Palestinian Exodus: Facts and Myths with Prof. Benny Morris

I'm Eitan Weinstein and I'm Norma Nagar and you're listening to two nice Jewish boys this podcast is made in collaboration with the Jewish Journal breakdown of the Palestinian refugee problem in 20 seconds the year is 1947 and the UN announces its Partition Plan for Palestine also known as resolution 181 promptly the Arabs residing in the region opened fire on Jews eventually a war breaks out and Exodus and the exodus of 700,000 Palestinians ensues maybe was a little less than 20 seconds this has turned into one of the most controversial debates in modern history what caused the Palestinian Exodus of the years 1947 to 1949 there's the mainstream Zionist narrative more or less that Arab leaders urge the Arab population to leave there's the mainstream Arab narrative basically Zionists and the ethnic cleansing and then there's professor Bette Benny Morris now buckle in because this is slightly more nuanced than the stuff you might be used to hear professor Benny Morris is the professor emeritus of history in the Middle East Studies department of ben-gurion University he's the author of several books as you can see including the birth of the Palestinian refugee problem 1947 in 1949 and also the book 1948 and he's a pretty cool dude so we are thrilled to be joined by him in his home this evening to talk about some history so let's get started maybe with a term that others have used to coin you which is a new historian how do you actually it was a term I coined I know the story ography new historiography old historians new historian what's that about and that was sort of a definitions in which I coined I suppose in 1988 in an article which was published in cocoon in America in which I said that the historians more or less a Israeli historians from the 1950 60s and 70s basically pervade an old official Zionist historiography and in the 1980s with the opening of new archives and the growth attainment of maturity by a younger generation of historians newest story ography which meant the revisionist historian Rafi had come into its own and was being published and so there was this divide between the the old and the new which of course the old old-timers didn't like and what was the old-timer I guess basic history it was the Jews all right the Arabs were wrong the Jews were good the Arabs were bad we came here with good will in our I had the right history yeah we came no it was the left-wing also which pervaded us we came here to establish a nice state among Arab neighbors they didn't they react nicely to us and eventually we started killing us and we had to defend ourselves and one of the byproducts of that was a creation of a large Palestinian refugee problem and how did you rebel against that well basically we looked at the documentation was me and not some other PRS torian's average time and so on we looked at the documents which had never been opened hadn't been opened before the 1980s and that showed a more a nuanced picture of what had happened in the years prefer before 1948 and in 1948 and in the years following 48 and the nuance picture showed the Jews sometimes did nasty things as well the Arabs did nasty things sometimes the Jews acted wisely sometimes the Arabs were unwise in so it sort of changed somewhat the picture a which had been sold through the Israeli public and Israeli schoolchildren during the previous 40 years so let's hone in a little bit on the Palestinian refugee problem and and then maybe later we'll get to your upcoming class see because I wrote about it 30 years ago yeah but we but it's new for our audience so we want to try and know and break it down for that relevant it is irrelevant yeah I think that I think it's it'll be news to a lot of people I think that when I was first introduced he not too long ago to to your lectures I had for years actually believed the idea that Arabs had urged Jews to leave their homes and then they would promise urged Arabs Arabs sorry Arabs had urged our Arabs had urged Arabs to leave their homes on the promise that they would return to you know a conquered homeland yeah and that apparently is not it's essentially not true it's essentially not true in Arab leaders from outside the Arab leaders of the States Arab states around Palestine in Israel did not urge the Palestinian Arabs to leave if anything quite the opposite happened in May 1948 they essentially told the Arabs of Palestine stay in your places or even if you've left go back to your places on penalty of arrest a confiscation of your property if you leave it and so on and and the leaders of the Palestinian national movement also essentially didn't encourage flight in a Haj Amin al-husseini issued in marks forty eight day orders to people to stay away people asked him what should we do and no notables from Tiberias and Jerusalem and he said no no stay in your places don't leave so it's essentially a myth the whole business but every myth has a core of reality and it of truth and it's true that in some places Arabs did urge other Arabs to leave and high for the local notables who had remained in Haifa in April 1948 it did call on their remaining populace and in Haifa to evacuate because staying there would have meant accepting Jewish rule essentially legitimizing Jewish control of Haifa and their acceptance of Jewish control so they told them leave probably a behind the scenes they said well eventually they'll be able to come back when the Arab armies come and conquer this place you'll be able to come back on the coattails of Arab conquering Arab soldiers but but then that usually wasn't stated in public aim and there were other places villages along the coastal plain near Jerusalem in which the elders in the village of the militiamen and the