1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War

by Benny Morris

This history of the foundational war in the Arab-Israeli conflict is groundbreaking, objective, and deeply revisionist. A riveting account of the military engagements, it also focuses on the war's political dimensions. Benny Morris probes the motives and aims of the protagonists on the basis of newly opened Israeli and Western documentation. The Arab side—where the archives are still closed—is illuminated with the help of intelligence and diplomatic materials.

Morris stresses the jihadi character of the two-stage Arab assault on the Jewish community in Palestine. Throughout, he examines the dialectic between the war's military and political developments and highlights the military impetus in the creation of the refugee problem, which was a by-product of the disintegration of Palestinian Arab society. The book thoroughly investigates the role of the Great Powers—Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union—in shaping the conflict and its tentative termination in 1949. Morris looks both at high politics and general staff decision-making processes and at the nitty-gritty of combat in the successive battles that resulted in the emergence of the State of Israel and the humiliation of the Arab world, a humiliation that underlies the continued Arab antagonism toward Israel.

 

Genres: History, Israel, Middle East, Nonfiction, War, Politics, Military History

544 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 21, 2008

About the author

Benny Morris is professor of history in the Middle East Studies department of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in the city of Be'er Sheva, Israel. He is a key member of the group of Israeli historians known as the "New Historians".

Reviews

[Dowl Phin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe, one of the "Israeli New Historians" who looked at the archived materials from Cabinet meetings, politician diaries, Israel Defence Force orders etc... after they were eventually released forty years after 1948. I read Pappe following the a challenge by an politically anti-Israel Jewish friend of mine who teaches in Philosophy at UNSW.

I found Pappe's book painful as he outlined the atrocities committed by Israel - even though I was mindful of the one-sided non-contextual facts that Pappe was describing, and the consequent one-sided idealistic anti-Israel interpretation. It was painful because, as a Jew, I couldn't help feeling 'ASHamed' (as a Jew) to be just like all the other racist nationalists the world over - Christian, Buddhist, Leftist, Rightist or Muslim.

I followed Pappe up with Benny Morris' book, knowing that Morris was one of the first of the "New Historians" to look at the historical material. Morris offers the balanced contextual background to Pappe's propaganda diatribe - with a 19th century starting point instead of one which commences in 1948. Morris accepts Pappe's atrocities but he also outlines the earlier Arab atrocities; he describes the self-delusion, corruption and moral bankruptcy of Arab leadership as well as the errors of strategy and internecine rivalries of the Arab elites; and he writes his history aware of the dynamics and uncertainties that are integral to war - in contrast to Pappe's simplistic interpretation of evil consequence being a result of evil desire.

Following the reading of both books I have come to the conclusion that there will NOT be any peace between Israel and the Palestinians until both sides recognise the atrocities and the errors of judgement that they have committed. At this stage, each side only looks at the atrocities the other side has committed, though I suspect that because of more freedom of speech and political-commercial transparency-accountability, there are more Jews, Israelis and Westerners who recognise the 'evils' of their ways than there are Muslims, Arabs and Palestinians who recognise the 'evils' of their ways.

War is evil - no doubt about that. War is two-sided - no doubt about that, either. The tit-for-tat strategy that both sides use has not produced peace in the near-term and there is no reason to believe tit-for-tat will bring peace in the long-term.

It is well to keep in mind that existence and honour seem to be two infinite values. Jews and Israelis see this conflict, following centuries of oppression and last century's attempt at liquidation in terms of existence. Simultaneously, Muslims and Arabs see the past century in terms of humiliation and loss of honour. At this stage in our history, non-indigenous Westerners in general, and non-Aboriginal Australians in particular, have little understanding of either existential threat or humiliation - and so it is that when I discuss the Middle East with them, I have a sense that they are clueless.

Reading Morris after Pappe is a good ways to become clued-up.

[Genia Lukin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay, let's grab the bull by the horns: nobody (except maybe one or two military history nuts) actually reads this book wanting to learn the military history of the 1948 war. People just want to know one thing - did they, or didn't they? Did Israel ethnically cleanse the Palestinians or not? Or, alternately, I suppose (though less likely with Morris readers) did the Arab states want to throw all the Jews into the sea or not? And, most importantly, whose fault is it??

(The British. Guys, it's the British. Okay, moving on.)

What does this book have to tell us on the matter?

- It is abundantly clear that there was no preconceived plan to systematically cleanse the Arabs from the territory the UN assigned to Israel. Some people love claiming that, indeed, there was, and cite things like the village files collected by Haganah intelligence (I'm looking at you, Pappé) to become "one of the most horrifying things done by mankind" (I'm loosely quoting a friend here). Except that we very quickly see that there wasn't. It appears that much of the earlier refugee wave was a result of abject fear and broken morale. I can't blame people; if you were in a situation of ethnic conflict, and being shelled, to boot, you'd flee the hell away, too. Israelis, stubborn idiots that they are, are clearly psychologically unsound and are an exception nobody should attempt to emulate, in that regard. Our basic response to shelling is to sit there and get stubborn. We are officially nuts. The Palestinians, much saner, decided to get while the getting was good, often on their own.

