Israel and Palestine Origins with Dr. Benny Morris

[Music] welcome to another episode of conversations with Coleman the topic of today's episode is the Israel Palestine conflict I've avoided discussing Israel on this podcast for two reasons first because I didn't know enough to feel qualified weighing in on it and second because it may literally be the most radioactive topic on planet Earth a tiny mistake or misplaced word can cause a level of backlash that I just don't want to deal with but two things have changed over the past few months first I've crossed some threshold where I've studied the issue enough to feel comfortable speaking about it and also I went to Israel for 10 days on a government-sponsored press trip with a group of journalists we spoke to Israeli journalists police officers politicians Supreme Court Justice military personnel and everyday citizens we went to Jerusalem Tel Aviv the borders with Gaza Lebanon and Syria and many other places now it goes without saying that this trip was structured so as to give us a favorable impression of Israel it was paid for by the Israeli government so some would call this a propaganda trip but the word propaganda is an umbrella term it covers everything from North Korea creating fake supermarkets full of food to show the outside world while their children starve by the thousands to the subtle choice of one word over another enhanced interrogation instead of torture or affirmative action instead of racial discrimination almost every op-ed you read has a perspective to offer that's not impartial just the choice of which facts to include and which to leave out is a kind of persuasion tactic that could be called propaganda I had Renee diresta on this show a while back and she reminded me that the original meaning of propaganda was not even a pejorative propaganda just referred to any material meant to persuade you of a political viewpoint by that standard most of what we read every day is propaganda so where did this Israel trip fall on the spectrum of propaganda well I can honestly say it was nowhere near the North Korea end of that Spectrum for one thing there was no limits on what we could ask anybody we could ask a politician or a Supreme Court Justice why are you guys oppressing the Palestinians in the West Bank and sometimes we could even record their answers that's not something you could do on a press trip in North Korea or in the Soviet Union on the other hand the Israeli government wouldn't sponsor these trips if they didn't believe we'd Come Away with a more positive perception of the country otherwise there'd be no point so was the trip structured so as to deliver the Israeli perspective on the conflict yes and consciously so but calling it propaganda calls to mind a level of lying and spinning and censorship that just wasn't there ultimately I think the word propaganda should be reserved for the really bad cases or else anything meant to persuade you of a Viewpoint becomes propaganda and the word loses all its potency in any event after my trip to Israel I felt ready to weigh in on this topic publicly and I want to do that in two ways first I want this podcast to serve as an introduction to the basic historical facts of the israel-palestine conflict from roughly 1880 until the present and the reason I want to do this is because I've noticed an astonishing level of ignorance around these basic facts when I was a student at Columbia I knew kids that seemed to be very moved emotionally by the plight of the Palestinians in the West Bank but could not tell you when or how British Palestine was partitioned when or how Israel was founded how and why many Jewish settlers ended up there in the first place nor could they tell you even basic facts about the major Wars that have been fought since 1948. so I want the first part of this podcast to serve as an introduction to these basic historical facts if you're well versed on this topic then you may want to skip the beginning but on the other hand there's still quite a bit of interesting material there the rest of this podcast is about the ethics and the current politics of the conflict who is in the right and who is in the wrong is Israel an apartheid state that's oppressing a minority out of pure bigotry is it is it a colonialist expansionist state motivated by religious belief or is it an embattled and legitimate nation-state surrounded by enemies that wants only to survive these are the questions that people struggle with and I brought in Dr Benny Morris to help me answer them now Benny Morris has a unique vantage point on this issue on the one hand he is an Israeli Jew and in recent years she has become a major defender of Israel against Global condemnation on the other hand she's probably done more than almost anyone you could name to discover and publicize Israel's historical war crimes he refused to serve in the occupied West Bank and was arrested as a result his academic work on Israel is cited favorably by people like Noam Chomsky who were all the way on the other side of the issue and he was at one point shunned by the Israeli academic Community for being in essence a traitor to his people he's one of the few people who can really claim to have battle scars from both sides of this debate so I thought he'd be a good person to help me weave through the complexities of the topic I have a lot of admiration for Benny Morris and I hope you find him as Illuminating as I did so without further Ado Dr Benny Morris [Music] Dr Benny Morris thanks so much for coming on my show my pleasure so before we get into your work on the history of the Zionist Arab conflict or the israel-palestine conflict I want to get a little bit of information on who you are so my audience can get to know you if they don't you're someone who has been identified in the past as left-wing and shunned by the Israeli Academy for uncovering many of the war crimes against Palestinians and uh and if I have this right you also refuse to serve in occupied territories and were arrested as a result and uh but you know more recently you've also been called right wing and uh criticized for you know defending some of Israel's more controversial actions so my first question is is kind of a two-part question how did you come to be a historian and how do you identify politically I'm not too sure how I became a historian as a youth I like to read books about history um and when I went to University that was an obvious choice studying history and also philosophy here they do two majors usually um and that just went on from there to do after being a PhD in history because that's what I felt comfortable doing and afterwards I started writing books that's basically what happened and what was the second part of the question and how do you identify politically or how have you identified politically throughout your life I think I've always been on the left the I believe in you know liberal democratic values and um and I've always voted for left-wing parties left center-left parties um and even though some people have accused me of becoming a right winger um I've I've never been a right-winger but I did find fault after I I did find full time with the behavior of the Palestinians and if you do that you're immediately branded the a right-winger by some circles Okay so I want the first part of this conversation to serve as a basically a summary of the history of the conflict for people that may you know may not know all that much about how the whole thing started so if you're deeply knowledgeable about this this may just all be sort of boring refresher but I kind of want to get some of those basic facts on the table and uh there's no one better to do that within you so let's start at 1880. who was living in the the place we now call Israel and how many were there and what was the political entity they were living under well in 1880 or 1881 or two in Zionism began um the land of Israel or Palestine as it was called by by most Christians um was part of the Turkish Empire the ottoman Turkish Empire and they was inhabited the area between more or less the Jordan River and the Mediterranean it was inhabited by something um like 500 000 um Arabs and the 20 30 000 Jews most of the Arabs 90 of the Arabs were Muslims about 10 of them were Christians so it's often said that in ottoman times Jews and Arabs lived in harmony to what extent is that true well it's probably it's a half truth um Jews lived as a subordinate religious minority in the Muslim empire and as long as they accepted their subordination um there was no trouble um when Jews began to assert assert themselves this is when Muslims resented it and this caused Strife eventually but but um Christians and Jews lived as a subordinate subjugated minority in an Empire run by Muslims largely inhabited by Muslims in which Muslims were if you like full citizens if you can call that or at least full subjects of the Empire whereas Jews were a tolerated a minority as Christians were so how did Zionism begin well there's two levels to understanding its Origins one level is that the Jews who had lived in what is called Palestine in the land of Israel two and three thousand years ago and had a sovereign state here under King David King Solomon eventually The Maccabees um were dispersed or dispersed during the first and second centuries under Roman rule they rebelled against the Romans twice and the Romans they expelled some of them and then gradually other Jews drifted away from Palestine moved to other areas North Africa eventually Europe and the the land was emptied of Jews the Jews always in their religion in their faith in their prayers a repeated this sentence next year in Jerusalem in other words they always wanted in some way to return to Palestine and to re-establish sovereignty in the land of Israel as they had once had so this is one level of the origins if you like the spiritual level over two thousand years of Exile of a Zionism or the wish to return to Palestine what prompted in Zionism to emerge as a modern political force at the end of the 19th century was essentially Chris Christian anti-Semitism it will programs large-scale massacres of Jews in the Russian Empire the tsarist Russian Empire in in the 