Moral
Decay And Benny Morris
By Ali Abunimah
The Electronic Intifada
26 January 2004
When
does the banishment of an entire people become morally justified? That
such a question can even be posed in today's Israel is dismal testament
to the transformation of Zionism into what it claims to abhor. In two
recent, extraordinary documents a commentary in London's The
Guardian and an interview with Ha'aretz Israeli historian Benny
Morris prepared the ground for Israel to justify any atrocity, no matter
how much it transgresses human rights, law and decency.
In a 9 January interview
with Ari Shavit of Ha'aretz, Morris went further than he ever did in
describing the 1948 exodus of Palestinians as the result of deliberate
"transfer" by the Zionist militias. Far from being horrified,
however, Morris said: "There are circumstances in history that
justify ethnic cleansing." He admitted that 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 ... (and) the villages
from which our convoys and our settlements were fired on."
Accepting this "necessity"
stands on the belief that the Zionists had an absolute, unquestionable
right to establish by any means necessary a Jewish state in Palestine,
notwithstanding that the land was already inhabited.
Morris recognized
this weakness and tried to dispense with it in his 14 January Guardian
commentary. "Looking at the big picture," Morris conceded,
"there can be no avoiding the simple Arab argument: 'No Zionism
no Palestinian refugee problem.' But adopting such a slogan means
accepting the view that a Jewish state should not have been established
in Palestine (or, presumably, anywhere else). Neither can one avoid
the standard Zionist rebuttal: 'No war no Palestinian refugee
problem,' meaning that the problem wasn't created by the Zionists but
by the Arabs themselves, and stemmed directly from their violent assault
on Israel."
Morris knows
because he has written the references on the subject that this
is pure fabrication. Indeed, he told Ha'aretz that he recently found
that in "the months of April-May 1948, units of the Haganah were
given operational orders that stated explicitly that they were to uproot
villagers, expel them and destroy the villages themselves." How
could the Zionist forces have reacted both in April and earlier to an
intervention by the Arab states that did not occur until after 15 May
1948?
For Morris, Israel
made a "serious historical mistake" in 1948, because it did
not do a "complete job" of forcing out all the Palestinians.
Asked if he would support the transfer and expulsion of the Palestinians
from Israel, the West Bank and Gaza today, Morris' reply to Shavit was
chilling: "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."
Morris is already
"a partner in this act" because he lays the ideological groundwork
for it in a context where Israeli Cabinet members are already crying
for "transfer," and where, bit by bit, Israel is implementing
in the Occupied Territories a process that may lead to it. He makes
ethnic cleansing moral and inevitable by constructing an inhuman enemy
whose essential disposition is not inspired by any of Israel's actions.
Morris told Ha'aretz:
"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, and 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 ... 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."
Morris conflates
all Palestinians with a de-historicized, monolithic Muslim culture that
is in ceaseless conflict with the West. To mitigate Morris' anxieties
about genocide, Israel the embodiment of Western values
must destroy the Palestinians. With such logic, Morris the historian
repudiates history as the pursuit of knowledge and understanding.
In this context,
consider how he addressed the issue of refugees in The Guardian. Ignoring
centuries of Muslim-Jewish coexistence and recent post-conflict reconciliations,
as in South Africa, Morris premised that the return of the refugees
or the creation of a binational state could only result in "widespread
anarchy and violence" and the emigration or subjugation of the
Jews "in an authoritarian, Muslim-dominated, Arab-ruled state."
Morris then contended: "To many in the West, the right of refugees
to return to their homes seems natural and just. But this 'right of
return' needs to be weighed against the right to life and well-being
of the 5 million Jews who live in Israel." Morris asked: "Wouldn't
the destruction, or at least the forced displacement of these 5 million
... constitute a far greater tragedy than what befell the Palestinians
in 1948, and, currently, a graver injustice than the perpetuation of
the refugeedom of fewer than 4 million Palestinians?"
It is painful to
read Morris' interview, in which he called Palestinians "barbarians"
who should be put in a "cage." But after reading it, I heard
an interview with black South African playwright John Kani on National
Public Radio. Kani recalled the frequent interrogations he endured from
a white intelligence officer: "He used to tell us South Africa
would never, ever change. This is a God-created situation. They (white
South Africans) were the chosen people, not the Jews, and that South
Africa was their country and we didn't have the brains to become a free
people, or even to think we could govern."
Reflecting upon
those experiences today, Kani said: "I am just laughing, because
he was stupid. You can't turn the tide of freedom ... A people who fight
for freedom will be free. They've got God on their side; they've got
time on their side; they've got truth on their side. It doesn't matter
how strong the enemy is, it's only delaying the inevitable."
Palestine-Israel
will, inevitably, become a democracy for all its people. Inevitable,
because through the collective efforts of those who work for justice,
we will make it so.
Ali Abunimah is
co-founder of The Electronic Intifada. This article was first published
in The Daily Star.