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Today's
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January 16, 2004
Kathy Kelly
A Visit
to Umm Qasr Prison
January 15, 2004
Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity
Memo
to the President: Your State of the Union Address
John Chuckman
Dry
Hole in the Oval Office: President from Podunk Drilling, Inc
Chris Floyd
Mind Over Matter
Gil-Scott Heron
Whitey on the Moon
Gary Leupp
The
Silk Road: Random Thoughts on the Bam Earthquake and Satan
January 14, 2004
Greg Moses
Happy
Birthday, Dr. King: To Write Off the South is to Surrender to
Bigots
Kurt Nimmo
Bush and the Supremes: Amputating the Bill of Rights
Dave Lindorff
Preview of Iowa? Pennsylvania Straw Poll Spells Trouble for Traditional
Dems (and Dean)
Jason Leopold
O'Neill Claims Backed by Rumsfeld / Wolfowitz War Letters to
Clinton
Alexander Cockburn
Bush,
Oil and Iraq: Some Truth at Last
January 13, 2004
William S. Lind
How 2004
Looks from Potsdam
M. Junaid Alam
Do Iraqis Have a Right to Resist?
Mickey Z
Snipers:
No Nuts in Iraq
Adolfo Gilly
Chonchocoro:
The Prisoner and the Presidents
Steve Perry
You Love God, Right?
January 12, 2004
Ben Tripp
No Stan
for the Kurds
Norman Solomon
The
Dixie Trap: Democrats and the South
Mike Whitney
O'Neill's Revenge
Jason Leopold
From the Very First Instant It Was About Iraq
Uri Avnery
Syria's
Peace Proposal
January 10 / 11, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
Susan Davis
Dangerous Books
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List
Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost
Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War
Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry
Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?
Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common
Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike
Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page
Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball
Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon
Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert
January 9, 2004
David Lindorff
The
Misers of War: Troop Strength and Chintzy Bonuses
Kurt Nimmo
Saddam's Defense: Summon Bush Sr. to the Stand
Mike Whitney
Orange Jumpsuits for the Bush Clan?: The Carnegie Report on Iraq's
Non-existent WMDs
Deb Reich
Palestinians and Israelis: This War is Unwinnable
David Vest
Disabled
Vets Fire Back at Rumsfeld
January 8, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israeli
Refuseniks Sentenced to Jail
Lenni Brenner
Dr.
Dean and the Godhead
Ray McGovern
Bush: Driving Without Breaks
Mark Scaramella
Inside
the DA's Office: Lies, Errors and Tedium
Yves Engler
Bush's Mexican Gambit
James Hollander
Journalists
Under Fire: the Death of José Couso in Baghdad
January 7, 2004
Democracy Now!
Uncharitable
Care: How Hospitals are Gouging and Even Arresting the Uninsured
Greg Weiher
The
Bush Administration's Ongoing Intelligence Problem
Ben Tripp
The Word of the Year, 2003
Dave Lindorff
Dean and His Democratic Detractors
Michael Leon
The NYT Does Chomsky
Bob Boldt
God Talk
Ramon Ryan
Small
Victories and Long Struggles: the 10th Anniversary of the Zapatista
Uprising
January 6, 2004
Dave Lindorff
RNC
Plays the Hitler Card: MoveOn Shouldn't Apologize for Those Ads
Ron Jacobs
Drugs
in Uniform: Hashish and the War on Terrorism
Josh Frank
Coffee and State Authority in Colombia
Doug Giebel
Permanent Bases: Leave Iraq? Hell No, We Won't Go
John Chuckman
Sick Puppies: David Frum's New Neo-Con Manifesto
Rannie Amiri
The Politics of the Iranian Earthquake
John L. Hess
A Record
to Dissent From
Thacher Schmid
A Cheesehead's Musings on the Sunday NYT
David Price
"Like
Slaves": Anthropological Thoughts on Occupation
January 5, 2004
Al Krebs
How
Now Mad Cow!
Kathy Kelly
Squatting
in Baghdad's Bomb Craters
Jordy Cummings
The Dialectic of the Kristol Family: Putting the Neo in the Cons
Fran Shor
Mad Human Disease: Chewing the Fat Down on the Farm
Fidel Castro
"We Shall Overcome": On the 45th Anniversary of the
Cuban Revolution
Gary Leupp
North
Korea for Dummies
January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
January 2, 2004
Stan Cox
Red Alert
2016
Dave Lindorff
Beef, the Meat of Republicans
Jackie Corr
Rule and Ruin: Wall Street and Montana
Norman Solomon
George Will's Ethics: None of Our Business?