This is demonstrated aptly in places where expulsions did not take place, like Haifa, Acre, the Druze villages, Nazareth, etc'. Places that surrendered or reached an agreement during the civil war stage of hostilities, and were left in place. We see this also in the uncertain, twitchy policy in central Galilee during the later stages of the war, where nobody could decide what to do, and just sort of went along with whatever seemed cool at the time, in typical Israeli fashion.

- Just as clearly, in the later stages of the war, when the situation was geared more toward solidification and expansion, rather than sheer survival, there were actual expulsion orders. There also was a policy of "good riddance", once people were out, they were out. The government and people on the ground tried to quickly put together a fait accompli, assuming they were going to get away with it - a very unsavoury thing in the 2000s, but much more understandable in the 1940s. Well, it was still unsavoury in the 1940s, but was more likely to be excused.

Many of these expulsions were driven by (often excessive) paranoia (like Ramleh and Lod) and opportunism, rather than by a desire for ethnic uniformity, but some definitely weren't. Policies were enacted to prevent the return of refugees. These policies were often also opportune ways to ensure the safety of settlements and cities that, previously, were under threat, or a way to house a new immigrant population, or just ugly revenge, or political calculation. The Arabs, on their end, did something similar to the (fewer) settlements they conquered on the way, not to mention expelled and persecuted their entire Jewish populations immediately after the war.

This presents a very ambiguous, uncertain and ambivalent picture, where people were making a series of ad hoc decisions, arguing endlessly about what to do, changing their minds, and in general trying to figure things out. That is not to say there is no guilt here, but, here's the thing. Many anti-Zionists, some of them even Jews, imbibed the anti-Semitic trope that requires finding the Evil Plot. They need - and will take nothing less than - a premeditated, calculated display of Evilness being Evil, Evilly. They are determined to perceive this Evil in every Israeli move. The reality is, of course, much more homey, and much more homely. The reality is selfish, opportunistic, paranoid, terrified, idealistic, conflicted, messy and uncertain. Instead of an axis of evil intent on a massacre of the innocents, you just have a bunch of guilty parties who are also innocent parties, fighting each other for what they see as their basic human rights.

- This was an ugly war. It was actually not as ugly as many other wars, and this is true for both sides, but that's not saying much. Of course, every war is ugly. There is no war, no matter how just, that doesn't get nasty, brutish and long. If anybody thinks there's gallant war out there, anywhere, they need their heads examined - or at least to read Amnesty's reports on the Ukraine.

- The whole war, beginning to end, was a massive post-colonial mess and communal landgrab. Everybody was pawing at the three and a half square kilometers (it feels like) of mandatory Palestine, trying to get a piece, before the icing melted. The Arabs wanted parts, or all, of it, the Israelis wanted more of it, the Palestinians wanted as much of it as they could get. The Israelis somehow found themselves in a position to execute a greater landgrab than they thought possible and, surprise, surprise, they promptly took it. If the Arabs had been winning, no doubt they would have done the exact same thing, which is why the Israelis felt they had to win.

- Speaking of landgrabs, it is astonishing how little the world mentions the staggering land grab executed by Jordan. If you're going around comparing Israel to the Germans - I don't think you should, but if you did - then Jordan pulled a thorough and complete USSR, grabbing, essentially, the vast majority of the territory allotted to the Palestinians, without a single peep out of anybody! Not only that, but it never had to share or assume any of the responsibility for doing so in front of the community of nations, neither then nor now. Considering the kind of crap Israel gets, 70 years later, an amoral asshole part of me really wants to know what is the secret of this astounding PR coup.

- The Palestinians were - pardon my delicate French here - fucked big time. By the international community, by their leaders (many times over), by the Arab world (extensively and thoroughly) and even by themselves. And, yes, also by Israel. The Israelis? They would have been utterly fucked too, except that they were, this time, hellbent on being the ones doing the fucking. Is that something to be proud of? Absolutely not. Is it better than being fucked over? I don't know, but I call out the massive hypocrisy of anyone who says they do.

- Jerusalem was, clearly, a major sticking point for all sides. especially, and understandably, for Israel, considering its primary importance to Jewish history and religion, and the large Jewish community living there, but also to the Arab world. It is interesting, and somewhat depressing, to speculate on what would have happened if Jerusalem were just another city with just another community.

- In general, the lack of regard the partition plans and international goals had for Jewish history is astonishing. The idea that the Jews should get precisely the part of Palestine that was not, historically, of significance to the Jews, makes a certain amount of geopolitical sense in light of where the greatest concentrations of Jewish populations actually were - largely a matter of necessity and accident - but completely ignored the whole reason Jews were in Palestine in the first place.

