Israel 1948 Various Historians

8/6/2019 Israel 1948 Various Historians

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/israel-1948-various-historians 1/122



















































































































































Brett Lee-Price Page 1

What are the principal causes of the Arab-Israeli conflict in 1948?

The conflict between both Israel and the surrounding Arab countries is one of the most intense and

prolonged conflicts of the modern era and the principal cornerstone of the wars in the Middle East.

The conflict, itself, was stemmed from the years gradually leading up to 1948 in Palestine, and were

marked with volatile and excessive violence and ever-increasing tensions, and while many reasons

abounded for cause of the conflict. Only several became prominent as major causes of the rift

between the Jews and the Arabs. This includes the goals of Zionism, the actions of the Pro-Jewish

British, The UN’s partitioning proposal, the Past Events, and, naturally, the ability of the leadership of

both sides to escalate the conflict. A conflict that would eventually lead to seven major wars in the

region, all designed somewhat to crush an illegitimate country whom, in the eyes of the Arabs, had

stolen its lands, and simply didn’t deserve to exist.1

To take the conflict into the context of the time, there were many small scuffles between the Jews,

the Arabs and the British leading up to the 1948 Palestine war, and this tension originates back in

1916 before the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire which encompassed Palestine. It was British

policy during the war, to convince minor ethnicities in enemy countries to rise up against the triple

alliance, to aid them and hinder the supplies of the enemy and this was achieved with the Arabs, by

promises of a great Arab nation spaning “eastward from Alexandretta to the Iranian Frontier and

thence southward to the Persian Gulf and to include the entire Arabian peninsula with the exception

of Aden”.2

Furthermore, the Young Turks whom held power in Istanbul had a policy of Turkification

which sought to make the non-Turkic people of the empire fall in line with the culture and heritage

of the Turks, which, in consequence, led to inequality and discrimination against the non-Turkish

inhabitants.

With this promise of freedom against the Ottomans, and the potential of a great Arab state, Arab

nationalism was rife throughout the Middle-East. It was under these conditions, that the Great Arab

Revolt took place, which effectively hindered and limited the Ottomans in the regions it was active.

However, while the revolt was successful, the Arab’s dream of a great Arab nation was never to be

realized as the British came to other conclusions on what was best for British interests in the Middle-

East. This policy shift consisted of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, signed by Britain, France and Russia,

which divided the region into areas of permanent colonial influence and the more relevant Balfour

1Michael Neumann, The Case against Israel (AK Press, 2005), p. 100.

2 Tareq Y. Ismael, Politics and Government in the Middle East and North Africa (University Press of Florida, 1991), p. 38.




Declaration which was issued in 1917 and aimed to support the Zionists, which stated that there

would be an “establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish people” .3

These

seemingly contradictory promises made by the British to their wartime allies brought much

resentment by the Arabs, who realized after the war, that they had been lied to — there would be

no great Arab nation, but separate countries, with huge slices being taken by the British and French.4

At first, many Arabs were not outright against an influx of Jews into Palestine, due to promises that it

would not impact the Palestinians to a great extent, further stating in the Balfour Declaration that it

was “being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious

rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”.5 Due to this many thought it was acceptable

to agree with the Zionists and even form closer ties to the organisation, with Emir Faisal, a

prominent Arab leader during the Great Arab Revolt, coming to terms with Chaim Weizmann, leader

of the Zionist movement, while at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. This agreement called for the

fulfilment of the Balfour Declaration but was hinged on the British promises of independence to the

Arab nations, which eventually were not kept. When the Balfour Declaration was put into gear, Arab

opposition grew much firmer, due to not only the breaking of promises by the British to them, but

they saw it in the way of a foreign power encouraging immigration into the country of a group which

then sought to dominate the country. Indeed, many Zionists had formulated their demand for

territory “not as a Jewish state in Palestine but as Palestine as a Jewish state ”6

and Weizmann,

himself, stating “Palestine will become as Jewish as England is English.”7

With statements like these being issued and an ever-growing Jewish population, the Arabs living in

Palestine had little reason to not be restive, and tensions soared between the Arab majority and the

Jewish minority. By 1922, the populace of Palestine consisted of 670,000 Muslims and only 84,000

Jews and in less than a decade, the Jewish population sprouted up to 175,000 while the Arab

population increased to 860,000. Effectively doubling the Jewish population, and bringing the Jewish

percentage of the total population from 11% to 16.8%.8 9

With this influx of immigration and more

calls for a greater immigration of Jews into Palestine in conjunction with firm statements of Jewish

nationalism, and the Arab belief that the Jews wanted a nation " from the Nile to the Euphrates”10

,

violent opposition from the local Arabs started to grow. Many Arabs were fearful, that due to the

3 Isaiah Friedman, The Question of Palestine: British-Jewish-Arab Relations, 1914-18 (Transaction Publishers, 1992), p. 257.

4 William Roger Louis, The British Empire in the Middle East, 1945-1951 (Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 278-284

5 Friedman, Op cit., p. 266.

6Simha Flapan, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities (Pantheon Books, 1987), pp. 23-24.

7Joseph Mary Nagle Jeffries, Palestine: The Reality (Longmans, Green and co, 1939), p. 267.

8

Mandate Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics, 1922 Census: Statistical Abstract of Palestine, 1944-45, p. 17.9Mandate Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics, 1931 Census: Statistical Abstract of Palestine, 1944-45, p. 23.

10Daniel Pipes, The Hidden Hand: Middle East Fears of Conspiracy (St Martin’s Press, 1996), p. 67.




main goal of Zionism being the establishment of a Jewish state, with a Jewish majority, that a Jewish

nation would require the expulsion or subjugation of all existing non-Jews in Palestine.