1880s beginning in the 1880s there had been waves of programs before that but the Jews weren't ready for a political movement but in the 1880s with a background of rising political movements nationalist movements in Europe the German nationalism Italian nationalism Serbian nationalism without his background when the pogrom struck in Eastern Europe in in a Russian World Eastern Europe a Jews began to flee most of them fled to America two million moved to a 2 million Jews moved from the Russian Empire to the United States um between 1880 A1 and the 1914 but a small minority of Jews in the Russian Empire under the impact of this anti-Semitism and if you like the impact of of rising nationalism the idea of nationalism said why don't we go instead of rushing to America why don't we go to Palestine the land of Israel the land of our fourth fathers and re-establish a sovereign Jewish State there where we can be protected where we can defend ourselves where we can be safe and this was the beginning of Zionism in the 1880s slowly the Jews began to trickle what were called zionists to he's began to trickle to Palestine establish settlements there by land first established settlements and um began to flourish as a a an Enterprise a political Enterprise inside the Ottoman Empire in the area called a Palestine the land of Israel foreign so what happened when the Ottoman Empire dissolved how did that change Dynamics in uh in Palestine well the Ottoman Empire being a Muslim empire wasn't particularly friendly towards the zionists but it was extremely corrupt and you could actually buy a way into things you could buy the right to buy land to right establish a settlement and so on but the the Ottomans because of corruption and inefficiency didn't really curtail the the emergence of Zionism and slowly the the Zionist Enterprise Grew From uh by the 1914 there were about 80 000 Jews in Palestine in a world war one broke out and uh it pitted the number of powers against each other including Britain and the Ottoman Empire they fought the two empires fought against each other and the British won they eventually conquered Palestine towards the end of World War One um and then um essentially throughout the Turks throughout the Ottoman Empire and so Palestine came under British governance and the Zionist Enterprise which had been supported by the British government um it's a bit queer how the British government came to support Zionism but it did by the end of world war one and a so the Zionist Enterprise flourished under this umbrella of British rule from 1917-18 onwards so can you describe the relationship between Jewish communities and which were growing somewhat rapidly and the Arab communities during this time was it getting worse can you describe a little bit of what what was actually happening well the Jews were a very small minority both in 1882 and by 1914 and World War one they were very small minority in Palestine about a tenth of the population of Palestine by the more or less the end of world war one so the Arabs did not feel particularly threatened and there were economic relations between them the Arabs grew certain crops the Jews bought their produce the Jews sold the Arab certain things helped them in fact in some ways even develop a certain branches of the economy um but um by the end of World War One nationalism had also struck the Arab world and and the Arabs began to think also in terms of nationhood to come out from under the ottoman Turkish dominance and eventually to to try and free themselves also from the Western Powers would won the war and took over the Arab lands either directly or indirectly um and the Jews were perceived as agents or at least as um [Music] being chaperoned by the British Empire and this was resented by the Arabs who as I say wanted to free themselves from the British and didn't like this foreign Infidel entry into the the country of Palestine which they regarded as an Arab area even though they'd never it hadn't been dominant politically in the area for hundreds of years but they regarded it as an Infidel intrusion into an area which was Arab and by 1920 it began to be Arab riots a hostility if you like it towards the Zionist Enterprise which as I say um a burgeon under the British government um so let's fast forward 15 or 20 years to the peel commission what was the peel commission and how did Arabs and Jews react to it okay the the British ruled Palestine and had this large Arab um a population here and the small Jewish but growing Jewish Zionist population hoped that they could somehow get the two ethnic groups over whom they ruled to reach some sort of Moses vivendi some sort of compromise between them the Jews said we want to State the Palestinians said the Arabs of Palestine they weren't yet called Palestinians but Arabs who lived in Palestine said we we believe that the whole of Palestine belongs to us and the Arabs launched their bouts of hostilities against the the zionists and in 1936 they um rebelled um against the British presence and against the the their Zionist Wards 1936 the beginning of What's called the Arab Revolt which lasted for three years until 1939. during this a rebellion the British tried to find the formula to end the rebellion and to somehow and not unite but find them a way to get the Arabs and Jews to live side by side um in Palestine and so they what they did what governments used to do still do they when they have a problem they establish a commission or committee to find a way out um and um so they set up a committee a commission called the the Royal commission for Palestine called the peel commission uh named after the head of the commission which arrived in Palestine at the end of 1936 a met Jewish and Arab leaders met the Arab leaders outside Palestine as well talked to British officials and in July 1937 the appeal commission submitted its a recommendations about you know in a well-documented 400 page a volume it um reported what what it saw what it found what it brought the history of the country was and made recommendations about how to solve the problem here and the appeal commission said essentially the British cannot continue to rule Palestine there's no way of Bridging the Gap between Arab nationalist demands for all of Palestine and the designers demands um for a Jewish state in Palestine or even of all of Palestine what they said then was um in trying to um they said British Britain must leave um the the Jews and the Arabs should divide the countries should partition the country between them the Arabs receiving a majority of the territory most of the territory about 80 percent the British should try and retain Jerusalem and Bethlehem and the corridor to the Sea and and the Jews should receive something less than 20 percent of the country in other words partition between Jews and Arabs um the Arabs rejected a a flatly rejected the appeal Commission in a proposal recommendation for a partition with the establishment of a Jewish and Arab State and said all of the country should be ours the Jews said okay we don't like only 17 or 18 or 20 percent of the country but we accept the principle of partition probably we can't have all of it the British is saying we can't have all of it so let's agree to a small Jewish State um alongside an Arab um majority State and um as I said the Arabs rejected this and the [Music] um rebellion was resumed by the Arabs 1939 that the British managed to crush crush the Rebellion but the appeal commission had established a basic premise for a solution to the conflict in Palestine by laying out the idea of a two-state solution an Arab State alongside a Jewish State and this remains if you like in the west and in most civilized countries it Remains the formula the basic idea for a solution to the Palestine Israel problem a partition of the land between the two peoples who inhabit the land um but as I said uh the Arabs resumed the Revolt the British crushed the revolt and then World War II broke out which sort of caused the six years suspension of treatment of the problem of Palestine until World War One finished in 1945. so let's move to 1946 and 47. now World War II is over and the British have the wherewithal to you know look at their crumbling Empire and get out of places like Palestine and also India which was partitioned at the same time um how's the what was the new Partition plan and how was that decision arrived at well the British at the end of World War what a tour exhausted by by the war Itself by their um loss of blood and treasure in the war um and also were the rising nationalist movements as you mentioned in India and other places including in Palestine um a forced them essentially to look at Palestine and say what can we do and they saw that there was no Bridge as the peel commission had seen there's no way of Bridging the Gap between the Jewish and Arab claims and the Jews had begun in fact to Rebel or some of the Jews the right wing of the Jewish the Zionist movement rebelled against the British started throwing bombs killing British soldiers in Palestine in um and so the British decided 19 early 1947 to Simply throw in the towel give up and leave Palestine and hand the problem of Palestine to the United Nations which was a successor organization to the um League of Nations which had approved in the early 1920s of British rule over Palestine um so the the British handed over the the problem uh saying we're going to leave you take care of the problem you find the solution to the United Nations the United Nations established another commission a new committee to look at the problem afresh this was called the United Nations special commission committee on Palestine unscop and unscop came up with its own solution for a pro for the problem of Palestine um in the summer of 1947. they're a proposal was based in principle on the peel commission proposal of the the partition of the country in the two states one Jewish the other Arab um the Arabs again rejected this proposal the United Nations General Assembly meeting in November 1947 approved the proposal of partitioning Palestine into two states one Arab and one Jewish the Jews accepted the proposal the Arabs rejected it and the Arabs went to war against the