On 1948 | Benny Morris | Part II | 2018 interview

What happened to the Palestinians when Israel declared its independence in 1948?
Was it ethnic cleansing? Chaos? Legitimate Jewish self-defense?
Prof. Benny Morris is arguably the preeminent historian of this question.
His answers tend to upset everyone equally, which is an accomplishment when it comes to Israel & Palestine. In short, Morris' scholarship is contentious, but hugely important.
This is part two of my two part interview with Morris last summer, at his home in southern Israel.
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[@Palestini22]

First, I would like to thank you for having done these interviews. Let me say my take about this issue and in particular on Prof. Morris. I am Palestinian myself and to be honest I have started looking thoroughly into the history of my country for the last 15 months let's say. I noticed many things which were not that much clear to me, let me say that the main sources for me were books of Ilan Pappe also talks on youtube by all of the three main new historians. What I noticed from the three of them is that all are consistent but Prof. Morris. I mean let's take for example Prof. Shlaim you can find a lot of tapes for him in which he says exactly the same thing when it comes to 48. For example he says "Whatever way you looked on the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, it involved a monumental injustice to the Palestinians" you find him saying the same thing in different talks and the reason to that from my understanding is that history scholars and may be scholars in general are very precise when it comes to wording. On the other hand, Prof. Morris is not consistent or may be he does not want to be so. If you look on his famous interview in Haaretz in 2004 he said this "In the months of April-May 1948, units of the Haganah [the pre-state defense force that was the precursor of the IDF] were given operational orders that stated explicitly that they were to uproot the villagers, expel them and destroy the villages themselves." Then if you look on what he's just said in these two parts, he said "there was no policy" and "few people were expelled", The statements are clearly in contradictions. I don't want from Prof. Morris to say things which are pleasing to me. I just want from him to be consistent since I found difficulty in believing that he is the same guy who says these things in such interviews and also write other different things in press or in his books. That's my point, there are other issues I would like to comment on like oral history and others, but may be I will do it later. Thanks again.

[@Mas_Tun]

I know the interview which you're referring to, and he isn't being inconsistent with what he said here. He was stating that there wasn't an official policy to remove all the Arabs from Palestine/Israel altogether. He does state, however, that there were incidents in which Haganah officials were given orders to expel the populations of some villages. This point coincides with what he said in that Haaretz interview, which isn't saying that these orders were for all Arab villages

[@Transliminal]

Hi Saddam ... thanks so much for these thoughtful comments. This is, indeed, a core public criticism of Morris--i.e., that he changes the tenor of his views over time, even if his documentation of the facts remains consistent. A second critique, of course, is his very heavy reliance on Israeli documentation, at the expense of other (potential) sources. ... Please stay tuned, and subscribe both here and at my Zionism-specific channel: Zionism--An Investigation .... I'll be uploading my interview with Ilan Pappe in coming days... please share widely, and am looking forward to your thoughts!

[@drplot1]

Pappe unfortunately is not an objective scholar. His writings are tendentious, polemical and in many cases factually inaccurate. I would describe him as an intellectual political partisan and less an objective historian.

[@dontbeadrone]

Perhaps, this is a strength. Whereas the others have become Leftists ideologues, and this is perhaps reflected in their refusal to budge or say anything that violates this view, Morris has remained "fluid" in his own political beliefs. Also, it's possible that in the intervening years between Morris' interviews, the information itself has become more fluid, and that he his updating his own understanding of the events based on access to new data since one of those older interviews.

[@pkoppart]

@@Transliminal But in Part-1 of this interview, he clearly states that the Arabs have never been known to maintain documentation on anything. So, it basically means, his options were limited as far as referring to documentation is concerned and hence the reliance on Israeli documentation.

[@khaledzurikat7190]

I find the disagreement between Morris and Pape irrelevant. Eventually they both literally say “Jewish soldiers demolished complete villages to prevent Arabs from returning, Jewish soldiers committed atrocities and massacres, Jewish leadership (semi) publicly announced the desire to “transfer”, i.e. expel”. Whether it was a written Israeli policy or not has no bearding in the facts above. Also, there is the fact that Israel never allowed the refugees to back to there stolen homes by the Jews. A very simple question is “why” it did not allow. There is one obvious answer, it wanted a Jewish state, a clear intention of ethnic cleansing

[@rickytikitavi4101]

Or perhaps Israel didn't allow them to return because it didn't want a hostile population living in their midst immediately after a war had been fought, without formal Arab recognition of Israel's right to exist. Are we to pretend that this was an unimaginable line of thinking that must have required some pre-conceived plan, considering that the Jordanians did the exact same thing with the Jewish population of the west bank? (sorry, the Jordanians actually did worse: as opposed to Israel, they left zero Jews in the territories they occupied).

