Tragedy

There is a long interview in Ha’aretz with Benny Morris, an Israeli historian(via ). He has done more than anyone else to expose the extent to which Palestinians were deliberately driven out of Iarael in 1948, and was for many years an inspirational figure for the Left. In 1988 he was jailed for refusing to serve in the army on the occupied West Bank. His latest book has further details of massacres and rapes committed in the War of Independence by Jewish troops — not a huge number, but a lot more than we were brought up to believe — but he has come to believe they were justified as a necessary means to drive out the Palestinians.

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

The mistake that ben-Gurion made, Morris now says, was to draw back half way through. He should have expelled all of them.

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. [but] 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 don’t want to argue that he’s right or wrong, or wicked to hold these beliefs. Most of history has been made by men who argued as he now does. I might argue that way myself, if there were suicide bombers going offi Cambridge. I hope I wouldn’t, but it would be rash to assume I couldn’t. What is important to notice is that, if he’s right, it is the most terrible defeat for western civilisation, and for the whole project of liberal imperialism, and high-minded colonialism. Essentially, he is saying that ethnicity and religion will always trump the appeal of freedom, democracy, and all the other things we believe in. The Israeli Arabs, whom he believes should also be expelled if there’s another war,

(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.)

— the Israeli Arabs have been offered all the goods of Western society: citizenship, a free press, an open society — and yet they cannot overcome the ties of blood and soil. Perhaps, you may say, they have not been offered these things. Perhaps only Jews can be first-class citizens in Israel. But if that’s the case, the Jews themselves have betrayed the ideals of liberalism: Western civilisaiton is not merely more than Ayrabs can manage. It’s more than we can manage either.

Morris justifies his change of heart by saying that the Palestinians have never really accepted a two-state solution. I’d guess that many of them haven’t. But what’s surprising is that he can’t see that most Israelis haven’t accepted a two-state solution either, and never meant it, even at the time of the Camp David and subsequent negotiations. When he talks about “The Land of Israel, from Jordan to the sea”, shouldn’t a Palestinian feel ‘existentially threatened.’

In the medium term, and as a matter of fact, he has to be right. If Israel and the Palestinians cannot share the land, one or another must go, by a process of divinely mandated ethnic cleansing, and here, as elsewhere, God is on the side of the side with better tanks.

But in the long term, I don’t see how that Israel can last. Suppose the headbangers are right, and that America is embarking on a 100 years’ war with Islam. The only hope of lasting Western victory in the ‘Clash of civilisations’ theory has been that they will come round to the merits of our civilisation — democracy, human rights, and all the rest. There will never be a more highly motivated, dedicated nor talented group of Western imperialists than the Zionists; what Morris is saying is that they have failed completely to win or change the hearts of their subjects. They have been reduced to a full-on military occupation. This policy of occupation in the West Bank is economically possible only because of massive American subsidies and politically possible only because of the unique ideological attractions of Zionism. The one thing we know for certain is that America can’t afford to colonise the Middle East, either politically or economically.

So, again, how exactly are we meant to win a global “War on Terror”?