David Vest
As the Top Wobbleth
January 1, 2004
Randall Robinson
Honor
Haiti, Honor Ourselves
David Krieger
Looking
Back on 2003
Robert Fisk
War Takes an Inhuman Twist: Roadkill Bombs
Stan Goff
War,
Race and Elections
Hammond Guthrie
2003 Almaniac
Website of the Day
Embody Bags
December 31, 2003
Ray McGovern
Don't
Be Fooled Again: This Isn't an Independent Investigation
Kurt Nimmo
Manufacturing Hysteria
Robert Fisk
The Occupation is Damned
Mike Whitney
Mad Cows and Downer George
Alexander Cockburn
A Great Year Ebbed, Another Ahead
December 30, 2003
Michael Neumann
Criticism
of Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Annie Higgins
When
They Bombed the Hometown of the Virgin Mary
Alan Farago
Bush Bros. Wrecking Co.: Time Runs Out for the Everglades
Dan Bacher
Creatures from the Blacklight Lagoon: From Glofish to Frankenfish
Jeffrey St. Clair
Hard
Time on the Killing Floor: Inside Big Meat
Willie Nelson
Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?
December 29, 2003
Mark Hand
The Washington
Post in the Dock?
David Lindorff
The
Bush Election Strategy
Phillip Cryan
Interested Blindness: Media Omissions in Colombia's War
Richard Trainor
Catellus Development: the Next Octopus?
Uri Avnery
Israel's
Conscientious Objectors
December 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
Guthrie / Albert
Another Colorful Season
December 24, 2003
M. Shahid Alam
The Semantics
of Empire
William S. Lind
Marley's
List for Santa in Wartime
Josh Frank
Iraqi
Oil: First Come, First Serve
Cpt. Paul Watson
The
Mad Cowboy Was Right
Robert Lopez
Nuance
and Innuendo in the War on Iraq
December 23, 2003
Brian J. Foley
Duck
and Cover-up
Will Youmans
Sharon's
Ultimatum
Michael Donnelly
Here
They Come Again: Another Big Green Fiasco
Uri Avnery
Sharon's
Speech: the Decoded Version
December 22, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Pray
to Play: Bush's Faith-Based National Parks
Patrick Gavin
What Would Lincoln Do?
Marjorie Cohn
How to
Try Saddam: Searching for a Just Venue
Kathy Kelly
The
Two Troublemakers: "Guilty of Being Palestinians in Iraq"
December 20 / 21, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
How
to Kill Saddam
Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy
Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali
David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the
Islamic World
Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee
Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush
Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared
Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression
Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN
Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and
Latino Prisoners
Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane
Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful
Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis
Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race
Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
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Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
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Wendell
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Small Destructions Add Up
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WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
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A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
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The
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Francis Boyle
Impeach
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January
16, 2004
Survival of the Fittest?
An
Interview with Benny Morris
By ARI SHAVIT
Note: Benny Morris is the dean of Israeli
'new historians', who have done so much to create a critical
vision of Zionism--its expulsion and continuing oppression of
the Palestinians, its pressing need for moral and political atonement.
His 1987 book, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem,
chronicled the Zionist murders, terrorism, and ethnic cleansing
that drove 600,000-750,000 Palestinians from their homes in 1948,
thus refuting the myth that they fled under the orders of Arab
leaders. A second edition of this book is due out this month,
chronicling even more massacres, and a previously unsuspected
number of rapes and murders of Palestinian women. Thus Morris
continues to provide crucial documentation for Palestinians fighting
the heritage of Al-Nakba, "The Catastrophe."
But in an astonishing recent Ha'aretz
interview, after summarizing his new research, Morris proceeds
to argue for the necessity of ethnic cleansing in 1948. He faults
David Ben-Gurion for failing to expel all Arab Israelis, and
hints that it may be necessary to finish the job in the future.
Though he calls himself a left-wing Zionist, he invokes and praises
the fascist Vladimir Jabotinsky in calling for an "iron
wall" solution to the current crisis. Referring to Sharon's
Security Wall, he says, "Something like a cage has to be
built for them. I know that sounds terrible. It is really cruel.