village told the women and children to evacuate because it didn't want the burden of protecting the women and children in combat zones so they said leave and that of course contributed to the creation the Palestinian refugee problem because of they had an effect which they didn't hadn't considered if you tell your women and children to leave they leave and then you have less to stay for you the fighters and the young men rather less reason to stay because you have to defend anybody you leave more easily than had they remained so so but it worked that way so though and there were certain villages which were instructed to leave also by Arab commanders Egyptian commanders Jordanian for tactical reasons they didn't want villagers a caught up in the middle pray you know ever as a obstacle to their own plans to you know the advance or whatever a but essentially people left and and there were places of course where Israeli troops did expel Arabs and there's no argument about that certainly not after the revelation it was it anecdotal or was it significant no that was significant it's not marginal they were from Lydia and Ramallah in July 1948 something over fifty thousand Arabs were expelled they were told to leave you've got a couple of hours get on the road and go to Abdullah was it legal though what I mean illegal I mean is it consistent policy isn't considered a war crime in international I don't know look I'm not I'm not a lawyer I don't know what's a war crime what isn't if you murder line up a hundred people on the next two wall and shoot them that's a crime I don't know be a lawyer to understand that but whether if you expel a population from a place which has attacked or is about to attack you or is behind your front line and you can't endanger your front line because they're on your lines of communication is that legal or not I don't know it's not really only but the works pulsons by Israeli troops a of Arabs in 1948 the most prominent being in Lydda and Ramallah with ben-gurion authorization direct immediate authorization we have the command yeah Robin said he told us expel them or he said with the gestures of there any notes no one document with that they did a series of documents as the documents as Robert Robbins said there's documents at the time in which Robin tells the local commanders orders them expel the population of leader and Ramallah man woman and child and then tell me you've done it and then the local commander of the brigade cables and a day later says we're expelling them and a day later says we've completed the expulsion so we've got the whole documentation of those sorry for being pushy about it but it's really interesting is there a written signed document by ben-gurion the ordering no there is no you're talking about a doc a document saying expelled the Arabs from palace for exam no there was never such a policy interpreter there was never overall policy as Arabs later maintained of expelling the Palestinians that wasn't government policy was never decided in cabinet was never decided in the Jewish Agency executive before was never decided by the Chiefs of Staff of the General Staff of the IDF or the Hagana before them so there was no policy but there was a an atmosphere from April 48th let's get rid of as many as we can get ridden in the sense of getting them out of the country and so that they won't be a bother to us militarily while the war continues and politically and militarily after the war ends they won't be a potential fifth column so it's better to have as few four Arabs as possible but it was never translated into official policy which meant ben-gurion hinted and winked and told some generals as few remain as possible and some generals accepted it and some didn't act accordingly and we have at the end of the war a fifth of Israel's population is Arab 160,000 Arabs 700,000 Jews in the State of Israel 1949 as a result of no policy they leave a lot of Arabs in place so it was kind of up to the discretion of generals on the ground more or less more or less yes I see and Generals an even lower usually it's Colonels and majors and captain's in other words company commanders and battalion commanders and brigade commanders they're the ones when to end decide what to do about the population and later Israeli officials come and visit the Galilee and they basically fume and say they write documents saying the some places they kicked out the Moslems some place they left them some places it kicked out Christian yes yes chaos exactly everybody did what they felt like so let's let's make some order of this because I want to understand it kind of because I feel like it's neither here nor there it's like a bit of everything half that's what history is long yeah yeah I'm so in a straightforward so what kind of a what stages did it happen and what amounts left when do we know that well I in my books I I more or less same chronologies that I I explained what the stages were and they were sort of four stages in the creation of the problem in the departure of the Palestinian Arabs from their homes most of them said in the ending up in other parts of Palestine not outside Palestine so in that sense they're not even refugees refugees to find somebody who leaves this country not his home to move to another part of the same country but anyhow there was an initial stage which is important between November 47 and March 1948 in which the upper class of the Palestinian people essentially upper class of Jaffa - Jerusalem fled with their families and this sort of left the Palestinian Arabs who remained the bulk of the Palestinian Arabs leaderless cuz they're the political nation the upper class had departed the lawyers the doctors the politicians energetic military commanders most of them had fled by the