Israel:
The Revised Version
A Review for Third
Way of
"Righteous Victims :
A History of the Zionist-Arab
Conflict, 1881-1999" by Benny Morris
(London, John Murray, 2000)
The French philosopher Ernest Renan apparently once defined a nation satirically
as "a group of people united by a mistaken view about the past and a hatred
of their neighbours." Unravelling the causes of the long and convoluted
Arab-Israeli conflict is in many ways an unenviable and Herculean task, at least
for the individual historian, let alone to the mutual satisfaction of both Zionists
and the 'new historians', a phrase first coined by Benny Morris in 1988. The
search for peace in the Middle East, as much as its historical analysis, has
become intractable, clichéd in its complexity, with every dispute traceable
to centuries of animosity and mutual mistrust, fuelled by cycles of violence
and revenge, justified by sacred texts and the deep conviction that each side
are the 'righteous victims' of the other.
A dramatic sea-change is, however, occurring in the Israeli educational establishment
and historiography of which Benny Morris' new book, Righteous Victims, is both
a reflection and instigator. Ethan Bronner, education editor of the New York
Times, makes the following observations.
For
someone deeply critical of David Ben-Gurion, Benny Morris is now ironically
Professor of History at Ben-Gurion University, Beersheba, Israel. He is one
of the newly emerging Israeli historians, like Tom Segev and Avi Shlaim, who
are revising and debunking the hallowed myths of Zionism, suggesting from the
outset Zionism was "tainted by a measure of moral dubiousness" and that
Israeli leaders bear substantial responsibility for the conflict between Israel
and its Arab neighbours. He has already proven his scholarship with earlier
important works including 'Israel's Border Wars', 'Israel's Secret Wars: A History
of Israel's Intelligence Services' and 'The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee
Problem'.
Benny Morris' writings mark a significant development in Israeli historiological
self-consciousness. It is less than 10 years since historians like Morris were
excluded from academic positions in Israeli universities, and only a year ago
that the Israeli Education Ministry begun to revise its history curriculum to
acknowledge Israeli expulsions of Palestinians during the 1948 war.
Righteous Victims is a comprehensive yet rigorous and dispassionate history
of the Zionist-Arab struggle for exclusive possession of a piece of territory
the size of Wales which both regard as home. With calmness and great clarity,
Benny Morris traces the roots of this conflict to the deep and intractable religious,
ethnic, and political ideologies which separated European Zionist immigrants
from the indigenous Arabs of Palestine, and, more than a century later, still
do.
Beginning with the Zionist dream of a Jewish homeland following the Russian
pogroms in the 19th century, Morris describes the gradual influx of Jewish settlers,
which was fiercely resisted by the Arabs during the decades of the British Mandate.
The establishment of the State of Israel in 1947-1948 at last gave the Jews
a refuge and homeland out of the pogroms, anti-Semitism and Holocaust. But tragically
it also led to the mass exodus of Palestinians and the birth of a new diaspora,
a festering refugee problem which today accounts for one in four refugees in
the world. According to Ethan Bronner,
Morris describes in detail these momentous events and the Arab and Western
reactions that followed, as well as the causes for the later wars of 1956, 1967,
1973, 1982-1985 and Intifada of 1987-1991. He argues persuasively, for example,
that for decades from the 1880's Zionists camouflaged their intention to control
Palestine; how, contrary to popular opinion, in 1948 the newly founded State
of Israel had both military and strategic superiority over its enemies; that
the war of 1956 was provoked by Israel's desire to destroy the Egyptian army
before it received further support from the Soviet Union; that the desire for
territorial expansion dominated the Israeli political spectrum prior to 1967;
and that Peres proposed the use of nuclear weapons in a pre-emptive strike against
the Arabs a month before the Six Day War began.
Morris traces the successes and failures of military, political and diplomatic
leaders on both sides, assessing their interaction with both accuracy and empathy,
drawing on newly released archive material, memoirs, and other sources to give
a most vivid account. So for example, Morris exposes the cynicism and hypocrisy
of Zionist leaders such as Theodor Herzl and his successors who claimed Zionism
would benefit the indigenous Palestinians while systematically expropriating
more and more of their land by purchase, intimidation and confiscation.
Similarly, in analysing the involvement of the United States and Russia in the
1973 war with Egypt and Syria, Morris notes Kissinger's caustic description
of Israel's threat to use its nuclear weapons as 'hysteria or blackmail'. On
the question of the occupation of the West Bank and bombing of Lebanon, Morris
is equally critical of Israeli belligerence. Bronner points out,
Morris also assesses the faltering attempts to find a lasting peace from the
initial negotiations of 1948 through to the Camp David (1977-1979), Oslo (1993-1995),
and Wye (1998) Accords. He offers uncompromising and critical portraits of both
Israeli and Arab leaders who were the chief protagonists of this contentious
history, including Theodor Herzl, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, David Ben-Gurion, Anwar
Sadat, Menachem Begin and Benjamin Netanyahu. Both side of the Arab-Israeli
conflict are shown to be so blinded by their own suffering that they still seem
unable to empathise with the suffering of their foes.
Righteous Victims concludes with a shrewd analysis of the implications of Ehud
Barak's election for the renewal of negotiations between Israel and its Lebanese,
Palestinian and Syrian neighbours. More a realist than optimist, Morris concludes:
The Zionist establishment will inevitably argue that Morris is both polemical and selective in his use of source material. Daniel Polisar, writing in Azure, for the Shalem Centre insists, for example,
The Jerusalem Post, has been equally critical of the new historical perspective Morris and others espouse. Last year it described the momentum as a "Post-Zionist Takeover" which would "undermine the moral case for Zionism" in Israeli schools. Derek Penslar, who hold the chair in Jewish history at the University of Toronto concedes,
Righteous Victims then represents the coming of age of Israeli historical self-criticism. In a review for the New York Times, Ethan Bronner concludes,
Righteous Victims is quite simply mandatory reading: a monumental work of narration and explication for all who want to make sense of the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the prospects for peace.
For more detailed reviews of Righteous Victims by Benny Morris, see:
Ethan Bronner, New York Times - http://www.igc.org/traubman/history.htm
Daniel Polisar, Azure, Shalem Centre - http://www.shalem.org.il/azure/9-editor.html
Derek Penslar, Forward - http://www.forward.com/back/1999/99.10.08/arts.html
Stephen Sizer
28 June 2000