[wat0n]

Still with the same nonsense. Allow me to just quote the letter Morris sent to the Irish Times in 2008

Israel and the Palestinians
Thu, Feb 21, 2008, 00:00

Madam, - Israel-haters are fond of citing - and more often, mis-citing - my work in support of their arguments. Let me offer some corrections.

The Palestinian Arabs were not responsible "in some bizarre way" (David Norris, January 31st) for what befell them in 1948. Their responsibility was very direct and simple.

In defiance of the will of the international community, as embodied in the UN General Assembly Resolution of November 29th, 1947 (No. 181), they launched hostilities against the Jewish community in Palestine in the hope of aborting the emergence of the Jewish state and perhaps destroying that community. But they lost; and one of the results was the displacement of 700,000 of them from their homes.

It is true, as Erskine Childers pointed out long ago, that there were no Arab radio broadcasts urging the Arabs to flee en masse; indeed, there were broadcasts by several Arab radio stations urging them to stay put. But, on the local level, in dozens of localities around Palestine, Arab leaders advised or ordered the evacuation of women and children or whole communities, as occurred in Haifa in late April, 1948. And Haifa's Jewish mayor, Shabtai Levy, did, on April 22nd, plead with them to stay, to no avail.

Most of Palestine's 700,000 "refugees" fled their homes because of the flail of war (and in the expectation that they would shortly return to their homes on the backs of victorious Arab invaders). But it is also true that there were several dozen sites, including Lydda and Ramla, from which Arab communities were expelled by Jewish troops.

The displacement of the 700,000 Arabs who became "refugees" - and I put the term in inverted commas, as two-thirds of them were displaced from one part of Palestine to another and not from their country (which is the usual definition of a refugee) - was not a "racist crime" (David Landy, January 24th) but the result of a national conflict and a war, with religious overtones, from the Muslim perspective, launched by the Arabs themselves.

There was no Zionist "plan" or blanket policy of evicting the Arab population, or of "ethnic cleansing". Plan Dalet (Plan D), of March 10th, 1948 (it is open and available for all to read in the IDF Archive and in various publications), was the master plan of the Haganah - the Jewish military force that became the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) - to counter the expected pan-Arab assault on the emergent Jewish state. That's what it explicitly states and that's what it was. And the invasion of the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq duly occurred, on May 15th.

It is true that Plan D gave the regional commanders carte blanche to occupy and garrison or expel and destroy the Arab villages along and behind the front lines and the anticipated Arab armies' invasion routes. And it is also true that mid-way in the 1948 war the Israeli leaders decided to bar the return of the "refugees" (those "refugees" who had just assaulted the Jewish community), viewing them as a potential fifth column and threat to the Jewish state's existence. I for one cannot fault their fears or logic.

The demonisation of Israel is largely based on lies - much as the demonisation of the Jews during the past 2,000 years has been based on lies. And there is a connection between the two.
I would recommend that the likes of Norris and Landy read some history books and become acquainted with the facts, not recycle shopworn Arab propaganda. They might then learn, for example, that the "Palestine War" of 1948 (the "War of Independence," as Israelis call it) began in November 1947, not in May 1948. By May 14th close to 2,000 Israelis had died - of the 5,800 dead suffered by Israel in the whole war (ie almost 1 per cent of the Jewish population of Palestine/Israel, which was about 650,000).

- Yours, etc,

Prof BENNY MORRIS, Li-On, Israel

[noemon]

If you are calling Benny Morris as non-sense then..sure, whatever:

No noemon, I am not misquoting anything here. rather than all of it like the conclusion chapter of the book does.

You did forget this part from page 588 of the book you quoted.

But the displacement of Arabs from Palestine or from the areas of Palestine that would become the Jewish State was inherent in Zionist ideology and, in microcosm, in Zionist praxis from the start of the enterprise.

At last, the interview in Ha'aretz refers to a specific incident during the war (Operation Hiram, which he also describes in the book) This interpretation

Creatively misinterpreting explicit Morris now...dancing around his blatant statements.

Historian Benny Morris, who opened the Pandora's box of Zionism, has found a new way to deal with the demons he unleashed. He justifies the expulsion of the Arabs in 1948, bemoans the fact that the job was left unfinished and doesn't rule out future population transfers. In an interview, Morris lays out his self-described 'politically incorrect' views.

-According to your findings, how many acts of Israeli massacre were perpetrated in 1948?

-"Twenty-four. In some cases four or five people were executed, in others the numbers were 70, 80, 100. There was also a great deal of arbitrary killing. Two old men are spotted walking in a field - they are shot. A woman is found in an abandoned village - she is shot. There are cases such as the village of Dawayima [in the Hebron region], in which a column entered the village with all guns blazing and killed anything that moved.

