Críticas
“This is the best book by far on the war of 1948.”—Benjamin Kedar, Professor of History, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Benjamin Kedar)
"This is a wonderful contribution to the historiography of the Israel/Palestine War of 1948. Morris has written a fresh account, substantiated by a lot of new documentation."—Ronald W. Zweig, Professor of Israel Studies, New York University
(Ronald W. Zweig)
"A commanding, superbly documented, and fair-minded study of the events that, in the wake of the Holocaust, gave a sovereign home to one people and dispossessed another. . . . What is so striking about Morris's work as a historian is that it does not flatter anyone's prejudices, least of all his own."—David Remnick, New Yorker (David Remnick New Yorker 2008-05-05)
"Morris relates the story of his new book soberly and somberly, evenhandedly and exhaustively. . . . An authoritative and fair-minded account of an epochal and volatile event. He has reconstructed that event with scrupulous exactitude."—David Margolick, New York Times Book Review (David Margolick New York Times Book Review 2008-05-04)
"Readers can do no better that to go to a new authoritative source about the beginnings of the Israeli state, Benny Morris' 1948."—Jonathan S. Tobin, The Jewish Exponent (Jonathan S. Tobin The Jewish Exponent 2008-05-08)
"As [Israel] celebrates six decades of reborn existence on May 14 and books about it cascade into stores, the most important among them [is] Benny Morris's 1948."—Carlin Romano, The Chronicle Review (Carlin Romano The Chronicle Review 2008-05-16)
"An ambitious, detailed and engaging portrait of the war itself—from its origins to its unresolved aftermath—that further shatters myths on both sides of the Israeli-Arab divide."—Glenn Frankel, Washington Post Book World (Glenn Frankel Washington Post Book World 2008-06-01)
"Morris, born in 1948, is among a group of Israeli 'new historians,' whose work has challenged the traditional, accepted line of the birth of Israel. In this well-researched book, he strives for balance."—Billy Heller, New York Post (Required Reading) (Billy Heller New York Post 2008-05-01)
"A compelling 'aha' book, 1948 brings order to complex, little-understood subjects . . . with [Morris'] vivid narrative prose and masterly analysis."—David Holahan, The Hartford Courant (David Holohan Hartford Courant)
"Morris relates the story of his new book soberly and somberly, evenhandedly and exhaustively. . . . An authoritative and fair-minded account of an epochal and volatile event."—David Margolick, New York Times Book Review (David Margolick New York Times Book Review 2008-05-04)
"Morris's account seems admirable, because he is unafraid of upsetting both camps. . . . His commitment to the pursuit of historical truth deserves as much admiration as his dismay at Arab intransigence commands sympathy."—Max Hastings, Sunday Times (London) (Max Hastings Sunday Times 2008-05-18)
"A considerable achievement, meticulously detailing and analyzing both Israel's war of Independence, on the one hand, and its mirror Palestinian face: the Catastrophe (al nakba), on the other."—Michael Bell, Toronto Globe and Mail (Michael Bell Toronto Globe and Mail 2008-05-10)
"1948 is a superb attempt to provide a reasoned assessment of a very contentious period. It is well worth study by anyone seeking to understand the Middle East that this war helped create."—Col. Jonathan M. House, Military Review (Col. Jonathan M. House Military Review 2008-11-01)
"Readers interested in military strategy and tactics will appreciate the book's comprehensiveness on this score, while others will be drawn in by the sheer drama of the war, with its interweaving of military and political action, told clearly and swiftly."—Joel Streicker, Shofar (Joel Streicker Shofar 2009-01-01)
"Morris has reviewed all the revisionist literature, re-worked the shelves of the archives to make sure that nothing has been overlooked, and given us a meticulously researched day-by-day narrative of the first Arab-Israeli war."—Paul C. Merkley, Books & Culture (Paul C. Merkley Books & Culture 2009-03-01)
"Highly recommended."—Choice (Choice 2009-03-01)
"A commanding, superbly documented, and fair-minded study of the events that . . . gave a sovereign home to one people and dispossessed another. . . . What is so striking about Morris's work . . . is that it does not flatter anyone's prejudices . . ."—David Remnick, New Yorker (David Remnick New Yorker)
"Morris tenders a well-documented work with more than one hundred pages of endnotes that support every major point. That fair-minded, impartial balancing of Arab and Jewish standpoints is what distinguishes Morris’ work."—John W. Sutherlin, MESA (John W. Sutherlin MESA)
Comentario del autor
A conversation with Benny Morris
Q: How does 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War relate to your previous work?