[@khaledzurikat7190]

@@rickytikitavi4101 Well a thief, by definition, doesn’t give back what they stole. Let’s remember that not allowing people to return to their own homes is a crime against humanity, the most odious of all crimes. It is a very basic moral issue that if we excuse it then we strip ourselves of basic human morality. Here is real personal example for you: My own grand father who was forced to leave his own house in Haifa in 1948 and went to refuge in Jordan went back on a visit to see his to see his own home in 1967 only to find a European Jewish woman living in his own house but who would not let him in when just asked if he could just look inside. But through the door crack he could see his own furniture that he bought when he got married and with all his youth memories with it. He collapsed crying on the door step and she still would not let him in just to see his own house. He begged her just to let him see. My mother was a child with him. If you have the nerve to look at someone in the eye and say this is right then I rest my case with you.

[@rickytikitavi4101]

@@khaledzurikat7190 I can't speak for the Jewish woman since I have no idea who she was, what she had been through or what thoughts crossed her mind when an Arab man asked to enter her home. I do know however that my grandfather never went back to see his house in the (formerly) polish town he fled, in what is now Ukraine. I do know that my grandmother may her memory be blessed never dared to travel back to see her house in Cairo which she fled under the threat of death, nor was she compensated by Egypt for her family’s possessions that were confiscated. Similarly, my grandmother-in-law never went back to live in her house in a village north of Jerusalem, because the Jordanians destroyed it once they occupied it in 1948 and, to the best of my knowledge, today Palestinian Arabs reside on that plot of land, which is administered by the Palestinian authority. So, while I'm sympathetic to your grandfather who I'm sure himself did nothing to deserve the horrors of a war started and perpetuated by Arab leaders, you might find that I'm not so easily emotionally manipulated by personal stories devoid of any and all historic context, seeing as I have quite a few of my own. The bottom line is that there wasn’t a pre-existing policy to expel Arabs other than tactical decisions made during battle (and trust me, if there was, no Arabs would be left in Israel). The refugee problem could've been avoided entirely had it not been for the continuous Arab refusal to recognize a Jewish state in ANY borders be it the peel commission, the UN 1947 partition borders or the 1948 borders. It's utterly absurd to expect that Israel should've allowed a hostile population to return under such conditions, when their Arab leaders wouldn't even agree to negotiate with Israel after the war and did all in their power to destroy it.

[@khaledzurikat7190]

@@rickytikitavi4101 My grandfather story is just to put a human face to the atrocities as documented by Hunan Rights Watch and B’tselem were 2/3rd of the Palestinians population were expelled or fled but were not allowed to come back. That European Jewish lady story who you absurdly gave her title to my grandfathers house is the same story of the 750K Palestinians who lost their homes in 1948. It seems like you are someone who in their head can justify a crime against humanity by simply relaying propaganda reasons such as “hostile population” , that is what the Europeans said about the Apaches in the US. or other silly Propagandas such as “if they accepted we would have brought them back” . btw: who in their right mind would accept giving their land to others simply because others took by force. I wrote here not to “convince” you or get your sympathies (I think there is no hope in you personally, unfortunately large majority of Israelis are like you, but I still hope they are redeemable sometime in the future) but to educate others who would read this. It is an amazing human capability for the oppressed to justify oppressing others. But is immoral and a crime by all standards and cultures. And no I don’t “trust you”: 75% ethnic cleansing is a pretty efficient operation I would say but maybe you have higher standards of crime efficiency for it to be “a policy”

[@deficrypto1234]

@@rickytikitavi4101 Palestenian resistance had ended as early as 39 and barely had any involvement in the 48 war. Its strange for someone to ethnically cleanse someone and then not allow them back cos they will be 'hostile'. Imagine preventing Holocaust victims from returning to Germany cos they might be 'hostile'. Or black slaves being allowed to live in America after the war of emancipation cos they might be 'hostile'. Maybe Hutus shouldnt allow Tutis's to live in Rwand cos they may be 'hostile' after a genocide. Refugees have a right to return.