"The worst cases were Saliha (70-80 killed), Deir Yassin (100-110), Lod (250), Dawayima (hundreds) and perhaps Abu Shusha (70). There is no unequivocal proof of a large-scale massacre at Tantura, but war crimes were perpetrated there. At Jaffa there was a massacre about which nothing had been known until now. The same at Arab al Muwassi, in the north. About half of the acts of massacre were part of Operation Hiram [in the north, in October 1948]: at Safsaf, Saliha, Jish, Eilaboun, Arab al Muwasi, Deir al Asad, Majdal Krum, Sasa. In Operation Hiram there was a unusually high concentration of executions of people against a wall or next to a well in an orderly fashion.

That can't be chance. It's a pattern. Apparently, various officers who took part in the operation understood that the expulsion order they received permitted them to do these deeds in order to encourage the population to take to the roads. The fact is that no one was punished for these acts of murder. Ben-Gurion silenced the matter. He covered up for the officers who did the massacres."

-What you are telling me here, as though by the way, is that in Operation Hiram there was a comprehensive and explicit expulsion order. Is that right?

-"Yes. One of the revelations in the book is that on October 31, 1948, the commander of the Northern Front, Moshe Carmel, issued an order in writing to his units to expedite the removal of the Arab population. Carmel took this action immediately after a visit by Ben-Gurion to the Northern Command in Nazareth. There is no doubt in my mind that this order originated with Ben-Gurion. Just as the expulsion order for the city of Lod, which was signed by Yitzhak Rabin, was issued immediately after Ben-Gurion visited the headquarters of Operation Dani [July 1948]."

I don't hear you condemning him.

"Ben-Gurion was right. If he had not done what he did, a state would not have come into being. That has to be clear. It is impossible to evade it. Without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here."

So when the commanders of Operation Dani are standing there and observing the long and terrible column of the 50,000 people expelled from Lod walking eastward, you stand there with them? You justify them?

"I definitely understand them. I understand their motives. I don't think they felt any pangs of conscience, and in their place I wouldn't have felt pangs of conscience. Without that act, they would not have won the war and the state would not have come into being."

You do not condemn them morally?

"No."

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."

I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying that Ben-Gurion erred in expelling too few Arabs?

"If he was already engaged in expulsion, maybe he should have done a complete job. I know that this stuns the Arabs and the liberals and the politically correct types. But my feeling is that this place would be quieter and know less suffering if the matter had been resolved once and for all. If Ben-Gurion had carried out a large expulsion and cleansed the whole country - the whole Land of Israel, as far as the Jordan River. It may yet turn out that this was his fatal mistake. If he had carried out a full expulsion - rather than a partial one - he would have stabilized the State of Israel for generations."

I find it hard to believe what I am hearing.

"If the end of the story turns out to be a gloomy one for the Jews, it will be because Ben-Gurion did not complete the transfer in 1948. Because he left a large and volatile demographic reserve in the West Bank and Gaza and within Israel itself."

In his place, would you have expelled them all? All the Arabs in the country?

"But I am not a statesman. I do not put myself in his place. But as an historian, I assert that a mistake was made here. Yes. The non-completion of the transfer was a mistake."

And today? Do you advocate a transfer today?

"If you are asking me whether I support the transfer and expulsion of the Arabs from the West Bank, Gaza and perhaps even from Galilee and the Triangle, I say not at this moment. I am not willing to be a partner to that act. In the present circumstances it is neither moral nor realistic. The world would not allow it, the Arab world would not allow it, it would destroy the Jewish society from within. But I am ready to tell you that in other circumstances, apocalyptic ones, which are liable to be realized in five or ten years, I can see expulsions. If we find ourselves with atomic weapons around us, or if there is a general Arab attack on us and a situation of warfare on the front with Arabs in the rear shooting at convoys on their way to the front, acts of expulsion will be entirely reasonable. They may even be essential."

Including the expulsion of Israeli Arabs?

"The Israeli Arabs are 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. In both demographic and security terms they are liable to undermine the state. So that if Israel again finds itself in a situation of existential threat, as in 1948, it may be forced to act as it did then. If we are attacked by Egypt (after an Islamist revolution in Cairo) and by Syria, and chemical and biological missiles slam into our cities, and at the same time Israeli Palestinians attack us from behind, I can see an expulsion situation. It could happen. If the threat to Israel is existential, expulsion will be justified."

[wat0n]

I find it interesting to see you claim I misrepresent Morris when I quoted the letter he wrote to the Irish Times in 2008 in full.

Ah, so intellectually bankrupt. It's beautiful.

[noemon]

You did forget to quote this from the same page in the book you quoted earlier:

But the displacement of Arabs from Palestine or from the areas of Palestine that would become the Jewish State was inherent in Zionist ideology and, in microcosm, in Zionist praxis from the start of the enterprise.