- It's amazing how easily terms such as "imperialism", "colonialism" and so on, were thrown at Israel, from the very beginning. These terms were adamantly applied, laughably, by an actual British colonial official in Jordan (known previously as the Protectorate of Transjordan) with utter seriousness, and the full weight of connotation, to an Israeli military expansion geared toward pushing the borders of the newly-created state outward by a few kilometers in each direction. This in the context of the still existent British empire, the recently defeated German and Japanese empires, the convenient annexation of the Baltic states by the USSR, and, even, the completely unauthorized snatch-and-grab pulled off by the Jordanians. It looks like the tendency for words to just.. lose their meaning, has been a feature of the Arab-Israeli conflict, practically from day one.

- The Arab inability to recognize the state of Israel, and to make peace, kept biting them in the arse, and it's amazing how many of them knew it and could do nothing. The chronic refusal to negotiate actually peace accords - as opposed to cease-fires - has also massively exacerbated and entrenched the problems of the Palestinians, including the refugees, the return of which Israel was, apparently, at the time extremely not eager for (to say the least) but willing to contemplate under peace negotiations. This, too, somehow managed to completely go under the international radar.

- Israel committed more atrocities and massacres than the Arabs had, most likely because it was winning. The lack of atrocities and general push on the Arab side appears to be less a matter of high-minded moral and more a lack of enthusiasm. Nonetheless, the atrocities committed during the war need to be better recognized by Israel and acknowledged. We did it, we gotta live with it. We, of all people, aren't allowed to just shove it under the carpet.

- The international community, from the start, was very keen on sending "thoughts and prayers", but not much else, and even their thoughts and prayers were often high-handed and resented by both sides. The inability and lack of desire to actually enforce the partition that it, itself, decided upon, probably started the whole thing. It's odd to speculate, in retrospect, how things would have looked if, whether through Arab cooperation or international enforcement, the partition were to go through smoothly, but its conduct during this war was probably a huge part of building up negative credit with every side - and keeping that credit going ever since.

- Lehi and Etzel really managed to screw things up.

- The whole obsession with the Negev is weird. I like the Negev, I guess, but the Zionist movement seemed so hell-bent on it, and then just couldn't sustain its own enthusiasm. Why it was so eager to make the Negev bloom in the first place is beyond me. Very romantic, I guess, but also kind of outré. Makes me wonder if resources wouldn't have been better off poured into something more productive in the first place.

- The present-day hatred of the kibbutz movement towards "those terrorist settlers" from Judea and Samaria is hilarious, in light of how much they benefited - more than anyone else, apparently - from the expulsion of the Arab population of Israel in 1948. Of course, the same kind of hilarious hypocrisy is true for the entire Western world - built as it is upon infinite suffering and exploitation - towards Israel and the Middle East. The atrocities they committed happened long ago, and are now invisible, it's time to guilt other people for the atrocities they are committing now, having had no opportunity to do so before.

Basically, this book is yet another depressing installment in humans being humans. I've spent the last while reading a lot of Jewish- and Israel-related nonfiction, and now I officially just want the climate catastrophe to come and drown us all. I appreciate Benny Morris's unemotional, dry take on the situation, but I think I'm going to spend the next few months reading Fantasy, or something.

[Khader · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an excellent read, although sometimes heavier in quantitative military details than I would have personally liked. This is not a shortcoming of the book, but rather a lack of knowledge and interest on the part of the reader, as I was most interested in the political aspects of the 1948 war, as opposed to detailed information about every individual skirmish.

One of my favorite chapters of this book was the final conclusions chapter, where Morris urges Arabs and Palestinians to do the necessary soul searching to try to understand why their history took such a course. As an Arab, and an American Palestinian, I believe that this is critical. I grew up hearing and continue to hear people blame everyone but themselves for the negative turn of events. But the real questions to me are why did passions prevail over levelheadedness among Arab leaders? Why did Arab leaders, with the exception of King Abdullah, not have a realistic assessment of their military capabilities? Why did Palestinian society collapse in such a dramatic way, where disunity prevailed in such a way as to allow the IDF to pick off one Palestinian Village at a time, without other Villages rallying in their support? The national humiliation faced by the Arab armies during the 1948 war made all future conflicts inevitable.

It's always interesting to wonder what would have happened had the 1947 UN partition plan been implemented in an orderly fashion. Many would argue that regardless of whether it had, the conflict between the two nationalist movements was inevitable. The future however, remains to be seen.

[Ram · Rating 5 out of 5]

A well written account of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

The history of the conflict before the war from the demographic, political, economic and religious aspects.

The various stages of the war and their outcome.

The decisions made by the leaders (military and political) and the priorities that guided them.

The reasons why the war ended as it ended and the reason it ended when it ended.

And much more.

Benny Morris is an Israeli historian. He is a key member of the group of Israeli historians known as the "New Historians" a term Morris coined to describe himself and historians Avi Shlaim and Ilan Pappé.