Jewish State and against if you like the will of the International Community as embodied in their partition proposal approved by the general assembly so when the Palestinian the 1948 War yes so so the UN approves the partition which gives them both a state this time the state for the Jews is larger than it was in the peel commission 10 years prior um it's it's closer to 50 50 but what were the exact what was the exact split of the land okay the United Nations General Assembly approved essentially approved unscop's recommendation of dividing the country into two states the Jews were allotted in the United Nations partition resolution 55 percent of the country in the Arabs were allotted something close to 45 percent of the country the area of the Jews the 55 percent increase was half of it at least more than half was Desert it was the Negev Desert the southern part the uninhabited part of Palestine the Arabs got most of the center and north of the country in this partition resolution the Arabs of course as I said rejected it but also they said why are we two-thirds of the population of the country being given only 45 percent of the country whereas the Jews only one-third of the population of Palestine were being allotted in over 50 percent the Jews counted as I said we're being given a large part of it is Desert and essentially we're being given land for all the Jews who still want to come to Palestine and don't forget this is after the second world war it's where six million Jews had just been murdered in Europe and there were hundreds of thousands of survivors Jewish survivors of the Holocaust who wanted to reach Palestine or at least the Zionist movement wanted them to reach Palestine so the the Jews said well we need a little more land than our proportion of the population justifies because we need room to resettle all these poor uh survivors of the a holocaust and other Jews and and so that that was the The Proposal the United Nations agreed on this was if you like the will the understanding of the uh um a community of the world's community of Nations as embodied in this proposal and part of the logic behind that that was compelling to the International Community was that there are many many Arab states like there are many states that an an ethnic Arab could go to if he were in trouble and uh yeah there was no Jewish State and it seemed like the the pogroms in Eastern Europe and the Holocaust you know had there been one Jewish state in the world there would have been somewhere for refugees to go to and it seemed like just nowhere on Earth was hospitable to the Jews now in in retrospect as an American when you see a thriving Jewish Community uh you know in New York and in LA and many other places you can Wonder well why didn't they just come to America so can you can you uh address that question yeah I I said originally that one of the major impetuses of Zionism the emergence of Zionism was a the anti-Semitism which the Jews suffered in their lands of dispersion mostly in Europe at the time um this was reinforced the sense of alienation and a a lack of security of the Jews was reinforced during World War II and the revelations of what had happened in World War II meaning the Holocaust in other words six million Jews had been killed the world Community had done nothing to save them and the Jews at last said well this is this is a has been our argument for 50 years the Zionist movement for 50 years why we need a state where we can be safe nobody's going to come and save us we we have to have our own state which can protect us and and the world Community essentially bowed its head and said yes we understand now we understand your argument and that's why the major reasoning behind the United Nations voting most most of the countries agreed this this is what the Jews must have this is if you like in some way compensation for or for the guilty conscience for what we didn't do um during World War II in Saving we didn't save the Jews so now we at least must give them a state the Arabs of course argued at the same time why should we the Arabs pay for um what uh Europeans have done to the Jews over the last hundred years or even the last two thousand years um the Jews as as you rightly point out um said well but you Arabs have some over a dozen states today in fact there are 23 Arab states um you have lots of territory uh in which you are sovereign we Jews want just this little sliver of land along the Mediterranean which used to be our state two thousand years ago that's all we want for our safety and for our sovereignty um Arabs never accepted this argument thank you was there any religious component to wanting that land specifically on the part of the zionists yeah look the Zionist movement was essentially a rebellion again the world of the Jews which was a religious World they basically turned their backs on the the world of their fathers and the religion of their fathers was a very secular movement not the religious movement it was an anti-religious movement essentially Zionism which said we cannot trust God to save us we must do our work maybe God doesn't exist maybe he does exist but we have to do um you know get safety on our own through establishing a Jewish State um but there was always a small minority of zionists who were also religious a very small minority today it's a very large minority of zionists of the Jews in the state of Israel who are religious but this wasn't the case in 1948 in 1948 the religious component among the Jews was probably about 10 percent today as I say it's probably closer to 30 percent but at the time it wasn't religion which was driving the Zionist movement even though there was a religious component in the sense if you like even among the secular Jews that the history of of their people of the Jewish people was connected in some way to God and and God having if you like planted the Jews in the land of Israel um under Abraham and his successors so there was a sort of a connection between religion and a political a life a political interests if you like but but in 1948 when the zionists established the state of Israel in the midst of the 1948 War um a religion wasn't very important on the Zionist side which is one reason incidentally the Jews the the Jews who led the country bengurian Etc all the Socialists who governed the country did not even use the word God in the Declaration of Independence of Israel unlike if you like the American Declaration of Independence hmm so but let me add let me add one other thing but on the Arab side religion I think was very important in 1948 as it has been throughout the conflict since then in the sense that the Jews were an Infidel people that the Jews are not God's chosen people we Arabs we Muslims are the chosen people and their our Prophet is the real prophet and and He commands us if you like to fight against the infidels trying to take over this Muslim tract of territory which is Ours by right that's how the Arab Muslims felt in 48 and many of them feel it they feel the same way today so when uh when the Palestinians attacked uh you know rejecting the U.N partition and then the Jews won that essentially Civil War and then five Arab Nations subsequently attacked every surrounding Nation plus Iraq um uh what were their goals in attacking Israel is Israel's goals in the 48th war was essentially to defend itself in other words the Zionist Enterprise was being attacked by the Palestinian Arab militias and subsequently by invading Arab states Jordan Syria Iraq and Egypt um they were being the the Enterprise was being assaulted and then when they declared statehood the the Jews in on the 14th of May 1948 the following day the Arab armies Invaders from outside and the Jews in both state stages of door their main aim was survival that is the survival of the Zionist Enterprise of the community which had time numbered 650 000 Jews all together in Palestine and the survival of the new state which had just been created this was the main Jewish shame to this I would say that in the course of the war a two additional War aims accrued um a one was um to expand the area of the Jewish State beyond the territory allotted in the United Nations partition resolution um if the United Nations had allotted 55 percent of Palestine to the Jews by the war by War's end 78 percent of Palestine was in Jewish Hands by the time the Jews won the 48th work um and and the Jews and the bengurion also I think essentially there's arguments among the Israeli historians about this the first part is not controversial the second part is more is controversial and the Jews uh the leadership under bengurion I think also sought to reduce the number of Arabs in the Jewish State knowing that the Arabs were fighting against the the Jewish state would not be loyal citizens when they are if and when they remained in the Jewish State he wanted to reduce the number if you like by expulsion um and the number of Arabs in the area which became the state of Israel was vastly reduced about 700 000 Arabs in um were uprooted from their homes they fled in face of battle a few were expelled a few you ordered by their own side to leave the country the area under Jewish sovereignty but then the 700 000 Arabs were uprooted from their homes in the course of the war and these became the Palestinian Arab refugees the Palestinian Arab Refugee problem on the Arab side the war aims are not as clear as I say the Jews main aim was survival simply the survival of the population the Jewish population in Palestine and survival of the state as it was born the Arab borings are not as clear we don't have Arab documentation the Arab archives still remain completely closed to all researchers so we don't know what that government the the Arabian presidents the Arab military commanders Etc what their War aims were um but um one can sort of divine their War aims from the way their armies moved into Palestine and from various declarations they made publicly and in face of in Western diplomats who talked to the Arab leaders so one would say that the Egyptians uh they have some various War aims different Arab governments the Egyptians said they're entering the country invading the country in order to save the Palestinians