Customer Reviews

The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949 (Cambridge Middle East Library)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
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2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

The issue of how the great bulk of the indigenous Arab Palestinians who constitued a majority of the people and landholders of the territory that became Israel after the 1948-1949 war is a topic of heated controversy. Israeli author Benny Morris weighs in with the revisionist perspective. (This is not to be confused with "Holocaust revisionism" a bogus line of thinking attempting to claim the Nazis did not commit genocide against Jews). The revisionist approach holds that contrary to official and popular opinion fostered by Israel, the Arab Palestinians did not evacuate in response to a generalized call by Arab leaders to leave in order to make way for Arab armies but that the Arabs fled due to a variety of factors, a great deal of which consisted of military pressure and terrorist acts by Jewish forces and actual organized forced expulsion by pre-state and post-state Israeli armed forces. Morris, using internal Israeli archives and a broad search of other sources, attempts to go village by village to analyze the causes of Arab flight or departure. It is a grand work of bravery and integrity by an Israeli author. Although the "revisionist" view has been close to standard in academic and intelligence circles (as well as of course, Arab, left-wing, and anti-Zionist polemic) for some time; it is only now penetrating popular perception in Israel and the United States. Morris also bravely looks at and exposes early Zionist leaders' expressed hopes and plans for the eventual "transfer" of the Arab population. Morris' one main drawback is that he is incomprehensibly apologistic regarding Israeli leader David Ben-Gurion, defensively portraying him as acting solely in response to circumstance and, despite the facts in Morris' very own book, not as a willfull ideological perpetrator of ethnic cleansing. Still, this book is sure to evoke rage in those who think Israeli revisionism is as evil and factually distorted as Holocaust revisionism but careful scholars and those interested in useful facts whic

Benny Morris' book is a particularly important and influential work because he dispells the myth that Palestinians 'left' their homes voluntarily. Through his research of declassified information from the the 1948 War Morris proves that Palestinians were forced out of their home and that is how they became refugees. Morris' work posed such a serious threat to the myth of Israel's existence that when it first came out he was black listed. Now, however, after 10+ years many Israelis accept the truth of his findings and his work is being taught in Israeli universities. This book is a MUST read for anyone who wants to understand the roots of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

I first read this book in college obout 10 years ago, and I remember all the hoopla surrounding its publication. After re-reading it recently, I'm still amazed by how good a book this really is.

Morris does three things well, and without rancor or polemetization: 1)he explains how the Palestinans fled/left/were driven out of Palestine in 1947-1949 2)he explains how well the Israelis had prepared for war, compared to the Arabs, and 3)he de-mythologizes David Ben-Gurion and the early Isreali leadership like American scholars have de-mythologized Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, etc.

What is especially great about is that it describes the Palestinian refugee problem from a rational, historical and unbiased standpoint. The Jews are not devils, nor are they angels. Ditto with the Arabs, Nobody is sugarcoated.

Some on both sides of the issue may disagree with some of the details of this book. I really don't know enough to decide either way. But I do sense that Morris has stumbled on the truth, or what can reasonably pass for the truth, about this complicated and terribly relevant topic.

In this book Benny Morris's meticulous research of declassified documents from Israeli, British, and American archives provides a detailed, accurate narrative of how Israeli conquest created the Palestinian refugee problem (revealing the specific causes that led Palestinian Arabs from each village, town, and city to flee). The book also demonstrates that the Peel Commission suggestions provided Ben-Gurion with the rationale he needed to favor a "transfer" policy to solve what Zionist leaders then described as "the Arab problem." While a few Israeli historians (Teveth, Karsch) have lashed out at Morris's works, anyone who gives this book an honest read will recognize that this is an important contribution to Israeli historiography. I also suggest students of the Israeli-Arab conflict study Avi Shlaim's "Collusion Across the Jordan," Uri Milstein's (recently translated from Hebrew into English) History of Israel's War of Independence (volumes 1-3), Tom Segev's "1949: The New Israelis," and Itamar Rabinovich's "The Road Not Traveled." These and other new historians debunk many myths disseminated for years by biased Labor Zionist historians who participated in the events themselves.

Readers interested in Benny Morris should read Israeli historian Yehoshua Porath's "War and Remembrance" in the summer 2002 issue of Azure. Porath adds to the Oct. 1995 and April 1990 discussions by Robert Satloff and Shabtai Teveth in Middle Eastern Studies and to Efraim Karsh's excellent book, Fabricating Israeli History. Don't read this book without looking at these critiques.

Why? Morris et al tell readers they have written "new" history of Israel, considering the entire previous historical record as if it were solely propaganda for the Zionist cause. Here, Morris considers Jewish conduct in the 1947 and 1948, and why the Arabs fled.

Morris claims to be the first person to have looked at Israeli archives on the Dalet Plan, a plan to move populations in certain areas. Nevertheless, other scholars show that Morris and his peers in this book misrepresent themselves and the facts.