Morris's work on the Arab–Israeli conflict and especially the Israeli–Palestinian conflict has won praise and criticism from both sides of the political divide. He is accused by some academics in Israel of only using Israeli and never Arab sources, creating an "unbalanced picture". On the other hand, the "New Historians" are accused by many in Israel as presenting a pro Arab point of view.

Regarding himself as a Zionist, he writes, "I embarked upon the research not out of ideological commitment or political interest. I simply wanted to know what happened."

The narrative in the book is different from what I learned in history classes, and as I do not want to get into a long discussion of political aspects of the Israeli Palestinian conflict I will not go into too many details.

While I am familiar with most of the events and battles in the book, I found it interesting.

The political atmosphere of the time is well described and the author goes into many details explaining how the world events, trends, character and type of leaders, public opinion and interests influenced the decisions made by the world leaders, local leaders and people of both sides at various points in time.

From the military point of view, many of the battles occurred in places that I am very familiar with, including the hills surrounding the place I live and the bike paths that I ride on, so this added a personal touch to the experience.

This book is an important book in order to understand some of the roots of the Israeli Arab conflict.

[Andrew Daniels · Rating 1 out of 5]

The strength of this book is the research behind it, and I respect Benny Morris as a serious historian who did important work, however, its not a particularly easy or interesting read. It is also a wildly biased work, Benny Morris is a radical extremist who advocates committing war crimes. His irritation with the period of 1948 is that the IDF didn't expel more Arabs. Ultimately, his bias afflicts his work to such a degree that he makes conclusions that do not match his research. He claims there was no intent to expel all the Arabs even as he reveals that there was such a plan, intent and it was carried out. Flimsily, he claims that because such a policy was only enacted and not advertised that proves it did not exist. Many parts of his history are incorrect or unreliable, in particular the entire conclusion is unreliable and problematic.
Ultimately, its manipulative and dishonest.

Like many military histories, it is a slog of names of the order of battle and a list of tactics of individual battles. This book does give some overall context, so it does have meaningful bits, but its mostly difficult to read like all military histories are. You can get some good bits in between the battles, but its a real struggle to get through the repetitive battles. Reading this is similar to the experience of playing a grind-heavy RPG.

Would definitely recommend other overview books on Palestine, like Israel-Palestine Competing Histories, to read first.

[Gerhard Venter · Rating 4 out of 5]

It would be unfair to expect a balanced view of the 1948 Israeli-Arab war from a Jewish author, and I picked up the book specifically to get the Israeli point of view. What I got, instead, was a pretty even-handed treatment of the events. Morris makes no attempt to disguise the often brutal way the Haganah, the forerunner of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) went about clearing Arab villages of their inhabitants, and making sure they can never return. In my opinion, present-day Palestinian narratives that tell exactly the same events would fare better if they included the Arab side of things, which was characterized by a blood-lust and level of antisemitism we can hardly imagine. What also stands out in the book is the almost institutionalized cruelty the British government displayed towards holocaust survivors at that time.
I bring from my reading is the impression that there were very few innocents in that piece of history, that the Palestinians had forever just lived and farmed there as subjects of the Ottoman Empire, that they weren't nearly ready to become a country or nation, that the Arab governments of Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt were forced into the war by their "streets," that the Jordanian royals have always (in context) been more wise than the others, that Egyptian soldiers can be very brave but were often made to look like buffoons by corrupt and incompetent government, and that the Israelis fought like devils, often within sight of their farms and houses.
It also leaves me despondent: those displaced Palestinians are never ever tever going to accept the status quo. I don't think I'll see in my lifetime the day when all the nations of the world say: Look, the borders are the borders. Let's work from there.
Extremely interesting, though.

[Anatoly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent and well written. Though full with military details, the book also covers the political and geostrategic background which I am more interested in. Also, and that is important in a subject like this (and in historical accounts as a whole) is that the book isn't biased to any of the sides.

[Jasper Sendler · Rating 2 out of 5]

In many ways a dangerous book. The arguments put forward seem academic and appear to be well evidenced. However, on closer inspection you realise that the majority of the sources are from Zionist organisations or sympathisers. Arab voices are silent here. Perhaps because Morris doesn’t speak Arabic. The arguments are often flawed or leave out key contextual points. Gave two stars as he does recognise key events (although only if evidenced by Israeli sources really). I’d definitely recommend Pappe or Shlaim for a much more convincing account.

[AskHistorians]

This book covers the history of the first Arab-Israeli war, with great detail given for how the war was conducted, the events of it, and how the Israelis managed to succeed in winning the war itself. This focuses on the lead-up to war from the Civil War that had been going on before, and discusses the various fronts.