um [Music] that's part of the explanation and probably isn't part correct as well but I think the Egyptians essentially wanted to take over part of Palestine and Annex it to themselves the southern part of Palestine uh the negative desert they wanted essentially to take for themselves and vaguely they hoped well maybe our Invasion will lead to the the destruction of the Jewish State um so they probably had that at the back of their minds as well destroyed the Jewish State as part of the war aim the same applies more or less to the syrians they also had some territorial Ambitions in Palestine um the Iraqis didn't but they decided they went along with with the program of the jordanians and the Egyptians and syrians in sent an expeditionary Force the fight in Palestine during the war the jordanians were a bit different the jordanians under Abdullah King Abdullah who's incidentally the the great grandfather of the present Abdullah Abdullah was second of Jordan they essentially preferred it sounds a bit strange but Abdullah king of Jordan in 1948 preferred to have a Jewish State as his neighbor instead of a Palestinian State he didn't like the Palestinians he didn't trust the Palestinian leader khajamina hussaini um and so he probably he essentially reached an agreement with the Zionist leadership a secret agreement before the going into the war he did enter the war against the zionists but with a a separate agreement in his pocket which said let's share the land between us instead of a Palestinian Arab State alongside a Jewish State let's have the the Palestinian areas under Jordanian sovereignty so his army essentially entered a Palestine and took over occupied the West Bank you know the area of East Jerusalem and the enablus and the februon um um and a next it to Jordan this was essentially their warring to take a chunk of Palestine for them for themselves if you like expand the the area of the kingdom of Jordan and not so much to attack the Jews in fact they never actually attacked the territory earmarked by the United Nations for Jewish sovereignty um so if you like me like I could sum up the the Arab borings in some way apart from Jordan the Arab states were would would have been happy to see the end the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel when they invaded But I think some of them the leaders were realistic and understood this is not going to be achieved maybe we can get a little bit of territory um for ourselves um um an exit for our own countries the south of the country by Egypt the north of the country by a Syria and so on um in part also the Arab leaders were driven by their own public in other words the public a hearing in in propaganda and the radios and so on that the Palestinians were being beaten by the Israelis in a a the public sort of surged uh into the streets and um um onto the gates of the Palaces where the Arab Kings and leaders lived and sort of forced the leaders to invade Palestine even though the leaders such as King Farouk of Egypt knew that the Israelis were too strong and couldn't be beaten but they couldn't resist their own public which wanted their armies to invade so this was also if you like one of the forces of the Arab invasion of of Palestine fear by the leadership which wasn't very legitimate they were Kings Not Elected leaders they feared their own public um that if they didn't do didn't join the invasion they themselves might be ousted by popular Uprising in their own countries so in the in the process of winning the independence War as you noted Israel expelled uh countless Palestinians from their homes who fled to Arab countries fled to the West Bank which was then occupied by Jordan um and and various other places and the expulsion of of Palestinians from their homes is one of the central grievances to this day against the Israeli State and it's something that you've played a big role in uncovering elements of in the archives which were sealed for a very long time obviously Israel's leaders had a strategic reason to not show the full extent of what was done to to Palestinians but you've also very controversially defended the the expulsion so can you talk about a little bit about how it could be possible that an expulsion of innocent civilians could possibly be justified how do you think about this issue as a historian and uh and ethically foreign expulsion is completely accurate in describing how the Palestinians were uprooted in 48. um a large number of the most of them simply fled their homes in the face of battle and moved to the West Bank or to Lebanon or to Syria or to the Gaza Strip in the face of battle they didn't want to didn't want to be killed by shells Israeli shells Jordanian shells they wanted to move out of Harm's Way some of them a certain portion were actually expelled by Israeli troops from their homes and a similar number probably were also advised or ordered by their own leaders to leave to leave their homes on the assumption that they would return to their homes When The War ended a the expansive part of 48 in terms of Israel's behavior isn't so much the acts of expulsion during the war as Israel's unwillingness at the end of the war to allow the Palestinian refugees to return and the Israelis didn't allow the Palestinian refugees to return at the end of the war the Israelis were six the Jews in Israel a numbered 650 000 in 1948. the Arab refugees were 700 000 had the Jews allowed the Arab refugees to return to their homes in what became the state of Israel at the end of 40 the 48 War they would have been outnumbered by Arabs who were against their state so it's not a matter of justification that the the the the the the the demographics of the situation were such that Israel couldn't have survived with a majority of Arabs as its new citizens as opposed to a minority of Jews in the country but they one mustn't forget that the Jews didn't begin the war the Jews were attacked by the Palestinian Arab militias and then attacked the second time by the Arab states the Jews in defending themselves it's like a man who's in the house and his neighbors come and try and kill him and he throws the throws the the the the killer out of his house that's essentially what happened to the Palestinians you can say that it's unethical that they should have allowed them to stay in the house that they should have allowed them to return to the house but essentially they were defending themselves this is the the if you like it in a sense of justification for the uprooting of the Palestinians they began the war they have to suffer the consequences the Palestinians afterwards said well why should we suffer the consequences okay we tried to throw you out to destroy your Jewish state to destroy your Zionist Enterprise but we didn't succeed okay now we want to come back to our our homes in Palestine and maybe even try and subvert the state from within with the majority of Arabs being in a country which is democratic we would overthrow the Jewish state from within um so the the zionists ever since 1940 have said that is the Israeli government all Israeli governments right-wing left wing have said we can't allow a mass Return of the refugees because this will subvert our state from within they will be not necessarily loyal probably disloyal citizens and they oppose our very existence here why should we allow them back we can't do that so uh let me add something yeah sure there's a problem here in terms of individual Arabs who became refugees one can certainly understand the desire and the ethical thrust of the desire of Arabs who left the country you call them innocent victims well some of them were innocent some of them were less Innocent but the desire of families to return to their homes and lands in Palestine but the problem isn't an individual problem ethical problem it's a national political problem in which as I said if a large number of Palestinian refugees had returned in 48 or 49 or subsequently today incidentally there are six million Palestinian refugees on the United Nations rules um this would mean the end of the Jewish state it would seize being a Jewish state it would become an Arab majority state in other words a 24th Arab state in the world I think the world has sufficient a sufficient number of Arab states 23 is quite a quite a lot in fact it's more than most peoples have hmm so this is a next one is a question from an acquaintance of mine who is an Arab uh Arab Israeli he um you recently co- published a study about uh additional details about the poisoning of the water supply of Palestinians in 1948. can you tell us what you found I I recently published with a um a friend and a fellow scholar Benny kedar an article about in this the Israeli campaign during the 1948 a two poison Wells poison to a pollute Wells with bacteria in in Palestine as part of the war effort against the Palestinian Arab militias and against the invading Arab armies the idea was that if you conquer an Arab Village and you don't want the militias or the the inhabitants to return to that Village If You Poison the Well the the the village as well it will they won't be able to retake or re-re settle in that area and if you poison Wells along the Arab armies a lines of Advance into Palestine through the Gaza Strip or through the West Bank into Israel um if you poison the wells along the Arabs root of March uh you will um create an impediment to the Arab advance and slow down if you like or harm the Arab military the war effort this was behind a this campaign in known as cast eye bread that was the code name of The Campaign which was mounted by the Israeli um military from April um 1948 onwards just as Israel was Facing The pan-arab Invasion The Invasion by the Arab armies um a lot of Israelis at the time had a it was a very secret campaign but um myself found the documentation in the Israeli archives of the the the um development the course of this campaign how it came about they took the who gave the orders how it worked in a in effect it had very little influence apparently on the war itself very little influence on the Arab armies even if that was intended um affected very few villagers and probably had caused very few casualties as far as we can tell from the