Firstly, Yigael Alon and Israel Galili, in The Book of the Palmah, gave Walid Khalidi material to argue in 1959 that the Dalet Plan was "the master plan of the Zionists" to expel Palestinians wholesale. Furthermore, Uri Millstein's 1973 History of the Hagana included the entire Dalet Plan text. Official or not, these 1959 and 1973 Israeli Jewish histories, very shortly after the the 1948 war, did not hide what happened, as Morris claims here. Furthermore, Uri Millstein also revisited the topic in his five-volume History of the War of Independence.

Morris also writes that Arab government archives were closed to his research and and to other historians writing on the Israeli-Arab conflict before him. He writes that he relied on Israeli and Western archives. But Porath, Karsh, Satloff and Teveth all show that this is not the case.

Furthermore, Morris did no research at the Hagannah archives or those of the IDF, a fact underlined by Efraim Karsh in 2002, and one which he admits in a more recent book (The War for Palestine). Morris now writes that in the mid 1980s both those archives were closed to all researchers after all. He writes, he was limited to few first-hand military materials, indicating that there is no "new" research here at all.

Morris' charge that Israel carried out a deliberate and systematic expulsion of the Palestinian Arabs isn't even remotely substantiated by extensive research done since the mid 1980s. On the contrary, Morris takes material very selectively, from Israeli archive fringes and makes what Porath terms "outrageously false claims"-- that Israel's victory resulted from "an imperialist conspiracy or an overwhelming advantage in manpower and arms."

Indeed, Morris writes here that Arabs left Israel because of many factors, their departure was not the fault of the Jewish people alone. Then, he contradicts himself, giving those who hate Israel grounds to blame Israel for the exodus, without considering the other circumstances.

This book also details a so-called "massacre" in 1948 of Arabs at the village of Deir Yassin, but not enough to mention that the incident was actually a battle--in which most Arabs killed (like those in Jenin in March and April 2002) were armed.

Finally, Morris does not note (by comparison) other massacres in 1948--of Jews, by Arabs. On December 30, 1947, for example, Arabs murdered some 50 Jewish co-workers at the Haifa refinery. On April 13, 1948, they massacred over 80 Jewish doctors, nurses and Hebrew University workers on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem.

Additionally, nearly all of the 131 people who surrendered at the Etzion Bloc were also murdered by Palestinian Arabs. Only two survived.

These latter Arab massacres of Jews do not fit the blame that Morris seeks to lay at Jewish feet. Nor does the fact that Jews did not afterward flee, as occurred on the Arab side following the battle at Deir Yassin. So Morris omits them.

I also find it disturbing that the book nowhere mentions the equal refugee claim of 1 million Jewish refugees from 22 Arab nations, who were expelled with nothing but the shirts on their backs, and rebuilt their lives in Israel, the U.S., and Europe.

The number of Jewish refugees was actually larger than that of Arab refugees (counting only those who fled, not their descendants). Honest history would have noted these parallels as well as the entire context of the war.

--Alyssa A. Lappen

As a diaspora jew with realtives and links in Israel, i am concerned with the problem of the Palestinian refugees. This book by Israeli author Morris is probably the most documented work one can read.

Upon deciding to open military archives which had been closed for forty years (1948-1988), Israel choose a professional historian, Benny Morris, to have the 'first look' at the records. In Morris' first book on this topic, he found the alleged Jewish 'purity of arms' was a myth. Morris, using Israeli Defense Force (IDF) records, confirmed that a massacre occurred at Deir Yassin, which included rapes and mutilations. The ethnic cleansing of Lydda, ordered by Ben Gurion, is documented, as is the Lydda Death march, which resulted in up to 350 civilian dead. If a Palestinian village did not surrender immediately, the IDF would execute some POW's and civilians, but would allow some survivors to escape, so that they could spread the word of IDF war crimes. Over 400 Palestinian villages were depopulated in 1948.

This rating concerns the first edition of The birth of the Palestinian refugee problem, 1947-1949, for I have been informed by an equally well-read associate that, due to the author's radical political realignment following the outbreak of the second intifada, the current edition has been revised in order to bring its thesis in accordance with the author's newfound hardliner perspective. Given this contention, I ultimately intend to revisit the original work, in order to properly assess the current edition. Until then, let me just say that I found the original monograph to be well researched, convincing and, all in all, a must read for anyone intrigued by or otherwise invested in the tumultuous, dyadic history of Israel and Palestine. Interested parties would be well advised to seek out an older copy of the work in a large public or academic library.

Mr. Morris lays out the particulars of a very intricate and sensitive issue with adeptness rarely seen. This book doesn't puport to be the final word but a factual statement of the matter at hand.

A must read for those wishing to learn more about the Palestinian and Israeli issues that are as relevant today as when this book was written.

If not more so!

Morris's central thesis, that the Palestinian refugee crisis was a result "of war, not design" can be questioned. Anyone following the Kosovo situation can see word for word parrellels between the two displacements. Still, it is comprehensive and a fine work of scholarship in presenting the Israeli archives evidence of village by village causes of displacement. Of course, the "we don't want to hear anything bad about Israel lest we give ammo to the anti-Semites" crowd will denounce it in fierce terms. But reality is reality and Morris gives a careful presentation of the record he studied.