end of march aim the second stage was a mass departure during April May June in which something like 200,000 or 300,000 Arabs fled their homes and then there was a third stage during a series of Israeli military offensives in a July 1948 in which some of them were from Lydda and Ramallah who were expelled others fled from the nazareth area not being expelled but fled and when Israel conquered these areas and then there was a fourth stage in october/november when Israel Israel went over to the offensive both in the Galilee and in the south and another to 300,000 essentially they were pushed out of their homes by military pressure here and there there was advice by Egyptian Colonels telling the people in NASH doridori's dude to leave but essentially was because they were being attacked by Israeli troops their homes and villages and and and so they said nobody wants to get killed by falling shells those are the four stages so how many how many are we talking about 700,000 is a rough estimate nobody knows exactly how many Arabs at the time said a million had been a spelled Israel said 500,000 the UN said 700,000 plus and that's probably the number that's though historically speaking it's not an uncommon thing when we look at wars throughout the 20th century wars which involve civilian populations you end up with a civilian flight usually or not usually I'm not even sure if it's true usually but often civilians are allowed back when Paris is taken by the Germans as the Germans are about to capture Paris and May June 19 a forty five million Parisians or Frenchmen around the Paris Area flee southwards but almost all of them return to Paris the difference here is that Israel from June 1948 onwards and this is consistent unlike no policy before that but from June onwards there is a government policy not to allow refugees to return right and that's implemented along the borders not would you shoot people who try to cross it back into Israel I can't help but remembering I heard an interview with Rafi Eitan who was a commander right at the 48th War and then he was chief of Mossad and he used to say no Rafi Eitan it wasn't cheap for most know what he was in the Mossad you're talking about Rafi I must rely it no yeah well a ton is another guy who was the chief of staff fool but he's but yeah just to rule eight tons so one of the motion the Mossad for a while and was also in the key Eichmann kidnapping yes yes he said in their interview what a mistake we did we should have pushed more out so many of that generation I think also felt that way and like you said regretted in a way and in a sense ironically lots of the things that's that there is going on now you can draw a line from those decisions made by back then by these middle-class soldiers and what is happening today in our geopolitics and it's mind-blowing I know you can say that if Israel's Arabs had not remained in Israel and if the West Bank Arabs and Gaza Arabs had not remained in the West Bank in Gaza crossed the Jordan in 1948 Lange's really easier things would have been less complicated for Israel and perhaps even easier for the Palestinians in some way yes that's not how it ended up yeah and you also I read some quotes from you saying about the current Arab Palestinian Israeli citizens about how our relationship with them is so complicated and some rough quotes do still stand behind the and I know I've never changed my mind on things and I changed my mind about things if I see documents which show me the opposite of what I said before and I haven't encountered that in what I said is that Israel's Palestinian a minority especially insofar as it identifies with the Palestinian national cause which essentially is to get rid of Israel are a potential Fifth Column they were they they have been since 1948 and remain so him some of them have become Israeli fide some of them have become westernized but in general they somehow identified it's natural if you like with their brothers across the line in the West Bank of the Gaza Strip and the refugee camps in Lebanon Syria and whatever and these people want to get back from the refugee camps they want to come back to their homes and lands in Palestine and essentially the Palestinian people believe we are a set of robbers who have taken their lands and houses and we should get out and they should be restored to their lands and houses and they should be sovereign in all of Palestine that's essentially the Palestinian ethnos and the Palestinian desire it said openly by the Hamas not so openly by the Fatah but this is what they would lend Benny Morris of nineteen eighty six seven eight would say the same thing yes the same thing yes that's so interesting because I read about your life story you know I've always been a Zionist I've always believed we should have a state here but I've always understood the Palestinians want us to get out of here they want to uproot us I think we're Noah is getting it is a lot of people kind of and I'm sure you've seen this say Benny Morris went through a conversion yeah it's not true I feel that well what I would say is this I would say that in the 1990s when Arafat seemed to be inching towards as the head of the PLO seemed to be inching too Ward's a settlement a two-state settlement an agreement to partition the country with a Jewish state next to an Arab state and he signed the Oslo Accords and supposedly recognized Israel's existence or legitimacy it appeared that maybe they were changing their colors they were changing their tune that they were were bowing to reality and would accept a two-state solution when in night in 2000 day in summer 2000 at Camp David he said no essentially he was continuing the line of Palestinian resistance since 37 of continuously saying no to a two-state solution