A: In the past, I have written about one particular aspect of the warabout the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem over 1947-1949, for exampleor, more generally, about the course of the Zionist-Arab conflict from 1881 to 2000. In this book I address the whole of the 1948 War in its political and military aspects, taking in as well the international context and interventions, the Arab world, and the internal Israeli scene. I try to present a good overall picture of what happened and why, from the UN handling of the Palestine issue to the Israeli-Arab armistice agreements that ended the war.
Q: What do you think at bottom is the cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict?
A: I would say that there is a territorial dispute between two peoples who claim the same patch of land. It is a very small, patch of land, and so the idea of dividing it between the two is extremely problematic a the technical sense. But it is also a cultural-religious conflict between the Islamic East and the West. The Islamic Arab world sees Israelas it sees itselfas an offshoot and outpost of the West inin their viewa Muslim area and as an infidel, invasive presence. Israel and Zionism are seen by the Islamic Arab world, and the wider Islamic world, as illegitimate. This, at root, is the cause of the ongoing conflict. Were they to accord it legitimacy, the problem in Palestine/Israel would be soluble. At present, given this mindset, it isn't.
Q: Are there any lessons to be learned from the study of the 1948 War?
A: To be sure, many Israelis will learn that they must remain strong and technologically advanced; otherwise they will be overwhelmed by Arab numbers and fervor. The Arabs might learn that they must improve themselves, at least on a technological-scientific level, and better their societies and armies, if they hope to overcome Israel, though it is possible that if they do, they may lose the desire to destroy Israel. Outsiders may simply learn about the conflict and the nature of the two contending societies, at least as they were in 1948, and perhaps with certain implications for the present and future.
Biografía del autor
Benny Morris is professor of history in the Middle East Studies Department of Ben-Gurion University, Israel. He is the leading figure among Israel's "New Historians," who over the past two decades have reshaped our understanding of the Israeli-Arab conflict. His books include Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001; Israel's Border Wars, 1949-1956; and The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited.
De The Washington Post
Reviewed by Glenn Frankel
In a zero-sum world, one side's gain must be exactly balanced by another's loss. In such a world, violence is inevitable, compromise is betrayal, neutral observers are enemies, and the only heroes are those willing to take the contest to its logical, lethal conclusion. And the only histories worth publishing are those that validate your own self-sustaining myths.
The remorseless, zero-sum conflict between the stateof Israel and the Palestinianshas been going on for three score years,and despite the sadly belated efforts of a lame-duck Bush administration, there is no end in sight.
The fault-line was clearly visible in mid-May: While Israelis sang "Happy Birthday" to themselves to celebrate the 60th anniversary of their independence, Palestinians were mourning 60 years of al-Naqba, "the Catastrophe."
Each side's narrative is self-contained and in total conflict with the other. In the Israeli version, Holocaust survivors redeemed their ancestral homeland against extraordinary odds by defeating bloodthirsty Palestinian terrorists and five Arab armies, while thousands of Arab civilians abandoned their homes under the directive of leaders who promised glory and spoils upon their return. The Arab counter-narrative depicts Palestinians as hapless victims of a vastly superior Jewish army, backed by the United States and Britain, waging a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing according to a plan laid out before the first shot was fired.
Both accounts contain elements of truth. Neither one was constructed for the sake of veracity, however. Each was useful in mobilizing members of a particular tribe to sustain the conflict: Israelis in their beleaguered fortress-state; Palestinians in their refugee camps, some still fondling the keys to their lost homes. The narratives have nurtured their separate identities -- and their enduring grievances.
