Benny Morris (Hebrew:בנימוריס;born 8 December 1948)[1] 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.[2] Scholars have perceived an ideological shift in Morris's work and a departure from the critical scholarship of his New Historian colleagues starting around 2000 during the Second Intifada.[3][4]
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.[5] Regarding himself as a Zionist,[6] he writes,"I embarked upon the research not out of ideological commitment or political interest. I simply wanted to know what happened."[7] In his later career,Morris has often been condemned for his opinion that the expulsion of all Palestinian Arabs from Israel would have been justified[citation needed].
His father,Ya'akov Morris,was an Israeli diplomat,historian,and poet,[9] 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."[10] 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.[11]
Morris served in the 1982 Lebanon War as an army reservist,taking part in the Siege of Beirut in a mortar unit.[10] 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.[2]
From 2015–18,Morris served as the Goldman Visiting Israeli Professor in Georgetown University's Department of Government.[13]
He lives in Srigim (Li On) and is married with three children.[12]
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.[14] He covered the 1982 Lebanon War for The Jerusalem Post,a war he also fought in as a reservist.[10]
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.[2] 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.[15] The related news reports were also published in The Jerusalem Post in 1983.[15]
Political views
In his first book,The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem,1947—1949,Morris supported Israeli actions during 1948,such as the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinian Arabs,stating that the only alternative to expelling them was the genocide of the Jewish population in Israel. Some critics have alleged this book was biased against Israel,but Morris responded that they failed to read his book with moral detachment,assuming that when he described Israeli actions as cruel or as atrocities,he was condemning them. In a 2004 interview with Haaretz conducted by Ari Shavit,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.[8] 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.[8]
When Shavit called the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight "ethnic cleansing",Morris responded,"[t]here are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing. I know that this term is completely negative in the discourse of the 21st century,but when the choice is between ethnic cleansing and genocide—the annihilation of your people—I prefer ethnic cleansing." 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."[8]
Morris told Shavit that his views changed in 2000 after the Palestinian rejection of President Clinton's peace accords and the beginning 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."[8]
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.[8] 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."[8] 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".[8]
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."[8]
Morris called the Israel–Palestinian conflict a facet of a global clash of civilisations between Islam and the Western World in the Haaretzinterview,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."[8]
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.[16]
His work has been criticised by Arab writers for failing to act on the evidence he found of forced evictions.[17]
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."[18] In an interview with the Austrian newspaper Der Standard Morris argues that a pre-emptive nuclear strike on Iran may have to be used as a last resort to stop the Iranian nuclear program.[19]
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."[20]
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."[21]
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.[22][23][24] 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".[25]
Criticisms of Morris' post-2000 views
Commenting on the post-2000 reversal of position by Morris,Shlomo Ben-Ami,former Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs,wrote that Morris' more recent "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' [quoting from Morris' major 2004 work:'The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited']".[26]
Ari Shavit,senior correspondent at Haaretz,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."[27]
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. Although Morris dismisses the claim that the Palestinians were systematically expelled due to orders from Israeli officials,he nevertheless cites an IDF Intelligence Report that concludes that 70% of the exodus was caused by Israeli forces and Jewish dissidents.[28]
1948:A History of the First Arab–Israeli War
In 1948:A History of the First Arab–Israeli War,Morris gives a detailed account of the war between various factions that year that caused the creation of the modern state of Israel. Yoav Gelber writes,"1948 is a praiseworthy achievement of research and analysis,the work of a historian unwilling to rest on his already considerable laurels." Gelber disagrees with some of Morris's analysis,in particular with the idea that the 1948 war was more a "clash of civilizations" between the West and Islam than a nationalist struggle. He also argues that Morris overestimates Israel's military strength,and disagrees with Morris about the aims of King Abdullah of Jordan.[29]
One State,Two States
In 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.[30] He suggests the possibility of something like a three-state solution in the form of a Palestinian confederation with Jordan.[31]
The Thirty-Year Genocide,Turkey's Destruction of its Christian Minorities,1894-1924
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. [5]
Morris has also been criticized[32][33][34] for being reluctant to accept the implications of the evidence he presents in his work. A particular example being his analysis of the root of the conflict which he has stated is that "they [the Arabs] didn't want the Jews to be here [Israel]", while his book Righteous Victims states: "The fear of territorial displacement and dispossession was to be the chief motor of Arab antagonism to Zionism down to 1948 (and indeed after 1967 as well)."[35][36]
Efraim Karsh