And you are of course ignoring Benny Morris statements, especially this one:

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."

The apologetic non-sense Morris says to the Irish somehow overpower the statements he makes in his own books and in Israel itself, especially this one where he is calling upon official Israeli documents. If Morris says it's in the documents, are you claiming he's lying wat0n? Your favourite historian that is?

That's a new one even for you.

[wat0n]

I can see you are still ignoring what I said regarding your partial quotation of Morris' book, particularly that they thought that any sort of population transfer would be a compensated one, in the context of an international agreement. You are also ignoring the very paragraph I quoted, the fact that Morris was referring to a particular event in the 1948 war (Operation Hiram) in the Ha'aretz interview whereas he was referring in both my quotation from his book and his letter to the Irish Times to the war as a whole.

Do you have anything new to add?

[pugsville]

Benny Morris s a zionist, unabashed, and his has a large known bars in favour on the Zionsts/Israelis. and he has become increasing so.

" And the invasion of the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq duly occurred, on May 15th.:
h was the army Jordan invading ? it had elicit orders to stay out of the Jewish partition state and had an understanding with the Israelis. Jordan was annexing the Arab partition state, and conflict with Jordanian forces was causes by Israeli forces embarking on expansion.

"those "refugees" who had just assaulted the Jewish community'
really how many of those refugees had decided to embark on a war assaulting the Jewish community. virtually none. maybe a 1,000. to say all the refugees was guilty. but this standard all the Jewish population were responsible for the crimes of the Irgun.

[wat0n]

Benny Morris s a zionist, unabashed, and his has a large known bars in favour on the Zionsts/Israelis. and he has become increasing so.

" And the invasion of the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq duly occurred, on May 15th.:
h was the army Jordan invading ? it had elicit orders to stay out of the Jewish partition state and had an understanding with the Israelis. Jordan was annexing the Arab partition state, and conflict with Jordanian forces was causes by Israeli forces embarking on expansion.

Jordan and Israel fought over Jerusalem, mainly, and it's not like the Palestinians resisted the Jordanian invasion AFAIK.

Egypt and Syria however did try to invade Israel proper. This is undeniable.

"those "refugees" who had just assaulted the Jewish community'
really how many of those refugees had decided to embark on a war assaulting the Jewish community. virtually none. maybe a 1,000. to say all the refugees was guilty. but this standard all the Jewish population were responsible for the crimes of the Irgun.

Indeed, that is correct.

What I do find interesting is what he mentions in the last paragraph, that 2,000 Jews were killed by Palestinian militias even before the invasion by the Arab states. That doesn't really suggest that there was little to no fighting before it began.

[noemon]

I can see you are still ignoring what I said regarding your partial quotation of Morris' book, particularly that they thought that any sort of population transfer would be a compensated one, in the context of an international agreement. You are also ignoring the very paragraph I quoted, the fact that Morris was referring to a particular event in the 1948 war (Operation Hiram) in the Ha'aretz interview whereas he was referring in both my quotation from his book and his letter to the Irish Times to the war as a whole.

Do you have anything new to add?

I think you 've gone and lost your marbles again:

a) Benny Morris is not referring to one incident as you claim, look for the bold.
b) You misquoted Benny Morris and forgot an important piece from the page you brought forward.
c) You are not making any sense, Benny Morris in the bit you forgot clearly states:

But the displacement of Arabs from Palestine or from the areas of Palestine that would become the Jewish State was inherent in Zionist ideology and, in microcosm, in Zionist praxis from the start of the enterprise.

Historian Benny Morris, who opened the Pandora's box of Zionism, has found a new way to deal with the demons he unleashed. He justifies the expulsion of the Arabs in 1948, bemoans the fact that the job was left unfinished and doesn't rule out future population transfers. In an interview, Morris lays out his self-described 'politically incorrect' views.

-According to your findings, how many acts of Israeli massacre were perpetrated in 1948?

-"Twenty-four. In some cases four or five people were executed, in others the numbers were 70, 80, 100. There was also a great deal of arbitrary killing. Two old men are spotted walking in a field - they are shot. A woman is found in an abandoned village - she is shot. There are cases such as the village of Dawayima [in the Hebron region], in which a column entered the village with all guns blazing and killed anything that moved.

"The worst cases were Saliha (70-80 killed), Deir Yassin (100-110), Lod (250), Dawayima (hundreds) and perhaps Abu Shusha (70). There is no unequivocal proof of a large-scale massacre at Tantura, but war crimes were perpetrated there. At Jaffa there was a massacre about which nothing had been known until now. The same at Arab al Muwassi, in the north. About half of the acts of massacre were part of Operation Hiram [in the north, in October 1948]: at Safsaf, Saliha, Jish, Eilaboun, Arab al Muwasi, Deir al Asad, Majdal Krum, Sasa. In Operation Hiram there was a unusually high concentration of executions of people against a wall or next to a well in an orderly fashion.