Benny Morris, born in 1948 on a kibbutz, is a charter member of a generation of Israeli historians who have challenged his country's founding narrative and deepened our understanding of the roots of the conflict. A former Jerusalem Post correspondent with a doctorate from Cambridge University, he first came to prominence with his 1988 book, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949, a ground-breaking, revisionist account of how Israeli forces uprooted and expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during Israel's independence war. His new book is an ambitious, detailed and engaging portrait of the war itself -- from its origins to its unresolved aftermath -- that further shatters myths on both sides of the Israeli-Arab divide.
Morris splits the war into two distinct phases. The first was a civil war between Jewish and Palestinian militias that began in November 1947, when the United Nations General Assembly approved the partition of British-run Palestine into two countries, one dominated by Jews, the other by Palestinian Arabs. Despite early setbacks, the main Jewish military force, known as the Haganah, rolled up major victories and forced much of the Arab population to flee. The key moment, according to Morris, came in early April when the Haganah took the offensive and seized as much land as possible before the planned British military departure. "Palestinian Arab society fell apart and was crushed by a relatively poorly armed and, in many ways, ragtag Jewish militia," Morris writes.
The second phase was the Pan-Arab invasion by the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq (Lebanon stayed largely on the sidelines) after Israel's declaration of independence on May 14, 1948. The Israelis won that struggle as well, expanding the territory of the new Jewish state well beyond the original partition lines and expelling hundreds of thousands more Palestinians in the process.
Along the way, Morris seeks to separate fact from legend. It's true, Morris notes, that the Arab states had a combined population of 40 million, while the Jewish community, known in Hebrew as the Yishuv, numbered a mere 650,000. But the Yishuv, led by the indomitable David Ben-Gurion, "had organized for war. The Arabs hadn't." Arab Palestine, lacking a great leader or unifying principle, amounted to a series of disparate towns, villages and clans rather than a coherent nation, and it succumbed readily to a spirit of powerlessness and fatalism.
As for the war that followed, the combined Arab militaries were far stronger than the Haganah, Morris argues, if not in manpower then certainly in equipment and firepower. But Israeli forces had some "home court advantages" over the four invading armies, such as a unified command, internal lines of communication, familiarity with the terrain and a commitment to protect their homes and families. By the end of the war, they outnumbered the Arab soldiers almost 2 to 1 and produced smashing victories on virtually every front.
Morris is remarkably even-handed when he sifts through the evidence of atrocities. During the civil-war phase, he says, neither side paid much heed to the possible injury or death of civilians, and both sides executed prisoners. In the more conventional fighting that followed, the killing of civilians and prisoners of war mostly stopped -- except for a series of atrocities committed by Israeli troops in the Palestinian town of Lydda in central Israel and in the Galilee. "In truth," writes Morris, "the Jews committed far more atrocities than the Arabs and killed far more civilians and POWs in deliberate acts of brutality in the course of 1948."
Morris doesn't attribute this to any greater morality on the Arab side but rather to the fact that the victorious Israelis captured some 400 Arab villages and towns, while the Arabs overran fewer than a dozen Jewish settlements. By his tally, Palestinians slaughtered some 190 Israelis in two large-scale massacres, while Israeli troops probably murdered some 800 Arab civilians and prisoners of war. But in comparison to modern slaughterhouses like Bosnia or the Congo, the atrocities were relatively limited. The 1948 war "is actually noteworthy for the relatively small number of civilian casualties," Morris concludes.
As for the 700,000 Palestinian refugees, he rejects the claims of other revisionist historians -- most notably Ilan Pappe in his 2006 book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine -- that the expulsions were part of Plan D, drawn up by Zionist leaders and military officers in Tel Aviv in March 1948 and carried out with relentless precision. Morris contends that the plan called for the destruction only of villages that resisted conquest, not those that were quiescent. "Nowhere does the document speak of a policy or desire to expel 'the Arab inhabitants' of Palestine," he writes, adding that "nowhere is any brigade instructed to clear out 'the Arabs.' "
Why is all of this worth re-adjudicating six decades after the event? Because none of it has been resolved. For Israelis, 1948 is central to the legitimacy of the Jewish state. For Palestinians, it is an open wound; if the refugees were unfairly expelled, then they should be allowed to return.