But there is no choice. There is a wild animal there that has
to be locked up in one way or another." He calls the conflict
between Israelis and Arabs a struggle between civilization and
barbarism, and suggests an analogy frequently drawn by Palestinians,
though from the other side of the Winchester: "Even the
great American democracy could not have been created without
the annihilation of the Indians."
That's nice and clear. Now one can find
fault with the analogy, as did one outraged reader of Ha'aretz,
who suggested that the annihilation of the Indians was the prototype
for American imperialism, not the precondition for American democracy.
But such arguments are almost beside the point. Morris's chilling
candor effectively removes him from the realm of rational argument,
and hauls Sharon's fascist vision of a Greater Israel out into
the light of day. There's no point in saying, "You're talking
about ethnic cleansing!" for Morris says bluntly, "There
are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing."
There's no point in saying, "You're denying Palestinian
suffering!" for after chronicling that suffering in scrupulous
detail, he observes brightly, "You can't make an omelet
without breaking eggs. You have to dirty your hands." There's
no point in saying, "This is racist!" for Morris has
abandoned humanist ethical universalism, invoking the pied-noir
Camus to do so: "He was considered a left-winger and a person
of high morals, but when he referred to the Algerian problem
he placed his mother ahead of morality. Preserving my people
is more important than universal moral concepts."
When momma makes it into a political
analogy, somebody's about to bleed: never get between a colon
and his motherland, particularly if his motherland used to be
your motherland. Here, Morris leaves Enlightenment universalism
for a volkische ethics of blood and bone that has haunted world
history from Herder to Milosevic. But another French-Algerian,
Jules Roy, answered Camus (and Benny Morris): "It is not
a matter of choosing one's mother over justice. It is a matter
of loving justice as much as one's mother."
Jim Holstun
Jim Holstun
is professor of English at University at Buffalo. His most recent
book, Ehud's Dagger: Class Struggle in the English Revolution
(Verso,
2000) won the prestigious Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize in
2001.
*****************
(This interview originally in Ha'aretz)
Benny Morris says he was always a Zionist.
People were mistaken when they labeled him a post-Zionist, when
they thought that his historical study on the birth of the Palestinian
refugee problem was intended to undercut the Zionist enterprise.
Nonsense, Morris says, that's completely unfounded. Some readers
simply misread the book. They didn't read it with the same detachment,
the same moral neutrality, with which it was written. So they
came to the mistaken conclusion that when Morris describes the
cruelest deeds that the Zionist movement perpetrated in 1948
he is actually being condemnatory, that when he describes the
large-scale expulsion operations he is being denunciatory. They
did not conceive that the great documenter of the sins of Zionism
in fact identifies with those sins. That he thinks some of them,
at least, were unavoidable.
Two years ago, different voices began
to be heard. The historian who was considered a radical leftist
suddenly maintained that Israel had no one to talk to. The researcher
who was accused of being an Israel hater (and was boycotted by
the Israeli academic establishment) began to publish articles
in favor of Israel in the British paper The Guardian.
Whereas citizen Morris turned out to
be a not completely snow-white dove, historian Morris continued
to work on the Hebrew translation of his massive work "Righteous
Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001,"
which was written in the old, peace-pursuing style. And at the
same time historian Morris completed the new version of his book
on the refugee problem, which is going to strengthen the hands
of those who abominate Israel. So that in the past two years
citizen Morris and historian Morris worked as though there is
no connection between them, as though one was trying to save
what the other insists on eradicating.
Both books will appear in the coming
month. The book on the history of the Zionist-Arab conflict will
be published in Hebrew by Am Oved in Tel Aviv, while the Cambridge
University Press will publish "The Birth of the Palestinian
Refugee Problem Revisited" (it originally appeared, under
the CUP imprint, in 1987). That book describes in chilling detail
the atrocities of the Nakba. Isn't Morris ever frightened at
the present-day political implications of his historical study?
Isn't he fearful that he has contributed to Israel becoming almost
a pariah state? After a few moments of evasion, Morris admits
that he is. Sometimes he really is frightened. Sometimes he asks
himself what he has wrought.
He is short, plump, and very intense.