documentation and a few people died an acre the town of acre but that seems to have been more or less the fatalities caused by this campaign um but we discovered the documents and thought that this is another part of the the history of the 1948 War various Scholars or journalists had written about this but based on rumors based on speculations we found the documents and outlined what exactly had happened so I can't help but as an Americans think of the analogy to our founding and the controversies and the moral controversies around our founding obviously to begin there is the the decimation of the Native American population most of which occurred because of disease but certainly some of which occurred through just through violence and Westward Expansion being being pushed violently toward the west so that settlers could uh form settlements and then there's obviously the issue of slavery and which we often call our original sin as a country um you know at some level you know people people critique these elements of our founding no one really thinks that that they they constitute a total invalidation of America's right to exist as a country in part because they are so far far back in the past but also because it's just totally impractical that America would unwind itself to to apologize for its uh the ugliness that occurred at its Origins but this brings me basically to the question of you know globally if you look at all of the developed nations in the world all of Israel's peer nations in Europe and in the developed nations in Asia America Canada Australia Etc how would you rate Israel's founding on the moral dimension in The Wider landscape of Nations that all of which have some skeletons in the closet would you say it was better than average worse than average roughly average Etc I think it was probably better than average on balance same um if we're talking about what happened in 1948 um more recent behavior in the Israeli occupation in the territories it's a different question but when in terms of the origin of what happened um look the the Israelis the the Jewish community in Palestine was attacked by their Palestinian Arab neighbors and then by the Arab states as Israel was founded the Israelis fought back Israel suffered um one percent of its population killed by the Arabs in the 1948 War that's more or less if you if it had happened to America today if the America lost one percent of its population in an attack by Outsiders that would have meant would have meant 30 30 million Americans were killed in um do I have that right no one percent would be three million Americans killed no yeah three million Americans yes three million yeah yeah that that's quite a large a percent uh you know casualties so a Israel felt it was attacked it had the right to uh repel the Invaders and at the same time to uproot or not allow back um the Palestinian Arabs when you think in terms of actual atrocities apart from expulsion which I don't think is an atrocity but but in terms of the uh chillings and massacres and rapes uh it was very very little of this in the 1948 War I know we all people always talk about Israeli massacres there were also Arab massacres of Israelis during the 1948 War um in fact the first big Massacre occurred when Arabs killed their fellow their co-workers in the Haifa oil refinery in December 1947 but all together all in all Israelis a killed deliberately massacred a something like 800 Arabs in the course of this year-long war which was forced upon them which they they didn't begin the Arabs began it so when you think about the number 800 killed Arabs killed all told in massacres by Israeli troops over a one year long War this is really very very small a very small number of across a very small atrocity or very small number of atrocities the same applies instead of the rapes there were probably a dozen cases of rape in the 48 War as Israel occupied hundreds of Arab Villages and towns if you compare this state to what happened in Yugoslavia in one or two days in Yugoslavia in the 1990s um a serbs killed Saturn 7 000 people in two days in bruniza is 800 killed by Jews in massacres of Arabs in 1948 is a very very small number and as I said there were also Arab massacres of Jews in which several hundred Jews died also in the course of the 48 War so if you wanted me to put give it a a Mark I would say when you if you want to compare it to the the mass murder of Indians by Americans in a in the the drive Westward over the centuries in America's founding or a other aim a country's a treatment of them their enemies um in the years and of their Foundation uh the Israeli uh behaviors are actually pretty good that's my my I know that a lot of people won't like to hear this but when you look at the actual numbers and figures and what happened um Israel's Behavior I think was very good this doesn't mean that I now condone certain Israeli policies and behaviors today there's something else I'm talking about 1948. yeah we'll get to that we'll get to today in a second let's just fast forward and go maybe a little more quickly through the history since 1967. let's actually just fast forward to 1967. what were the motives of the Arab countries that invaded in during The Six Day War what did they want well The Six Day War was caused by mistakes in halations it wasn't an intended War neither by Israel nor by the Arabs um the Egyptian leader a colonel Nasser was flexing his muscles and hoped to re-militarize the cyanide peninsula which had been demilitarized after Israel's withdrew from Sinai in 1957 um and he went further than that not only did he put his troops into the Sinai Peninsula but he closed a an international Waterway the states of the states of The Straits of Kiran and the Suez Canal to Israeli shipping these were acts of War and the Israelis had to mobilize they didn't know if the Egyptians were going to attack or not attack but they had to mobilize to confront the possible assault by the Egyptian Army and then the the generals came to the the government and said we can't maintain the situation of total mobilization and forever it's economically impossible and politically impossible the Egyptians have broken international law and they're forcing us to go to war on the Israeli Prime Minister reluctantly he's told the generals okay attack and so the Egyptian Israelis preempted and attacked the Egyptian Army in Sinai then the jordanians and syrians of their own um bad attacked the Israelis on the Eastern side by on the Israel's Eastern Frontier Israel pleaded with Jordan not to enter the war not to shoot we won't do anything to you we won't attack the West Bank or Jordan in the West Bank for East Jerusalem if you stop shooting the jordanians wouldn't listen and eventually Israel conquered the West Bank in response to the Jordanian attack and that's what happened in The Six Day War so Israel took the Sinai Peninsula the West Bank East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights um um the Israeli government it's not well known but the Israeli government a few days after the war ended in which Israel had one of a wonderful Victory if you like it is really secretly essentially decided that they would give back the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt and the gulan heights to Syria in exchange for a demilitarization of these areas and a peace treaty with these countries and the countries were unwilling to make peace with Israel the Israelis were unwilling because of internal divisions in the inside Israel were unwilling to give back the West Bank and East Jerusalem to Jordan I think this is a terrible mistake but that's what Israel did and they held on to the West Bank which was the origin of course of the present occupation which has lasted ever since 1967. so let's talk a little bit about how the settlements began my understanding from your book righteous victims is that the settlements in the West Bank began almost immediately after the occupation what were the motives of the settlers and were they shared by Israeli leadership well it's it's a complicated question what happened was that within days of Israel's conquest of the West Bank Israeli right-wingers pressured the government to establish Israeli settlements in the West Bank in areas where there had been Jewish settlements before the 1948 War which were destroyed by their jordanians when they took over the West Bank in 1948 the children of the settlers of 348 settlements said well we want to go back to where our fathers had established settlements in the etcion block for example just south of Jerusalem and the Israeli government because it was divided between right-wingers left Wingers centrists couldn't decide and the settlers were basically given their head and they went ahead and if you like settled the places on their own initiative and then the government sort of went along with them and supplied supplied them with their electricity um military protection and so on and eventually a more and more settlements were established so behind the settlement Drive was a if you like an historic a religious uh impetus because the area of the West Bank was um the heartland of the Jewish state of King David and the the the the Jews of two and three thousand years ago places like um in Bethlehem and Shiloh is Sebastian Samaria and so on these were the heartland of the Jews two or three thousand years ago and the East Jerusalem of course and the settlers said well we want to return we want these areas which were our original you know Crucible of the Jewish people we want them to be in Jewish hands um to remain in Jewish hands um alongside that was a the government had a strategic a political considerations were to do to do with the highlands that is the highlands of the West Bank were seen as strategic and the the generals basically said Israel's border should be along the Jordan River in other words east of the West Bank um that's a natural Frontier the Jordan River so there was a sort of a political strategic um motive for settling in the West Bank and holding on to the West Bank in addition to this spiritual historical reason for settling there by the settlers and the the religious right so you also say that especially starting in