As Israelis Celebrate Independence and Palestinians Mark the “Nakba,” a Debate with Benny Morris

[oberliner]

Saree Makdisi and Norman Finkelstein

Benny Morris, welcome to Democracy Now! Explain, from your perspective, from your research, what happened in 1948.

BENNY MORRIS: Well, based on a large amount of documentation, which I’ve gone through over the years, several decades, in fact, the international community in the wake of the Holocaust voted to establish two states in Palestine, to divide the land into a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jewish side, the Zionist movement, the Jewish Agency Executive accepted the international decision and went about establishing their state.

The Palestinian Arabs, backed by the Arab world, rejected the decision and went to war against the Jewish community in Palestine and subsequently against the state which was established half a year later. As a result of this war, some 700,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes, not really turned into refugees, most of them, because they were moved or moved from one place in Palestine to another. About one-third moved out of Palestine and were genuine refugees.

AMY GOODMAN: And on what do you base all of this?

BENNY MORRIS: Oh, on masses and masses of Israeli, American, United Nations, British documentation. The Arab documentation isn’t available. The Arab states, all of them being dictatorships, do not open their archives. But all Western archives, especially the Israeli archives, give a very good picture of what actually happened.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/5/16/as_israelis_celebrate_independence_and_palestinians

[mike_c]

1. you beat me to it by a couple of minutes....

I'll move my comments over to your thread. :-)


http://www.democracynow.org/2008/5/16/as_israelis_celeb...

/snip/

AMY GOODMAN: As we continue this discussion, I wanted turned, though, to an excerpt of an interview I did with former US President Jimmy Carter. This is President Carter talking about his book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid and why he describes the situation in Palestine as one of apartheid.

JIMMY CARTER: Well, the message is very clear. It deals with Palestine, not inside Israel itself, just the Palestinian Occupied Territories. <…> And the word “apartheid” is exactly accurate. You know, this is an area that’s occupied by two powers. They are now completely separated. Palestinians can’t even ride on the same roads that the Israelis have created or built in Palestinian territory. The Israelis never see a Palestinian, except the Israeli soldiers. The Palestinians never see an Israeli, except at a distance, except the Israeli soldiers. So within Palestinian territory, they are absolutely and totally separated, much worse than they were in South Africa, by the way.


AMY GOODMAN: Professor Morris, your response?

BENNY MORRIS: I think the image of apartheid is problematic and inaccurate. I think there are—there is a separation of the settlers—between the settlers and the local Arab population in the territories, between the soldiers, the Israeli soldiers, and the Arab population, but it all stems from a vast problem of security: Arab terrorism, Arab warfare by neighboring states who support the Palestinians. And the whole thing is simply a mechanism of self-defense, which has—which has obviously unpleasant and anti-humanitarian offshoots.

more@link

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Benny Morris came off rather badly in this interview-- at one point Finklestein scoffs at Morris's "fantasies" about Israel not having a deliberate expansionist agenda in 1967-- but this passage sums up his desperate attempts to paint a happy face on genocide throughout the interview. He maintains that although Israel policy in the occupied territories has all the earmarks of apartheid, it isn't really apartheid because its purpose is to maintain the Israeli settlers' security. He seems incapable of understanding that apartheid regimes ALWAYS have a motive, especially a political imperative that erects false-front justifications to obscure their crimes against humanity, even while he tries to minimize those crimes as merely "unpleasant" circumstances. Apartheid is the condition, not the motive. It's the outcome, regardless of the justifications.

[notfullofit]

6. Where the hell did this idea come from?

'his desperate attempts to paint a happy face on genocide'

Genocide??????

[pelsar]

7. mike_c has explained....

in previous posts, if i understood correctly, that accuracy takes a back seat to "opinion"..seems to allow a certain flexibility of definitions when it comes to pushing a certain point of view.

_________
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=124x211452#211736 around post 52


within the thread its explained.....

[notfullofit]

16. O.K. that explains it, is it permissable to say

BULLSHIT?

[Shaktimaan]

2. What struck me in this debate most of all,

is what a prick Finkelstein is. He just can't have an honest debate at all, it was like Morris was trying to argue with some of the folks on DU. Morris could hardly get a word in edgewise.

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Security is always the key thing, Mr. Morris.

BENNY MORRIS: It’s not always—it is the key. It’s true. Since Israel—

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: You can justify taking over a whole continent in the name of security.