The Palestinians saw this swift influx of Jewish immigration as potentially dangerous to both their

homeland and their national identity as a people. Furthermore, the Jewish policies of prohibiting the

employment of Arabs in both Jewish factories and farms greatly angered the Palestinians, as it was

generally felt that the Jews were coming to Palestine to reap the benefits from the land but not to

contribute back to the community. The overall tension from these events and circumstances evolved

from several small isolated scuffles to larger outbreaks of violence, eventually resulting in the 1929

Palestine riots; Which started over Arab anger at a violation of the law by the Jews, with the Jews

placing a screen to segregate Men and Women at the Western Wall, when the law prevented Jews

from making any 'construction' in the Western Wall area. This violent outbreak lasted for a week in

late August, and claimed the lives of 133 Jews and 116 Arabs, with 339 Jews also wounded.11

This

illustrated the clear discontent the Palestinian Arabs had with Jewish immigration and the policies in

place by the British mandate, and did nothing but increased the tensions between the communities

tenfold.

It should be noted that the conflicts thus far in Palestine was relatively minor in the broad context of

the Israeli-Arab conflict, and that the great turning point happened to be the persecution of Jews in

Europe throughout the 1930’s and into the first half of the 1940’s. This brought a huge surge of Jewish immigration into Palestine. Under British approval and the world’s sympathy, Palestine

became an open gate to all Jews whom sought refuge from the anti-Semitic governments of the

time. Accordingly, the number of Jews in Palestine rose up to 474,102 by 1941, becoming 29.9% of

the total.12

Many demonstrations broke out throughout Palestine, protesting against the British

policy of increased Jewish immigration, the unfair preferences for Jews, and many land purchases

which the Palestinians believed was eventually leading them to become a minority within the

mandate.13

One such protest was a general work strike in Jaffa in January 1936, to demonstrate against the

aforementioned points and the death of Sheik Izz ad-Din al-Qassam at British hands, he had violently

resisted the British in the name of a free Palestine. Due to the anger at both the British and the Jews,

the strike got out of hand, leading to the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt. Instrumental in this uprising was

the Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, whom assisted in leading the Palestinians

against the Zionists and the British. A general hope or goal of the Arabs in this uprising was to

11

Rashid Khalidi, The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood (Beacon Press, 2007), p. 86. 12Esco Foundation, Palestine: A Study of Jewish, Arab, and British Policies Vol. 1 (Yale University Press, 1947), p. 46.

13David Levinson, The Encyclopaedia of World Cultures (MacMillan Reference Books, 1995), p. 264.




achieve immediate elections which, due to their demographic majority, they would have the ability

to have a government in which to restrict any further Jewish immigration.

About one month later, the leadership of the strike called for a non-payment of taxes, explicitly in

protest to Jewish immigration. 14 The strike was ended in October 1936 after an agreement with the

British, and the violence subsided for roughly a year while a commission was setup --- this was

known as the Peel Commission. The commission deliberated for nearly an entire year and came to

the finding that a partition would be in the best interest of all parties involved. This was thoroughly

rejected by the Arabs as unjust as they would formally be ceding land to the Jewish Immigrants. The

Jewish camp on the other hand was mixed; some rejected the commission’s findings as they wanted

more, while some such as David Ben-Gurion, who was to become the first President of Israel,

declared that “We are being given an opportunity which we never dared to dream of in our wildest

imagination.” 15

Overall, the population exchange between the two partitions suggested by the Peel Commission,

would have involved the transfer of roughly 225,000 Arabs and 1,250 Jews — a relatively small

amount considering the population of both ethnic groups at the time. However, the partitioning idea

was declared unworkable by the British, and was never implemented. Due to the disfavour of the

proposal by the Palestinian Arabs, the revolt reappeared in the autumn of 1937, and violence struck

out at both the British and the Jews, whom the Arabs saw as being partners in crime, the apex of therevolt being the assassination of British Commissioner of Nazareth, Lewis Andrews in August 1937.

And while violence continued throughout 1938, it eventually simmered down and ended in 1939.

Throughout the revolt, the British cooperated with the Haganah, a Jewish Para-military organisation,

to crush Arab resistance wherever found and a working relationship developed which would later

form several security and defence forces mentioned later. Once the revolt was ultimately crushed,

the British then attempted to confiscate all weapon s from the Arab population. This combined with

the almost complete annihilation of Palestinian leadership during the revolt greatly limited their

military efforts during the 1948 war, nine years later.16

In addition, the revolt had two major affects on the Palestine issue; firstly it led to closer ties

between the British governance, and the Jewish populace, with the British recruiting, training, and

arming many Jews into a range of security and intelligence forces in collaboration with the Jewish

Agency, the self appointed government of the Jews. Examples of this include the Jewish

14

Susan Silsby Boyle, Betrayal of Palestine: The Story of George Antonius (Westview Press, 2001), p. 226.15Sabtai Teveth, Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs (Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 180-182.

16 Eugene L. Rogan, The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 (Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 190.




Supernumerary Police, the Jewish Settlement Police and the pre-runner of the SAS, the Special Night

Squads.17

Secondly, to avoid further riots by the Arab majority to British rule, the British

implemented the White Paper of 1939. This paper proposed an end to Jewish immigration by 1944,

with a limit of 75,000 more immigrants by this point, and a supplemental 25,000 to be admitted

afterwards. After this cut-off, further immigration would depend on the permission of the Arab

majority.18

However, due to the circumstances in Europe, and Anti-Semitism spreading across

Europe, this quota was used up quickly. And by the end of the war, many Jewish Holocaust survivors

were determined to reach Palestine, this lead to the Aliyah Bet , or rather the mass illegal

immigration by Jews.