The son of immigrants from England, he was born in Kibbutz Ein
Hahoresh and was a member of the left-wing Hashomer Hatza'ir
youth movement. In the past, he was a reporter for the Jerusalem
Post and refused to do military service in the territories. He
is now a professor of history at Ben-Gurion University of the
Negev in Be'er Sheva. But sitting in his armchair in his Jerusalem
apartment, he does not don the mantle of the cautious academic.
Far from it: Morris spews out his words, rapidly and energetically,
sometimes spilling over into English. He doesn't think twice
before firing off the sharpest, most shocking statements, which
are anything but politically correct. He describes horrific war
crimes offhandedly, paints apocalyptic visions with a smile on
his lips. He gives the observer the feeling that this agitated
individual, who with his own hands opened the Zionist Pandora's
box, is still having difficulty coping with what he found in
it, still finding it hard to deal with the internal contradictions
that are his lot and the lot of us all.
Rape, massacre, transfer
Benny Morris, in the month ahead the
new version of your book on the birth of the Palestinian refugee
problem is due to be published. Who will be less pleased with
the book - the Israelis or the Palestinians?
"The revised book is a double-edged
sword. It is based on many documents that were not available
to me when I wrote the original book, most of them from the Israel
Defense Forces Archives. What the new material shows is that
there were far more Israeli acts of massacre than I had previously
thought. To my surprise, there were also many cases of rape.
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.
"At the same time, it turns out
that there was a series of orders issued by the Arab Higher Committee
and by the Palestinian intermediate levels to remove children,
women and the elderly from the villages. So that on the one hand,
the book reinforces the accusation against the Zionist side,
but on the other hand it also proves that many of those who left
the villages did so with the encouragement of the Palestinian
leadership itself."
According to your new findings, how many
cases of Israeli rape were there in 1948?
"About a dozen. In Acre four soldiers
raped a girl and murdered her and her father. In Jaffa, soldiers
of the Kiryati Brigade raped one girl and tried to rape several
more. At Hunin, which is in the Galilee, two girls were raped
and then murdered. There were one or two cases of rape at Tantura,
south of Haifa. There was one case of rape at Qula, in the center
of the country. At the village of Abu Shusha, near Kibbutz Gezer
[in the Ramle area] there were four female prisoners, one of
whom was raped a number of times. And there were other cases.
Usually more than one soldier was involved. Usually there were
one or two Palestinian girls. In a large proportion of the cases
the event ended with murder. Because neither the victims nor
the rapists liked to report these events, we have to assume that
the dozen cases of rape that were reported, which I found, are
not the whole story. They are just the tip of the iceberg."
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]."
Are you saying that Ben-Gurion was personally
responsible for a deliberate and systematic policy of mass expulsion?
"From April 1948, Ben-Gurion is
projecting a message of transfer. There is no explicit order
of his in writing, there is no orderly comprehensive policy,
but there is an atmosphere of [population] transfer. The transfer
idea is in the air. The entire leadership understands that this
is the idea. The officer corps understands what is required of
them. Under Ben-Gurion, a consensus of transfer is created."
Ben-Gurion was a "transferist"?
"Of course. Ben-Gurion was a transferist.
He understood that there could be no Jewish state with a large
and hostile Arab minority in its midst. There would be no such
state. It would not be able to exist."
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."
When ethnic cleansing is justified
Benny Morris, for decades you have been
researching the dark side of Zionism. You are an expert on the
atrocities of 1948. In the end, do you in effect justify all
this? Are you an advocate of the transfer of 1948?
"There is no justification for acts
of rape. There is no justification for acts of massacre. Those
are war crimes. But in certain conditions, expulsion is not a
war crime. I don't think that the expulsions of 1948 were war
crimes. You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. You have
to dirty your hands."
We are talking about the killing of thousands
of people, the destruction of an entire society.
"A society that aims to kill you
forces you to destroy it. When the choice is between destroying
or being destroyed, it's better to destroy."
There is something chilling about the
quiet way in which you say that.
"If you expected me to burst into
tears, I'm sorry to disappoint you. I will not do that."
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."
What you are saying is hard to listen
to and hard to digest. You sound hard-hearted.
"I feel sympathy for the Palestinian
people, which truly underwent a hard tragedy. I feel sympathy
for the refugees themselves. But if the desire to establish a
Jewish state here is legitimate, there was no other choice. It
was impossible to leave a large fifth column in the country.
