[Peace-discuss] Book Review: Benny Morris on the 1948 War

[David Green]

See bolded text
 
Book Review: Benny Morris on the 1948 War
By: Tom Segev
 
Benny Morris, 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War, Translated into 
Hebrew by Yaacov Sharet, Am Oved Publishers 

 
Benny Morris’ attempt to author a popular history of the War of Independence is 
praise-worthy, and as a former journalist he is skillful at taking into account 
the limits of his readers’ patience. The story he tells is well-edited, the 
translation from English flows well, and, and the general picture takes shape 
clearly. 

 
But Morris is now also a history professor, and unfortunately he – like his 
colleagues – writes primarily about decision-making and processes, armies and 
military maneuvers, and tends to ignore the people behind the documents. His 
book therefore demonstrates what the books written by his colleagues tend to 
prove: it is generally not a good idea to abandon a good story to history 
professors. Like everything else Morris writes, this book is also very 
political, and for this reason, too, it is worth reading. Like the books by his 
colleagues, it also demonstrates that history is written by the winners: 
Morris’s position about the tragedy of the Palestinians is shameful on both 
humanistic and moral terms.
 
The basic thesis appears in the very first sentence: “The 1948 war was an almost 
inevitable result of nearly half a century of friction and disputes between 
Arabs and Jews.” In the next 40 pages Morris takes his readers on a whirlwind 
tour beginning in 1200 B.C. and ending at the end of the British Mandate over 
Palestine…
 
Morris focuses on the fate of the Palestinians, and that is indeed the main 
story. Like other historians, he divides the War of Independence into two 
primary stages: from the Partition Decision, on November 29th 1947, until the 
declaration of independence, on May 15th, 1948; and from the invasion of the 
armies of Arabia until the armistice agreements in 1949. Morris calls the first 
stage a “civil war” for some reason, as do others. This is a spurious term 
because even at this stage there was no political dispute between citizens of 
one state but rather, a national confrontation between two nations. For some 
reason Morris found it important to prove that the Arabs of the country were not 
a nation but just “a nation”. He uses quotation marks a great deal: the Arab 
Rebellion was not a rebellion but a “rebellion”, the Arabs did not have a plan 
but only “a plan”, a promise made by an Arab prime minister is only “a promise”. 
The land of Israel is the land of Israel, but Palestine is only “Palestine”, of 
course, and the justice sought by its Arab residents was not justice but only 
“justice”.
 
Most of the Arabs in the country, approximately 400,000, were chased out and 
expelled during the first stage of the war. In other words, before the Arab 
armies invaded the country. According to Morris, the expulsion of the Arabs was 
meant to safeguard the homeland before the invasion of the armies of Arabia. 
This explanation is problematic, first because according to Morris himself, 
David Ben Gurion was not at all afraid of the Arabs of Israel, and for good 
cause: they were almost powerless. Ben Gurion was afraid of an invasion by the 
Arab armies. Moreover, Ben Gurion was not certain that they would invade Israel. 
On May 7th 1948 he wrote in his journal: “Will the neighboring countries fight?” 
Ben Gurion could not know this for certain because, according to Morris, the 
Arabs themselves hesitated until almost the very last moment. Be that as it may, 
Morris states that the invasion plans by the Arab armies played no role [in the 
thinking and decisions of] the Arabs of the land of Israel.
 
This brings the discussion back to the question of why 400,000 Arabs were 
expelled before these armies had taken even a single shot at the IDF, and the 
possibility arises that it did not happen because the Arabs had attacked Israel 
but vice versa: the Arab states attacked Israel – among other reasons – because 
it had chased out and expelled 400,000 Palestinians. It is doubtful if any 
person knows more about this subject than Morris. The thesis which transpires 
from his book is that almost everything happened as the result of an error: the 
Jews exaggerated the force of the Arabs and were afraid of another Holocaust. In 
fact, they did not correctly estimate their weakness and were unjustifiably 
afraid of them. It seems that it was for this reason that they expelled them, 
with no justification. But Morris wishes to justify the expulsion of the Arabs: 
he says that they started the attack, but the concrete information that he 
brings forth about their harassment of the Jewish settlements cannot explain the 
great extent of the expulsion.
 
Naturally, the question arises: were the Arabs expelled in order to get rid of 
them. Morris states at as early as December 1947, at least, which is nearly half 
a year before the Arab armies invaded, two goals were at the forefront for the 
Jews of the land of Israel: expanding the territory designated by the United 
Nations resolution for the founding of a Jewish state; and reducing the number 
of Arabs living in that territory. And that was what they did. 
Historiographically, that is sufficient, but Morris brings his readers into an 
old dispute about a subject with which he is also well-familiar: the Zionist 
movement’s yearning to transfer the Arabs of the country, or at least some of 
them.
 
This idea has accompanied the Zionist movement since the time of Herzl himself. 
It took center stage in the thinking of the leaders of the Zionist movement, 
including Chaim Weizmann and David Ben Gurion. But Morris makes a great effort 
to detach the chasing out of the Arabs from the idea of transfer. A similar 
measure of logic could detach the founding of the state from the Zionist vision.
 
The rest of the Arabs [300,000 more] were expelled during the war and 
thereafter. What Morris says about the frontline conditions does not demonstrate 
the military need to expel the population, especially as Israel’s military power 
was much greater than the armies of Arabia within two or three weeks, and the 
remaining Arab population did not constitute any kind of threat to the country. 
The question of why they were expelled remains without an answer in this book. 
Morris says that they wanted to throw the Jews into the sea and states: “The 
Arab expulsion clearly derived from the Zionist transferist thinking in the 30s 
and 40s.” This is a perplexing statement, as Morris goes out of his way to prove 
the marginal status of transferist thinking.
 