This gigantic influx of immigration consisted of over 100,000 individuals trying to gain illegal entry to

Palestine, often by boat, and was supported by many Jewish terrorist organisations, such as Irgun,

an extremist offshoot of Haganah, and the Stern Gang, which had committed several atrocities

against Palestinian Arabs. Over half of these attempts were prevented by the British authorities and

interned in camps on Cyprus. While the paper served to assure the Palestinians that further

immigration would be limited, it also alienated the Jews, and meant that British resources, in the

training of Jewish organisations, were being used against the hand which dispensed them. The

actions and feelings of the Jewish community are best summed up by the then leader of the Jewish

Agency, David Ben-Gurion stating 'We will fight the White Paper as if there is no war, and fight the

war as if there is no White Paper .' 19

Effectively, the British stuck to usage of the White Paper until the end of the Mandate, however

according to population statistics founded by the UN in 1946; The Jewish population had risen up to

608,225, an increase of the Jewish population by 28% since 1944, making the Jews 33% of the total

population.20

While the white paper sought to abate the tensions in the Palestine, it failed in its

practical aims of limiting the population to the goals set out, and to reduce the tension between the

Arabs and Jews which continued to grow. The British, being sick of this constant tension and the

involvement needed in Palestine, decided to bring the case before the newly founded successor ofthe League of Nations, the UN to decide on what to do with the Palestine issue. Like the Peel

commission before it, it felt that the best outcome and solution would be the partition of Palestine.

This idea was passed by 33 countries, and thus the 1947 Palestine Partition Plan was born. This idea

was thoroughly rejected by Arabs across the Middle-East, demanding, instead, a single state with an

Arab majority to depict that 67% of the population were Arabs. Instead the UN’s plan wished to

17Robert Silverberg, If I Forget Thee, O Jerusalem: American Jews and the State of Israel (Morrow, 1970), p. 279.

18

James L. Gelvin, The Israel-Palestine Conflict: One Hundred Years of War (Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 118. 19Ibid., at 119.

20United Nations General Assembly, A/364, "UNSCOP Report to the General Assembly," September 3, 1947




grant the Jewish 33% of the population, 56.47% of the land including the valuable coastal strip, while

giving the Arabs a smaller amount. To the Palestinians this was injustice of the worse form, as they

were being robbed of their land from usurpers, many whom arrived over the last decade. On the

other-hand, many of the Zionists and Jews were filled with joy at this proposal, but a considerable

number of others wanted more. It was clear that among the leadership especially, that if a suitable

opportunity presented itself they would take more than that allocated to them by the Partition. Ben-

Gurion himself saw the small Jewish state as a gateway to expansion, stating to confidents that “the

war will give us the land. The concepts of 'ours' and 'not ours' are only concepts for peacetime, and

during war they lose all their meaning.” 21

This echoed Zionist anger back in 1923 when Trans-Jordan

was politically separated from Palestine, as it reduced the area of any future national home of the

Jews.

Effectively, many Zionists did not accept this partition, regardless of the favourable benefits

allocated to them. Many Zionist terrorist organisations proceeded to seize areas beyond the UN’s

proposed borders, and were on an overly-aggressive offensive, to the point that before Israel

declared independence in May 1948, 300,000 Palestinians had already been either expelled from or

fled their homes, due to the actions of Irgun and Stern Gang among others.22

23

The leadership

wanted to unite the entire country under a Jewish flag, and were determined that Palestine would

become a Jewish nation with Ben-Gurion telling other Zionists, that “after we become a strong force,

as the result of the creation of a state, we shall abolish partition and expand to the whole of

Palestine”24

, the Jewish politician, Menachem Begin also weighing in with that “The partition of the

Homeland is illegal . It will never be recognized. The signature of institutions and individuals of the

partition agreement is invalid. It will not bind the Jewish people. Jerusalem was and will forever be

our capital. Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel, All of it. And forever .”25

Ultimately, the message was clear, there could only be a Jewish home in Palestine, and the Jewish

Leadership and Zionist organisations were chief reasons on the irreconcilable factors leading up to

the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. With the British both setting the ball rolling, and failing to find peace

between the two communities, tension and conflict was Inevitable. The motivation and interests of

all parties involved were found to be crucially different and vitally incompatible, and all prior

solutions at ending this conflict were futile. This eccentric mix of past events, the leadership of both

sides, and the failure of the British to maintain the area lead to a conflict which is still ongoing today.

21Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 45.

22Noam Chomsky, Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky (New Press, 2002), pp. 131-132.

23

Morris, Op cit., p. 66.24Neumann, Op cit., p. 59.

25Noam Chomsky, Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians (South End Press, 1999), p. 161.




Works Cited

Boyle, S. S. (2001). Betrayal of Palestine: The Story of George Antonius. Oxford: Westview Press.

Chomsky, N. (1999). Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians. Boston: SouthEnd Press.

Chomsky, N. (2002). Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky. New York: New Press.

Esco Foundation. (1947). Palestine: A Study of Jewish, Arab, and British Policies Vol. 1. New York:

Yale University Press.

Flapan, S. (1987). The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities. New York: Pantheon Books.

Friedman, I. (1992). The Question of Palestine: British-Jewish-Arab Relations, 1914-1918. London:

Transaction Publishers.

Gelvin, J. L. (2007). The Israel-Palestine Conflict: One Hundred Years of War. New York: Cambridge

University Press.

Ismael, T. Y. (1991). Politics and Government in the Middle East and North Africa. Miami: University

Press of Florida.

Jefferies, J. M. (1939). Palestine: The Reality. London: Longmans, Green and co.

Khalidi, R. (2007). The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood. Boston: Beacon

Press.

Levinson, D. (1995). Encyclopedia of World Cultures. London: MacMillan Reference Books.

Louis, W. R. (1984). The British Empire in the Middle East, 1945-1951. London: Oxford University

Press.

Mandate Government of Palestine. (1947). Statistical Abstract of Palestine, 1945-45. London.

Morris, B. (2004). The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. New York: Cambridge

University Press.

Neumann, M. (2005). The Case Against Israel. Oakland: AK Press.

Pipes, D. (1996). The Hidden Hand: Middle East Fears of Conspiracy . New York: St Martin's Press.

Rogan, E. L. (2007). The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948. London: Cambridge

University Press.

Silverberg, R. (1970). If I Forget Thee, O Jerusalem: American Jews and the State of Israel. New York:

Morrow.

