Solomonia: Benny Morris Takes Down Tom Segev

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

At TNR, Benny Morris reviews a pair of books, Tom Segev's 1967: Israel, the War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle East and Isabella Ginor, Gideon Remez's Foxbats over Dimona: The Soviets' Nuclear Gamble in the Six-Day War. Morris prefers the second book, and really uses it as a device to get to a well-deserved savaging of the revisionist (in the negative sense of the word) Segev: Provocations

...This portrait of Israel in 1966 and early 1967 is skewed. The economic downturn was a minor recession, nothing like the American or German depressions. (Indeed, the early 1960s saw the establishment of the foundations of the modern industrial economy.) There was greater immigration to Israel than emigration. The Sephardi-Ashkenazi gap, while extant, was hardly in crisis mode (there were no riots to compare with 1959 or the early 1970s); and the same applies to the religious-secular divide--hardly a period of violence or fireworks. Palestinian terrorism was meager and trivial compared with the standards set in the 1970s and 1990s. The country's political leadership, while not flamboyant or "great," was certainly composed of capable and honest people. Israelis were no more "bored" then than in any other time. In other words, the picture that Segev paints of Israel's internal condition in 1966 and early 1967, with which he tries to "explain" the war, is essentially false...

...(As it turned out, Israel suffered less than eight hundred dead, several dozen of them civilians.) With the benefit of hindsight, Segev feels able to argue that Israeli fears were irrational, indeed paranoid: the Arabs were weak and Israel was strong, and Nasser and the others did not really mean it when they spoke of throwing the Jews into the sea.

And yet Segev himself provides the counter to this when he quotes Ben-Gurion: "None of us can forget the Nazi Holocaust, and if some of the Arab leaders, with the leader of Egypt at their head, declare day and night that Israel must be destroyed we should not take these declarations lightly." (Later Segev offers a counter to this counter by quoting King Hussein: "With the Arabs, words don't have the same value as they do for other people. Threats mean nothing." So, in the end, Israel should not have taken Nasser's threats, or moves, seriously?)

In Segev's view, to understand the Six Day War one needs to understand more than the "diplomatic and military background. What is needed is deep knowledge of the Israelis themselves." Not of the Arabs--of Nasser and his generals, who sent in their tank divisions and closed the straits in defiance of the agreements of 1956-1957; or of the Jordanians, who ignored Israeli appeals on the morning of June 5 not to open fire or, later, to stop firing artillery into downtown West Jerusalem, the suburbs of Tel Aviv, and the Ramat David air base in lower Galilee (the IDF began responding only at around noon, after Jordanian troops stormed the U.N. headquarters compound in southern Jerusalem); or of the Syrians, who rained down shells on Israel's Jordan Valley settlements starting on the evening of June 5 (the IDF assaulted the Golan on June 9-10). No, there is no need to look at or understand Nasser, Hussein, or the Syrian leadership--or the hundreds of thousands of Arabs who took to the streets of Cairo, East Jerusalem, Damascus, and Baghdad shouting "Idhbah al Yahud!", "Slaughter the Jews!"...

The idea that the Arabs have no agency in Segev's view is pretty familiar stuff. Not surprisingly, Segev was the local NPR outlet's choice for in-studio guest on the 40th anniversary of the war. Who better to help the public understand history? Well, almost anyone.

Posted by Solomon at 4:30 PM on Tuesday, Jul 31, 2007 | Comments (10)
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10 Comments

#1 Grantman | July 31, 2007 5:40 PM

Sol - will this be posted in full in the forum?

#2 Grantman | July 31, 2007 5:43 PM

Oops. Sorry. Just saw it.

(Gotta check before I post...gotta check before I post...gotta check)

;-)

#3 jaws | July 31, 2007 9:38 PM

Has Morris finally turned his back on the school of revisionist history he helped found?
More and more, it looks like he has been-which is a good sign.

#4 Solomon | July 31, 2007 10:39 PM

He's been...revising himself for awhile now. He's certainly separated himself from the Segevs and the Pappe's. Here's a search with some of his stuff:
http://www.solomonia.com/blog/fastsearch?query=%22benny+morris%22

#5 Bill B. | August 1, 2007 8:45 AM

What is it with the so-called "new historians" in Israel today?Why do they have such loathing for their ancestral homeland?Tom Segev's latest book "1967" appears to be nothing more than another attempt at a revisionist rewrite of the 6-Day War.I refuse to buy his distorted tomes but try local libraries or skim thru
them at the bookstore for free.

Aside:
Is there a way I could ask some ques. to someone here about former Deputy Dir. "Muhammad Ali Salaam" of the Boston Redevelopment Authority???

#6 Solomon | August 1, 2007 9:13 AM

You can ask here or email me. solomon a solomonia.com

#7 Joanne | August 1, 2007 12:59 PM

Yeah, he diverged from his "post-Zionist" views with his book Birth of the Palestine Refugee Problem Revisited, which was a revision of an earlier book that had been in the new historian mold.

Here's an interesting article: http://hnn.us/articles/3166.html

#8 Lynne T | August 1, 2007 2:35 PM

Bill B:

Nick Cohen observes in his critique "What's Left" that it is easier to hate that which is familiar, so perhaps that's what animates the New Historians' constant railing about Israel. Or maybe they have to prove themselves to be better Jews than Jews who are more supportive of Israel than they are by being so "self-critical" of the country in which they were likely born and currently reside.

Or maybe they do it for the money.

#9 Mike Nargizian | August 1, 2007 6:47 PM

Morris hasn't changed his opinion of the refugee situation from 1948... imho, he reveled in his status a bit too much in the late 80's and early 90's ignoring the threat he helped to import into Israel... the PLO.. And now he sees the danger of the irresponsible vehement zealots of Pappe, Segev and Finkelstein...
Anyway, here is a comment at the TNR that I found interesting -
http://www.tnr.com/doc_posts.mhtml?i=20070723&s=morris072307

The answer to your question about why Morris didn't mention Oren is simple: Scholar's envy (translated from a Talmudic term) by a second rate historian (Morris) of a first rate historian (Oren).

I had opportunity to discuss both of these books with Michael Oren about a month ago or so at a Jerusalem book fair. Oren said that Remez & wife's theory (I don't have her name in front of me; him I remember from his days broadcasting on Israeli radio) it's flimsy, not being based on any hard documentation although it's an interesting hypothesis -- but no more than that. As far as Segev's book goes he trashed it, noting that as an orthodox post-modernist and new historian, Segev does not touch Arab documentation as Oren did quite extensively and assiduously ignores very public and private threats being spewed from the Arab states before 6 June 1967.
Oren reviewed Segev's book for The Washington Post; the review can be read here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2007/06/07/AR2007060701872.html:

One additional tidbit: I asked Oren about his next big project ("The Power, Faith & Fantasy" was a sideshow), whether it would be the Yom Kippur War. He said no since many of the relevant archives are not open yet and he is very big on documentation (as opposed to Segev & Morris & the highly politicized school of new historians). Instead he is going to tackle (or perhaps already is) Israel's War of Independence, i.e., the "1948" war (which actually started in November 1947). THAT should be interesting. And controversial. And probably not very P.C.

Hershel Ginsburg,
Jerusalem.

#10 Mike Nargizian | August 1, 2007 6:53 PM

Here is the article in full at Google Cache. I didn't see Solomon post it anywhere?
http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:rMTsGwmH4K8J:www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml%3Fi%3D20070723%26s%3Dmorris072307%26c%3D3+provocations+benny+morris&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us