That can't be chance. It's a pattern. Apparently, various officers who took part in the operation understood that the expulsion order they received permitted them to do these deeds in order to encourage the population to take to the roads. The fact is that no one was punished for these acts of murder. Ben-Gurion silenced the matter. He covered up for the officers who did the massacres."

-What you are telling me here, as though by the way, is that in Operation Hiram there was a comprehensive and explicit expulsion order. Is that right?

-"Yes. One of the revelations in the book is that on October 31, 1948, the commander of the Northern Front, Moshe Carmel, issued an order in writing to his units to expedite the removal of the Arab population. Carmel took this action immediately after a visit by Ben-Gurion to the Northern Command in Nazareth. There is no doubt in my mind that this order originated with Ben-Gurion. Just as the expulsion order for the city of Lod, which was signed by Yitzhak Rabin, was issued immediately after Ben-Gurion visited the headquarters of Operation Dani [July 1948]."

[pugsville]

Egypt and Syria however did try to invade Israel proper. This is undeniable.

but the description of Jordanian actions as an invasion is undeniably wrong. i pointing out that Morris makes ay pejorative statement about Jordanian actions which is undeniable false , which anyone with a passing acquaintance of the history should know but Morris an historian of this events makes? why is that? because his bars about the entire viewpoint of the war is very pronounced.

[ that 2,000 Jews were killed by Palestinian militias even before the invasion by the Arab states.

why does no one quite the number of Arab dead ?

[wat0n]

Well noemon, I can tell you are unwilling to actually address my arguments. Unsurprising, to be honest.

but the description of Jordanian actions as an invasion is undeniably wrong. i pointing out that Morris makes ay pejorative statement about Jordanian actions which is undeniable false , which anyone with a passing acquaintance of the history should know but Morris an historian of this events makes? why is that? because his bars about the entire viewpoint of the war is very pronounced.

Probably because Jerusalem had a substantial Jewish population and thus trying to take it was an invasion from the perspective of the Yishuv?

why does no one quite the number of Arab dead ?

Palestinians only or all Arabs? For the war as a whole or only up to May 14, 1948? For the war as a whole, at least, there are obviously figures for the Arab casualties as a whole, though those for the Palestinians have more scant documentation.

Honestly it's the first time for me to see figures for the dead from either side for the period December 1947-May 1948.

[noemon]

but the description of Jordanian actions as an invasion is undeniably wrong.

Of course it is, you need to keep in mind that Morris is the guy who accuses Ben Gurion for not finishing the job and getting rid of all Palestinians. He is also the guy who today wants a second massive ethnic-cleansing to get rid of the Arabs from the OPT and from Israel itself. Morris is not the kind of person for any value statements or judgements, he is only as good as the original material he brings forward.

And even that guy admits that in the official documents(original material) he read that ethnic-cleansing was the plan.

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."

I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying that Ben-Gurion erred in expelling too few Arabs?

"If he was already engaged in expulsion, maybe he should have done a complete job. I know that this stuns the Arabs and the liberals and the politically correct types. But my feeling is that this place would be quieter and know less suffering if the matter had been resolved once and for all. If Ben-Gurion had carried out a large expulsion and cleansed the whole country - the whole Land of Israel, as far as the Jordan River. It may yet turn out that this was his fatal mistake. If he had carried out a full expulsion - rather than a partial one - he would have stabilized the State of Israel for generations."

I find it hard to believe what I am hearing.

"If the end of the story turns out to be a gloomy one for the Jews, it will be because Ben-Gurion did not complete the transfer in 1948. Because he left a large and volatile demographic reserve in the West Bank and Gaza and within Israel itself."

In his place, would you have expelled them all? All the Arabs in the country?

"But I am not a statesman. I do not put myself in his place. But as an historian, I assert that a mistake was made here. Yes. The non-completion of the transfer was a mistake."

And today? Do you advocate a transfer today?

"If you are asking me whether I support the transfer and expulsion of the Arabs from the West Bank, Gaza and perhaps even from Galilee and the Triangle, I say not at this moment. I am not willing to be a partner to that act. In the present circumstances it is neither moral nor realistic. The world would not allow it, the Arab world would not allow it, it would destroy the Jewish society from within. But I am ready to tell you that in other circumstances, apocalyptic ones, which are liable to be realized in five or ten years, I can see expulsions. If we find ourselves with atomic weapons around us, or if there is a general Arab attack on us and a situation of warfare on the front with Arabs in the rear shooting at convoys on their way to the front, acts of expulsion will be entirely reasonable. They may even be essential."

Including the expulsion of Israeli Arabs?