Teveth, S. (1985). Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs. Oxford: Oxford University Press.



























































（ 55 ）55

A question of historiography:the “new historians” of Israel

E T OTTMAN ※

Abstract

Controversy continues to surround the so-called Revisionist Historians of Israel,

whose retellings in the late 1980s of the true origins of their State were to cause

profound psychic aftershocks. Their leading historian, Benny Morris, has

retreated dramatically to a traditional Zionist-determinist position; scandal-

mired Ilan Pappe felt compelled to quit his position as a professor at the

University of Haifa and take up a post at a British university (Exeter), from

where he continues with greater impunity his campaign to have Israeli

universities boycotted. Avi Shlaim also criticizes from the judicious distance of

the UK (St. Anthonys College, Oxford). Despite Morriss apparent ideological

volte-face, accounts that have a powerful bearing on our interpretation of the

Israel-Palestine conflict continues to be produced, an approach that is

emphatically subjective, often but not always standing for the defeated over the

victorious (Pappe, 2004:121) Yet the question remains: is this history? The

author considers how the narrative that seeks to redress injustice, to rewrite,

indeed salvage, a history that was erased and forgotten (Pappe, 2004:xx)2

increases historical understanding.

Introduction

How can we ever know what really happened? How can we know why we are as

we are now? History should tell us; but often, it does not. For one thing, unless it

is in the recent past, it is intangible, unobservable; what remains is located in

archives, monuments and fragments. We simply cannot grasp history without the

※ Associate Professor, School of Government, Kyoto University

1. Pappe, I. (2004) A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

2. Pappe, I. (2004) Op. cit.

© The International Studies Association of Ritsumeikan University:

Ritsumeikan Annual Review of International Studies, 2008. ISSN 1347-8214. Vol.7, pp. 55-67



56 （ 56 ）

E T OTTMAN

services of a medium, the one who constructs (not reconstructs, for the past

cannot be resurrected) the bridge of inquiry between ourselves and the past

(White, 1999): the historian3. And since history is written by humans, it is

inevitably shaped. Even setting aside Hayden Whites notion that all historians

operate from metahistories (their own perceptions of what history ought to be)

there is the simple proposition that from the moment that the historian is

interposed between ourselves and the past̶ the moment of interpretation̶ we

have noise or spin. There are facts, to be sure̶ dates and events̶ but it takes

narration to bring them together, to order them in a comprehensible fashion, to

emplot them (in Whitean parlance). No amount of rigorous pseudo-

wissenschaftlich methodology can transform history into hard science4:

History or rather historical studies remains the least scientific--in both its

achievements and its aspirations--of all the disciplines comprising the human and

social sciences. Ever so often, there is a move to make historical studies more

scientific, either by providing it a theoretical basis such as positivism or dialectical

materialism or by importing into it a methodology from one or another of the "social

sciences." But these efforts seldom succeed, largely because of the way that the

principal object of historical study--the event--is defined. Historical events are

considered to be time and place specific, unique and unrepeatable, not reproducibleunder laboratory conditions, and only mimimally describable in algorithms and

statistical series. (White, 1999)

Moreover, if there can be no end to history (and even Francis Fukuyama allegedly

did a volte-face on his own position) it is equally likely that that what we can

know about the past is not finite. Our knowledge will never be perfect.

White conceptualized historical narratives as a form of literary genre, a

discursive turn in which the attention focuses on the product (the text itself)

rather than on rendering an objective account of the past5: Thus historical

narratives are not neutral, but involve ontological and epistemic choices with

distinct ideological and even specifically political implications (White, 1987: ix).

The role of the historiographer is a consciously constructed one, collapsing the

3. Hayden White (1999) History as Fulfillment (Keynote Address) [online]. Available at http://

www.tulane.edu/~isn/hwkeynote.htm

4. White, op. cit.

5. P. Sutermeister (2005), Hayden White or history as narrative: A constructive approach to

historiography [online]. Available at http://www.grin.com/en/fulltext/get/25061.html



（ 57 ）57

A question of historiography

boundaries between primary and secondary sources, for although

… historical narratives proceed from empirically validated facts or events, they

necessarily require imaginative steps to place them in a coherent story; they also

represent only a selection of historical events. Thus, truth is limited. (Sutermeister,

2005)

Meanwhile, others envisioned history as inevitably coloured by (or tainted with,

dependent on ones perspective) ideology. History is therefore never history, but

history-for, wrote Claude Lévi-Strauss6 (Lévi-Strauss, 1972). For Collingwood7,

Benedetto Croce, and even White, history has a moral purpose, and true

historical investigation was always inspired by some moral concerns (Domanska,

1998: 176). Enquiry into war origins, then, is inseparable from our normative

concern, writes Suganami (1997) in Stories of war origins: a narrativist theory of

the causes of war.8 Thus, the best grounds for choosing one perspective on

history rather than another are ultimately aesthetical or moral rather than

epistemological (White, 1973: xii). And last (but by no means least) there is

history by omission, where actors or perpetrators are never directly named, and

the veracity of events as they actually occurred disappears down the rabbit-hole

of voluntary collective amnesia, described by Milliken and Sylvan (writing on American violence in Indochina) as a memory hole of non-existence (Milliken

and Sylvan, 1996: 321). No-one, it seems, writes history for posterity s sake.

Levisohn (2002) finds this deeply troubling: What of historical truth, where does it

lie? What or how should we teach our students?

… the popular easy solution of teaching both sides of controversial issues̶ both

stories̶ is hardly more defensible, since there is no readily available criterion to

determine when to teach the story and when to teach the conflict about the story, or

even which conflicting narratives deserve space in the curriculum. Moreover, if one

believes that students ought to learn how to engage in the practice of history, then

presumably one also believes that doing history entails something other than

6. C. Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (La Pensée sauvage), (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press. 1972) 257.

7. R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History: With Lectures 1926-1928, (Oxford: Oxford

Paperbacks, 1994) 10.

