45 Facts About Benny Morris

Benny Morris was a professor of history in the Middle East Studies department of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in the city of Beersheba, Israel.

Scholars have perceived an ideological shift in Benny Morris's work starting around 2000, during the Second Intifada.

Benny Morris's perspective has been described as having become more conservative and more negative towards Palestinians, viewing the 1948 expulsions as a justified act.

Benny Morris was born on 8 December 1948 in kibbutz Ein HaHoresh, Israel, the son of Jewish immigrants from the United Kingdom.

Benny Morris's father, Ya'akov Morris, was an Israeli diplomat, historian, and poet, while his mother, Sadie Morris, was a journalist.

Benny Morris served in the Israel Defense Forces as an infantryman, including in the Paratroopers Brigade, from 1967 to 1969.

Benny Morris saw action on the Golan Heights front during the Six-Day War and served on the Suez Canal during the War of Attrition.

Benny Morris was wounded in 1969 by an Egyptian shell in the Suez Canal area and was discharged from active service four months later, but continued to serve in the military reserve until 1990.

Benny Morris completed a BA in modern European history from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and then received a doctorate in modern European history from the University of Cambridge in 1977.

Benny Morris's thesis was on Anglo-German relations in the 1930s.

Benny Morris served in the 1982 Lebanon War as an army reservist, taking part in the Siege of Beirut in a mortar unit.

Benny Morris covered the war as a correspondent for The Jerusalem Post.

Benny Morris interviewed the residents of the Rashidieh Palestinian refugee camp near Tyre, which helped pique his interest in the Palestinian refugee issue.

Benny Morris found evidence that there had been expulsions in some cases.

Benny Morris left The Jerusalem Post in 1991 as part of a mass walkout of journalists due to a perceived right-wing turn in the newspaper and began searching for an academic position, but found that no university would hire him.

Benny Morris continued researching and writing but found it impossible to support his family from his work and had to rely on loans from friends.

Benny Morris considered leaving Israel but was persuaded to stay by Ezer Weizman, then Israel's president, who found him a job at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in 1997.

In 2004, Haaretz published an interview with Benny Morris conducted by Ari Shavit that has generated significant controversy.

Benny Morris told Shavit that his views changed in 2000 after the Palestinian rejection of President Clinton's peace accords and the outbreak of the Second Intifada.

Benny Morris had originally viewed the First Intifada as a legitimate uprising against foreign occupation, and was imprisoned for refusing to serve in the occupied territories as a reservist.

Benny Morris said that Israel was justified in uprooting the Palestinian 'fifth column' after the Arabs attacked the infant state, and that proportion should be employed when considering the "small war crimes" committed by Israel.

Benny Morris told Shavit that he still describes himself as being left-wing because of his support for the two-state solution, but he believes his generation will not see peace in Israel.

Benny Morris later denied the term "ethnic cleansing" with regard to the actions undertaken by Jewish forces in Israel during the year 1948.

Benny Morris said that possibly, the term might apply in a limited or partial context to Lod and Ramla.

Benny Morris says that according to historical records, approximately 160,000 Arabs remained within the territories of Israel post-1948 and that while many were indeed expelled, a significant number managed to return and retained their status as citizens of the newly established Jewish state.

Benny Morris is critical of the Israeli settlements, calling it "counterproductive" because it will not assure Israel's security.

Benny Morris called some of the settlers "right-wing fanatics", who are violent towards their Palestinian neighbors.

Benny Morris claimed that as soon as the Palestinians did have rights, Israel would no longer be a Jewish state, and that it would descend into intercommunal violence with Jews ultimately becoming a persecuted minority and those who could emigrating.

Benny Morris considers Israel's decision to bar the refugees' return and the international context.

Benny Morris's work considers what happens in urban communities, such as Jerusalem, Jaffa and Haifa.

Benny Morris contends that there is no two-state solution to the Middle East crisis, and that the one-state solution is not viable because of Arab unwillingness to accept a Jewish national presence in the Middle East and cultural differences including less Arab respect for human life and rule of law.

Benny Morris suggests the possibility of something like a three-state solution in the form of a Palestinian confederation with Jordan.

Benny Morris has won praise and criticism from both sides of the political divide.

Some commentators criticised Benny Morris for being reluctant to accept the implications of the evidence he presents in his work.

Avi Shlaim, retired professor of international relations at the University of Oxford, and himself a New Historian, writes that Benny Morris investigated the 1948 exodus of the Palestinians "as carefully, dispassionately, and objectively as it is ever likely to be", and that The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem is an "outstandingly original, scholarly, and important contribution" to the study of the issue.

Shlaim writes that many of Benny Morris's critics cling to the tenets of "Old History", the idea of an Israel born untarnished, a David fighting the Arab Goliath.

Benny Morris argues that these ideas are simply false, created not by historians but by the participants in the 1948 war, who wrote about the events they had taken part in without the benefit of access to Israeli government archives, which were first opened up in the early 1980s.

However, Ben-Ami criticised Benny Morris' drawing of an "awkward symmetry" between the Palestinian refugee crisis and the "forced emigration" of Jews from the Arab world.

Efraim Karsh, professor of Mediterranean Studies at King's College London, writes that Benny Morris engages in what Karsh calls "five types of distortion".

Benny Morris expects his readers to take on trust his assertions that fundamental contradictions exist between published accounts and the underlying documents.

Benny Morris is simply not what he makes himself out to be, a trained historian.

Benny Morris has been criticised by Norman Finkelstein and Nur Masalha.

Benny Morris holds to his conclusion that there was no transfer policy.

Benny Morris wrote a review critical of Ilan Pappe's book A History of Modern Palestine for The New Republic.

Benny Morris says it subjugates history to political ideology, and "contains errors of a quantity and a quality that are not found in serious historiography".