"The Israeli Arabs are 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. In both demographic and security terms they are liable to undermine the state. So that if Israel again finds itself in a situation of existential threat, as in 1948, it may be forced to act as it did then. If we are attacked by Egypt (after an Islamist revolution in Cairo) and by Syria, and chemical and biological missiles slam into our cities, and at the same time Israeli Palestinians attack us from behind, I can see an expulsion situation. It could happen. If the threat to Israel is existential, expulsion will be justified."

Well noemon, I can tell you are unwilling to actually address my arguments. Unsurprising, to be honest.

I do not see any arguments, all I see is the fact that you misquoted Benny Morris from the page your brought forward and you also falsely claimed that he talks about one incident while I have put right in front of your face that he talks for a variety of incidents.

[wat0n]

No noemon, I most certainly did not misquote him or his conclusions, I also did not misquote the letter he wrote to The Irish Times in 2008 stating clearly that no ethnic cleansing took place and that there was no plan to expel the population - even if there were indeed expulsions and even killings of Palestinians (as he also says in the letter, in his book and also the interview published by Ha'aretz), an objective fact that is indeed documented by the Israelis themselves. Regarding the ideological characteristics of Zionism you say so keenly I omitted is also addressed in his book, and as I said he does say that the Zionist leadership believed that whole idea of transfer should be in the context of a compensated one, under the framework of an international agreement similar to those which had been signed at the time (the interwar and immediate aftermath of WWII) in several instances, and which was actually raised by the Peel Plan for the first time (all of this is in the boom too, unfortunately it is way too long to quote all of it in a single post, unlike his letter to the Irish Times).

You are free to address the above paragraph for once already, though I know you won't just like you can't even take Morris' interview for Ha'aretz without distorting what he said, even more so since your interpretation is clearly against both what he wrote in the book and what he wrote in the letter to the Irish Times.

[noemon]

No noemon, I most certainly did not misquote him or his conclusions, I also did not misquote the letter he wrote to The Irish Times in 2008 stating clearly that no ethnic cleansing took place and that there was no plan to expel the population

You are free to address his own statement from the Israel documents themselves, since you deny the obvious by misquoting pages and refusing to comprehend that the number 24 is not the same as the number 1 upon which you ridiculously insist.

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."

and as I said he does say that the Zionist leadership believed that whole idea of transfer should be in the context of a compensated one, under the framework of an international agreement similar to those which had been signed at the time (the interwar and immediate aftermath of WWII) in several instances

Imagining compensation to the ethnic-cleansed peoples does not make their ethnic-cleansing justified, it does not make it non-existent and no compensation has been provided 7 decades later, so your non-sense to justify ethnic-cleansing are quite hilarious. Are you saying that since Jews were compensated by Germany, it's all good what happened? Besides the Jews got more compensation than the Palestinians have and before you post non-sense note that the German reparation demand was made and given for material property.

Benny Morris says quite explicitly:

But the displacement of Arabs from Palestine or from the areas of Palestine that would become the Jewish State was inherent in Zionist ideology and, in microcosm, in Zionist praxis from the start of the enterprise.

You can dance around all you want but you cannot pretend forever.

[pugsville]

Probably because Jerusalem had a substantial Jewish population and thus trying to take it was an invasion from the perspective of the Yishuv?

so from the Yishuv perspective they already had legitimate claim over areas beyond allocated by the UN partition, and that them going and sizeing by armed force was not an invasion, and Morris totally identifies with this perspective. the presence of a large number of Arabs in irrelevant.

this is not a neutral unbiased standpoint. Morris is a Zionist, he has an idealogical position which his entire interpretation will conform to.

given the known facts of 1948 the conclusion that (a) the zionist leadership panned and intended to expand well beyond the UN partition state (b) they intended and committed large scale ethnic cleansing. is pretty much inescapable. they had discussed it for years, it was the default zionist position, it was required to achieve their objective. they had the means, the motive. to not do so would be for them to act illogically.

[wat0n]

You are free to address his own statement from the Israel documents themselves, since you deny the obvious my misquoting pages and refusing to comprehend that the number 24 is not the same as the number 1 upon which you ridiculously insist.

I already addressed that, why did you cut that part off?

Imagining compensation to the ethnic-cleansed peoples does not make their ethnic-cleansing justified, it does not make it non-existent and no compensation has been provided 7 decades later, so your non-sense to justify ethnic-cleansing are quite hilarious. Are you saying that since Jews were compensated by Germany, it's all good what happened? Besides the Jews got more compensation than the Palestinians have and before you post non-sense note that the German reparation demand was made and given for material property.

Benny Morris says quite explicitly:

You can dance around all you want but you cannot pretend forever.