From the moment the Yishuv [pre-1948 Jewish community in Palestine]
was attacked by the Palestinians and afterward by the Arab states,
there was no choice but to expel the Palestinian population.
To uproot it in the course of war.
"Remember another thing: the Arab
people gained a large slice of the planet. Not thanks to its
skills or its great virtues, but because it conquered and murdered
and forced those it conquered to convert during many generations.
But in the end the Arabs have 22 states. The Jewish people did
not have even one state. There was no reason in the world why
it should not have one state. Therefore, from my point of view,
the need to establish this state in this place overcame the injustice
that was done to the Palestinians by uprooting them."
And morally speaking, you have no problem
with that deed?
"That is correct. Even the great
American democracy could not have been created without the annihilation
of the Indians. There are cases in which the overall, final good
justifies harsh and cruel acts that are committed in the course
of history."
And in our case it effectively justifies
a population transfer.
"That's what emerges."
And you take that in stride? War crimes?
Massacres? The burning fields and the devastated villages of
the Nakba?
"You have to put things in proportion.
These are small war crimes. All told, if we take all the massacres
and all the executions of 1948, we come to about 800 who were
killed. In comparison to the massacres that were perpetrated
in Bosnia, that's peanuts. In comparison to the massacres the
Russians perpetrated against the Germans at Stalingrad, that's
chicken feed. When you take into account that there was a bloody
civil war here and that we lost an entire 1 percent of the population,
you find that we behaved very well."
The next transfer
You went through an interesting process.
You went to research Ben-Gurion and the Zionist establishment
critically, but in the end you actually identify with them. You
are as tough in your words as they were in their deeds.
"You may be right. Because I investigated
the conflict in depth, I was forced to cope with the in-depth
questions that those people coped with. I understood the problematic
character of the situation they faced and maybe I adopted part
of their universe of concepts. But I do not identify with Ben-Gurion.
I think he made a serious historical mistake in 1948. Even though
he understood the demographic issue and the need to establish
a Jewish state without a large Arab minority, he got cold feet
during the war. In the end, he faltered."
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."
Cultural dementia
Besides being tough, you are also very
gloomy. You weren't always like that, were you?
"My turning point began after 2000.
I wasn't a great optimist even before that. True, I always voted
Labor or Meretz or Sheli [a dovish party of the late 1970s],
and in 1988 I refused to serve in the territories and was jailed
for it, but I always doubted the intentions of the Palestinians.
The events of Camp David and what followed in their wake turned
the doubt into certainty. When the Palestinians rejected the
proposal of [prime minister Ehud] Barak in July 2000 and the
Clinton proposal in December 2000, I understood that they are
unwilling to accept the two-state solution. They want it all.
Lod and Acre and Jaffa."
If that's so, then the whole Oslo process
was mistaken and there is a basic flaw in the entire worldview
of the Israeli peace movement.
"Oslo had to be tried. But today
it has to be clear that from the Palestinian point of view, Oslo
was a deception. [Palestinian leader Yasser] Arafat did not change
for the worse, Arafat simply defrauded us. He was never sincere
in his readiness for compromise and conciliation."
Do you really believe Arafat wants to
throw us into the sea?
"He wants to send us back to Europe,
to the sea we came from. He truly sees us as a Crusader state
and he thinks about the Crusader precedent and wishes us a Crusader
end. I'm certain that Israeli intelligence has unequivocal information
proving that in internal conversations Arafat talks seriously
about the phased plan [which would eliminate Israel in stages].
But the problem is not just Arafat. The entire Palestinian national
elite is prone to see us as Crusaders and is driven by the phased
plan. That's why the Palestinians are not honestly ready to forgo
the right of return. They are preserving it as an instrument
with which they will destroy the Jewish state when the time comes.
They can't tolerate the existence of a Jewish state - not in
80 percent of the country and not in 30 percent. From their point
of view, the Palestinian state must cover the whole Land of Israel."
If so, the two-state solution is not
viable; even if a peace treaty is signed, it will soon collapse.
"Ideologically, I support the two-state
solution. It's the only alternative to the expulsion of the Jews
or the expulsion of the Palestinians or total destruction. But
in practice, in this generation, a settlement of that kind will
not hold water. At least 30 to 40 percent of the Palestinian
public and at least 30 to 40 percent of the heart of every Palestinian
will not accept it. After a short break, terrorism will erupt
again and the war will resume."
