In the old novel Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, there is a bizarre character in the story, a man who had been a Nazi war criminal, but after the War trained as a medical doctor and came to the Caribbean in order to save sick impoverished island people. He saves about a dozen people a week and he figure it will only take about 600 years to save more people than he had killed as a war criminal during the War.
I am reminded of that story whenever I examine the peculiar career of Prof. Benny Morris. Now don’t take this the wrong way, Morris was never any murderer or war criminal and I do not mean to imply that he was as evil as a Nazi. But he did have to spend the second half of his career undoing the damage from the first half.
Benny Morris was one of the original, and in some ways the most destructive, of Israel’s “New Historians.” The “New Historians” are actually pseudo-historians, who seek to revise history to make it jive with Arab propaganda. Those who denounce the “New Historians” as charlatans are sometimes called the “New New Historians.” The far leftists call them McCarthyists and fascists.
For many years Morris was the leading “New Historian” revisionist. Born on an Israeli socialist kibbutz and son of a diplomat, Morris did his PhD on Anglo-German relations at Cambridge. He seemed to think that this qualified him to be a Middle East historian and Orientalist. The academic world disagreed. He returned to Israel from Cambridge and mainly worked as a newspaper journalist at the Jerusalem Post.
Morris’ main venture into historic revisionism came with the publication of his book, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, published by Cambridge University Press in 1988. It was by and large a retelling of the “Arab narrative” about the creation of Palestinian “refugees.” The alternative narrative, also knows as the truth, was that any Palestinians who became refugees resembled the ethnic German refugees at the end of World War II who became refugees. Both sets were people who had supported the losing side of a genocidal war of aggression or who had fled the battle zones of the victorious armies in the war they had started.
In those days Morris was essentially a pseudo-historian, inventing historic “narratives” to reflect Arab propaganda and to dabbling in the demonization of Israel. And he was good at it. He collaborated with academic haters of Israel like British (Israeli expatriates) Ilan Pappe and Avi Shlaim. Because he was so viciously anti-Israel and because so much of his “scholarly” work consisted of nothing more than anti-Israel propaganda, Morris at first had trouble finding an academic position in Israel. He was eventually hired by Ben Gurion University, which cannot get enough of leftist anti-Israel propagandists serving as its faculty members. Rumor has it that the president of the university at that time, leftist Avishai Braverman (today a politician in Israel’s Labor Party), personally intervened so that Morris could get hired. While far less vulgar and infantile than the “books” of Norman Finkelstein, Morris turned out Bash-Israel and Bash-Zionism treatises, a lot about the 1948-9 Israeli war for independence.
All this made Morris the darling of the radical campus Left in Europe and the US. They loved citing Morris to prove how evil Israel is and was. About 12 years ago Morris would have been one of the most obvious targets for righteous Zionist rage and for being exposed, attacked and denounced as a pseudo-scholar and a charlatan, something like a Neve Gordon or Ilan Pappe.
But then something happened.
Morris suddenly appeared to have second thoughts. He repented. He largely repudiated his earlier anti-Israel radicalism and started espousing pro-Israel and pro-Zionist opinion, especially regarding the 1948-9 Israeli war of independence. Not everyone is convinced that Morris has really wised up, and Efraim Karsh from the University of London is the leading proponent of the view that Morris has not and is simply engaged in pragmatic maneuvering and cynical posturing. (See this and this, as well as several Karsh articles in the NY Times and Commentary Magazine). Karsh is particularly critical of the fact that Morris has not outright renounced in total his earlier “histories” of the “Palestinian refugees.”
I was skeptical of Morris’ “conversion” at first, but over time it seems to me to be genuine. I think his very first public break with the Bash-Israel Left took place in Berkeley in the late 90s, when I happened to be in town. Invited to speak in a church, the place was packed with the usual Berkeley jihadists and Hitlerjugend expecting from Morris a blistering demonization of Israel. Instead, Morris spent the entire talk explaining that the Middle East conflict is the fault of the Arabs, including any “refugee” problem. You can imagine the hysterical reactions in the local Berkeley drug-infested media. These days the Bay Area has its own specialized anti-Morris hate organizations, such as this one, devoted to demonizing Morris. This is all so amusing. The jihadists love citing from the old writings of Benny Morris about how Israel was somehow to blame for “Palestinian sufferings,” but refuse to listen when Morris himself repudiates those claims.
what morris did initially was base his "history" on partial archival records
he wasnt given access to the entirety of israeli records…and no access to arab records…
most historians would have at least noted that…but not morris
when he was given access…that was when he changed his narrative…and he also begain noting that he has yet to be given access to any of the arab archives
what is amazing about morris, is that to write his original history, he was forced to deny eyewitness and newspaper accounts
and you are right…if there is a right of return for the fakestinians…then there must be a right of return for all ethnic germans
The Arab records are not available for there aren't any.