I'm amazed you understood that when I was clearly talking about the position of the Zionist leadership on the issue of so-called transfer according to Morris himself. In particular, it was opposed to the wholesale expulsion of Arabs and, indeed, as Morris says it did not have any prior plans or decision of a wholesale expulsion of the Palestinians.

so from the Yishuv perspective they already had legitimate claim over areas beyond allocated by the UN partition, and that them going and sizeing by armed force was not an invasion, and Morris totally identifies with this perspective. the presence of a large number of Arabs in irrelevant.

They simply wanted to defend the Jewish population of Jerusalem from the possibility of being expelled or killed by the Jordanian army if it took control of the Jewish neighborhoods of the city, just like it did in Kfar Etzion.

this is not a neutral unbiased standpoint. Morris is a Zionist, he has an idealogical position which his entire interpretation will conform to.

given the known facts of 1948 the conclusion that (a) the zionist leadership panned and intended to expand well beyond the UN partition state (b) they intended and committed large scale ethnic cleansing. is pretty much inescapable. they had discussed it for years, it was the default zionist position, it was required to achieve their objective. they had the means, the motive. to not do so would be for them to act illogically.

Actually the idea of a wholesale forcible expulsion of the Arabs was a taboo even within the leadership, and the issue was only seriously discussed after the British raised the possibility of an agreement which included transferring Arabs out of the proposed Jewish State in the Peel Plan. Even then, it took place in the context of an international agreement on the matter rather than a war fought to expel Palestinians.

Furthermore, as I have shown in the past, there are confidential cables by Zionist leaders showing surprise to see the Palestinians fleeing in April 1948 (like in the case of Haifa). Hardly proof of planning, even if you may choose to disregard it based on some conspirational claim like saying that it was meant to be read (which is based on nothing). It's not like we haven't discussed this in the past...

[skinster]

I am not even going to respond to some nonsense like your use of the term "ethnic cleansing". The very idea is preposterous. If that was Israel's intent they would have been successful long before now.

That you've been brainwashed in zionist propaganda doesn't take away from the facts that ethnic-cleansing took place when zionist militias went on their killing sprees and ethnic cleansing continues to this day. That you deny this happening despite all the evidence against you is what is preposterous.

These Christians are better than you.

Unfortunately for you, it's not my word, it's on third party sources - including Morris' work. I most certainly don't care about who were Miko Peled's grandparents, it's not like he signed the Israeli Declaration of Independence himself.

I also said that the 100,000 Palestinians who left between December 1947 and March 1948 weren't expelled but simply left, which is also what Morris himself has said.

You don't need to care who Miko Peled's grandparents were - even though it's significant i.e. his grandfather signed the declaration of independence of Israel and his father was a General in the '67 "war" - but you can't ignore the information lifted from the Israeli army archives where the minutes of the General's meetings recorded them talking about attacking Egypt as an opportunity because Egypt wasn't prepared for war and would need at least 18 months to prepare.

Morris says a lot of things and the book of his you share is from the last decade, along with the news article of his. It's clear during this time he went from being a historian to being a shill for zionism. Baruch Kimmerling exposes Morris well here.

The notion that over 100,000 people merely chose to up and leave their homes and land (which they had a lot of) is so very = Israeli documents referred to the ethnic-cleansing at that time as "purification" (of the natives).

It must be really weird to claim something noeman was saying is bs and sharing a source which noeman reads and finds within your source agreement in the exact thing he is arguing. Must be really weird to keep arguing against it despite it being shown to you repeatedly in the words of the source that you shared.

Selling zionism isn't working well these days at all, more people now are aware of what zionism is; an ideology which supports a settler-colonial and apartheid state which conducts ethnic cleansing, still. To this very day. Peled reported on how the plan was to take the entire state in the 40s but the zionists did not do that because they didn't think it'd be good PR at the time (considering the plan for partition meant Palestinians would also have a state). The facts on the ground show that the Palestinians still don't have a state. But the land we pretend they do have is occupied and blockaded by Israel and Israel has built hundreds of settlements worth billions in this land, placed hundreds of thousands of "Israeli" settlers who keep eating up more and more of the land and terrorizing the natives....all the while committing more and more ethnic cleansing up to today.

I understand that due to your lack of arguments you have started the personal accusations again, but you need a paper bag to calm down before you start going mental again.

It really is stunning; the delusions on display.

[noemon]

I already addressed that, why did you cut that part off? I'm amazed you understood that when I was clearly talking about the position of the Zionist leadership on the issue of so-called transfer according to Morris himself. In particular, it was opposed to the wholesale expulsion of Arabs and, indeed, as Morris says it did not have any prior plans or decision of a wholesale expulsion of the Palestinians. given the known facts of 1948 the conclusion that (a) the zionist leadership panned and intended to expand well beyond the UN partition state (b) they intended and committed large scale ethnic cleansing. is pretty much inescapable. they had discussed it for years, it was the default zionist position, it was required to achieve their objective. they had the means, the motive. to not do so would be for them to act illogically.
Actually the idea of a wholesale forcible expulsion of the Arabs was a taboo even within the leadership, and the issue was only seriously discussed after the British raised the possibility of an agreement which included transferring Arabs out of the proposed Jewish State in the Peel Plan. Even then, it took place in the context of an international agreement on the matter rather than a war fought to expel Palestinians.