to a compromise he was essentially saying it's all ours we're not going to give up any part of it to you or not legitimize any part of it belonging to the Jewish people and and from that point on you at the Second Intifada and you've got Palestinian rejection ISM continuing under Olmert I went under a Abbas when he said no to all mert's similar peace offering Clinton parameters and the Olmert aim proposals which were also for a two-state solution he also said no so this has been a consistent Palestinian line so what I'm saying is I understood the depth and partly because when I wrote this book righteous victims I came to understand the depth of Palestinian rejection ISM that book sort of follows the conflict from its origins through the first half of the 90s 20th century and and you when you read what they're saying and doing during those 50 years from 1880 until 1948 you come to understand why they're saying the same things in the 1960 70s and they don't want to say what they think we are robbers they believe we've stolen their land and they want it back and they think that's justice from the late 19th century yes yes from the beginning from 1890 a Palestinian notables and they weren't considered Palestinian then they were southern Syrian Arabs who lived in Palestine in this area they sent petitions to Istanbul to the capital of the Ottoman Empire asking the Sultan to stop Jewish immigration to Palestine to stop Jewish land purchases in Palestine because they're coming here to dispossesses they understood they believed in stood if you like that this is what was going to happen if Zionism expanded and it worked out that they were right yourself so thrilling prophecy quite amazing the prophecy well no they understood look they had they had been influenced by anti-semitic views of the Jews and the anti-semitic Semites in England America Russia said the Jews are out to conquer the world as the you know like a Tom knew nay not an octopus enveloping the world these rabbis control Moscow and eventually control the Communist Party and they control the capital that is rich the rich west through New York and the stock exchange and they want to conquer the world and so the Arabs in Palestine who didn't know too much but they'd heard that the Jews are all-powerful they are coming here and taking over and this is a real danger it's not a couple of ten thousand settlers of twenty or thirty thousand they are the the point the spear point of a vast movement didn't know there were only ten million Jews in the world of the time they probably thought there were hundreds of millions and they're all powerful they'll come here and they'll throw us out for them it was like discovering the boogie man's real yes well this is the bogeyman and eventually it turned into real yeah so it's interesting though that you because it seems like the the research ventures you go on are kind of I mean you say that you understand this this issue with the Palestinians I guess not accepting Israeli sovereignty and wanting seeing us as robbers and and I I mean maybe this is too much of an assumption but that you see that as a problem in a certain civil society but you still kind of make a point of it to research their claims and you name righteous victims which is interesting that you're righteous victims in the book and it's not spelt out but most people understand it refers to both sides things are both sides they choose the victims of the outside world but anti-semitism and so on and ended up coming here because of that not because they dispossessed somebody but they want to possess something still you don't do it yet still so though it's it's an Arab source of victims of course of Zionism yeah but still so I wonder what it is that you feel like drop because obviously I mean as a historian your concern with I guess the objectivity and you would call it dry facts but something drives you in a certain direction to be interested in something I wonder what it is that drives you to read I think the truth is the thing which interests me not justice okay but truth in other words I mean I have my own views of what is just and what isn't but that's not really what you'll find in the book what you'll find in the book is an effort to get to the truth of what happened what happened in certain places what happened overall in the conflict and so on a mandus incidentally is also what I I think we we've done myself and my fellow M author in this book on Turkey is what we've tried to do with him the tale of Turkey and its Christian minorities at the end of the 19th beginning of the 20th century in a second yeah so you're saying I guess is it that you look for places that you feel are clouded in in myth and you want to kind of bust through that and say okay that's my simply lie I'd like to get the story straight that's what interests me to get what is really true and people were saying this about that and other people saying the opposite in terms of the arab-israeli conflict or the creation of the refugee problem the same applies to Turkey if you like and what happens with Armenians or the Greeks of Assyrians there's this version yeah I'd like to see what happened so you go to the documents to try and find out what the documents tell you happened and then you present it and that's what I we did I did in 9 or 10 books on the israeli-palestinian conflict and what I've tried to do with my fellow author in new book on the Turkish problem so maybe we'll talk a bit about can we can we say the name yeah advisement by Harvard University Press in it's a catalog for April and the book is supposed to come out it's published the name so that's it's also it's gone the record already in the 30 year genocide yeah and subtitles important Turkey's destruction of its Christian