8. H. Suganami. Stories of war origins: a narrativist theory of the causes of war. Review of

International Studies (1997), 23: 418.



58 （ 58 ）

E T OTTMAN

imposing a narrative on the past. Can this intuition be defended? (Levisohn, 2002:

466)

The “New Historians” of Israel

Thus we come to the compelling conundrum of the so-called New Historians of

Israel (also known as the Revisionist or Postzionist Historians), whose retelling in

the late 1980s of the true and less than heroic history of the origins of the State

of Israel, stripped of ideological myths, were to cause profound aftershocks in the

Israeli (but not the Palestinian) psyche, hitting the headlines abroad, well beyond

academic journals and the Israeli media. Writing about Zionist and Israeli

history will never be the same, thanks to scholars such as Avi Shlaim, Benny

Morris, and Ilan Pappe, comments Neil Caplan (Caplan, 1995: 96).

These days the historians are perhaps no longer so New (and indeed one of them,

Benny Morris, has fallen dramatically off the wagon and retreated to a traditional

Zionist position, but more of that later). However, controversy continues to

surround them with the publication of each new work, every new pronouncement

in the media adding to a snowstorm of letters to the editor, to such a degree that

one of their number, scandal-mired Ilan Pappe (Stein, 2002: 43), felt compelled toquit his position as a professor at the University of Haifa and take up a post at a

British university (Exeter, where he is chair of the Department of History, and

co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies) from where he

continues with limited impunity9 his campaign to have Israeli universities

boycotted (Lappin, 2007). Avi Shlaim also criticizes from the judicious distance of

the UK (as a Fellow of St. Anthony s College, Oxford, and a professor of

international relations at the University of Oxford). As Yoav Gelber observes,

Present post-Zionism … is mainly blue and white[the colours of the Israeli

national flag]̶ an Israeli product produced by people who were born and/or

9. Y. Lappin.(2007) writes in Israeli academic lashes out at 'Jewish student lobby,' students

reject allegations [online at http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3385189,00.html] an

article in the British Times Higher Education Supplement (THES), entitled 'Historian hits out

at Jewish student lobby,' extensively quoted Pappe as complaining that UK Jewish students

have formed a "lobby" aimed at quashing open debate on the Middle East. " …Professor Pappe

may find that Britain is not the haven of peace and tolerance he seeks. Jewish students' groups

have already complained about his appointment, saying he is anti-Zionist," the article said.

"Jewish student organizations have ceased to care for the interests and concerns of Jewish

students but have become a front for the Zionist point of view. They act as an arm of the Israeli

embassy," Pappe was quoted as saying.



（ 59 ）59


educated in Israel though now some of them may live abroad (Gelber, 2007).

What enabled this new history to emerge, and why was it a tale untold

before? In his introduction to The Israel/Palestine Question: Rewriting Histories,

Ilan Pappe attributes the revision of traditional Zionist historiography to the

influences of recent historiographical debates taking place around the academic

world at large, a general trend towards interdisciplinarity, and the desire to

inject a more skeptical view towards historical narratives written under the

powerful hand of nationalist elites and ideologies (Pappe, 1999: 1). But the

origins of the new history were somewhat more mechanistic; indeed, nothing

could better illustrate that what we know about the past may be always

incomplete. Modelled on the British Public Records Act with its 30 year rule,

Israel also regulates the release of information from its national archives for an

identical period of time. Archival documents written during the period of the

creation of the Israeli state thus became accessible from the late 1970s, and by

1987, the first and most celebrated work of the New Historians emerged, Benny

Morriss The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem 1947-1949.

Past historiography claims that in 1947, Palestinian Arabs voluntarily left their

homes following the Arab leaders orders of temporary evacuation. Morris,however, was the first to offer a very different explanation, one which tallies with

Palestinians account of Nakba (catastrophe). He revealed that many Palestinians

fled in terror from the Zionist militias invasion of certain Palestinian Arab

villages, and also how some Palestinians were compulsorily expelled from their

land. In addition, he recounts that Zionist militias conducted massacres of

Palestinians. An extended version of this work was republished in 2004 as yet

more documents became declassified.

While the validity and supposedly groundbreaking nature of these

historiographies rests on their access to previously unseen national archival

documents that describe objective facts (as opposed to the prior ideologically-

tainted accounts): but this exclusive dependence on national documents is also

the Achilles heel of certain New Historians approach. Nevertheless Morriss

account stood out in sharp relief to the accepted version of the truth of previous

generations. In The History of Zionist Historiography, Yoav Gelber (2003, online)

excuses the first generation of pre-state Zionist historians, who focused on

portraying the relationship of Diaspora Jews with the land of Israel and with the



60 （ 60 ）

E T OTTMAN

Yishuv (early settlers):

The writing of history cannot be separated from the era in which it is written.

Changing perspectives define scope, fields and focal points, attitudes to the objects of

study, and even methodological developments. …Within the context of its time frame,

Zionist historiography itself becomes part and parcel of the history of Zionism. …

Early historians of Zionism were, on the whole, amateurs - Zionist activists who under

certain circumstances became historians. (Gelber, 2003)

For the second wave of Zionist historiographers, writes Gelber, statehood changed

everything, distorting perspective on accounts of the Holocaust, which for a long

time was covered mainly through journalism (Gelber, 2003; Arendt, 1963, 1994):

Under the new circumstances, the writing of Zionist history lost its apologetic tone

and, moving to the opposite pole, began to distribute laurels to the victors. For many

years, the euphoria in the wake of the Zionist triumph blurred the central issue of

modern Jewish history the Holocaust. (Gelber, 2003)

It also blurred the sharp political divisions between the ruling Labour Zionist

party, Mapai, led by the first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion and firstpresident, Chaim Weizmann, and the right-wing Revisionist Party, led by Zeev

(Vladimir) Jabotinsky.