Instead of your zionist creative interpretations of Benny Morris facts, it's preferable to actually read his own explicit words from the documents themselves:

They perpetrated ethnic cleansing.

"There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing.

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."

But the displacement of Arabs from Palestine or from the areas of Palestine that would become the Jewish State was inherent in Zionist ideology and, in microcosm, in Zionist praxis from the start of the enterprise.

They simply wanted to defend the Jewish population of Jerusalem from the possibility of being expelled or killed by the Jordanian army if it took control of the Jewish neighbourhoods of the city, just like it did in Kfar Etzion.

Pugsville is asking you why is Morris considering the invasion of Jordan to East Jerusalem as an invasion to Israel itself when East Jerusalem was not part of the partition plan and you reply with moralistic whining and claptrap instead, even when you fell right into your own straw, again, when you said that he is talking from the perspective of the Yishuv thus admitting that no-one in Israel had any intention of honouring the partition plan.

[wat0n]

You don't need to care who Miko Peled's grandparents were - even though it's significant i.e. his grandfather signed the declaration of independence of Israel and his father was a General in the '67 "war" - but you can't ignore the information lifted from the Israeli army archives where the minutes of the General's meetings recorded them talking about attacking Egypt as an opportunity because Egypt wasn't prepared for war and would need at least 18 months to prepare.

I think you might be mixing the 1967 war with the 1948 one. I recall I posted an article on how recently published Israeli archives on the former actually show they believed Egypt only needed some weeks to be able to be prepared to fight Israel.

Morris says a lot of things and the book of his you share is from the last decade, along with the news article of his. It's clear during this time he went from being a historian to being a shill for zionism. Baruch Kimmerling exposes Morris well here.

That was also discussed here, it was ultimately based on a rather biased reading of Plan Dalet. I also love how Kimmerling is considered to be a historian when he was actually a sociologist, while Morris is the one who has the history degrees...

The notion that over 100,000 people merely chose to up and leave their homes and land (which they had a lot of) is so very =

Why? They feared for their security as violence began to escalate gradually and as they realized it was going to get worse when the British left the region and they were left on their own and actually had properties or at least contacts outside Mandatory Palestine.

I actually think most people would have left in their situation, just like many Syrians are currently fleeing the country over its civil war, as it was shown by ingliz a few days ago at TLTE the upper classes are overrepresented among refugees (considering a high percentage of doctors and engineers as reported by European sources) and leaving their property behind.

Israeli documents referred to the ethnic-cleansing at that time as "purification" (of the natives).

Example?

It must be really weird to claim something noeman was saying is bs and sharing a source which noeman reads and finds within your source agreement in the exact thing he is arguing. Must be really weird to keep arguing against it despite it being shown to you repeatedly in the words of the source that you shared.

No, he's just quoting rather selectively from it. Morris dedicates a complete chapter on the debate among Zionists on the concept of transfer precisely because it cannot summarized in a single paragraph and because the debate went through different stages.

Likewise, he also ignores what Morris himself wrote as his general assessment of the war in the book, and also in his letter to the Irish Times in 2008.

Selling zionism isn't working well these days at all, more people now are aware of what zionism is; an ideology which supports a settler-colonial and apartheid state which conducts ethnic cleansing, still. To this very day. Peled reported on how the plan was to take the entire state in the 40s but the zionists did not do that because they didn't think it'd be good PR at the time (considering the plan for partition meant Palestinians would also have a state). The facts on the ground show that the Palestinians still don't have a state. But the land we pretend they do have is occupied and blockaded by Israel and Israel has built hundreds of settlements worth billions in this land, placed hundreds of thousands of "Israeli" settlers who keep eating up more and more of the land and terrorizing the natives....all the while committing more and more ethnic cleansing up to today.

You actually believe that leftist student unions are representative of the general population? Don't make me laugh

You say that the facts on the ground vindicate Peled, yet I don't really see how. I mean, Israel currently enjoys peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan to a great deal because it left Egyptian territory and because all sides saw an interest in negotiations and compromise.

[noemon]

No, he's just quoting rather selectively from it. Morris dedicates a complete chapter on the debate among Zionists on the concept of transfer precisely because it cannot summarized in a single paragraph and because the debate went through different stages.

Likewise, he also ignores what Morris himself wrote

This is what Morris wrote and it is what you selectively forgot to quote from the page you brought forward:

They perpetrated ethnic cleansing.

"There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing.

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."