Your prognosis doesn't leave much room
for hope, does it?
"It's hard for me, too. There is
not going to be peace in the present generation. There will not
be a solution. We are doomed to live by the sword. I'm already
fairly old, but for my children that is especially bleak. I don't
know if they will want to go on living in a place where there
is no hope. Even if Israel is not destroyed, we won't see a good,
normal life here in the decades ahead."
Aren't your harsh words an over-reaction
to three hard years of terrorism?
"The bombing of the buses and restaurants
really shook me. They made me understand the depth of the hatred
for us. They made me understand that the Palestinian, Arab and
Muslim hostility toward Jewish existence here is taking us to
the brink of destruction. I don't see the suicide bombings as
isolated acts. They express the deep will of the Palestinian
people. That is what the majority of the Palestinians want. They
want what happened to the bus to happen to all of us."
Yet we, too, bear responsibility for
the violence and the hatred: the occupation, the roadblocks,
the closures, maybe even the Nakba itself.
"You don't have to tell me that.
I have researched Palestinian history. I understand the reasons
for the hatred very well. The Palestinians are retaliating now
not only for yesterday's closure but for the Nakba as well. But
that is not a sufficient explanation. The peoples of Africa were
oppressed by the European powers no less than the Palestinians
were oppressed by us, but nevertheless I don't see African terrorism
in London, Paris or Brussels. The Germans killed far more of
us than we killed the Palestinians, but we aren't blowing up
buses in Munich and Nuremberg. So there is something else here,
something deeper, that has to do with Islam and Arab culture."
Are you trying to argue that Palestinian
terrorism derives from some sort of deep cultural problem?
"There is a deep problem in Islam.
It's a world whose values are different. A world in which human
life doesn't have the same value as it does in the West, in which
freedom, democracy, openness and creativity are alien. A world
that makes those who are not part of the camp of Islam fair game.
Revenge is also important here. Revenge plays a central part
in the Arab tribal culture. Therefore, the people we are fighting
and the society that sends them have no moral inhibitions. If
it obtains chemical or biological or atomic weapons, it will
use them. If it is able, it will also commit genocide."
I want to insist on my point: A large
part of the responsibility for the hatred of the Palestinians
rests with us. After all, you yourself showed us that the Palestinians
experienced a historical catastrophe.
"True. But when one has to deal
with a serial killer, it's not so important to discover why he
became a serial killer. What's important is to imprison the murderer
or to execute him."
Explain the image: Who is the serial
killer in the analogy?
"The barbarians who want to take
our lives. The people the Palestinian society sends to carry
out the terrorist attacks, and in some way the Palestinian society
itself as well. At the moment, that society is in the state of
being a serial killer. It is a very sick society. It should be
treated the way we treat individuals who are serial killers."
What does that mean? What should we do
tomorrow morning?
"We have to try to heal the Palestinians.
Maybe over the years the establishment of a Palestinian state
will help in the healing process. But in the meantime, until
the medicine is found, they have to be contained so that they
will not succeed in murdering us."
To fence them in? To place them under
closure?
"Something like a cage has to be
built for them. I know that sounds terrible. It is really cruel.
But there is no choice. There is a wild animal there that has
to be locked up in one way or another."
War of barbarians
Benny Morris, have you joined the right
wing?
"No, no. I still think of myself
as left-wing. I still support in principle two states for two
peoples."
But you don't believe that this solution
will last. You don't believe in peace.
"In my opinion, we will not have
peace, no."
Then what is your solution?
"In this generation there is apparently
no solution. To be vigilant, to defend the country as far as
is possible."
The iron wall approach?
"Yes. An iron wall is a good image.
An iron wall is the most reasonable policy for the coming generation.
My colleague Avi Shlein described this well: What Jabotinsky
proposed is what Ben-Gurion adopted. In the 1950s, there was
a dispute between Ben-Gurion and Moshe Sharett. Ben-Gurion argued
that the Arabs understand only force and that ultimate force
is the one thing that will persuade them to accept our presence
here. He was right. That's not to say that we don't need diplomacy.
Both toward the West and for our own conscience, it's important
that we strive for a political solution. But in the end, what
will decide their readiness to accept us will be force alone.