[@Mas_Tun]

Really loved this interview. Very informative. Actually much more so than many of his uploaded lectures, which are almost all the same and mostly worth watching for the Q&As.

[@iillii5]

are these details in his books?

[@dinorino2]

@iillii5. His book "1948" is extremely detailed

[@yugioh8810]

I'm late to comment here but you challenging Morris and Pappe is very good work sir @Transliminal Thanks for these interviews.

[@adaptiveagile]

Absolutely fantastic interview. Thank you!

[@iillii5]

Benny Morris is my go to in this subject such a knowledgable man

[@sbaumgartner9848]

Me too. Serious journalists and other scholars, etc. lean far more to what Benny Morris has to say than to the likes of Pape and Finkelstein.

[@josephtein3835]

Glad to see he mentions Deir Yasin in this segment, although he seems to be minimizing the murderous intent of the perpetrators.

[@yossibtk]

I think that his point was that it wasn't planned ahead or systematic, It sounds like he minimizing the severity of the actions taken by those individuals that made those unjustified killings (out of combat killings) but I don't think that what was he meant. He is an historian and he just trying to lay out facts, not being morally judgey.

[@PLOttawa]

@18:04. That's not true about oral history. Most of it can be corroborated, despite some details being murky or lost.

[@shaygahweh]

Great interview.

[@davidzero7024]

Great information. Thanks for sharing

[@javierborda8684]

I kind of get his point about oral testimonies, but really nothing at all can be inferred from them? Nothing? Not even an admittedly subjective comparative mapping of what people perceived to have happened. Even if you couldn’t rely on it scientifically, it gives you enormous nuance and clues. History is about humans, not processes (documentation).

[@clairezet3182]

Morris admits that much - this is what gives him his broad perspective, but he is very cautious with them. so nuance yes but unequivocal truth - no.

[@caseyjones831]

I'm glad you said this . People make this mistake often and history is misinterpreted on this principal more often than not.

[@deficrypto1234]

@@clairezet3182 Unfortunately most of the Holocaust is oral testimony. The first book on the Holocaust was writen about 20 years after the event.

[@clairezet3182]

@@deficrypto1234 Are you mad? 90+% of Polish Jews perished, the remainder unable to trace them. You have an unsavoury agenda - you are not for truth and facts, so please do not write to me.

[@deficrypto1234]

@@clairezet3182 provide thé évidence that 90% of Polish Jews perished.

[@TheShacharZiv]

Morris is somewhat more rigorous as an historian and I think that if you read his books you'll see that he is pretty consistent. However, his main limitation is that he doesn't read or speak Arabic at all. That is of course a huge limitation. I hope one day there would also be open archives of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq, and other researchers would be able to shed more light.

[@sbaumgartner9848]

I understand what you are saying. Maybe he used professional translators to help him. BTW, Arabic is a very difficult language to learn, especially at the elite level that would be required for both reading and speaking. I know as I've studied it.

[@sbaumgartner9848]

Morris has clarified elsewhere why he didn't learn Arabic. No Arab country, zero, Nada, has ever opened their archives to their citizens or to anyone outside of their countries. The western world has. Even Russia after the USSR dissolved opened their archives and western scholars like Stephen Kotkin, Anne Applebaum, European scholars, etc who are fully conversant in Russian spent several years and several trips studying the archives and travelling to different parts of the country. The other reason Morris doesn't depend on Arabic is because what has been written and is publicly available is based on oral history. As we all know what one person tells another person, and keeps going down the chain eventually gets twisted into something very different. Morris says that unless oral history is captured and verified very quickly it looses it's dependability, regardless of where in the world the oral history is captured.

[@85_Inka]

Does anyone believe that if any Arab country had documents in their archives that would support claims about massacres committed by IDF they wouldn't have already presented them?

[@bunb8541]

If it exists in their archives, they would.

[@sbaumgartner9848]

This is a Wow! The more I listen to Benny Morris the more impressed I am. I realize that it's very difficult for the average person to determine what 'expert' has the best interpretation of history, but I get the feeling Morris is the most accurate person regarding Israel/Palestine. It's obvious being a credible dedicated historian on areas of the world like this takes a person who is willing to learn multiple languages, slowly go through a lot of obscure and boring texts, while being able to connect or dis-connect the dots. Most of us should know that we can't rely on what people say orally.I remember Canadian scientist/prof David Sukzuki saying that the average person's recollection of an event is 30% wrong, plus we all know the game of passing a sentence on to a chain of people, by the time the last person has received the sentence, what is said is very different from what the initial speaker said. I see Ilan Pappe is easily found on KZbin, and I know I should be open to listening to him. But for now I'm more interested in reading Benny Morris's books and listening to him talk. The history of this area of the world makes the Russian Empire /former USSR look like a piece of cake in comparison.