minorities 1894 1924 which are their main Ian's well it's the Armenians but also the Greeks and their Syrians right everybody seems to focus on what happened to the Armenians during World War one but the fact is it's a a year process and involves a Greeks Armenians and Assyrians not Romanians were Christians Armenians and Greeks and the Syrians all Christians today so the point of the the point of what happened is dar the Turks were essentially interested in getting rid of all their Christians either by murdering them or by expelling them and that's what they did so in this 30-year period so no flights for you to Europe in with a connection in Istanbul and I don't think so I think I'll have to skip Istanbul yes you're right it's it's worse for my cohort like your head but then it's worth for my my worse for my in his Turkish he's not Turkish but he is a autumn honest and he's always worked on Ottoman files etc in Istanbul he was even married to a Muslim Turk for a while the kind who end up in the jail we're probably worse than the jail maybe a bit like tel keshavjee whatever his name is yeah in the garden yes I I would not I would not recommend either of us to visit Turkey in the near future yeah ok you know it's quite an important issue even here in Israel we debate about from time to time maybe it will also help and push because in Israel we never we never recognized right official I don't think it's I think is wrong as being immoral and not officially recognizing the Armenian Genocide but as I say the genocide encompassed hundreds of thousands maybe as many as a million Greeks and the Syrians as well as a million Armenians the D is the word Holocaust in the book no is the word as genocide it's never harm now look well actually the the you I was surprised to find in looking at the documents and I've been doing this for the last eight nine years we've taken a long time to write this book aim some American missionaries used the word Holocaust in relation to the Armenians in the sense of what the Holocaust actually means it means a large fire conflagration that's what the word means in English no in Greek it's a Greek word the Greek which is usual in English but it means a fire a large fire rail and the merit that Armenia the American missionaries used it because the Turks quite often put hundreds of thousands of Armenians in churches and great and this was called a Holocaust also yeah at least see the same no they didn't that's well some people did the same but yeah now see essentially the shot people gasped yeah but there were there were the workplaces we were burnt but often I understand often by Ukrainians and poles rather than Germans the Germans didn't actually I don't think go ahead and burn people in synagogues what they did was they assemble them and took him to camps merciful heavens it was more orderly but it's true that in the advanced in places like that in Poland the locals mustered the people in a synagogue and burnt so can you give us a little bit of a rundown give us the 30-year genocide in 30 seconds I'm kidding but give us can you tell us a second well I mean what happened specifically with each community with the Armenians well Greeks and with the Assyrians it's it's um it's it's it's complicated and quite simple the successive art a Ottoman Turkish governor governments between 1894 and 1924 wanted to get rid of their Christian minorities because they regarded the minorities as disturbed stabilizing potential knife in the back fifth columnist s' a and they wanted a pure Turkish Muslim state that's what they wanted this is what Abdul Hameed wanted the Sultan in the 1890s this is what the CU p or young turks wanted during world war one and this is what Ataturk wanted in a period in 1919 1924 and to this end they in staggered bouts of massacre and expulsion and forced conversion of tens of thousands of people a and mass rape also a and abduction of women also in their tens of thousands they essentially got rid of their three large Christian communities nobody knows the exact numbers but probably there were initially in 1892 million Armenians two million Greeks and about six hundred thousand Assyrians living in the area we call Turkey today a and they essentially got rid of them they were 20% of Turkish population in 1890 they were less than 2% of Turkish population in 1920 trade guilt when you well know they did both they both killed large numbers and they expelled large numbers with the Armenians they probably killed more and expelled less and with the Greeks they expelled more of them and kill less but we're talking in the hundreds of thousands of murdered people in cases I mean they're sirenians almost a million you said well probably a million over the 30 year period it's probably a million Armenians it's probably something less in Greek terms of the Greeks and it's probably about 300,000 in terms of their Syrians why because they didn't want Christians the Christians were the other they wanted a Muslim state they regarded the Christians as infidels they regarded the Christians as potential allies of external Christian powers which were inimical to Turkey the Russians especially but also the British and the French they wanted their property and they stole all their property which was enormous more Greek and truck and Armenian property and the Syrian property they fell into the hands of the state or individual Turks many trucks wanted the women to rape them to take them as a abductees into their houses concubines servants say slaves were this is also under Ataturk's rule yes the Turkish kind of organizers Turkey is seen as a modern enlightened European in yes who tries to turn Turkey into a western country he changes the script from arabic into latin and so on but he was as much genocide 'el