One weakness of Morris's book is that he can offer little documentation of the Arab side. Most of the archives of countries like Egypt, Jordan, Iraq and Syria remain off-limits. Too often Morris ends up speculating about the perceptions and motives of Arab leaders because he lacks the documentation that enriches his treatment of the Israeli side.
Morris himself is a controversial figure in the conflict over the conflict. As an army reservist in 1988, he protested Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip by refusing to report for duty during the first Palestinian uprising; he spent three weeks in jail as a consequence. But after the second intifada broke out in 2000, he condemned Palestinian suicide bombers as "barbarians" and said the early Israelis were right to have expelled their Arab neighbors. "When the choice is between destroying or being destroyed, it's better to destroy," he told the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz.
Despite his personal views, Morris strives to give a balanced view of the conflict. The collapse of the Arab military effort caused a chain reaction of coups and assassinations that brought down many of the old regimes. Leaders were killed or discarded in Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Jordan. "But 1948 has haunted, and still haunts, the Arab world on the deepest levels of collective identity, ego, and pride," Morris writes. "The war was a humiliation from which that world has yet to recover."
Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Glenn Frankel In a zero-sum world, one side's gain must be exactly balanced by another's loss. In such a world, violence is inevitable, compromise is betrayal, neutral observers are enemies, and the only heroes are those willing to take the contest to its logical, lethal conclusion. And the only histories worth publishing are those that validate your own self-sustaining myths. The remorseless, zero-sum conflict between the stateof Israel and the Palestinianshas been going on for three score years,and despite the sadly belated efforts of a lame-duck Bush administration, there is no end in sight.The fault-line was clearly visible in mid-May: While Israelis sang "Happy Birthday" to themselves to celebrate the 60th anniversary of their independence, Palestinians were mourning 60 years of al-Naqba, "the Catastrophe." Each side's narrative is self-contained and in total conflict with the other. In the Israeli version, Holocaust survivors redeemed their ancestral homeland against extraordinary odds by defeating bloodthirsty Palestinian terrorists and five Arab armies, while thousands of Arab civilians abandoned their homes under the directive of leaders who promised glory and spoils upon their return. The Arab counter-narrative depicts Palestinians as hapless victims of a vastly superior Jewish army, backed by the United States and Britain, waging a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing according to a plan laid out before the first shot was fired. Both accounts contain elements of truth. Neither one was constructed for the sake of veracity, however. Each was useful in mobilizing members of a particular tribe to sustain the conflict: Israelis in their beleaguered fortress-state; Palestinians in their refugee camps, some still fondling the keys to their lost homes. The narratives have nurtured their separate identities -- and their enduring grievances. Benny Morris, born in 1948 on a kibbutz, is a charter member of a generation of Israeli historians who have challenged his country's founding narrative and deepened our understanding of the roots of the conflict. A former Jerusalem Post correspondent with a doctorate from Cambridge University, he first came to prominence with his 1988 book, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949, a ground-breaking, revisionist account of how Israeli forces uprooted and expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during Israel's independence war. His new book is an ambitious, detailed and engaging portrait of the war itself -- from its origins to its unresolved aftermath -- that further shatters myths on both sides of the Israeli-Arab divide. Morris splits the war into two distinct phases. The first was a civil war between Jewish and Palestinian militias that began in November 1947, when the United Nations General Assembly approved the partition of British-run Palestine into two countries, one dominated by Jews, the other by Palestinian Arabs. Despite early setbacks, the main Jewish military force, known as the Haganah, rolled up major victories and forced much of the Arab population to flee. The key moment, according to Morris, came in early April when the Haganah took the offensive and seized as much land as possible before the planned British military departure. "Palestinian Arab society fell apart and was crushed by a relatively poorly armed and, in many ways, ragtag Jewish militia," Morris writes. The second phase was the Pan-Arab invasion by the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq (Lebanon stayed largely on the sidelines) after