[@nilskp]

Morris is a Zionist. Notice how he ignores the ethics of what happened and only applies cold logic. This is exactly how the Nazis dealt with the Jews. Try listening to Pappe as well, a deeply moral man

[@philosophicaltrainer2610]

Really good!

[@Transliminal]

Philosophical Trainer glad you found it insightful ... I hope to combine this with other interviews & in field footage into a proper documentary ... please share, subscribe & check out the patreon page at the end of the vid!

[@philosophicaltrainer2610]

Transliminal mate, last time we had a chat you said you wanted to chat with a muslim/sufi. Dr. Hossein Nasr is a professor at George washington university. First non westerner and Muslim to give a lecture at the Gifford lectures and he is also in the library of living philosophers. His Gifford Lecture was entitled 'knowledge and the sacred." Please interview him! hahaha

[@Transliminal]

Philosophical Trainer oh yeah-am definitely aware of Nasr’s work ... is he still alive? I thought he’d be super old by now... if I ever find myself in DC, though, I’d definitely reach out for an interview .. great suggestion

[@philosophicaltrainer2610]

Transliminal he is super old hahaha but alive as far as i know. Would be good

Is there a corollary to a Bennie Morris on this same history but from a Palestinian pov? Or maybe just from someone who isnt employed by a university named after Ben Gurion? Lol. Are we really to believe that what happened were merely just "unintended consequences"? And he def skirts the whole 'plausible deniability' issue.

[@Transliminal]

Absolutely. I've also interviewed Ilan Pappe, on the same subject ('Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine', U of Exeter), and hope to interview Rashid Khalili, but he's thus far been harder to get through to. ... I hope to edit & upload the Pappe interview in the near future. ... If you haven't already, please sign up as a Patron to help make it happen!

[@Mas_Tun]

Ben Gurion's professors arent really right wing. It's not like Bar Ilan, which is further to the right. I think he skirts the plausible deniability issue regarding Lehi and Irgun because he hasn't seen any concrete proof of it, so he didn;t want to say anything one way or another

[@Transliminal]

True on both accounts, imho. Ben Gurion University (historically anyway) is actually considered the left-wing black sheep of the Middle East studies academe in Israel, for what it's worth.

[@relhage100]

"precipitated flight of Palestinians" lol As if they always wanted to leave, and the violence only helped them make their mind faster.

[@aliahammouri]

He lost his credibility to me when he disregarded the Tantoura Massacre research. A documentary done recently shows specifically how these ex- Israeli soldiers were coerced into denying their testimonies.

[@katrinweigel3796]

Interesting. Where could i find sources on this?

[@drplot1]

In my opinion, Benny Morris knows more about the '48 war and the development of the Palestinian refugee crisis than anyone. He maintains a historical objectivity and discusses facts and conclusions based on those facts following a lifetime of dedicated scholarship.

[@jonsnow4029]

Not sure I agree with that assessment. His claims on the invalidity of oral testimonies (one of the fundamental pillars of the modern legal system, investigative journalism and history) is plain wrong. Relying on documents provided by the perpetuators as the main source of his findings should tell you everything you need to know about his credibility.

[@bloodyplebs]

@@jonsnow4029 lol ok Mr expert.

[@clairezet3182]

@@jonsnow4029 oral testimony is only valid if it is close to the events; 40 years on people's views tend to be influenced by what they had heard in the meantime, by their own political view and by expediency. You ar enot right when you say Morris does not rely on oral testimony as he himself says in the video that he had interviewed different kinds of people. This, at least, provides him with his broad yet cautious approach.

[@evanroberts2771]

What started the war? Something that predates Benny's May trigger. The Deir Yassin massacre.

[@cl9615]

@@evanroberts2771 The war was started by the Arabs on the 30th of November

[@Offa7a]

My response to this B:. Watch any testimony of Israeli soldiers from that era.