the late 70s there was a somewhat concerted effort to make life harder for the Palestinians the many Palestinians living in the West Bank in subtle and not so subtle ways to basically encourage them to leave of their own volition uh do you think that that that attitude remains today or do you or or has that changed well the the government didn't want a most of the ministers in the government would have been happy to see the backs of the Palestinians in others to see the Palestinians leave the West Bank but they weren't a going to expel them they they understood that what had happened to the Arabs in what became the state of Israel in 48 couldn't be repeated in the modern world and they maybe they also would have regarded it as immoral but they were willing to make life not pleasant or unpleasant for the Palestinians um to a certain degree and this probably impelled some Palestinians to leave but not very many in other words the the life which same the the way they lived in the West Bank was essentially Live and Let Live the Israeli Army said you don't you don't carry out terrorist attacks against us we won't touch you you can go ahead and live your life but it was a military Administration uh there were a mass arrests when there was demonstrations there was clampdowns there were curfews when there was trouble it wasn't a pleasant life for the Palestinians but they those who um kept their nose out of trouble uh were basically left alone this is essentially what happened and economically they were allowed to prosper and did Prosper Palestinians over the decades since 1967 lived much better lives than they'd lived before 67. hey they prospered if you like alongside the growing prosperity of the Israeli State as well um and and that's that's what happened but as more and more Israelis settled in the territories they began to constrict the living space of the Palestinians in the West Bank itself in a and the the settlers themselves began to make life a difficult if not the Army the settlers began to make life difficult for the Palestinian inhabitants so so you've you've also written that the Palestinian nationalist cause was more or less dead between 1949 and the Warren in 1967 and that Israel's victory in the Six Day War and their subsequent occupation of the West Bank and Gaza reignited the Palestinian nationalist cause and and brought it back from the dead do you think there is anything that Israel could have done in the aftermath of 67 that would have kept the Palestinian nationalist cause dormant yeah I think I think Israel made a terrible mistake in the 67 War they had no choice but to conquer the West Bank and East Jerusalem from which the jordanians were shooting at the Jews who lived in Jerusalem in Tel Aviv suburbs and they had no choice but to conquer the West Bank and the East Jerusalem um but I think in retrospect what Israel should have done was conquer the West Bank beat the Jordanian Army and immediately Retreat to Israel to Simply have abandoned the territory which they just conquered and let the jordanians come back and Rule there had that happened um in the Palestinians it possibly might have um not demanded statehood because they were would have been living again under Arab Muslim Rule and they wouldn't have had the great impetus to to um reach their own statehood and sovereignty over themselves which is what they had following Israel's um a occupation of the West Bank in here the Palestinians were then being ruled by a non-muslims non-arabs by Jews which as you say reignited the Palestinian national nationalist cause and Israel withdrawn immediately let the jordanians back in history might have been different okay so I want to move from the the history of the conflict to the present and the present the present ethics of the conflict uh and I guess I'll begin with this question of the power imbalance between the two sides obviously this power most of the time we've been talking about there wasn't such a large difference between Israel and her enemies I mean like if you count all of the Arab the five Arab states surrounding it and Israel's Army in 48 or 67 or 73. Israel was nothing was never sure it was going to win all any of those conflicts definitely not in 48 and 73 and and and so but today we have a very different situation we have a situation where Israel is one of the most powerful militaries in the world it's backed by America it has no you know none of its neighbors I guess we can talk about Iran later but none of none of its historic enemies can hold a candle to its military um and and so when Israel has an exchange with Hamas or Hezbollah Hamas sends Rockets into Israeli Villages Israel retaliates and what what we've seen is there's often a a ratio of casualties on both sides where Israel is killing more people than uh than Palestinians are right even if Palestinians are beginning the attacks when Israel retaliates you see a three to one a five to one in any given case might be a ten to one ratio of fatalities and many people see this and they say listen Israel is the bully of the situation Israel's the bully the Palestinians are being bullied end of analysis so what do you have to say to someone that sees the situation that way the the David and David and Goliath um image um pertains here um but on two levels Israel which has a population of about seven or maybe today eight million Jews seven or eight million Jews is surrounded by an Arab world of a hundred million or more 200 million God knows how many uh Arabs there are in the 23 Arab states and the whole Muslim World Behind These Arab states supporting these Arab states so in in that sense Israel is the weaker partner in this conflict there's an Israeli Arab conflict even if the government some Arab governments have made peace with Israel the governments of Egypt and Jordan have made peace and now there's a countries in the gulf and Morocco who have made their peace with Israel but the Arab public the Arab world still opposes Israel's existence it hasn't came resigned itself to Israel's existence um and they given the chance so Israelis feel might again gang up on Israel and destroy to try and destroy it so it's true Israel has a large army a strong Army it has probably Atomic weapons so they say um but it still feels surrounded by a large hostile Arab world which doesn't actually want it to exist on the other hand there's an Israeli a a David and Goliath um image between Israel and the Palestinians that is the Palestinians are a small fraction of the Arab world and here is an imbalance with which Israel is 5 10 100 times stronger than its Palestinian neighbors who happen to also be under Israeli or military occupation at least in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip they're at least surrounded by Israel it's not under physical occupation um so whenever there's a clash between Israel and the Palestinians as you rightly say there's always far more Arab casualties than our Israeli casualties because the Israelis are that much stronger they have Rockets which can shoot down the Arab rockets and they have tanks and guns and whatever which they can overpower the Palestinians Israel doesn't really use much force it always fights against the Palestinians when there is an eruption vis-a-vis for example the Gaza Strip Israel fights with its hand behind hands tied behind his back a because it doesn't want to cause such disproportion in casualties which can only ignite more hatred but nonetheless the clashes end up with Israel killing more Palestinians than our Israeli did so this is the reality but but Israelis have to think in both terms they have to think in terms of us vis-a-vis the Palestinians and US surrounded in this area by 100 million Muslims who don't really want us to exist here and might one day gang up on us perhaps with the help of Iran in the future as well another Muslim state so in the in the West Bank um no as you say after the 67 War Israel was mostly happy to Live and Let Let Live unless there was a terrorist threat but that had that situation has evolved very much uh partly because of uh the reaction to the intifadas and now there is a you know a system of checkpoints and a lack of freedom of movement for Palestinians in the West Bank and Military courts that have uh extremely high conviction rates and reports of you know Collective punishment of violence you know punishing someone's cousin because they did something wrong and you know obviously this is the stuff of military occupations at one level you know there's rarely a nice military occupation uh historically speaking on the other hand this occupation has lasted 55 years where most occupations last you know a few years or you know five or ten at the most and because of how long this one has lasted people have labeled it labeled Israel as an apartheid state so I'm curious what do you make of the designation of Israel as an apartheid state well Israel has seven million uh Jewish citizens and 1.5 or 1.7 million Arab citizens Israel's Arab citizens have full rights they vote they have knesset members they have even occasionally a member of the in the cabinet they have Supreme Court Justices a a Israeli Arabs enjoy full essentially full full rights compared to Israeli Jews so in this sense there's no apartheid Israel isn't an apartheid state Arabs can move freely they were limited in their ability to move and where they worked for the first decade or so of Israel's existence but from the 1960s on they lived as equal citizens inside Israel the problem is that there is a occupation of the West Bank and in the West Bank a Arabs do not have rights they're not enfranchised they don't have the vote they're not citizens they have as you they suffer from roadblocks from curfews if there's terrorism a collective punishment exists there were times when a suspects were tortured by the Israelis security authorities maybe still are um um it was a military occupation it's not apartheid because in South Africa the population the small white minority population ruled over disenfranchised inhabitants of South Africa not a military occupation but these were the inhabitants simply weren't given rights Israeli Arabs are given rights but um in the territories which