself."

Morris: "He is an exception. His statements are putting his life in danger. He is not one of the first rank senior leadership. I never heard Mohammad Dakhlan, Jibril Rajoub, or Abu Allah and their guys saying this. Even if they will sign on such a text at one stage or another, a new generation will emerge in ten or twenty years and will argue that they had no right to give up [the right of return]."

Y.A.: "You are the man who revealed to the Israelis that they have responsibility for the refugee problem. Are you asking them to ignore what you revealed to them?"

Morris: "I revealed to the Israelis the truth of what happened in 1948, the historic facts. But the Arabs are the ones who started the fighting, they started the shootings. So why should I take responsibility? The Arabs started the war, they are responsible."

Morris: "We need to give some kind of a solution to the Palestinians but we must not recognize the right of return. Arafat and his generation cannot give up on the vision of the greater land of Israel for the Arabs. [This is true, because] this is a holy land, Dar-al Islam. It was once in the hands of the Muslims, and its inconceivable [to them] that infidels like us would receive it. And besides, even if Arafat will sign an agreement, I find it hard to believe, in view of his behavior during the last two years, that he or his heirs will abide by it."

Morris: "Not because they are Arabs, but rather because they don't understand that justice exists on the other side as well. We do understand that justice exists on the other side. Have you ever heard a senior Palestinian official who says that the Jewish demand for the State of Israel is justified? I have never heard that being said..."

"We will not reach a compromise in this generation, and I have a sneaking suspicion that we will never reach a true and permanent agreement. In the heart of every Palestinian exists a desire that the State of Israel will not be here anymore. For many of them this translates into more than just a desire. As far as they are concerned, all of their misfortunes are a consequence of our deeds, and our destruction will bring about their salvation. Their salvation is the whole of Palestine."

Y.A.: "Do they not understand the reality? Do they not understand that they absorb all these blows as a consequence of their unwillingness to compromise?"

Morris: "Every nation has its own particular way to understand reality, and their reality is very fluid. They feel that demographics will defeat the Jews in one hundred or two hundred yeas, just like the Crusaders. Or [the Palestinians are hoping that] the Arabs will have nuclear weapons. Why should they accept a compromise that is perceived by them as unjust today?"

Y.A.: "And when you hear Palestinian leaders, like Abu Mazen and others, who say that they are willing to accept Israel, and living alongside it, do you not believe them?"

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) is an independent, non-profit organization that translates and analyzes the media of the Middle East. Copies of articles and documents cited, as well as background information, are available on request. E-Mail: memri@memri.org

Nothing new. Finkelstein and Said have always maintained that Morris, cleaving to his own Zionists beliefs, could not bring himself to the obvious conclusions his research, and the evidence pointed to.

These folks, posting this, are only about five years behind the curve here! This is absolutely no new development for Morris and the slant given this is merely the spin coming from the obvious pro-Zionist source.

Please read:

Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, reviewed by Edna Homa Hunt, Aug/Sept. 1996

Book Review

Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict

By Norman G. Finkelstein. Verso, 1995, 243 pp. List: $18.95 paper; AET: $16.50.

Reviewed by Edna Homa Hunt

August/September 1996, Page 63

Norman Finkelstein is a brave man, In writing Image and Reality, he has challenged important myths underlying the origins of Israel as a state, and many elements of the Israel-Palestine conflict. These myths, of course, are imbedded in Zionist doctrine evolved over a century and already widely documented elsewhere.

This is a particularly significant book for its extensive research and thorough documentation. Notes provided in 67 pages added to 171 pages of text are often as illuminating as the text itself.

These myths still are prominent in some public discussions and private conversations in the U.S., even though scholarship has discredited them. Therefore, the book is especially important for American readers. They are not as likely as Israelis to have access to updated and revised accounts of events that occurred during and after the overt hostilities that have punctuated the course of conflict between Israelis and Arab peoples.

The book’s narrative does not proceed along a continuous historical time line. Rather, Finkelstein chooses to dwell on several critical periods examined in the writings of historians such as the Israelis Benny Morris and Anita Shapira; and American putative scholar Joan Peters. Indeed, the meticulous research that ultimately led to the unequivocal exposure of Peters’ fraudulent scholarship was Finkelstein’s doctoral dissertation at Princeton.

The Falsehoods of Abba Eban in his “finest hour” as Israel’s diplomat par excellence during and after the June 1967 war are the third of Finkelstein’s central challenges.

