Having skimmed Benny Morris’
Righteous Victims, I had thought he was part of the Israeli Left.
Then I came across an interview from 2004 titled “Survival of the Fittest? An Interview with Benny Morris,” and now I’m not so sure.
Here are some excerpts:
Quote:
[Ari Shavit]: Ben-Gurion was a “transferist”?
[Benny Morris]: Of course. Ben-Gurion was a transferist. He understood that there could be no Jewish state with a large and hostile Arab minority in its midst. There would be no such state. It would not be able to exist.
[Ari Shavit]: I don’t hear you condemning him.
[Benny Morris]: Ben-Gurion was right. If he had not done what he did, a state would not have come into being. That has to be clear. It is impossible to evade it. Without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here.
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Quote:
[Ari Shavit]: So when the commanders of Operation Dani are standing there and observing the long and terrible column of the 50,000 people expelled from Lod walking eastward, you stand there with them? You justify them?
[Benny Morris]:I definitely understand them. I understand their motives. I don’t think they felt any pangs of conscience, and in their place I wouldn’t have felt pangs of conscience. Without that act, they would not have won the war and the state would not have come into being.
[Ari Shavit]: You do not condemn them morally?
[Benny Morris]:No.
[Ari Shavit]: They perpetrated ethnic cleansing.
[Benny Morris]:There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing. I know that this term is completely negative in the discourse of the 21st century, but when the choice is between ethnic cleansing and genocide—the annihilation of your people—I prefer ethnic cleansing.
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The rest of the interview can be seen here:
http://www.logosjournal.com/morris.htm
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