The New Historians (who also included Simha Flapan, Uri Milstein, Michael

Cohen, Anita Shapira, Uri Bar-Joseph, and critical sociologist Baruch

Kimmerling) emerged in the wake of the dilemma of the third generation of the

more academically sophisticated Zionist Historiographers, who were infected with

a similar desire to European historiographers, the dedication for objective

history, but hampered by their attachment to portraying the undivided

relationship of Diaspora Jews to the land of Israel. Through revealing historical

facts from the newly declassified archives, the new scholars moved beyond the

ambiguous impulses of the third generation, although not all were successful in

completely escaping their tenuous links to Zionist ideologies. (The author uses the

plural form here advisedly, for the ideologies were far from monolithic, containing

numerous strains, from the Political to Cultural or Spiritual Zionism, Labour,

Socialist, Revisionist, Practical, Liberal, Synthetic, Religious and Radical

Messianic Zionisms, to anti-Zionist Autonomists and the Neturei Karta [Ottman,



（ 61 ）61


2004; JAFIa; JAFIb, both undated.]) Nur Masalha (1992:91 ) found that although

the new histories thoroughly demolish a variety of assumptions which formed

the core of the old history, Morris did not always live up to his claim of using

this material in a critical manner and as a result this casts doubts on his

conclusions, ignoring recent works by non-Zionist scholars and thus giving the

impression that these discourses are basically the outcome of a debate among

Zionists which unfortunately has little to do with the Palestinians themselves.

For Norman Finklestein, too, Morris did not go far enough and was frequently

inconsistent (Finklestein, 1991, 1992).

Zionist historiographers fought back in the battle for Israels history. Ephraim

Karsh (professor of Mediterranean studies at King's College, University of

London) is one of Benny Morriss most vociferous critics:

As a general rule, every war is fought twice: first on the battlefield, then in the

historiographical arena. The Arabs failed to destroy the State of Israel in 1948; in the

next fifty years, they and their Western partisans waged a sustained propaganda

battle to cast the birth of Israel as the source of all evil. In the late 1980s this effort

received a major boost with the advent of a group of Israeli academics calling

themselves the New Historians who claim to have discovered archival evidencesubstantiating the anti-Israeli case. (Karsh 1999, online)

Claiming that the new politicized historians had turned the saga of Israel's

birth upside down, with aggressors turned into hapless victims and the reverse

(authors emphasis) Karsh (1999) accuses Morris of systematic falsification of

archival source material. Morris, he said, had engaged in five types of distortion:

he misrepresents documents, resorts to partial quotes, withholds evidence, makes

false assertions, and rewrites original documents. Karsh takes Morris to task

again in a systematic investigation of Morriss version of history, Fabricating

Israeli History: The New Historians (Karsh, 1997). Presenting a detailed

knockdown of the central claims of the revisionist historians, he adds that

newness of the facts unearthed was also at issue (Karsh, 1997:195). Later, in

2005, Karsh gave an equally harsh review to the expanded latest edition of

Morriss The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (Morris, 2004):

The Birth Revisited is a misnomer. Rather than offer a reassessment of Morris's

previous writings on the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem, The Birth



62 （ 62 ）

E T OTTMAN

Revisited is but a longer replica of its dishonest and shoddy predecessor. To downplay

his failure to consult the most important archives in the preparation of The Birth,

Morris argued that "the new materials … tend to confirm and reinforce the major

lines of description and analysis, and the conclusions, in The Birth."… And so, The

Birth Revisited continues the stubborn refusal of Morris to base his arguments and

conclusions on archival evidence and the historical record. Far from confirming and

reinforcing his arguments, archival documents demonstrate that "the Palestinian

refugee problem" was the creation of Palestinian and other Arab leaders, not of the

Zionists. (Karsh 2005, online).

Morris, as alluded to earlier, recanted in spectacular fashion in the Israeli media

(Shavit 2004, online). That is to say, he stood by his story, but claimed that his

position was never that of anti-Zionist or Post-Zionist.

Zionism was not a mistake. The desire to establish a Jewish state here was a

legitimate one, a positive one. But given the character of Islam and given the

character of the Arab nation, it was a mistake to think that it would be possible to

establish a tranquil state here that lives in harmony with its surroundings. (Shavit

2004, online)

Yes, there was expulsion; yes, there was rape and ethnic cleansing; yes, Ben

Gurion did advocate transfer of Palestinians (whom Morris describes as a time

bomb. Their slide into complete Palestinization has made them an emissary of the

enemy that is among us. They are a potential fifth column.). Without all of these,

the fledgling state would never have come into being:

Because I investigated the conflict in depth, I was forced to cope with the in-depth

questions that those people coped with. I understood the problematic character of the

situation they faced and maybe I adopted part of their universe of concepts. But I do

not identify with Ben-Gurion. I think he made a serious historical mistake in 1948.

Even though he understood the demographic issue and the need to establish a Jewish

state without a large Arab minority, he got cold feet during the war. In the end, he

faltered. … You have to put things in proportion. These are small war crimes. All told,

if we take all the massacres and all the executions of 1948, we come to about 800 who

were killed. In comparison to the massacres that were perpetrated in Bosnia, that's

peanuts. In comparison to the massacres the Russians perpetrated against the

Germans at Stalingrad, that's chicken feed. … There are cases in which the overall,



（ 63 ）63


final good justifies harsh and cruel acts that are committed in the course of history.

(Shavit 2004, op.cit.)

Asked if the historical reality of the conflict is intolerable, Morris replies that it is

more so for a people that suffered for 2,000 years, that went through the

Holocaust, arrives at its patrimony but is thrust into a renewed round of

bloodshed, that is perhaps the road to annihilation. He found this far more

shocking than what happened in 1948 to a small part of the Arab nation that was

then in Palestine. Talking about his book, Righteous Victims: A History of the

Zionist-Arab Conflict 1881-2001 (Morris, 2001) Morris indulges in relativism,

describing the Jews as the greater victims in the course of history. They are the

weaker side … a small minority in a large sea of hostile Arabs who want to

eliminate us. One day, says Morris, Everyone will understand we are the true

victims. But by then it will be too late (Shavit 2004, op. cit.).