The course of that very fateful war of 1967 and its aftermath -- the October 1973 war -- and the Camp David Accords as its ultimate denouement prior to the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, become another “group” for Finkelstein’s in-depth object lessons. These deserve utmost attention because from the events in question there arose a web of “political correctness” that still holds exclusive sway in many circles in the U.S.

Above and beyond Finkelstein’s refutation of Joan Peters’ thesis that most of the Palestinians are descendants of very recent arrivals from Syria and elsewhere, and the mountain of ”evidence” she dredges up in support, his chapter “A Land Without a People” highlights a serious problem: the chorus of enthusiasm, praise and endorsement for the Peters book from such Jewish scholars and literary luminaries as Barbara Tuchman, Bernard Lewis, Saul Bellow and Elie Wiesel, to mention but a few.

Certainly, one of the highlights of Finkelstein’s numerous accomplishments is his expose’ of the aftermath of Peters’ discrediting. He did a great service to those of us who still care about such things, by bringing to light those who subjugate integrity in the service of ideological propaganda. Sadly, even after Peters’ “evidence” became widely recognized as falsehood, few of the endorserspublicly admitted their mistaken gullibility.

The profound injustice done the Palestinian people has significant roots in the 1948 war, when a massive exodus from their villages, towns and neighborhoods took place, over a short period of months. The chapter “Born of War, Not by Design” could well be the most instructive for those readers -- especially in the U.S. -- whose memory does not extend back to that time.

In this chapter, focus is on the work of Israeli “new” historian Benny Morris. His books chronicle the political, military and also - in my view - significant human events of the 1948 war that set the stage for almost half a century of the most vigorous Zionist “settler colonialism” and expansion. Still ongoing, and entirely at the expense of the Palestinian people, this settler colonialism again has been eloquently described by Israeli Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi in his 1992 book, Original Sins.

Finkelstein focuses on one aspect of Morris’ historical scholarship. While Morris reveals political and military leaders, he steadfastly - but according to Finkelstein falsely - maintains that “the Arab exodus was not the result of a general, premeditated Yishuv (Jewish) policy” (quoted on p.64 of Image and Reality). The Morris thesis is that the mass exodus of Arabs from their major population centers all over present-day Israel was not the result of a well-formulated plan to get rid of as many Arabs as possible, as quickly as possible. Rather, Morris maintains that Arab flight was a by-product of war. As in all wars “things happen!” Finkelstein shows that Morris’ obfuscation of the widely-known Plan D’s real objective is a falsification of the facts, plain and simple.

Indeed, in May 1975 edition of a report on “Arab villages destroyed in Israel,” Prof. Israel Shahak states that “the truth about Arab settlements which used to exist in the area of [the present] Israel before 1948 is one of the most guarded secrets of Israeli life”. In the spirit of Palestinian historian and geographer Arif Al-Arif - on whose work the Shahak report on these villages is based - and also in the spirit of Image and Reality, but in contrast to Benny Morris, I am compelled to add, in the words of the Shahak report, that “falsifying facts in this way is a most grave offense in itself and also one of the most important causes for the prevention of any meaningful peace (i.e. not one based only on force and oppression).”

Of 475 Palestinian villages known to have existed before 1948, 385 have been destroyed, some without so much as a stone to mark their past existence.

“The June 1967 war marked a decisive crossroads in the history of the modern Middle East,” Finkelstein writes on p. 123 of his book. “It redefined the contours of the Arab-Israeli conflict as well as the terms of its settlement.” Indeed, I am convinced that the June war launched Israel on a path toward the exercise of power almost on a global scale.

With impressive military and diplomatic documentation, Finkelstein thoroughly rebuts Abba Eban’s edifice of falsehoods and linguistic acrobatics. For a long time indeed, Eban successfully diverted the blame for that war away from Israel. Moreover, his version of events served to bring Israel much of the glory and praise that still clings to its military and diplomatic image. But Finkelstein presents sufficient evidence to reverse the credibility of the received truth of Eban’sassessment.

As his finale, Finkelstein takes readers through the labyrinthine “career” or U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, even as it wound its way through another war, that of October 1973, and the “neutralization of Egypt” at Camp David. For those who were not around to read the newspapers in the post-October war period, the final chapter, “Language of Force,” recalls the Jarring mission, its aftermath, and Anwar Sadat’s dramatic opening to Israel which led to Camp David, which in turn opened the way to the 1982 Lebanon invasion.

As for Resolution 242, no one has formally announced its death and internment. But is that not what actually happened in Oslo and Cairo?

This Issue´s TOC	Current Issue	Back Issues
Contact Us	Today's News	WRMEA News
Activists' Corner	Resources	Subscribe
About WRMEA		Home

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.