Saturday, January 31, 2009
Here's an NPR interview with Benny Morris from a few days ago. Morris does a great job throughout. [h/t: Cinnamon Stillwell]
I wonder if Michael Krasny would have given Morris the full hour alone had he known he wasn't getting the Berkeley version. You can get a sense of NPR's audience by the questions that come in from callers toward the end.
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The congress should keep that admonition in mind when replying to the request from the U.S. Postal Service to change the current law that requires the mail be delivered 6 days each week. The Postal Service wants to cut out either Tuesday or Saturday ... Read More
An NPR interview (KQED Radio - Forum-Michael Krasny) with Historian Benny Morris, Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Ben Gurion University.(h/t: Solomonia) Very interesting and I thought enlightening comments from an Israeli historian considered b... Read More
A real historian on Benny Morris
http://www.meforum.org/article/711
Great interview. I thought that Morris' responses to the callers' questions were very effective and to the point. The questions themselves -- not so much.
By the way, don't judge NPR's audience by a few callers. I'm NPR's audience too.
Mal, when Morris is wrong, he needs to be called out on it (I've linked to that article before, it's good), but when he's right, he deserves credit. And when he's right, he's very good.
Well Adam, there was that one softball question at the end...that guy speaks for you. :)
Adam, you can judge the audience of Krasny's show out here on KQED by just a few callers--they're always the same fools and fascists. And Krasny is a tool from S.F. State and his program has become painful to listen to...I stopped years ago (I'm in Oakland). But agreed, Morris was good.
Solomon, not that I'm offended as a Cal graduate, but it's Berkeley. But no offense. Even though I'm about 2 miles from the town border, I don't think I've stepped foot in there in close to 10 years!
Heh. Sorry, fixed. I ended up somewhere between Berkeley and Berklee (College of Music).
You're forgiven. I believe that town was named after the famous Iranian poet and literary master, Lord Berkeley-nejad.
Do you think Morris has read The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism?
He certainly could have filled out some of his talk with facts to better describe the "religious fanatics".
Pity when describing Hamas charity to provide social care he did not enlarge on it and show how Hamas entraps and maintains captive those "dependent" on its "largesse".
One problem is that authoritarian Arab regimes do little to help their populace. Even under Nasser's "socialism," I've heard, there was little in the way of social or community investment programs. So, that left an opening for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and for Hamas in Gaza, to fill in the gap and win easy popularity.
I think that Krasny had to have known about Morris' defection from revisionist history. It's been known for a few years now.
One other thing: I found the questions to be rather tired. They were the same bromides that have long been discredited, like the one about how well off the Jews were under Muslim rule.
I thought people would have known well enough to retire those themes. Perhaps it's because these people travel in circles, and read publications, in which the notion of dhimmitude is ignored. People can live in bubbles like that, surrounded by like-minded people and never coming across other points of view except superficially.
One last thing (I promise?): The interviewer's questions were probing, but by no means unsympathetic to Morris. Had he been unpleasantly surprised by what Morris said, he would have starting questioning Morris in a less friendly manner.