[Gubly]

Favorite words I learned reading this book:
Enfiladed
Minatory
Tour d’horizon
Jeremiad
Spoor
Promontory
Fait accompli
Fusillade
Bivouacking

[Oz · Rating 1 out of 5]

Was willing to be charitable about Morris's intent on nuance up until the conclusion. Nauseating, the way he talks about Palestinians (and Arabs broadly), with this paternalistic tone, all while contradicting himself at every step. At one point he says Ben-Gurion was naively generous about Arab beliefs, blaming this on Ben-Gurion not having spoken Arabic, so Morris jumps in to tell us what Arabs actually believe. Except we know from the introduction that Morris does not speak Arabic either, and acknowledges only Israeli archives as his sources.

This was a useful read for me, despite it feeling like being thrown into cold water, partly as an exercise in critical thinking, partly as a test of knowledge of the screeds of Palestinian context Morris leaves out, and also just to see what's being said by a Zionist often considered moderate. To Morris's credit, he cites his sources well, and since the vast majority of them are quotes from prominent figures of the time this becomes a helpful collection of (extremely one sided) primary sources.

[Sherif Gerges · Rating 5 out of 5]

Benny Morris belongs to a special cadre of Middle Eastern "New Historians", whose work revised the sanitized narrative of Arab expulsion (reframing it as voluntarily emigration) which the Israeli government promulgated post-1948. In this dexterously written and dense book, Morris undoubtedly invited considerable controversy - albeit not just within Arab circles, but Zionist as well.

Most books written about either Israel or Palestine have not sought to accomplish this. They either try to A) highlight the authenticity of the Jewish connection to Israel and their rights to sovereignty. Or B) conversely, the Palestinians as being indigenous to a land, and their collective plight as subjects of European settler colonialism. Critical to appreciating the broad appeal of Morris lays in his style. He's not interested in pontificating or languishing. His writing is a precise, almost emotionally detached and sterile description of what he has determined to be facts on the ground. I found this approach refreshing and can understand why it birthed many fans of his work.

In this book I learned a bit more about the mentality of the Israeli and various Arab nations and Palestinian factions that fought. I learned that the Israeli army committed multiple expulsions and sometimes massacres in order to occupy as much territory as possible while reducing the number of Palestinians. However, you also learn about the intense Judeophobia and murderous intent of the Arab armies. It is clear the two sides harbor an inherent distrust of one another with completely uncompromising claims to the land. It can only end badly for the loser.

[Jerome Otte · Rating 4 out of 5]

A broad, nuanced and well-written history of the 1948 war.Most of the book is a straightforward military history, and Morris ably covers the excesses and blunders of all sides.

Morris ably covers the strategic aspects, and suggests that the war was all but inevitable. Morris argues that the Israelis won due to better preparation, planning, motivation and logistics, as well as international sympathy. The Arab nations, on the other hand, were wracked by infighting and often seemed to prefer rhetoric to adequate planning and training, even though they had years to prepare.Morris does acknowledge the atrocities committed by Israeli forces and argues that these were mostly ad hoc rather than deliberately planned. At the same time, he portrays the Palestinian Arabs as unorganized and often unwilling to fight for areas outside their immediate home.

A balanced, well-researched and well-organized work. Some better maps would have helped, though, and Morris seems to portray the war as a sort of east-west struggle, but supports it with little more than random quotes.

[Jim Pomeroy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well researched and argued. Morris’ shines in the diplomatic/political sections of the book (less so in the battle narratives). Very balanced and opened my eyes to a lot of what happened in this confusing, unnecessary, and strange conflict.

[Dr. Tami R Peterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Morris does a good job of exploring the various battles of the 1948 war in minute detail including excellent maps which make the troop movements, take overs and losses easy to follow, even for someone who is unfamiliar with the terrain.[return][return]He explores the reasons for the defeat of the armies of the surrounding Arab states, which include poor preparation, a lack of coherent ideology and lack of arms as opposed to the Yishuv which was literally fighting for its life.[return][return]It is clear that Morris is approaching the subject through the Israeli lens but there does seem to be a paucity of information from the side of the Arab states and armies meaning any scholarly attempt at covering this subject will be necessarily limited. In fact one cannot help but admire the tenacity and perseverance of the Israelis when they were underdogs, whatever one's current view of the situation in the Middle East.[return][return]For all this Morris is honest about atrocities committed by both sides in the course of the war and tries to hide nothing. It was a bloody, brutal conflict but likely no more so than the birth of any state. It is certainly worth a read for anyone interested in the issue, international politics or history.

[Ran · Rating 5 out of 5]

ספר חובה לכל מי שרוצה להבין לעומק את הסכסוך הישראלי-ערבי, ואת שורשיה של המציאות שאנו נמצאים בה היום.

בני מוריס הוא פרופ' להיסטוריה מאוניברסיטת בן גוריון אשר ספריו שובחו בעבר ע"י הצד הערבי והפלסטיני ככאלו המציגים את הנרטיב שלהם באופן אותנטי. בשנת 2000 הוא עבר סוג של מהפך תודעתי (אם כי הוא עדיין מגדיר את עצמו כאיש שמאל), ומאז הוא חוטף ביקורת משני צדי המתרס - מה ששם אותו בפוזיציה הנדרשת על מנת לספר את האמת: ואת האמת הוא מספר.