Morriss recantation provoked a shocked response from Tel Aviv University

philosopher Professor Adi Ophir (2004, online), who wrote, If there is a sick

society here, the publication of this interview is at one and the same time a

symptom of the illness and that which nourishes it.

Despite Morriss apparent volte-face, new history that has a powerful bearing on

our interpretation of the Israel-Palestine conflict continues to be produced. For

one thing, postzionists (and others) have accepted the responsibility of speaking

out against what they consider to be unjust power relations in society notes

Silberstein (1999:209). Theirs is a transformative, revolutionary role, in the

struggle against exclusion and domination. Quoting Foucault10, Silberstein

views these intellectuals as having a duty:

to speak on this subject, to force the institutionalized networks of information to

listen, to produce names, to point the finger of accusations, to find targets … [This is]

the first step in the reversal of power and the initiation of new struggles against

existing forms of power. (Foucault 1996:79, in Silberstein, 1999:209)

For another thing, says the Andersonian Ilan Pappe (Pappe, 2004), it is the

zeitgeist; the timing is right for a story told from a humanist, and not nationalist,

10. Michel Foucault, 1996. Foucault Live: Collected Interviews, 1961-1984, ed. Sylvere

Lorringer. New York: Semiotexte.



64 （ 64 ）

E T OTTMAN

ethnic or religious, perspective (Pappe, 2004: xix). Students, Palestinians and

Jews, wish to hear it. And in the true fashion of epic narration, Pappe will offer

them heroes and villains. The heroes are good, old-fashioned underdogs,

victims of these calamities: women, children, peasants, workers, ordinary city

dwellers, peaceniks, human rights activists; the villains are the arrogant

generals, the greedy politicians, the cynical statesmen and the misogynist men

(Pappe, 2004: xix).

Without a shred of irony, Pappe reminds us that first one needs to rewrite, indeed

salvage, a history that was erased and forgotten (Pappe, 2004: xx). And this is the

paradoxical question: if history has been erased and forgotten, from where does

the historian derive her primary source? Elites left behind their historical records,

whether one accepts them or not; but local Palestinian subaltern society, the

actors who were absent or totally marginalized did not so conveniently provide

documents for historical validation (Pappe, 2004:8). Clearly, there are two

conflicting versions of the narrative; dualistic thinking would suggest that

accepting one version makes a lie of the other (although Pappes stated mission is

rather to expand the understanding of the marginalized vector). In particular, the

national historiographical approach presumes each side s tale is synonymous

with its history of nationalism (Pappe, 2004:7), an elitist narrative that excludesthe poor and specifically, women (since nationalism is taken to be a hetero-male

project).

Pappe has something more organic, holistic and expansive in mind, an

alternative narrative that recognizes similarities, criticises overt falsifications

and challenges the sequential modernist paradigm that zeroes in on the

departure point for the history of modern Israel and Palestine (Pappe, 2004: 12).

He would rather tell of ordinary human past, writing out of compassion for the

colonized not the colonizer, siding with the workers and not the bosses. He

feels for women in distress, and has little admiration for men in command. Nor

can he feel indifferent towards mistreated children (Pappe, 2004:12). It is a

redressive approach, one which he admits is subjective, often but not always

standing for the defeated over the victorious, a moving and a timely read, and

one which is deeply pertinent for the better understanding of the Israel-Palestine

conflict: but the question remains: is this history?

Historiographical text and historical context are closely bound, writes another of



（ 65 ）65


the new historians, Uri Ram (Ram, 2003:35), recognizing the close coupling of

the politics of knowledge and the politics of identity. For Ram, there is no pure

identity (least of all that of the historian?) or objective memory. Historians may

dispute past events (Ram, 2003:36), but the nature of the dispute often says

more about the present than about the past; in quasi-Hegelian dialectical tension,

it reveals what is of more immanent sociological significance. Or, as Nick

Vaughan-Williams notes, history has long been considered exogenous if not

superfluous to IR: at best a quarry to be mined in support of theories of the

present (Vaughan-Williams, 2005:115). In the grand scheme of things, unless one

can designate with surety an endpoint to the quantity of facts to be uncovered

from primary sources about a historical event, there is no absolute history,

whether the approach is more scientific or more humanist. The historical truth,

or the problem of history--in other words the impossibility of getting historical

interpretation one hundred percent right (Vaughan-Williams, 2005)̶ remains a

constant condition, residing somewhere in between the binaries of fact and

narrative (while the latter, being composed of language that may change in

meaning, is in itself unstable and subject to Derridean differance11). All that we

can say is that it takes many histories to get a better picture, and that we had

better be aware which kind we are reading in order to make a more informed

judgment. As we try to comprehend the past, historical consciousness isindispensable.

Bibliography

Arendt, H. (1963) A Reporter at Large: Eichmann in Jerusalem. The New Yorker; 16 February, 23

February, 2 March, 9 March and 16 March.

Arendt, H. (1994) Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil .London: Penguin

Books.

JAFIa (Jewish Agency for Israel), Depart of Zionist Education (no date); The Story of Zionism:

Background: The Theory of Zionism̶ Different Models. [online] Available at http://www.jafi.org.il/education/100/zionism/b9.html [accessed on 18 January 2008].

Caplan, N. (1995) The "New Historians". Journal of Palestine Studies (24) 4: 96-103 [online]

Available at http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0377-919X%28199522%2924%3A4%3C96%3AT%2

2H%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Y [accessed on 13 January 2008].

Collingwood, R.G. (1994) The Idea of History: With Lectures 1926-1928, Oxford: Oxford

11. David Roberts (1995: 194) in Nothing But History: Reconstruction and Extremity after

Metaphysics explains Derridean differance well: Meaning is an endless web, each part of which

depends on and refers to others, so that we never get a full, final grasp of what is being referred

to. Meaning is always deferred; there is always further differance. When we seek the level of

settled meaning or certain interpretation, we find no stopping place but only traces or earlier

traces, as sequences, linkages, referring us back, back, endlessly back.