and explosive as his predecessor well if genocide is a new european thing that's not European that's not true genocide is something which has been going on for thousands of years the Babylonians did it serious did it the Egyptians did it they killed peoples they conquered or turn them into slaves and and they do more in modern days and probably the Jews did see this idle aspiration they did things like that to their malachite sodomites perhaps in ancient times if you believe what's in the Bible or whatever but yeah and why why is it that this story is so and talked about no well in the 20th century people gradually during the 17th 18th 19th centuries Europeans became more cultured and less violent that's what happened in the Middle Ages everybody was violent they became less violent as the Whig interpretation of history progressed as Liberals became and liberalism became the dominant ethos who's supposed to behave nicely the turks didn't behave nicely him and he didn't aspire to behave nicely and the Germans of course were a big aberration they were the most unwise people around during a Hitler's day but but the Turks did this and they also got a terrible name you will call the terrible Turks as a result of massacring Christians in Bulgaria and later in Turkey itself and is it a coincidence that they ended up teaming with the Germans in World War one for example like well some people say it wasn't a coincidence because the Germans already been slaughtering people in South a West Africa a before so culture like some people attribute to say I don't know okay IIIi don't know if this is true but there there were charges and there were people there were a lot of German advisors in Turkey during what happened in World War one to the Armenians and some of them advised to get rid of the Armenians or at least they looked the other way as Armenians were being massacred him and but it's interesting to note that one of the German consuls in Turkey in one of the town's provincial towns was a man who actually died alongside Hitler was killed in the Berlin Munich puch 1923 when Hitler tried to get power a chief power in Bavaria and mounted the sort of rebellion a one of the consuls aim from a of one of the German consuls in Turkey we'd been in Turkey before died he was shot by German police but this consul actually was constantly reporting against the Turks and their destruction of Armenians in World War one and lady becomes a Nazi I said and he was killed by the German yes by Germans were opposed to the Nazis German police in Munich hair so he sort of crosses the lines he and he's opposed to the Armenian killing of mass killing of Armenians by the Turks who are Germany's allies in World War one and then when he gets back to Germany becomes a Nazi and presumably suppo supports Nazi ideals of cleansing Germany so why do you why do you think the but that's a that's a yes yes why do you think wristing why do you think the Israeli government has such an issue is it because of the the the like Turkey is the is the closest Muslim country we have so I don't know the closest Muslim country but it's it's it's an important Muslim country in the Middle East it's not Arabs so potentially it could be an ally against Arabs or at least not pro Arab but at the moment or the last decade or so it has turned pro Arab under this a ruling party under everyone but Israel still for apparently for strategic and economic reasons doesn't want to offend the Turks over much and therefore doesn't recognize now Professor Morris is going singing handedly ruin the relationship the relationship or an earth one continuously says he supports the Hamas and Israel is evil and so on do we really have that that much of a strategic I don't know I don't know I think there are things we don't know about I think their intelligence things and military things we don't know about which stay Netanyahu's hand from cutting off relations with birthdays when I personally would have cut relations off with Turkey a long time ago and said you don't like that okay we don't have to have relations with you but we can we but morally speaking we should recognize the Armenian Genocide because that's the sort of thing we would like people to recognize yeah what happened to us and those who don't accept the Holocaust we're doing the same thing in that sense with the Armenians and the Greeks and their Syrians did you have to travel to Turkey to look through a haircut I I didn't like my partners and autumn Alice did drawers heavy went through the it is no it's not a complete dictatorship Turkey it's sort of it's some it straddles a fence between democracy and dictatorship and at the moment foreigners are usually not prevented from seeing a documents but the point is that the Turks basically have purged their archives she don't actually see much incriminating material in Turkish archives but there is a lot of supplementary material there which supports what the Westerners who were in Turkey in nineteen nineteen hundred the British consuls as German consuls American consuls missionaries from the various countries took his documents support their version of what happened in one way or another you're going to publish it in Turkish I don't know we don't have a contract with Turkey at the moment no we we have three contracts in the English we have a contract in Italian it'll come out an Italian probably first aim I hope it'll come out in Turkey because it's good the Turks know know their history with that axe I mean that we are there books in Turkish about the Armenian Genocide I don't know you know what I don't know I think a lot of Turks some Turks some Turkish historians have written about it the books have been published in English I don't know whether they've actually been published in