Except for the Koran, and it's more than enough as a record of Islamic Arab deeds.
How about a return of ethnic Poles to Eastern Poland driven out in a campaign of ethnic cleansing by the Soviet Union? http://www.stalinsethniccleansing.com/nextnn.htm
If Benny Morris was a liar in the beginning who cleaned him up made him righteous in the end? A matter of fact Morris did not take back most of what he found in his research but changed his opinion and reasoning saying what Israel was unavoidable and justified
Yes, this is true. He believed ethnic cleansing in this case was an evil necessary for the survival of the State of Israel and the prevention of perennial conflict.
When he got it wrong he was a hero. When he corrected that he was a monster. I've known of certain religious groups here in the US that when a convert recants, the members of the "church" harass the apostate at home and at work. You can't get away from these nuts.
And the Muslims, kill you.
Our own David Horowitz has spent the second half of his life atoning for the first. He is a splendid example of the (rapidly disappearing) human capacity for self-reflection and acceptance of personal responsibility. If only we were all as predisposed to righting our wrongs, the world wouldn't be the cesspool of hatred that it is.
In "Defending the West", Ibn Warraq discusses what Chezwick_mac describes as "human capacity for self-reflection and acceptance of personal responsibility" under the rubric of "self-criticism", one of three attributes of Western culture (the other two being rationalism and universalism). It's thus not a "human" capacity as some cultures (Islamic most prominently) seem to have little capacity for self-criticism. If something turns out badly it's either God's will (insh'allah) or the fault of someone else – most commonly colonialists, "Crusaders", the West, or Jews.
"If anyone abandons anti-Israel partisanship, kill him."
But I'm paraphrasing.
Morris' evolution in thought is like that of David Horowitz, Christopher Hitchens and too few others who tempered their youthful passion with experience and observation and came to understand. Liberalism is like bed wetting and thumb sucking, entirely age appropriate but life patterns best left behind as one matures.
Prof. Benny Morris "was almost lynched by a mob of leftists and jihadists", "they pushed and cursed him", they accuse him of being "an old racist" .. ze b'seder Now, at last, he has experienced a little reality instead of talking his head off about something he knew nothing about.
What a blessing from G-D for Benny Morris that he now speaks the truth about Israel! G-D bless and protect him!
Muslim immigrant mob:“fascist,” “racist,” “England should never have allowed you in,” “you shouldn’t be allowed to speak.”
It is these Muslims who England should NEVER have allowed in! They are cursing Britain. They are vehemently against TRUTH. Vehemently against free speech. Send them back to their countries now!
BREAKING NEWS! Jewish Cemetery and grave stones vandalized in Las Vegas, New Mexico.
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/Local%20News/Van…
(Also in today's santafenewmexican.com, a story on two Santa Fe residents who were in the Audacity of Hope flotilla. Article is now being hidden but if you go to the comments area, you can press on the article and you can post a comment.)
Good piece. But it is "jibe" not "jive" (you jive turkey)
a piece of garbage !!! plaut and dershowitz are the reasons finkelstein still sells his books.
morris is morris. he's his own man and does not need to be put in a mold specially not from
an unknown business professor whose only outlet is frontpage mag.
Anti-semitism is why Norman the Neonazi Finkelstein finds people to buy his "books."
Plaut is hardly unknown.
Josh on the other hand is a horse's arse
Lets hope more people wake up and change their ways to do good for mankind instead of destroy it.
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Ugh, a nest of zionist racists!! we need to do an exorcism or something
An article and video of the actual 'lynching' of Benny Morris outside the LSE
http://www.inminds.co.uk/article.php?id=10514
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Please learn the difference between "jibe" and "jive". This is one of the worst grammatical errors around!