Efraim Karsh, professor of Mediterranean Studies at King's College London, writes that Morris engages in what Karsh calls "five types of distortion". According to Karsh, Morris "misrepresents documents, resorts to partial quotes, withholds evidence, makes false assertions, and rewrites original documents... [he] tells of statements never made, decisions never taken, events that never happened ... at times [he] does not even take the trouble to provide evidence..... He expects his readers to take on trust his assertions that fundamental contradictions exist between published accounts and the underlying documents.....he systematically falsifies evidence. Indeed, there is scarcely a document that he does not twist. This casts serious doubt on the validity of his entire work." 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.[37]
Yezid Sayigh, professor of Middle East Studies in the Department of War Studies at King's College London, writes of Karsh's criticism, "[t]his is not the first time that Efraim Karsh has written a highly self-important rebuttal of revisionist history. He is simply not what he makes himself out to be, a trained historian (nor political/social scientist)." (Karsh responds that he has an undergraduate degree in modern Middle Eastern history, and Arabic language and literature, and a doctorate in political science and international relations.) Sayigh urges academics to compose "robust responses [to Karsh] that make sure that any self-respecting scholar will be too embarrassed to even try to incorporate the Karsh books in his/her teaching or research because they can't pretend they didn't know how flimsy their foundations are".[38]
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."[39]Anita Shapira, Dean of Tel Aviv University, argues "thirty of [Karsh's] references actually refer to writings by Shlaim and Morris, and fifteen others cite primary sources, and the rest refer to studies by major historians...."[40]
Morris elsewhere argues that Karsh "belabor[s] minor points while completely ignoring, and hiding from his readers, the main pieces of evidence" and argued, "... Karsh, while claiming to have 'demolished' the whole oeuvre, in fact deal[t] with only four pages of Birth. These pages tried to show that the Zionist leadership during 1937–38 supported a 'transfer solution' to the prospective Jewish state's 'Arab problem.'"[41] 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."[42]
Finkelstein and 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.[43][44][45]
In a reply to Finkelstein and Masalha,[46] 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. Shlomo Ben Ami states that Benny Morris' conclusion is not supported by the evidence that he himself (Morris) presents such as his statement that, "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 the atrocities".[47]
Ilan Pappé
Benny Morris wrote a review critical of Ilan Pappé's book A History of Modern Palestine[48] for The New Republic.[49] 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".[49] Replying, Pappé accused Morris of using mainly Israeli sources, and disregarding Arab sources, which – Pappé alleged – Morris "cannot read". Morris, Pappé said, had "abominable racist views about the Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular."[50]
Michael Palumbo
Michael Palumbo, author of The Palestinian Catastrophe: The 1948 Expulsion of a People from Their Homeland,[51] 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.[52] 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,[53] as well as oral testimonies of Palestinians and Israelis, which can be reliable if their substance can be independently verified.[54] Palumbo says:
Morris' regard for documentation is indeed commendable, were it not for his tendency to choose sources which support his views, while avoiding those document collections which contain information inconsistent with his principal arguments. His decision not to use the testimony of Israeli veterans is unfortunate, since some of them have spoken candidly about Israeli atrocities and expulsion of civilians at Deir Yassin, Lydda–Ramle and Jaffa.[55]
Baruch Kimmerling
In an article in HNN, Baruch Kimmerling discusses an interview with Benny Morris 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.[33]
The 1948 Arab–Israeli War, also known as the First Arab–Israeli War, followed the civil war in Mandatory Palestine as the second and final stage of the 1948 Palestine war. The civil war became a war of separate states with the Israeli Declaration of Independence on 14 May 1948, the end of the British Mandate for Palestine at midnight, and the entry of a military coalition of Arab states into the territory of Mandatory Palestine the following morning. The war formally ended with the 1949 Armistice Agreements which established the Green Line.
Palestinian refugees are citizens of Mandatory Palestine, and their descendants, who fled or were expelled from their country over the course of the 1947–1949 Palestine war and the Six-Day War. Most Palestinian refugees live in or near 68 Palestinian refugee camps across Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In 2019 more than 5.6 million Palestinian refugees were registered with the United Nations.
Killings and massacres during the 1948 Palestine war resulted in the deaths of hundreds of civilians and unarmed soldiers.
Plan Dalet was a Zionist military plan executed in the civil war phase of the 1948 Palestine war for the conquest of territory in Mandatory Palestine in preparation for the establishment of a Jewish state. The plan was requested by the Jewish Agency leader and later first prime minister of Israel David Ben-Gurion, and developed by the Haganah and finalized on March 10, 1948. Historians describe Plan Dalet, in which Zionist forces shifted to an offensive strategy, as the beginning of a new phase in the 1948 Palestine war.
Efraim Karsh is an Israeli and British historian who is the founding director and emeritus professor of Middle East and Mediterranean Studies at King's College London. Since 2013, he has served as professor of political studies at Bar-Ilan University. He is also a principal research fellow and former director of the Middle East Forum, a Philadelphia-based think tank. He is a vocal critic of the New Historians, a group of Israeli scholars who have questioned the traditional Israeli narrative of the Arab–Israeli conflict.
Ilan Pappé is an Israeli historian, political scientist, and former politician. He is a professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, director of the university's European Centre for Palestine Studies, and co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies. Pappé was also a board member of the Israeli political party Hadash, and was a candidate on the party list in the 1996 and 1999 Israeli legislative elections.
Yosef Weitz was the director of the Land and Afforestation Department of the Jewish National Fund (JNF). From the 1930s, Weitz played a major role in acquiring land for the Yishuv, the pre-state Jewish community in Palestine.