are considered a occupied um and are occupied the Arabs have no rights and this is a terrible situation the problem is Israel since 67 has essentially been caught in a terrible dilemma those Israelis who would like to give up the occupation and get out of the West Bank and maybe even also East Jerusalem um are constrained by the problem of security if you leave if Israel leaves the West Bank the Arabs in the West Bank will probably vote for Hamas into power and the Hamas the extremist a fundamentalist Muslim organization will start shooting Rockets into Israel from the west bank and then what do you do you reoccupy the West Bank um the Hamas might inviting a foreign armies to come in and base themselves for instance Iranian troops in the West Bank what do you do do you reoccupy the place so that's the Dilemma you leave the West Bank which you want to do because you don't want to occupy another people you don't want to Lord it over on other people but on the other hand your Security will be mortally endangered if you leave the territory and this has been essentially the Israeli dilemma of those who want to leave now our Israelis don't want to leave the West Bank they want to continue to rule rule over the the people who are the Palestinians who live there and to um settle more and more of the land in the West Bank and turn it into Jewish a a land um but but um so they don't maybe care about this dilemma but they also understand that there is a security dilemma as well you know they understand that if the territory is handed over to a Palestinian control and the Hamas as they did when they had elections wins take control over the territory it will it threatens Israel's existence it's a terrible dilemma but I don't think the word of apartheid applies it's not it's not it's not the situation hmm so the Israeli public has moved to the right rather significantly over the past 20 years and the recent government is the the most right-wing government in its history and some some are calling it racist and fascist or at least some elements of the government why has the public turned to the right I know there are many causes but in your view what are the causes there's two two main causes why Israel has drifted the Jewish population of Israel has drifted rightwards one is continued Arab in transitions that is the Arabs the essentially the Palestinian Arabs have been unwilling to reach a territorial compromise prime minister in the year 2000 offered the Palestinians with the support of President Clinton offered them a two-state solution have a state in the West Bank part of Jerusalem or large part of Jerusalem in your hands as your capital A that'll be your state we'll have Israel here and the Palestinian leadership under Arafat rejected the the this a compromise and the continued rejection by Arab leaders including the Palestinian leader today Abbas the rejection of this two-state idea as a basis for a compromise has forced Israelis many Israeli is to say well we have no partner so we have no choice but to continue in this occupation and basically to vote right the other reason which is probably even more significant is the demography in Israel of the Jewish population a religious right-wing um Jews have more children than secular a liberal left-wing Israelis they simply have more children a secular Israelis have between two and three children per family religious families in Israel who are essentially right-wing have five six seven eight children per family and over the years because Israel is a democracy maybe this is unfortunate but it is a democracy they have more and more voters each successive election and by by the year 2022 now they simply have more votes than a secular a liberal or left-wing Israelis and that's why Israel is drifted because of this demographic imbalance between a secular and religious and right-wing Israelis and it seems to me that this problem of demography is huge and it it makes a two-state solution less and less likely with each passing year obviously you know two-state solution has been unlikely from the start I think primarily because uh Palestinians don't want it or Palestinian leadership doesn't want it or the Palestinian leaders who do want it would be killed by the terrorists who don't that's the primary I think impediment right if one side doesn't want the thing then then how do you how do you get that but on the Israeli side with each passing year as the religious right-wing minority just grows at a you know seven to two birth rate over over the rest it seems like it just becomes you know you know I'm looking at 2050 if there were a kind of Palestinian Sadat to arise like someone that really could convincingly say that he wanted peace would it would it matter at that point would it be too late have the opportunities been permanently missed because of how demography is likely to change in the future I think you're right and unfortunately I agree with you I think that Israel's drift to the right is a permanent situation and it's only going to get worse with more and more right-wing voters receiving the vote um [Music] um and in addition to that the continued growth of the settlement uh Enterprise in the West Bank makes less and less territory in the West Bank available for a Palestinian Arab state to emerge um but on the other hand I think that the Palestinian leadership still haven't agreed to the principle of a Juris state next to a Palestinian State they reject reject that so sorry um so so I think from both ends the likelihood of a two-state solution a compromise based on two states a has grown unlikely and is going to grow even more unlikely as the decades um progress so if that's true if a two-state solution is just receding further and further into the rear view mirror um what what is the whys and just policy towards the occupation I mean I could picture someone just saying listen I know Israel cannot just leave the West Bank look what happened when Israel left Gaza it probably life became worse for the gazans in in the long run and it also became worse for Israelis living on the border with Gaza so who benefited other than Hamas from from the the retreat at some level that argument makes sense to me and it could just be doubly true with the West Bank because it's so much larger um but is there is there a a way is the proper view that the occupation should just become less uh less Draconian is there a way to make the occupation in other words is everything Israel is doing in the occupation in the West Bank is it all justifiable in the name of security or is there excess I'm sure there's excess I think excess is probably built into the idea of a military occupation military rule is excessive by Nature it's it's it's I don't know about Draconian but certainly based on force and often brutal this is this is what happens in in military occupation but I don't see it getting any better I can see there might be Israeli leaders who would try and make it less brutal but they on the ground the troops will react as they will react to terrorism they will have curfews they will have a collective punishments they will shoot a at Target same justifiably or sometimes unjustifiably and kill people who are actually innocent this happens in occupations among troops who feel threatened by terrorists and that's how they regard the Arabs who shooted them um I I don't see I don't see any way of making the occupation any less suppressive any less oppressive um the occupation has to end but how you end it when you have a population here which doesn't want to end it in Israel and in the Arab population which doesn't want to accept Israel's existence um I I don't know how you get out of it I just see more of the same in the coming decades so there's one argument that people on the Palestinian side or sometimes on the BDS side of this conflict make so you look at Hamas you look at how Hamas prosecutes their war against Israel they shoot Rockets from High civilian areas hospitals uh school buildings so that when Israel retaliates against the militants they can't help but also kill women and children essentially which is just unacceptable to watch from the point of the International Community but they intentionally do this you know and they when they send Rockets they you know most of the Rockets are sending out or they're sending out Villages right they're sending out Villages full of women and children rather than military targets so these are the tactics of terrorism these are not the tactics of a just War and and yet some people you know some people are tempted to not necessarily defend this but one argument goes that the reason Hamas uses tactics of Terror is because they don't have a state you know if they have if they had a state they would liberalize someone they would they would not you know part of of the ruthlessness of how how they operate is a function of their statelessness and their current status and shouldn't be used as an argument not to give them a state what do you make of that argument uh as a historian who studied Hamas and their views it's a problem look you're right they're not a state they don't have an Air Force they don't have a military with tanks and artillery they can't fight Israel on the the same playing field same level of the playing field they they have to they have to use a terrorism or certainly rocketry and so on if they want to harm Israel um on the other hand though Hamas happens to be a Fundamentalist terrorist organization it's not it's it's also a political party but it's a terrorist organization it believes in Israel's destruction this is one of the principles it's most important principle in a its Charter and its founding if you like the Declaration of Independence they want to destroy Israel that's what they say uh this is an Infidel State uh they hate Jews it's an anti-semitic organization that in its Charter it blames the Jews for igniting World War One World War II and establishing the United Nations if this all sounds like nonsense but but that's the way they see the Jews and that's the way they see the state of Israel which is the Jewish State um and this organization uh clearly aims at Israel's destruction in addition to Turning of course all of