Israel's declaration of independence on May 14, 1948. The Israelis won that struggle as well, expanding the territory of the new Jewish state well beyond the original partition lines and expelling hundreds of thousands more Palestinians in the process. Along the way, Morris seeks to separate fact from legend. It's true, Morris notes, that the Arab states had a combined population of 40 million, while the Jewish community, known in Hebrew as the Yishuv, numbered a mere 650,000. But the Yishuv, led by the indomitable David Ben-Gurion, "had organized for war. The Arabs hadn't." Arab Palestine, lacking a great leader or unifying principle, amounted to a series of disparate towns, villages and clans rather than a coherent nation, and it succumbed readily to a spirit of powerlessness and fatalism. As for the war that followed, the combined Arab militaries were far stronger than the Haganah, Morris argues, if not in manpower then certainly in equipment and firepower. But Israeli forces had some "home court advantages" over the four invading armies, such as a unified command, internal lines of communication, familiarity with the terrain and a commitment to protect their homes and families. By the end of the war, they outnumbered the Arab soldiers almost 2 to 1 and produced smashing victories on virtually every front. Morris is remarkably even-handed when he sifts through the evidence of atrocities. During the civil-war phase, he says, neither side paid much heed to the possible injury or death of civilians, and both sides executed prisoners. In the more conventional fighting that followed, the killing of civilians and prisoners of war mostly stopped -- except for a series of atrocities committed by Israeli troops in the Palestinian town of Lydda in central Israel and in the Galilee. "In truth," writes Morris, "the Jews committed far more atrocities than the Arabs and killed far more civilians and POWs in deliberate acts of brutality in the course of 1948." Morris doesn't attribute this to any greater morality on the Arab side but rather to the fact that the victorious Israelis captured some 400 Arab villages and towns, while the Arabs overran fewer than a dozen Jewish settlements. By his tally, Palestinians slaughtered some 190 Israelis in two large-scale massacres, while Israeli troops probably murdered some 800 Arab civilians and prisoners of war. But in comparison to modern slaughterhouses like Bosnia or the Congo, the atrocities were relatively limited. The 1948 war "is actually noteworthy for the relatively small number of civilian casualties," Morris concludes. As for the 700,000 Palestinian refugees, he rejects the claims of other revisionist historians -- most notably Ilan Pappe in his 2006 book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine -- that the expulsions were part of Plan D, drawn up by Zionist leaders and military officers in Tel Aviv in March 1948 and carried out with relentless precision. Morris contends that the plan called for the destruction only of villages that resisted conquest, not those that were quiescent. "Nowhere does the document speak of a policy or desire to expel 'the Arab inhabitants' of Palestine," he writes, adding that "nowhere is any brigade instructed to clear out 'the Arabs.' " Why is all of this worth re-adjudicating six decades after the event? Because none of it has been resolved. For Israelis, 1948 is central to the legitimacy of the Jewish state. For Palestinians, it is an open wound; if the refugees were unfairly expelled, then they should be allowed to return. One weakness of Morris's book is that he can offer little documentation of the Arab side. Most of the archives of countries like Egypt, Jordan, Iraq and Syria remain off-limits. Too often Morris ends up speculating about the perceptions and motives of Arab leaders because he lacks the documentation that enriches his treatment of the Israeli side. Morris himself is a controversial figure in the conflict over the conflict. As an army reservist in 1988, he protested Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip by refusing to report for duty during the first Palestinian uprising; he spent three weeks in jail as a consequence. But after the second intifada broke out in 2000, he condemned Palestinian suicide bombers as "barbarians" and said the early Israelis were right to have expelled their Arab neighbors. "When the choice is between destroying or being destroyed, it's better to destroy," he told the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz. Despite his personal views, Morris strives to give a balanced view of the conflict. The collapse of the Arab military effort caused a chain reaction of coups and assassinations that brought down many of the old regimes. Leaders were killed or discarded in Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Jordan. "But 1948 has haunted, and still haunts, the Arab world on the deepest levels of collective identity, ego, and pride," Morris writes. "The war was a humiliation from which that world has yet to recover."
Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