זו לא ההיסטוריה שמלמדים בבתי הספר: בני מוריס לא חוסך בסיפורי זוועות שבוצעו בין היתר על ידי הלוחמים היהודים, הסדירים ולוחמי המחתרות כאחד. מובן שגם פשעיו של הצד הערבי מתוארים - אך יותר מכל מעניינת נקודת המבט הגיאו פוליטית, האינטרסים של שליטי מדינות ערב השונות, והסיבות שהובילו לנצחון היהודי ול"נכבה" הערבית.

הסיפור מסופר מנקודת מבטו של צופה אובייקטיבי ומנותק, אך עדיין לא ניתן להתעלם מהתחושה שתיאור הצד הישראלי דומיננטי יותר כאן (אולי מכיוון שרוב המקורות הם עבריים). אולם החלק המעניין ביותר היה הפרק האחרון, "אי אלו מסקנות" שהוא לא רק סיכום של מהלכי המלחמה, אלא באופן מובהק רגע בו המחבר מוריד את כובע המתבונן הנייטרלי ומנסה לחוות דעה, לגזור מסקנות ולהסתכל קדימה.

[Caitlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written by an Israeli historian, the historical part was fair and informative. I ended up skipping a lot of the battles due to more interest in the political history of the country.
I do admit I didn't finish the final section entitled "Conclusions". I became frustrated rather quickly as the author seems to throw in the towel on his unbiased streak. He starts by talking about how the Arabs of the region have always been hostile towards the Jews citing examples from the 1940's, and yet he spent a good portion of the book describing how Jews began immigrating to Palestine in the 1880's and Arabs happily sold them land to live and work on. These two groups lived harmoniously for decades until the British Empire took it upon themselves to give the land to the Jews without a second thought of the third world people that already lived there.

[Thor Hansson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'll start off with a few disclaimers: Benny Morris is an Israeli historian who regards himself as a Zionist and who fought in both the 1967 six day war and the 1982 Lebanon war. However, he also originally viewed the first intifada as a legitimate uprising against foreign occuptation (by his own country. A view that later changed after the second intafada) and he was imprisoned for refusing to serve in the occupied territories.

Because of these contextual factors, I was initially quite sceptical or suspicious of Morris's biases when I started reading the book. This work, however, comes off as very well balanced. Morris is very honest about Israeli/zionist intentions, Israeli war crimes, cases of zionist terrorism, cases of ethnic cleansing, etc. He also gives various arab factions credit/benefit of the doubt when justified.

The book gives ample historical context leading up to the 1948 UN partition of Israel and Palestine, covers the the "civil war" that ensued between the Yishuv (Israelis) and Palestinians as a consequence of this partition, the declaration of the Israeli state after the Palestinian defeat, the invasion of Israel by Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq after this declaration, their subsequent defeat by the Israelis, and the many unresolved issues that would lead to more conflicts in the many decades to come.

This book paints a narrative that is far from black and white, and where the image of who's right from who's wrong is far from clear. I still feel that a biase in favour of the Israeli perspective is there, but that's to he expected (I'd be extremely surprised if a similar book authored by a Palestinian/Arab would be exempt from similar biases in favour of a Palestinian narrative).

This is excellent scholarship and I highly recommend it! If you want to understand the complex root causes of this long lasting conflict this should be one of your main books of research to start off with.

[Fran Henderson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Waste of time

[Joshua Burns · Rating 4 out of 5]

Second non-fiction read of the year. Really insightful look into the Arab-Israeli War of 1948.

[Shawn Fahy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just days before the latest Hamas attacks in Israel, I got “1948” by Benny Morris (2008), which is about the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. My interest in this subject was spurred by reading the novel “Exodus”, which was reviewed previously.

The war was basically fought in two phases: the first phase, arguably starting decades earlier, really went into high gear in 1947 after the UN got involved in the British Palestine Mandate and came up with a plan to set aside a Jewish state to resettle displaced victims of the Holocaust, as well as other Jews that wanted to move there. The local Arabs were completely opposed to this and began fighting the growing numbers of Jews with local militias and a more ‘national’ organization called the Arab Liberation Army or ALA. The ALA and the Arab militias were little more than social clubs before the fighting started, doing no actual paramilitary training and really never even getting together except for the occasional parade. The Jewish Haganah, by contrast, was well-organized, fairly well-equipped, and had the Holocaust fresh in their minds as motivation to fight. The book makes it sound like the battle between the Arabs and the Haganah was fairly one-sided, with the Jews getting most of the victories and capturing many Arab settlements. The Arabs, by contrast, usually got the worse end of every fight and never succeeded in capturing a Jewish settlement.

