Talk:Benny Morris
From Academic Kids
There is sort of a contradiction in the article: First it states that Morris showed that "700,000 Palestinians who fled from their homes in 1947 were not dispelled with premeditation on the part of the Israelis [...] " ; but then the excerpts from the interview show that he changed his mind about this (atrocities part of conscious strategy). When and why did he change his mind? Since it's such a crucial question, it would be great to have more info on this. pir 22:43, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)
- Good observation. First, as both Norman Finkelstein and Edward Said have pointed out, he appears to not been willing to come to this conclusion in the first edition of The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem despite the fact the evidence suggested it. Second, he appears to have found additional material that was previously unavailable to confirm that in fact that expulsion was in fact premeditated. Indeed the article should be updated to reflect this. -- Viajero 22:59, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)
- great, thanks for the info. - pir 02:05, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)
From the Haa'retz interview:
- [interviewer:]They perpetrated ethnic cleansing.
- "There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing. I know that this term is completely negative in the discourse of the 21st century, but when the choice is between ethnic cleansing and genocide - the annihilation of your people - I prefer ethnic cleansing."
- And that was the situation in 1948?
- "That was the situation. That is what Zionism faced. A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them. There was no choice but to expel that population. It was necessary to cleanse the hinterland and cleanse the border areas and cleanse the main roads. It was necessary to cleanse the villages from which our convoys and our settlements were fired on."
- The term `to cleanse' is terrible.
- "I know it doesn't sound nice but that's the term they used at the time. I adopted it from all the 1948 documents in which I am immersed."
- -- Viajero 18:36, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)
loss of faith in Oslo: left wing or right wing?
44% of all Israelis support the Oslo Accords in any form....Benny Morris is among the 29% that have changed their position from support the Accords to not support the Accords. The center of Israeli society has moved from supporting to not supporting. Furthermore 80% of all Israelis believe that the IDF has successfully dealt with the violence militarily. [1] (http://spirit.tau.ac.il/socant/peace/peaceindex/2000/data/may2000d.pdf)[2] (http://spirit.tau.ac.il/socant/peace/peaceindex/2004/data/may2004d.pdf)
POV edits by 24.60.142.49
POV edits (see Diff (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Benny_Morris&diff=0&oldid=6345578)), but some worthwhile material for the article. Points:
- It is obviously POV to regard Karsh's attack on Morris as "proven", etc.
- The link provided http://emperors-clothes.com/docs/karsh-morris.htm is broken. I've tried the usual google trickery to find it but with no success (eg. no hits for inurl:karsh-morris). Shame it's not possible to contact 24.60.142.49 to find out.
- I've added a link to Finkelstein's criticism of Morris that I've been meaning to add for a while.
- Most of the content of this article is a series of quotes, which is not really Wikipedia house style. I've put these in a separate section.
Hopefully these changes improve the article... ---- Charles Stewart 13:47, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