Only the recognition that they are not capable of defeating us."
For a left-winger, you sound very much
like a right-winger, wouldn't you say?
"I'm trying to be realistic. I know
it doesn't always sound politically correct, but I think that
political correctness poisons history in any case. It impedes
our ability to see the truth. And I also identify with Albert
Camus. He was considered a left-winger and a person of high morals,
but when he referred to the Algerian problem he placed his mother
ahead of morality. Preserving my people is more important than
universal moral concepts."
Are you a neo-conservative? Do you read
the current historical reality in the terms of Samuel Huntington?
"I think there is a clash between
civilizations here [as Huntington argues]. I think the West today
resembles the Roman Empire of the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries:
The barbarians are attacking it and they may also destroy it."
The Muslims are barbarians, then?
"I think the values I mentioned
earlier are values of barbarians - the attitude toward democracy,
freedom, openness; the attitude toward human life. In that sense
they are barbarians. The Arab world as it is today is barbarian."
And in your view these new barbarians
are truly threatening the Rome of our time?
"Yes. The West is stronger but it's
not clear whether it knows how to repulse this wave of hatred.
The phenomenon of the mass Muslim penetration into the West and
their settlement there is creating a dangerous internal threat.
A similar process took place in Rome. They let the barbarians
in and they toppled the empire from within."
Is it really all that dramatic? Is the
West truly in danger?
"Yes. I think that the war between
the civilizations is the main characteristic of the 21st century.
I think President Bush is wrong when he denies the very existence
of that war. It's not only a matter of bin Laden. This is a struggle
against a whole world that espouses different values. And we
are on the front line. Exactly like the Crusaders, we are the
vulnerable branch of Europe in this place."
The situation as you describe it is extremely
harsh. You are not entirely convinced that we can survive here,
are you?
"The possibility of annihilation
exists."
Would you describe yourself as an apocalyptic
person?
"The whole Zionist project is apocalyptic.
It exists within hostile surroundings and in a certain sense
its existence is unreasonable. It wasn't reasonable for it to
succeed in 1881 and it wasn't reasonable for it to succeed in
1948 and it's not reasonable that it will succeed now. Nevertheless,
it has come this far. In a certain way it is miraculous. I live
the events of 1948, and 1948 projects itself on what could happen
here. Yes, I think of Armageddon. It's possible. Within the next
20 years there could be an atomic war here."
If Zionism is so dangerous for the Jews
and if Zionism makes the Arabs so wretched, maybe it's a mistake?
"No, Zionism was not a mistake.
The desire to establish a Jewish state here was a legitimate
one, a positive one. But given the character of Islam and given
the character of the Arab nation, it was a mistake to think that
it would be possible to establish a tranquil state here that
lives in harmony with its surroundings."
Which leaves us, nevertheless, with two
possibilities: either a cruel, tragic Zionism, or the forgoing
of Zionism.
"Yes. That's so. You have pared
it down, but that's correct."
Would you agree that this historical
reality is intolerable, that there is something inhuman about
it?
"Yes. But that's so for the Jewish
people, not the Palestinians. A people that suffered for 2,000
years, that went through the Holocaust, arrives at its patrimony
but is thrust into a renewed round of bloodshed, that is perhaps
the road to annihilation. In terms of cosmic justice, that's
terrible. It's far more shocking than what happened in 1948 to
a small part of the Arab nation that was then in Palestine."
So what you are telling me is that you
live the Palestinian Nakba of the past less than you live the
possible Jewish Nakba of the future?
"Yes. Destruction could be the end
of this process. It could be the end of the Zionist experiment.
And that's what really depresses and scares me."
The title of the book you are now publishing
in Hebrew is "Victims." In the end, then, your argument
is that of the two victims of this conflict, we are the bigger
one.
"Yes. Exactly. We are the greater
victims in the course of history and we are also the greater
potential victim. Even though we are oppressing the Palestinians,
we are the weaker side here. We are a small minority in a large
sea of hostile Arabs who want to eliminate us. So it's possible
than when their desire is realized, everyone will understand
what I am saying to you now. Everyone will understand we are
the true victims. But by then it will be too late."
Weekend
Edition Features for January 10 / 11, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
Susan Davis
Dangerous Books
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List
Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost
Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War
Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry
Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?
Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common
Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike
Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page
Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball
Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon
Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert
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