66 （ 66 ）

E T OTTMAN

Paperbacks.

Domanska, E. (1998) Hayden White: Beyond Irony. History and Theory (37) 2: 173-181. [online].

Available at stable URL http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0018-2656%28199805%2937%

3A2%3C173%3AHWBI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-7 [accessed on 18 January 2008].

Finkelstein, N. (1991) Myths, Old and New. Journal of Palestine Studies (21) 1: 66-89. [online].

Available at stable URL http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0377-919X%28199123%2921%3A1%3

C66%3AMOAN%3E2.0.CO%3B2-T [accessed on 18 January 2008].

Finkelstein, N. (1992) Rejoinder to Benny Morris. Journal of Palestine Studies (21) 2: 61-71.

[online]. Available at stable URL http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0377-919X%28199224%2921

%3A2%3C61%3ARTBM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-B [accessed on 17 January 2008].

Gelber, Y. The History of Zionist Historiography [online]. Accessed at http://aboutisrael.co.il/eng/

articles.php?actions=details&p_id=520 [on 18 January 2008].

Gelber, Y. (2007) Some Basic Issues of the Zionist/Post-Zionist Controversy. In Midstream, May/

June 2007 issue [online]. Available at http://www.midstreamthf.com/ [accessed on 1

December 2008].JAFIb (Jewish Agency for Israel), Depart of Zionist Education (no date); Zionist Dreams [online]

Available at http://www.jewishagency.org/JewishAgency/English/Jewish+Education/

Compelling+Content/Worldwide+Community/Connecting+to+Community/Zionist+Dreams.

htm [accessed on 17 January 2008].

Karsh, E. (1997) Fabricating Israeli History: The New Historians. London: Cass.

Karsh, E. (1999) Benny Morris and the Reign of Error. Middle East Quarterly (VI) 1. [online]

Available on the Middle East Forum website http://www.meforum.org/article/466 [accessed

on 10 May 2004].

Karsh, E. (2005) The Post-Zionist Critique. Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2005 [online]

Available at http://www.meforum.org/article/711 [accessed on 19 January 2008].

Lappin, Y.(2007) Israeli academic lashes out at 'Jewish student lobby,' students reject

allegations. [online] Available at http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3385189,00.html [accessed on 19 January 2008].

Lévi-Strauss, C. (1966) The Savage Mind (La Pensée sauvage) Chicago: University of Chicago

Press.

Levisohn, J. A. (2002) Stories about Stories about History: Hayden White, Historiography, and

History Education. Philosophy of Education [online] Available at http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/

EPS/PES-Yearbook/2002/465-levisohn%2002.pdf [accessed on 19 January 2008] 465-472.

Masalha, N. (1991). A Critique of Benny Morris. Journal of Palestine Studies (21) 1: 90-97.

[online] Available at stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0377-919X%28199123%2921

%3A1%3C90%3AACOBM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-D [accessed on 4 January 2008].

Milliken, J and Sylvan, D. (1996) Soft Bodies, Hard Targets, and Chic Theories: US Bombing

Policy in Indochina. Millennium Journal of International Studies (25) 2: 321-359. [online]

A v a i l a b l e a t U R L h t t p : / / w w w. i n g e n t a c o n n e c t . c o m / c o n t e n t / m p g /

mjis/1996/00000025/00000002 [accessed on 4 January 2008].

Morris, B. (2001) Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict 1881-2001. New York:

Vintage.

Morris, B. (1987) The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-9. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

Morris, B. (2004) The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

Ophir, A. (2004) Must Zionism Lead to Ethnic Cleansing? Benny Morris vs. Adi Ophir. Tikkun

Newsletter (January 2004).

Ottman, E. T. (2004) Fractured Fences – On Post-Zionism and Diversity. Ritsumeikan Annual

Review of International Studies, Vol. 3:12.



（ 67 ）67


Pappe, I. (1999) (ed.) The Israel/Palestine Question. London and New York: Routledge.

Pappe, I. (2004) A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

Ram, U. (2003) From Nation-State to Nation-----State: Nation, History and Identity Struggles in

Jewish Israel. In Ephraim Nimni (ed.) The Challenge of Post-Zionism: Alternatives to

Fundamentalist Politics in Israel. London: Zed Books.

Roberts, D. (1995) Nothing But History: Reconstruction and Extremity After Metaphysics.

Berkeley: University of California Press.

Shavit, A. (2001) Survival of the fittest. Haaretz, 09/01/2004 [online]. Available at http://www.

haaretz.com/hasen/spages/380984.html [accessed on 6 April 2005].

Silberstein, L. (1999) The Postzionism Debates: Knowledge and Power in Israeli Culture. New

York and London: Routledge.

Stein, R. L. (2002) Pappe Faces down Prosecution. Middle East Report (223): 43. [online].

Availab le at http:/ /links.j stor.org/sic i?sici =0899-2851%28200222%290%3A223%

3C43%3APFDP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-P [accessed on 4 January 2007].Suganami, H. (1997) Stories of war origins: a narrativist theory of the causes of war. Review of

International Studies (23): 401–418.

Sutermeister, P. (2005) Hayden White or history as narrative: A constructive approach to

historiography [online]. Available at http://www.grin.com/en/fulltext/get/25061.html

[accessed on 4 January 2007].

Vaughan-Williams, N. (2005). International Relations and the Problem of History. Millennium:

Journal of International Studies. Vol.34 No.1: 115-136.

White, H. (1973) Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe.

Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

White, H. (1987) The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation.

Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press.

White, H. (1999) History as Fulfillment (Keynote Address) [online]. Available at http://www.tulane.edu/~isn/hwkeynote.htm [accessed on 4 January 2008].



Documents

Israel 1948 Various Historians