Jewish treatment of the Arab civilians ran the gamut from completely leaving them alone, to ordering them to leave their homes (sometimes temporarily, sometimes permanently; sometimes they were told to just go to another town or region, sometimes they were completely expelled from Palestine), to murdering them en masse. There’s an argument that this policy was the worst of both worlds: it was brutal enough to embitter the Arab population against the Jews for all time while still leaving said Arabs in the Jews’ midst where they could act as a fifth column against the emerging nation state of Israel.

The second phase of the war was the day after May 15, 1948, when the Jews had trounced the Arab Palestinian population to the point that they felt sure about declaring independence and renaming their state “Israel” (this was also after the British had cleared out of Palestine and washed their hands of that troublesome colony). On May 16, all of Israel’s neighbors began invading the nascent state. On paper, this was a huge threat to the Jews’ existence in the region: the combined Arab population was around 40 million at that time while the Jewish population was more like 600,000 - 650,000. In reality, the first phase of the war wound up being a preview of the second phase, with Arab armies being poorly led, trained, equipped, and motivated, unlike their Jewish enemies.

The Jordanians were the best-performing army that the Arabs had and were able to capture territory that we now call The West Bank. They actually had some battles where they were able to defeat the Haganah/IDF (the name change occurred at some point during the war) and had limited help from their British benefactors. As a side note, John Glubb, the author of the “Fate of Empires” essay, was one of the main British officers that was advising the Jordanians at this time and is mentioned frequently in the book.

The Egyptians were numerically significant in the war but performed poorly. They penetrated far into Israel at first but by the war’s end had IDF troops on Egyptian soil, driving the Egyptians toward Cairo. Only UN intervention stopped the IDF from going farther.

The Lebanese were a very half-hearted participant in the whole affair. Part of this was Lebanon’s significant Christian minority who viewed a Jewish state as something that could take the heat off of them from the Muslim majority. Even the Muslim majority, including their leadership, didn’t seem to want anything to do with the fighting. Lebanon got in the war late and contributed little.

The Saudis, Syrians, and Iraqis contributed quite a few troops but were also ineffective. All the Arab states treated one another as competitors rather than allies at every turn. They were constantly backstabbing each other politically and refused to come to each other’s aid with reinforcements, supplies, or even sharing information. As for the Arab populations, they were quick to stage angry demonstrations in their own streets against the idea of a Jewish state in the Middle East, but few of them joined their country’s military and those who did fought poorly. I got the impression that most Arabs were motivated by the “honor culture” concept rather than actual victory.

The state of armaments was also lopsided, with Arab states getting used to simply being given weapons and materiel by either France or Britain (who carved up the Arab states for themselves with the Sykes-Picot Agreement during WWI) and who didn’t know what to do once the UN placed an arms embargo on the region after fighting started. The Arabs hadn’t stocked up on weapons beforehand, unlike the Jews, and what little they had tended to be an older generation of equipment that the European powers no longer wanted. As a side note, it was interesting to hear about equipment being used in this war that came too late to be used in WWI but that didn’t really cut the mustard by WWII; this war was probably the only place where it really got used in combat and was considered to be useful by both sides.

The Jews, by contrast, were well-funded by international Jewry (especially in America) and simply bought weapons on the black market to get around the UN embargo. Most of these seem to have come from Czechoslovakia but many C-47 and B-17 aircraft came from America too. A lot of machine tooling was also purchased from the USA to jump start the Israeli arms industry. Many of the new Jewish immigrants to Israel were skilled tradesmen who could build what was needed while such an industrial base was almost non-existent in the Arab world.

In the end, the Arabs didn’t seem to do much of anything right and executed their war very half-heartedly. This is somewhat confusing to me at first glance; in my mind, Israel’s enemies are so passionate about their cause that they’re willing to become suicide bombers just to kill some of their foes. This extreme worldview doesn’t seem to have existed in 1948 and, perhaps, was born of the humiliation at the Jews’ hands in 1948 and beyond.

Post war, there were two refugee crises that arose: the Arabs that were kicked out of Israel and sent to neighboring Arab states and the Jews that fled those states (and others) to come to Israel. Some of the numbers are amazing: Yemen had 40,000-50,000 Jews in 1948 but had only about 200 by the 1960’s, as most had left for Israel. In a few short years after the war, the influx of Jews into Israel had doubled the population of the nation. All of these immigrants seem to have been integrated into Israeli society fairly quickly and easily, in spite of many of them coming from disparate backgrounds and virtually none of them speaking Hebrew. By contrast, the Palestinians that made it to other Arab nations have been excluded to this day from those societies in spite of their shared ethnicity, religion, and language.