About six years ago Benny Morris said that Israel had not expelled enough Arabs. 
In an interview with Haaretz’ Ari Shavit, he stated that if Ben Gurion had 
carried out a full, rather than just a partial expulsion he would have 
stabilized the State of Israel for generations. It would eventually transpire as 
his fatal error, warned Morris at the time. He does not repeat this opinion in 
his current book, but he describes Ben Gurion as an obsessive “generalissimo” 
who is not always aware of the goings on around him.
 
Morris’ obliviousness to the story of the people behind the documents he quotes 
is also revealed by an almost complete avoidance of describing the suffering of 
the refugees. It seems that in his opinion at least some of them, especially the 
residents of Lydda and Ramleh, should have been grateful for the expulsion: 
“there is no doubt that after they had experienced battles, massacres, and 
Israeli occupation, many of the residents wholeheartedly wished to leave and 
move to areas controlled by Arabs,” writes Morris. In his opinion, the loss of 
their homes was not so terrible for them: “The Palestinians, a mostly rural 
nation, used to living outdoors, exhibited resilience,” he says, wishing to 
soothe his readers. The decision not to permit the refugees to return is also 
acceptable to Morris, and in a footnote he states that most of the refugees are 
not refugees at all, as they had been permitted to remain in the land of Israel, 
in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip.
 
He exhibits a great deal of understanding for a series of atrocities which went 
along with the expulsion. He describes some actions which were meant, among 
others, for the expulsion of residents – as cleansings, with no quotations. This 
is embarrassing and indeed, in the American original, quotations were added to 
this phrase in one case. At the same time, he carefully states again and again 
that Arabs, including prisoners of war and civilians, including women and 
children, were “executed”. Jews, on the other hand, were generally “murdered”, 
as he puts it. The civilians who were killed by Arabs in Gush Etzion were 
murdered in a “massacre” writes Morris. This was after the events of Deir 
Yassin, but the Deir Yassin incident is not one that he defines as a massacre. 
Even those of the villagers who were shot after the battle were, as he put it, 
“executed.”
 
He directs his readers to a footnote in which he complains that the Commissioner 
General “believed exaggerations” when he cabled his superiors about women and 
children being stripped, stood in a row, photographed, and then massacred by 
automatic gunfire in Deir Yassin. Morris sarcastically comments that “it seems 
like the British were prepared to believe everything that is said about the 
Etzel and the Lehi.” Horrifically, the State of Israel conceals to this day 
photographs taken in the course of the attack on Deir Yassin and prevents their 
publication. The Haaretz newspaper has appealed to the Supreme Court of Justice 
in this matter, and the State explained that making these photographs public 
could damage not only the country’s foreign relations but also “the dignity of 
the deceased.” Having seen the photographs, the Supreme Court justices decided 
that the State was correct. For this reason it would perhaps be better to wait a 
bit with the guess about the Commissioner General having “believed 
exaggerations.”
 
It is customary to say that the Israelis won, being “a few against many”, thanks 
to their fighting spirit, the sense that they have no other country, and the 
remembrance of the Holocaust. The victory cost the lives of nearly 6,000, nearly 
1% of the Jewish population in the country. Morris does not ignore all of these 
factors, but he tends to focus more on the professional quality of the IDF.  The 
defeat of the Arabs does not, for this reason, come to be seen as a “miracle.”
 
Morris wishes to persuade his readers that the primary cause which led the Arabs 
to attempt to throw the Jews into the sea was religious and anti-Semitic. In his 
opinion, this is not an Israeli problem but rather, a global struggle between 
the Muslim Orient and the West. In doing so, he meticulously gathers up every 
Arab call for a Jihad against the Jews. At least in one case, he adapts his 
source to his own needs, using an ellipsis: Kind Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud did indeed 
write President Roosevelt about the religious hostility between Jews and Muslims 
and mentioned the “treacherous conduct” of the Jews toward the Prophet Muhammad 
[Peace Be Upon Him], but where Morris placed an ellipsis the king suggested that 
the religious issue be put aside and stated that even without it, the land of 
Israel could not resolve the problem of the Jews. And indeed, the Arabs did not 
need the Quran in order to object to the intention by the Zionists to take over 
the land of Israel. The expulsion of the Palestinians proved to them that they 
had been right.
 
Morris knows what he does about the Arabs, primarily from having read the 
reports of the Hagana intelligence service. This is a doubtful source, as 
according to Morris himself, the foundational perceptions of the Jews about the 
power of the Palestinians and the Arab armies were entirely mistaken. His choice 
of sources to quote is sometimes odd. In one case he quotes a news item, 
translated into English, which had appeared in German in a Swiss newspaper, 
which stated that hundreds of Jews had been murdered in Egypt. It is not clear 
why Morris did not find a better source for this than the Basle National 
Zeitung, and he states in a note to this that there apparently were not hundreds 
of casualties.
 
To remove any doubt that the Arabs are really scoundrels, he also gets carried 
away and quotes the Palestinian National Covenant of 1964 and does not forget 
Saddam Hussein. A long line of such quotes reminds one of Morris’ own scolding 
of the Palestinians: they do not have serious historiography.
 
The bottom line is this: the IDF won because it was stronger than the Arabs of 
the land of Israel and the Arab armies put together, it carried out more 
atrocities than the Arabs, some of which were perpetrated in order to cause the 
Arabs to escape and to expel them, but not to worry: “a total number” of 
approximately 800 Arab citizens and prisoners of war were murdered in the war, 
writes Morris; the war crimes in Yugoslavia and Sudan are worse.
 
Translated from the Hebrew by Dena Shunra
From Haaretz Hebrew edition, July 9, 2010, English translation published by 
Richard Silverstein’s Tikun Olam


      
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