Palestine into a fundamentalist Muslim entity um and this is a problem it's not a it's not an organization which is going to reform itself or become moderate this is not something anybody who understands from us uh will will expect to anticipate do you think that Netanyahu wants really wants a two-state solution with security assured I don't know I have no idea hey look he comes from a right-wing family he has writing views he's also an opportunist and occasionally pragmatic he's also somebody who's tried to avoid Wars um he knows it Wars never end the way you want them to end um but on the other hand he's the right winger so I I don't know what he wants he says he's paid lip service to the idea of a two-state solution but I think he understands it's not something which is going to happen and therefore he is no longer pressing it so the philosopher Sam Harris I remember in his engagements on the Israel topic years ago uh made a point which seems ethically important to me which is what would each side do if it could do whatever it wants or there's another way of framing the ex this point as a kind of thought experiment say there were you know a pill that just was administered to all Israelis such that for some reason the whole IDF laid down its arms and just couldn't do anything right became essentially zombies right what would happen if this pill was administered to all of Israel and Hamas could have its way and then what would happen on the other hand if Palestinians were administered this pill and Israel and the IDF could have its way um I mean like so I you know I made this point earlier about the power imbalance between these two sides there also may be an intention imbalance like what what do both sides want if they could do if they could do whatever so how would you answer that question I have a feeling I fear that there's an asymmetry here I think if the IDF laid down its arms and the Hamas was allowed to do what it wanted it would simply kill all Israelis or at least subjugate them and turn them into Servants of the Islamic State but probably they would try and expel most and perhaps kill the rest um if the Hamas were to lay down their arms and the Israelis were allowed by the International Community to do what they wanted most Israelis probably wouldn't want to kill or drive out most of the Arabs but some Israelis might and that's how I put it but most Israelis were probably not not have the will the the desire the ability um to do this to the the willingness to do this but but so I think there's an a an asymmetry here in intentions or what would be the intentions were they given a free hand hmm so another question I wanted to ask you is about the notion of Aliyah which is basically the right of any Jewish person by some definition and sometimes there are proposals to change the definition and so forth but the right of any Jewish person somehow defined to immigrate to Israel and be granted more or less automatic citizenship that's a that's a policy that I mean it's it it makes a lot of sense in 1948 given that you know Jews are getting persecuted and killed anywhere in the world and the whole point of this state is that they can come here and they'll be safe uh in 2022 that's a policy that increasingly seems from the Western liberal eye to just be ethnic chauvinism without a clear security purpose right it seems like yes there's anti-Semitism anti-Semitism in America but there are not pogroms and there probably aren't going to be um so has like what do you make of Aliyah as a as a policy does it seem uh justifiable to you still or do you think it's it's it's backwards and should be jettisoned well I have a completely different take on this um I think that um a open-ended Aliyah in other words the opening of the borders to any Jew who wants to come here a is a mistake now Israel is overcrowded it's an overcrowded country the traffic jams here are terrible there's no place to live there's not enough room to build um Israel should end all immigration to Israel both of Jews and non-jews but essentially we're talking about Jews I think this is a terrible mistake to have continued this for so long in the past decades um that that's on one level on the other [Music] um this is the Jewish State and I can understand Jews um the Jewish leadership of the country wanting to allow any Jew who feels persecuted to come and live here and become automatically a citizen incidentally this writer as far as I remember exists also in some other countries like Germans going back to Germany or whatever are given automatic citizenship you know people of German origin I think the same might apply to Ireland as well I'm not sure about this um but the idea that the Jews anywhere have the ability to come here um for safety's sake should they feel persecuted or should they actually be persecuted somewhere there's nothing really wrong with that except as I say on the level of demographics is simply too many people here in this country should basically close its doors to anybody who's not actually under threat foreign so I want to ask one question about the the settlements today now this is an area where I you know the there's so much journalism uh you know politicized on both sides about what exactly is happening with with settlements in the West Bank it can be hard to discern exactly what's true many people many journalists say that uh you know Palestinians are getting kicked out of their homes um and and the the you know settlers are violently attacking them in some cases um people on the other side will say you know something like 90 something percent of the settlement expansion you hear about is actually upward expansion on already existing settlements rather than horizontal expansion that's displacing Palestinians what is your perception of what is true currently um and how do you view the ethics of settlement expansion well I've always been against the settlement Enterprise I think it's counterproductive it's not going to get What It Wants in other words the idea of the settlements uh was to assure Israel's security and for those who want to expand Israel down to the Jordan River to expand Israel's borders I don't think both things are realistic any longer um on the other hand the settlers the settlements are expanding both horizontally and vertically and a lot of settlers are right-wing Fanatics not a lot some of the settlers are right-wing Fanatics and they are violent towards their Palestinian neighbors cut down olive trees attack Palestinian Olive Pickers this is a not a controversial matter for dispute this is what is happening in the in the on the ground in various areas of the West Bank um um the settlements are a terrible impediment to peace this is has been true ever since there the Enterprise began if you were a young Israeli today would you would you also refuse to serve in the occupied territory would you do that again probably yeah okay my final question for you uh I want to end on a optimistic note but it may or may not be an optimistic note depending how you answer it you know say it's the year 2100 probably both you and I will not be alive um and there is peace between Israel and Palestinians reverse engineer this for me what is the plausible path what was done in the intervening 80 years that uh that made this unlikely piece possible well I as I mentioned before I think what Israel did in 67 after winning the war was a mistake they should have immediately withdrawn from the West Bank and allowed the jordanians to reoccupy and rule the West Bank this might have made a historic difference in the evolution of the conflict since 67. beyond that I'm not sure there are people who've criticized Israel's leadership in 48 myself included for not being generous a post 48 and 49 for example and not being generous enough um in offering concessions to the Arabs in order to make peace but in hindsight I think that the 49 in 1949 nothing really could have changed because the Arabs weren't ready after they're humiliating defeat in the war to make peace with the Jewish state so nothing could have really changed I think um I don't know what else could have been done but in 67 that was the point in which something different could have been done and changed the course of history my question though is sort of asking you to speculate about an optimistic future this is uh obviously I'm not optimistic about the future I don't see the point in speculating about it because I don't see anything good Happening Here in the future fair enough so before I let you go can you tell my audience where to find your work which which books of yours you would remember you know recommend as an entry point to your work and where they can follow you well um I don't know I think I think my book righteous victims which you can get easily in Amazon righteous victims is a history of the Israeli Arab conflict I think it's a fairly reasonable balanced history of what happened here since 1881 until the year 2000 but essentially most of the conflict yeah I think that's a a reasonably good book and I think my book on 1948 which is called 1948 about the most important of the Israeli Arab Wars a history of that war is also a reasonably good history of the war those two I think I would recommend okay Benny Morris thanks so much for your time my pleasure thank you for having me that's it for this episode of conversations with Coleman guys as always thanks for watching and feel free to tell me what you think by reviewing the podcast commenting on social media or sending me an email to check out my other social media platforms click the cards you see on screen and don't forget to like share and subscribe see you next time [Music]

Channel: Coleman Hughes

Views: 1,152,614

Keywords: politics, news, politicalupdates, policies, currentaffairs, political, society, highsociety, modernsociety, contemporary, intellectualproperty, debate, intellect thoughts, opinion, public intellectual, intellect, dialogue, discourse, interview, motivational, speech, answers, Coleman Hughes, talkshow, talks, ethics, intelligence, discrimination, music, Israel, Palestine, BennyMorris

Id: wv8F4NLr4E0

Length: 99min 27sec (5967 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 11 2023