But the displacement of Arabs from Palestine or from the areas of Palestine that would become the Jewish State was inherent in Zionist ideology and, in microcosm, in Zionist praxis from the start of the enterprise.

If you claim that Morris disputes his own self, then you can bring his contradictions forward.

[wat0n]

Instead of your zionist creative interpretations of Benny Morris facts, it's preferable to actually read his own explicit words from the documents themselves:

Like this one you mean?

Israel and the Palestinians
Thu, Feb 21, 2008, 00:00

Madam, - Israel-haters are fond of citing - and more often, mis-citing - my work in support of their arguments. Let me offer some corrections.

The Palestinian Arabs were not responsible "in some bizarre way" (David Norris, January 31st) for what befell them in 1948. Their responsibility was very direct and simple.

In defiance of the will of the international community, as embodied in the UN General Assembly Resolution of November 29th, 1947 (No. 181), they launched hostilities against the Jewish community in Palestine in the hope of aborting the emergence of the Jewish state and perhaps destroying that community. But they lost; and one of the results was the displacement of 700,000 of them from their homes.

It is true, as Erskine Childers pointed out long ago, that there were no Arab radio broadcasts urging the Arabs to flee en masse; indeed, there were broadcasts by several Arab radio stations urging them to stay put. But, on the local level, in dozens of localities around Palestine, Arab leaders advised or ordered the evacuation of women and children or whole communities, as occurred in Haifa in late April, 1948. And Haifa's Jewish mayor, Shabtai Levy, did, on April 22nd, plead with them to stay, to no avail.

Most of Palestine's 700,000 "refugees" fled their homes because of the flail of war (and in the expectation that they would shortly return to their homes on the backs of victorious Arab invaders). But it is also true that there were several dozen sites, including Lydda and Ramla, from which Arab communities were expelled by Jewish troops.

The displacement of the 700,000 Arabs who became "refugees" - and I put the term in inverted commas, as two-thirds of them were displaced from one part of Palestine to another and not from their country (which is the usual definition of a refugee) - was not a "racist crime" (David Landy, January 24th) but the result of a national conflict and a war, with religious overtones, from the Muslim perspective, launched by the Arabs themselves.

There was no Zionist "plan" or blanket policy of evicting the Arab population, or of "ethnic cleansing". Plan Dalet (Plan D), of March 10th, 1948 (it is open and available for all to read in the IDF Archive and in various publications), was the master plan of the Haganah - the Jewish military force that became the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) - to counter the expected pan-Arab assault on the emergent Jewish state. That's what it explicitly states and that's what it was. And the invasion of the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq duly occurred, on May 15th.

It is true that Plan D gave the regional commanders carte blanche to occupy and garrison or expel and destroy the Arab villages along and behind the front lines and the anticipated Arab armies' invasion routes. And it is also true that mid-way in the 1948 war the Israeli leaders decided to bar the return of the "refugees" (those "refugees" who had just assaulted the Jewish community), viewing them as a potential fifth column and threat to the Jewish state's existence. I for one cannot fault their fears or logic.

The demonisation of Israel is largely based on lies - much as the demonisation of the Jews during the past 2,000 years has been based on lies. And there is a connection between the two.
I would recommend that the likes of Norris and Landy read some history books and become acquainted with the facts, not recycle shopworn Arab propaganda. They might then learn, for example, that the "Palestine War" of 1948 (the "War of Independence," as Israelis call it) began in November 1947, not in May 1948. By May 14th close to 2,000 Israelis had died - of the 5,800 dead suffered by Israel in the whole war (ie almost 1 per cent of the Jewish population of Palestine/Israel, which was about 650,000).

- Yours, etc,

Prof BENNY MORRIS, Li-On, Israel

Pugsville is asking you why is Morris considering the invasion of Jordan to East Jerusalem as an invasion to Israel itself when East Jerusalem was not part of the partition plan and you reply with moralistic whining and claptrap instead, even when you fell right into your own straw, again, when you said that he is talking from the perspective of the Yishuv thus admitting that no-one in Israel had any intention of honouring the partition plan.

Jordan aimed to conquer the complete city, and East Jerusalem was not allotted to the Arab state either.

Upon conquering territory like East Jerusalem and the West Bank, Jordan expelled the Jewish population that remained as the case of Kfar Etzion can attest. So, why wouldn't it be valid to say that the Yishuv was defending them?

If you claim that Morris disputes his own self, then you can bring his contradictions forward.

Do you? How can you explain the letter quoted above?

I think he was talking exclusively about the massacres perpetrated by the IDF during war in the interview for Ha'aretz - which, indeed, took place -, but not about the motivations for the Yishuv to fight the war and the decisions the political leadership took before and during the early stages of the war. That is how the interview in Ha'aretz and his letter to the Irish Times fit.