Mondoweiss: ‘Ethnic cleansing’ becomes ‘No ethnic cleansing’ in Israeli history by Benny Morris [View all]

Source: Mondoweiss, by Jonathan Ofir

Winston Churchill quipped at the House of Commons in 1948, “For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all Parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history”.

Benny Morris is one Israeli historian who has definitely written about the history of Israel and Palestine in a way that made him an authoritative reference for many scholars and writers, particularly concerning the 1948 Nakba. In his pioneering role as a ‘new historian’, already in the late 1980’s, he scrutinized many declassified documents from and around 1948, and reached the conclusion that not only was there a “transfer” (as he quite systematically regards it), but that this “transfer” was “inevitable and inbuilt in Zionism – because it sought to transform a land which was ‘Arab’ into a Jewish state and a Jewish state could not have arisen without a major displacement of Arab population”. (In Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem)

That is a conclusion, an admission, of some magnitude. You don’t just go back on this one.

But, unbelievably, Morris does. At least he tries to.

Yesterday he writes in Haaretz, an article bluntly titled: “Israel conducted no ethnic cleansing in 1948.”

Read more: http://mondoweiss.net/2016/10/cleansing-becomes-israeli/