Re: [Marxism] Benny Morris op-ed piece

["Paul Flewers" <rfls12802@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Re Benny Morris and the expulsion of the Palestinians, the offending bit is
here, straight from the horse's mouth in October 2002 <
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/oct/03/israel1 >:

'One wonders what Ben-Gurion -- who probably could have engineered a
comprehensive rather than a partial transfer in 1948, but refrained -- would
have made of all this, were he somehow resurrected. Perhaps he would now
regret his restraint. Perhaps, had he gone the whole hog, today's Middle
East would be a healthier, less violent place, with a Jewish state between
Jordan and the Mediterranean and a Palestinian Arab state in Transjordan.'

Here's a reply <
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/oct/05/israel.guardianletters >:

'Let me extend Benny Morris's logic (G2, October 3) in arguing that if the
ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in 1948 had been complete, there might
have been peace today in the Middle East. If the Nazi programme for the
final solution of the Jewish problem had been complete, for sure there would
be peace today in Palestine.' (Prof Baruch Kimmerling, Hebrew University,
Jerusalem)

And another response <
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/oct/04/israel.guardianletters >:

'As a Palestinian academic, born and brought up in Israel, I have debated
the issue of "transfer" in Zionism with Benny Morris many times. In Morris's
book on the Palestinian refugees there are only a couple of pages on the
"idea of transfer in Zionism". Only after the publication of my book,
Expulsion of the Palestinians, in 1992 (based on Hebrew archives) did Morris
begin to accept that "the idea of transfer is as old as modern Zionism and
has accompanied its evolution and praxis during the past century" (Could
this happen again, G2, October 3). 

'But, contrary to the headline on your news story, (Radical Israeli in
u-turn on Palestinians), I have always detected in Morris a deeply rooted,
though subtle, streak of justification for the actual expulsion of the
Palestinians that took place in 1948. This is not about a one-man conversion
to the cause of the Israeli extreme right. The repackaging of "demographic
racism" by Morris into scholarship is an alarming symptom of a wider
phenomenon in Israel. This phenomenon involves the brutalisation of
mainstream Israeli culture, which is unable to think beyond the two racist
options it currently offers the Palestinians: institutionalised inequality
and racist apartheid, or ethnic cleansing and a new Palestinian holocaust.'
(Dr Nur Masalha, University of Surrey)





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