[@sbaumgartner9848]

I am commenting on why Benny Morris chose not to learn Arabic and why he doesn't depend on oral history. Morris has clarified elsewhere why he didn't learn Arabic. No Arab country, zero, Nada, has ever opened their archives to their citizens or to anyone outside of their countries. The western world has. Even Russia after the USSR dissolved they opened their archives to western scholars like Stephen Kotkin, Anne Applebaum, European scholars, etc who are fully conversant in Russian and spent several years and several trips studying the archives and travelling to different parts of the country. The other reason Morris doesn't depend on Arabic is because what has been written and is publicly available is based on oral history. As we all know what one person tells another person, and keeps going down the chain eventually gets twisted into something very different. Morris says that unless oral history is captured and verified very quickly it loses its dependability, regardless of where in the world the oral history is captured. I would also like to know what % of people who have watched this video, and the smaller % who have commented on it, have actually bothered to sit down and read what these people have to say. My bet is it's very few. How said that we have become a 30 second sound bite world.

[@moseskpakor7427]

It's not that easy to study, study and study, read here and there, there and here to gain such knowledge as Prof Morris and contemporaries. But the fact is, trusting or believing these information is usually hampered by an individual's perception of what he believes as truth or what their people told them as truth. But I think the most important thing today is for the two sides to forget the mistakes of old and look for ways to make peace now. They cannot continue this way forever and ever. May God help the innocent people who are usually made to pay the price.

[@colinboyd9121]

Well thanks for the interview. Pappe's version certainly has the stronger ring of truth but at least they are both debating the same facts

[@ZombieLincoln666]

lol no, Morris is a well respected historian. Pappe is an activist

[@sbaumgartner9848]

I agree with you ZombieL@@ZombieLincoln666

[@Offa7a]

Omg how come 120 thousand Palestinians were already expelled before the war then. Arabs attacking!!! At their homeland ? When you expelled their leaders. De armed them. Established the Haganah stern lehai.

[@jahermos]

I don’t trust someone who relies only on official documents - that seems either incredibly naive or intellectually dishonest (or maybe just lazy)

[@sbaumgartner9848]

OMG! Lazy. Do you have any idea what it must be like to spend thousands of hours going through official documents in multiple languages, cross referencing who said what and when, understanding the context of each piece of writing,, etc? If someone things oral is easier it's because oral is a passive, easy way out of understanding. Just look at the work Benny had to do to translate different languages whose meanings of even the word 'dog, house, child, happy, sad, generous, lazy' etc. can vary between language to language. I've studied Arabic and I find going through an Arabic dictionary fascinating. They take a root typically 3 letter word and expand it to various nouns, adjectives, verbs, etc. The number of definitions of even one noun can give you a wide range of usage, definitions/uses I'd never would have thought of. And using the wrong definition can give a very different interpretation to the person listening to your talk or reading what you have said.

[@Halcyon1234567891]

Thanks for the video. Tone Tone Tone. The man is dismissive, arrogant, and passive.As a personality trait for a serious historian, that’s unique. He took many shots at Ilan Pappe- as if that fortifies his position. If anything, it lends much credit to IP because this professor is repeatedly using him as a reference. He is adamant that no one tells the truth about the opposing side- except maybe the holocaust survivors . And that people get together at picnics, forget the individual nightmares they’ve endured for 40 years, and trade them in for a group version. He’d be a funny joke if the topic wasn’t so grim. By contrast, check out the Pappe interview. IP was informative, with numbers/dates. He was very engaging, and processed every word uttered- the interviewer will attest to that.

[@neoepicurean3772]

Lolz, Pappe called Morris all sorts of names in his interview!

[@breathize]

The interviewer has a real hard on to try and trip up Benny Morris on Deir Yassin.How many different ways does Benny have to say you cannot trust the accounts of this? Sheesh!

[@evanroberts2771]

Because questioning has got the world closer to the truth. Originally the massacre was denied. Digging through the archives, researches/historians have found plans/outlines on the course that would be taken to expel the arabs, and keep them gone. Benny's in the middle, but still downplaying the roles played by the extremist groups. Benny states that "people weren't lined up and shot". “They ran like cats,” related the commander of the operation, Yehoshua Zettler, the Jerusalem commander of Lehi, as he described the Arabs fleeing from their homes. Shoshani interviewed him in 2009, a few weeks before his death. Zettler denied that his people carried out a massacre in the village but he spared no words to describe the way its inhabitants were killed. “I won’t tell you that we were there with kid gloves on. House after house ... we’re putting in explosives and they are running away. An explosion and move on, an explosion and move on and within a few hours, half the village isn’t there any more,” he said. www.haaretz.com/israel-news/MAGAZINE-testimonies-from-the-censored-massacre-at-deir-yassin-1.5494094