The Palestinian right of return is the political position or principle that Palestinian refugees, both first-generation refugees and their descendants, have a right to return and a right to the property they themselves or their forebears left behind or were forced to leave in what is now Israel and the Palestinian territories during the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight and the 1967 Six-Day War.
During the 1948 Palestine war in which the State of Israel was established, around 700,000 Palestinian Arabs or 85% of the total population of the territory Israel captured fled or were expelled from their homes by Israeli forces. The causes for this mass displacement is a matter of great controversy among historians, journalists, and commentators.
Ezra Danin was the head of the Arab section of the SHAI, the intelligence arm of the Haganah, Israeli politician and an orange grower. Danin specialized in Arab affairs.
Nur ad-Din Masalha commonly known in English as Nur Masalha is a Palestinian writer, historian, and academic.
The 1948 Palestinian expulsion from Lydda and Ramle, was the expulsion of 50,000 to 70,000 Palestinian Arabs when Israeli troops captured the towns in July that year. The military action occurred within the context of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The operation included the events of the Lydda Massacre and the Lydda Death March. The two Arab towns, lying outside the area designated for a Jewish state in the UN Partition Plan of 1947, and inside the area set aside for an Arab state in Palestine, were subsequently transformed into predominantly Jewish areas in the new State of Israel, known as Lod and Ramla.
In the 1948 Palestine war more than 700000 Palestinian Arabs – about half of Mandatory Palestine's Arab population – were expelled or fled from their homes, at first by Zionist paramilitaries, and after the establishment of Israel, by its military. The expulsion and flight was a central component of the fracturing, dispossession, and displacement of Palestinian society, known as the Nakba. Dozens of massacres targeting Arabs were conducted by Israeli military forces and between 400 and 600 Palestinian villages were destroyed. Village wells were poisoned in a biological warfare programme and properties were looted to prevent Palestinian refugees from returning. Other sites were subject to Hebraization of Palestinian place names.
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine is a book authored by New Historian Ilan Pappé and published in 2006 by Oneworld Publications. The book is about the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight, which Pappe argues was the result of ethnic cleansing.
The New Historians are a loosely defined group of Israeli historians who have challenged traditional versions of Israeli history, including Israel's role in the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight and Arab willingness to discuss peace. The term was coined in 1988 by Benny Morris, one of the leading New Historians. According to Ethan Bronner of The New York Times, the New Historians have sought to advance the peace process in the region.
The 1937 Ben-Gurion letter is a letter written by David Ben-Gurion, then head of the executive committee of the Jewish Agency, to his son Amos on 5 October 1937. The letter is well known to scholars as it provides insight into Ben-Gurion's reaction to the report of the Peel Commission released on 7 July of the same year.
The 1948 Palestine war was fought in the territory of what had been, at the start of the war, British-ruled Mandatory Palestine. During the war, the British withdrew from Palestine, Zionist forces conquered territory and established the State of Israel, and over 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled. It was the first war of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the broader Arab–Israeli conflict.
1948: A History of the First Arab–Israeli War is a non-fiction work written by Israeli historian Benny Morris. It was published by Yale University Press in 2008. The author is otherwise known for multiple other books such as Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem and Righteous Victims, being a member of the group called the 'new historians' and the individual who most popularized the term.
The Nakba was the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Mandatory Palestine during the 1948 Palestine war through their violent displacement and dispossession of land, property, and belongings, along with the destruction of their society, and the suppression of their culture, identity, political rights, and national aspirations. The term is also used to describe the ongoing persecution and displacement of Palestinians by Israel. As a whole, it covers the fracturing of Palestinian society and the long-running rejection of the right of return for Palestinian refugees and their descendants.
↑ 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.
1 2 Shlaim, Avi. "The Debate about 1948", International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol 27, No. 3 (1995), pp. 287–304.
↑ 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.
↑ Said, Edward. (1998) "New History, Old Ideas" in Al-Ahram weekly, 21–27 May.
1 2 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)
↑ Shlomo Ben-Ami (2005). Scars of War, Wounds of Peace (PAPERBACKed.). Phoenix (Orion Books). p.43. ISBN0-7538-2104-4.
↑ Moris, Beni (2001). Righteous victims: a history of the Zionist-Arab conflict, 1881 - 2001 (1. Vintage Booksed.). New York, NY: Vintage Books. ISBN978-0-679-74475-7.
↑ Morris, Benny (1 September 1996). "Undeserving of a Reply". Middle East Quarterly. Archived from the original on 16 August 2006 – via www.meforum.org.
Israel Revisited Benny Morris, Veteran 'New Historian' of the Modern Jewish State's Founding, Finds Himself Ideologically Back Where It All Began, by Scott Wilson, The Washington Post Foreign Service, 11 March 2007
'New Historian' Shifts from Old View of Israel Israeli "new historian" Benny Morris was online Monday, 12 March, at 2pm. ET to discuss his books and changing views that have driven him away from the critical perspective of Israeli history that he helped create.
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