encourages a my my partner would know draw knows exactly what's in Turkish I don't know is this an attempt to I guess rename the Armenian Genocide there no I'm saying the Armenian Genocide is forgetting a whole other million people well that's true we didn't know that when we started out we were going to write a a new look at the Armenian Genocide it what happen why because it interested us because as I said it was controversial we wanted to sort out the facts from the fiction okay what is the true story of what happened but as we got into it we saw so much longer and deeper story it's a thirty-year story another two years story and involves other people's as well Greeks and Assyrians and various same and not successive Jim Turkish government's not just one government and so it's essentially Turkish policy over those 30 years not just one aberration by some Colonels who were running the government in 1915 before we go professor I have to ask you this why did he sit in jail in 88 because I refused to serve in the IDF as a reservist why why the curveball well the first notes of the First Intifada I was different from the Second Intifada you grew up maybe remembering the Second Intifada we know nothing about the First Intifada done anything about so from 1987 until 1991 the Arabs in the West Bank in Gaza essentially wanted to throw off the yoke of Israeli military in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip they may have also in their hearts wanted something beyond that just to get rid of the Israelis from where we're sitting on top of them but their official stance was this is against military occupation and its burdens and its trials and tribulations and we want to be free and in I I thought that was quite legitimately I I understand why Israel has been in occupation of the Arab territories Palestinian territories since 1967 we had nobody to give them to we were willing to trade but they weren't willing to trade that was a how it was under the Labor Party it isn't the situation today but but at the time I thought they have a legitimate grievance and I'm certain not gonna take part in suppressing a popular a revolt which wasn't an armed lethal revolt it was basically using a stones and protests and the strikes and didn't I mean people did dine yes but not very many very few about a thousand Palestinians died and maybe several dozen Israelis and there were a few Hamas Knicks who were shooting people but this was rare was the exception during the First Intifada was basically a civil as a fishing boat peacefully a semi semi peaceful revolt but non-lethal that's the point the Second Intifada was very lethal thirteen fourteen hundred Israelis died in and there was a lot of shooting and killing and bombing etc etc and the point in the Second Intifada was that you felt that it wasn't just to get thrown off the Israeli military occupation was basically to get rid of Israel as well that's what they really wanted to destabilize Israel and make it disappear in some way it wasn't a realistic aim but but you could sense that and it was also spearheaded by the Hamas whereas the first proved the First Intifada wasn't spearheaded by Hamas Hamas was a marginal a participant that was essentially a Fatah a campaign so would you approve an objector nowadays no because I think their fingers moved to a different stage in which it is really before the Palestinians a struggle to get rid of Israel as well as to get rid of the occupation even though they of course stress we want to get rid of occupation they're essentially a me further than that they're aiming at Tel Aviv Haifa but now you say that they always were like that right yeah but it didn't seem so during the First Intifada right I'm saying that historically speaking the Palestinian national movement wants to get rid of the Israeli Zionists were you wrong to object in your opinion no yeah you have to put you have to put yourself in people's shoes in a specific set of circumstances and those circumstances we were shooting at us we were killing Palestinians were throwing rocks which essentially didn't endanger anybody maybe one or two people died from rocks but not much more than that him and we were killing large numbers of them is I thought that was wrong okay fair enough so before we go we have a collaboration as we were telling with the Jewish Journal Jewish Journal calm they are a new source out in LA they have great columns to check them out yes and we accept donations so guys go to 2ng b.com slash donate and help us out please because we do it on our free time and of course check out Bennie Morris's books the new book is coming out in English April in April and all the other books and you can check out also his lectures online there's lectures I don't know if they're legally online but you can check them out yeah I don't make any profits as approach probably anything yeah but really check out many more as we urge very interesting stuff yeah thank you so much guys we do videos now so you can watch it you can watch us so check it out on our Facebook and YouTube and that is it thank you so much professor Michael thank you [Music]

Channel: Two Nice Jewish Boys

Views: 12,404

Keywords: Benny Morris, Palestine, Israel, Conflict, Palestinian Refugee, Palestinian Exodus, History, Nakba, Palestinian Nakba, benny morris (author), palestinian people (ethnicity), israeli news, palestinian exodus 1949, palestinian exodus 1948, palestine and israel, palestinian exodus 1967, history documentary, benny morris palestinian refugee problem, benny morris palestine, benny morris birth of the palestinian refugee problem, benny morris 1948 a history of the first arab-israeli war

Id: 0FEzsBjtcMQ

Length: 41min 54sec (2514 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 07 2019