[@evanroberts2771]

"Another harsh account was provided by Prof. Mordechai Gichon, a lieutenant colonel in the Israel Defense Forces reserves, who was a Haganah intelligence officer sent to Deir Yassin when the battle ended. “To me it looked a bit like a pogrom,” said Gichon, who died about a year ago. “If you’re occupying an army position - it’s not a pogrom, even if a hundred people are killed. But if you are coming into a civilian locale and dead people are scattered around in it - then it looks like a pogrom. When the Cossacks burst into Jewish neighborhoods, then that should have looked something like this.” According to Gichon, “There was a feeling of considerable slaughter and it was hard for me to explain it to myself as having been done in self-defense. My impression was more of a massacre than anything else. If it is a matter of killing innocent civilians, then it can be called a massacre.”"

[@breathize]

@@evanroberts2771 Wow! You found somebody that disagrees with Benny Morris. Aren't you special?

[@breathize]

@@evanroberts2771 Just an FYI, I have muted you so no need to reply. LOL!

[@evanroberts2771]

@@breathize LOL. The reply isn't specifically for you. It's for other readers who see your absurd statement.

[@vahdetyldrm2144]

We are not witness what happen in1947 but we witness now gaza better ask to him what happen in gaza we guess he tell the thrue or deviate

[@Rascaduanok]

This is one of the funniest things I’ve seen. He doubts the massacre at Tantura, little realising that a few years later Israeli veterans themselves would admit to it on camera!

[@alexsternberg2029]

Many listeners have an preconceived opinion about these events. So, if you believe that Israel committed the "Naqba" you believe Pappe and not Morris as Pappe is more anti Israeli. In Israeli society Morris is considered a :lefty historian. I believe he is telling the truth and is an unbiased historian

[@steephenabraham5372]

Is not Jordan Arab palastine

[@ttecnotut]

Both Pappe & Morris agree there was an atmosphere of expulsion. But Pappe knows Israel isn’t stupid enough to expulsion a written policy. It’s an unwritten policy. Morris is too shortsighted you see that.

[@clairezet3182]

You are wrong. Morris speaks the truth: expulsions became a necessity in the latter parts of the war as you cannot have your enemy sitting amongst your people. As you heard, for 4-5 months the Jews did not fight and suffered the onslought by the Arabs. In April 1948 they organised themselves and began a fully-justified offensive. Poland cleared its western border of every German who had lived there for hundreds of years prior to WWII; millions of German refugees as well as Poles, Ukrainianss and many, many others (totalling 50 million world-wide) fled their homes and were rehabilitated wherever they ended up, only the Palestinians were kept by their brethren as an open wound for the world to villify the Jews and to present themselves as victims so that they could be perpetually supported financially and in every other way by the despicable UNWRA. It has not served the Palestinians (many of whom originated in Asia and Africa and not in Palestine) well; their current suffering is due to their leaders and Muslim brethren. In Israel they live very well, prospering academically and financially.

[@ttecnotut]

@@clairezet3182 expelling invaders is different from expelling natives. Israelis expelled natives.

[@clairezet3182]