BENNY MORRIS: Since Israel—since Israel was invaded—since Israel—

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: That’s what Hitler did.

Oh, but some people here still think that he didn't get that tenure position because he was unfairly smeared by pro-Zionist agents. Suuuure. It had nothing at all to do with his whacked out perspective on history or his total lack of respect for his peers. Naw, it was all due to anti-Arab, pro-AIPAC zealots who trashed his good name.

:sarcasm:

[mike_c]

3. I disagree-- Morris was all over-inflated ego and self-importance....

In that particular exchange neither Morris not Finkelstein were listening to the other-- Finkelstein was trying to make a point and Morris kept trying to talk over him. He was also being obnoxiously condescending. In the rest of that passage he insults Tom Segev and Norman Finkelstein both. He sounded like a spoiled, petulant child.

[oberliner]

4. People hear what they want to hear

Or read, in the case of the transcript.

Folks who are predisposed to like Finkelstein will perceive that he came off well, and those who are predisposed to dislike him will think the opposite.

Personally, I'm not a fan of folks jumping to the Hitler comparison so readily.

[Violet_Crumble]

5. I think both Finkelstein and Morris are wankers...

While I'd go see either of them if they were to come here and give lectures, I hate debates where super-sized egos end up trying to talk over the top of each other. When it comes to Finkelstein, I've read 'Image and Reality' and it's a very good book. I'm more familiar with Morris' work and personal views, though, and I'm reading 'Righteous Victims' now. And while I admire Benny Morris the historian, Benny Morris' personal views are repulsive, as he's advocated ethnic cleansing of Palestinians....

[Name removed]

9. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[azurnoir]

10. It came off like a

George Galloway/Chris Hitchens debate without the wit.

[oberliner]

11. Morris has been all over the place

Note this exchange from the discussion:

AMY GOODMAN: Are you for the completion of the expulsion of Palestinians?

BENNY MORRIS: No, I’ve always said that I’m opposed, both morally and on practical grounds, to expulsion in present circumstance—

SAREE MAKDISI: That’s not what you said in that interview.

BENNY MORRIS: —in present—that’s what I said in the interview, as well—in present circumstances. But projecting back on ’48, I said both peoples would have had a much pleasanter, a more pacific existence since ’48, if what had happened between Turkey and Greece in the 1920s had happened also in Palestine. But that’s the secondary subject here at the moment.

[msmcghee]

12. What's inconsistent about that statement?

He described two contexts - two conclusions.

However, he has changed his views in important ways based pretty much on the same evidence that he saw previously. He has not explained that change of position. He has not said that some new evidence has caused him to see things differently as far as I know.

Finkelstein pointed this out, correctly I believe.

I think that is interesting in terms of his hierarchy of beliefs. Something seems to have changed higher up in Morris' hierarchy of beliefs on this issue that has caused him to see the lower order issues of the history of the conflict in a different light. Maybe I'll buy "1948" and see if I can figure it out.

[oberliner]

13. Here's what he said in the Ha'aretz interview

And today? Do you advocate a transfer today?

If you are asking me whether I support the transfer and expulsion of the Arabs from the West Bank, Gaza and perhaps even from Galilee and the Triangle, I say not at this moment. I am not willing to be a partner to that act. 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.

[msmcghee]

15. I still don't see the problem . .

. . if your point is that he is inconsistent. He is explaining the conditions where he would see expulsion as morally justified - or not. Are you saying that he is inconsistent on this point - or that he lacks consistency generally, and therefore his conclusions are not to be trusted? Or something else?

If you disagree with his view on substance that's another thing.

[oberliner]

17. His position on explusion seems a little unclear

Or perhaps is evolving as time goes on.

[mike_c]

8. by all means listen to the stream if you can....

That exchange is hard to get a sense of from the transcript. The same is true of several other exchanges as well. Finkelstein was calm and articulate, making his points, while Morris was sputtering and arrogant, seeming to be affronted that anyone would dare question him.

[Sezu]

14. Until the Arab states open their archives

the real truth will never be known and they will be suspected of trying to hide things.

[aranthus]

18. Four against one. Such a fair debate.

Still, I think Morris held his own.

[msmcghee]

19. I noticed that too. There was . .

. . apparently only one historian in the bunch and it sure wasn't the Fink.

[aranthus]

20. Finkelstein is useful to give a Jewish face to the hate Israel side;

as if that means that their antisemitism doesn't exist.