@@ttecnotut This is a fair distinction Sham Shan, but untrue. If the Jews came from the outside and indeed expelled the 'natives', you would be 100% right. But the Jews never expelled them and 60-80% of the 'natives' were not natives at all - they were mostly Muslim and Christian newcomers, some imported to the land by various conquerors and some coming as economic migrants, from neighbouring countries as well as from far-flung countries, who had no connection to the land whatsoever, right up to 1948. The countries they came from include: Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Greece, Albania, Armenia, Italy, Persia, Afghanistan, , Circassia, Bosnia, Sudan, etc, etc. Widely differing group of inhabitants speaking 51 languages were recorded in the 1931 census as well as dozens of birth-places listed for the non-Jewish communities. These people had no historic/religious or any other ties to the land. All this strongly disproves the idea that today's Palestinians have some long-standing connections to the land. Name one figure of prominence, one writer, one leader of the Palestinians during or prior to the Ottoman empire (which lasted for 400 years until 1917) - there is nothing. The idea of Palestinian identity came about in 1967, when the Jews liberated the lands which belonged to them historically and which were taken away from them by mighty powers. There has always been, however, a Jewish presence in the land - uninterrupted. The Muslims, unable to acknowledge Jewish history and religion, had to invent a narrative (and China, Cuba and Russia helped with this) and they came up with this fantasy story of a Palestinian people usurped of their land by the Jews. It is true that there were people living in the and, non-Jews and Jews. it is also true that there was never a nation/country/people called 'Palestinians', or rather there were and they included all those dozens of nationalities and Jews! They were all called Palestinians. The name Palestine originated with the Romans. The first 'Palestinians (= Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula) came to the land in 7th century AD as part of their conquest of the Middle East and beyond - look at the map: who is the colonialist? The tiny Israel or the vast Arab/Muslim lands? The Arabs of the land did not possess a separate identity as Palestinians - they were Arabs. Secondly: Expulsions by the Jews in 1948 account for a tiny fraction of displacement of the Arab and Christian communities. The vast majority left because this is what war does: it creates refugees. They were also encouraged by neighbouring countries to leave as the Arabs did not want to hurt them in their war against the Jews. The expulsions were a strategic necessity which any combatant will understand. The mayor of Haifa begged its non-Jewish inhabitants not to leave, but in war the mistrust is compounded and many of them left. From the river to the sea (at the least, for there is also a lnad beyond the Jordan river which could be legitimately claimed by the Jews) - is Jewish land by virtue of history, morality, legality and justice. All the minorities living in Israel are treated equally under the law. The Bahais chose to settle in Israel, there are Druze communities whose children serve in the IDF as combat soldiers/officers, etc etc. Israel is a democracy. The 'Palestinian refugees' are the only ones among 50-60 million refugees world-wide who have not been resettled or given citizenship of the country they ran away to, and UNWRA is a huge lie to syphon billions of dollars from the stupid and naive and fearful-of-Muslim-terror EU and many other countries who support the 'poor' Palestinians. Palestinians are clans/families who do not intermarry - so much for their homogeneity. Yes, many of them suffer - but they suffer not because of Israel but because of their corrupt rulers. So much more to say.... but if you are a true seeker of truth you will endorse what I have said above.

[@clairezet3182]

@@ttecnotut By the way, I fail to understand with whose ears you listened to this video? Morris says - expulstions account for a tiny percentage of 1948 war refugees. Please read my other reply to you.

[@ttecnotut]

@@clairezet3182 just b/c Palestinians speak Arabic, it doesn’t mean they’re from Arabia. Mexicans speak Spanish. But they’re not from Spain. They’re Latinized natives. Similarly, Palestinians are Arabized natives. Don’t be surprised if Palestinians are genetically closer to ancient Hebrews & Canaanites than the blonde Russian & Polish Jews. I agree war creates refugees. But Israel has done every thing it can to stop refugees from returning. This speaks to the atmosphere &!unwritten policy of expulsion of Arabs.

[@mdog111]

As a fellow Jew, I find Morris' justification for his rejection of Arab oral testimony whilst defending the oral testimony of holocaust survivors as somehow being beyond question, to be contemptible. By his standard, any oral history taken more than say, a year or two after the fact, cannot be relied upon. That would probably rule out 90% of what we know about the experience of those who went through the holocaust. His book on the Palestinian refugee problem is commendable for doing much to reveal the ugliness of what Israel did to the Palestinian community in 1948 but his hypocracy in dismissing Arab oral testimony as unreliable whilst defending Jewish oral testimony shows him in a very bad light. Imagine the outcry if modern revisionist historians attempted to minimise the human cost of the holocasut because they considered oral testimony of survivors to be unreliable and 'concocted over a campfire forty years later'!

[@reactionaryjudaism]

Oral testimony about the holocaust as actually frequently unreliable. For instance, there is extensive testimony about using human skin for lampshades in concentration camps, but it didn't happen. None of the facts of the holocaust rely on oral testimony,see David Cole.

[@damonkowarsky]

In his response to this interview Ilan Pappe said that the oral histories of Holocaust survivors were not taken at the time but began to be given during the Eichmann trial some years later. Pappe also points out oral testimony has been enough to convict paedophile priests in many countries even decades after the crimes took place.

[@puckutubesux7356]

Mood-slimes are unreliable because they're liars. The entire thing is propaganda. There was no such thing as "Palestine." It was a term used for an undefined region by Europeans. Nobody in Southwestern Syria separated themselves from the rest of Southern Syria, which is now Jordan. They spew a bunch of nonsense about how they're getting oppressed by a tiny sliver of land in a vast empire that they created through gen0cide.

[@Adushka1976]

Holocaust had HUGE documentation!!

[@jordidema3132]

In what types of documentation is this gigantic documentation divided? Do we discard oral testimonies? But let's play Morris' game, I'm going to ask something I don't know. Where is the documentation where the Nazis explain their intention to carry out the Holocaust?

[@ahyaok100]

Okay cool. Now let's look at how many civilian Jews were killed by Arab Palestinians militias around that time. They were not all exactly saints either. Bad things happened and there's plenty of blame to go around.

[@kennethroy6915]

So Hagganah became IDF. So then Hamas can become PDF(Palestinian Defense Forces). History truly is written by the victors. This man seems to portray the expulsion of the Palestinians as self-inflicted.

[@baikorg]

Hamas did not exist in 1948

[@frosibald81]

Well, he is a historian and not a propagandist.

[@TheSpyFromArrakis]

Actually, the PLO was (kind of) the "Palestinian Defense Force". The Hamas was funded and supported by Israel in the 80s to weaken the PLO, which worked. Then they became too strong and slowly started killing Palestinians as well, which also fits Israel agenda. The same with PA in the occupied territories.

[@mak2675]

@@baikorg he is talking about them with respect to now and the future

[@alexplotkin3368]

Hamas is a genocidal terror group If Hamas hadn't been stopped in October 2023 they would have murdered everyone in Israel. Israel didn't murder, or plan to murder, all the Palestinians in the 1947 to 1949 conflict. Now you're a Hamas apologist which is disgusting. If the Jews had lost the 1947 to 1949 conflict, the Jews would have been wiped out. The Palestinians rejected partition in 1947. And they've turned down every peace offer since.

[@buhaissy]

Ten maybe twenty were executed in Tantoura, but no systematic killings? A couple of rapes? Apologist much?

[@katrinweigel3796]

I am asking my self how Arabs could try to conquer Jewish villages and settlements since the mass of them o lay arrived very shortly before? Didn’t the Jewish population just took over houses and villages from the Arabs? Or did they build in enormous speed their own?

[@katrinweigel3796]

We know as a matter of fact about the fabrication of facts. I am going more with the approach of Miko Peled and Gabot Maté.

[@alexplotkin3368]

Gabor Mate is not a historian. He's a doctor.

[@dinorino2]

@katrinweigel3796 You're going with the approach of Miko Peled and Gabot Maté for one reason only: their approach is aligned with your initial bias. What you say about "fabrication of facts" is just a poor excuse. it's your way of saying "I simply don't like the FACTS that Morris puts forward". Benny Morris is a very serious and honest historian. If you claim that he's fabricating facts then the burden of proof is on you.

[@OK-mb7cy]

So, when Benny talked about dar yassin and the massacres that happened there, he says he doesn't believe palestinians' collective memory. But, he believes tantoura residents' memory because some didn't say there was massacres to Iraqi troops in the west bank. How can anyone take Benny seriously??? He was making excuses for IZL and LHI as not meaning to commit a massacre. Lol. This guy is a joke.

[@nilskp]

And since this interview, there's now a documentary where the soldiers admit what they did.

[@katrinweigel3796]

Israel Arabs can say what they like? I am not very convinced by this saying.

[@dinorino2]

@katrinweigel3796 I'm an Israeli and I can testify that Morris is correct. Israel Arabs can indeed say what they like. What makes you say that this is not the case?

[@MAGurue]

He is so apologetic of the israeli stance that given his stature as historian it's painfull to watch. Thank god we now have Tantura documentary by Alon Schwarz.

[@KeyserSoze23]

Interviewer has a real soyboy voice.

[@Transliminal]

Well, i’m not for everyone.

[@dinorino2]

@@Transliminal Don't listen to that id*ot. You did a very good job. It is one of the best interviews I've seen on the topic of the 1948 war.

[@davidbraunstein772]

great interview unlike the lying Pape

[@BK-uf6qr]

This interviewer has an agenda. Not very well hidden either although efforts are made.

[@sbaumgartner9848]

Bennie is known by both Israelis and Palestinians as someone they may love or dislike, but they both go to him or his works to get a credible explanation of what happened and when. Morris continues to look at new material/archives that are released to acquire more insight into what happened and he is very open to changing his POV when he comes across convincing material. Being a professional historian in this very complex part of the world is a very demanding highly skilled profession. Most of us don't have what it takes to work at this level. Benny also doesn't look for financial gain out of this. Not many people can say this.