As for the book itself, the writing style tended slightly towards dryness that made some parts a little hard to read. Luckily, the whole book wasn’t like that and so I was able to focus on it for the most part. There were a lot of statistics about how big a military unit was, how many vehicles or artillery pieces they had, and how many casualties there were on each side of each battle. While useful historical information, this could be presented mechanically at times. On the matter of numbers, it was also remarkable how few casualties there really were in this war; major battles where one side would lose more than low to mid double digits worth of soldiers killed were rare. For such a world-changing war, and one that took place immediately after WWII, the largest war in human history, these numbers seem very low. Of course, the populations of the states involved were also quite sparse and the Arab nations, more heavily populated by far, were too poor and disorganized at the time to mobilize more than a tiny amount of their manpower.

I’m left with the impression of almost confusion; the Arab/Muslim passion and outrage at Israel that I’ve taken for granted my entire life just isn’t present in this story. The isolation of the Arabs is also something that I can’t fathom today, their oil being too valuable to too many in our world. In 1948, the USA was actually trying to distance itself from the conflict (quite the opposite of our policy today!) and the USSR was actually backing Israel since the Jews were seen as an opponent of the British at this stage. Of course, this would reverse as the Cold War evolved.

The British were a wild card in the story, as they were nominally just keeping a lid on any violence in the Palestine Mandate, but they were constantly erring on the side of not angering their Arab subjects, of whom there were millions across the globe. There were times when they stopped Arabs from killing Jews, times when they literally stood by and watched Arabs kill Jews, and even times when they assisted Arabs with killing Jews. There were no stories about the British fighting alongside the Jews, with the exception of some British deserters that joined the Haganah. There were at least two incidents late in the war where RAF planes were shot down by the IAF or Israeli anti-aircraft batteries. British public opinion was mixed, with some seeing the Jews as terrorists that were killing their troops overseas while others sympathized with the recent victims of the Holocaust.

I’m glad I read the book but the story is, in some sense, oddly simple: the Jews prepared to fight, organized well, and took the war seriously and the Arabs did not. Such a significant epoch in history seems like it should have more to it than that but, broadly speaking, it appears that that’s really all there is to it. I kind of feel like saying that if you accept that, then you don’t really need to read the book, unless you want the details of how that all went down. Still, I’m glad I did read it so that I can say that I know more about this war, strange though it feels to me.

[Alex Goldstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

Понравилось. Ясное, четкое изложение, выглядит объективным - насколько это возможно, хотя взгляд на события скорее со стороны евреев.
Некоторые интересные моменты:
-в 36-39 годах палестинские арабы устроили восстание против англичан, были безжалостно разгромлены и раздавлены - лидеры изгнаны или арестованы, оружие изъято, самых активных участников поубивали и т.д. Поэтому когда пришел 47/48 год, у них значительная часть энергии и ресурсов уже была растрачена.
- война четко делится на 2 этапа - до 15 мая 1948, и после. Поскольку арабские режимы тогда были "под крылом" у англичан, они не могли вторгнуться в Палестину раньше официального окончания мандата.
- местное арабское население было неорганизованно, не было единого командования, организации снабжения и т.д. Военные действия с их стороны были на уровне банды из местной деревни, сводились к нападениям на соседние еврейские поселения или конвои. Поэтому когда евреи перешли к систематическим наступательным действиям, они брали одно село за другим -каждое село могло рассчитывать только на свои силы, помощи даже от соседних сел не приходило. В течение марта-апреля 1948 все местные арабские вооруженные формирования были разгромлены и нейтрализованы, села захвачены, жители изгнаны.
- Арабские армии начали войну только 15 мая, палестинские арабы к этому времени уже были разгромлены и участия в последующих боевых действиях не принимали.
- Арабские армии были очень слабыми, их основной задачей вообще-то было удерживать правящий режим, а не воевать. Тем не менее арабские лидеры были вынуждены начать войну из-за давления народных масс.
Самыми сильными были иорданцы - Арабский легион, созданный англичанами, с английским главнокомандующим. Часть офицеров также были англичанами.
- Война фактически состояла из нескольких коротких периодов военных действий, между которыми были длинные перемирия.
- Арабские армии были нескоординированы между собой, у каждой были свои цели.
- Иорданцы сразу захватили Западный берег и Восточный Иерусалим, и на этом успоколись, и наступательных действий больше не вели. Потом евреи смогли отобрать у них обратно Лод и Рамлу (с изгнанием местных жителей), а Латрун так и остался за иорданцами. Иракский корпус был на подхвате у иорданцев, ничем особо себя не проявил.
- Египтяне очень быстро увязли в районе Ашкелона-Кирьят Гата (тогда это были арабские города Мадждаль и Фалуджа). Они надеялись удержать за собой Негев, но были постепенно окружены и разбиты в несколько приемов. Причем израильская армия в процессе залезла в Синай. Еще египтяне в какой-то момент контролировали Хеврон (назло Иордании), но потом отошли назад.
- Сирийцы захватили маленький кусочек территории севернее Кинерета, и сидели там до конца войны. Потом по соглашению о перемирии ини его вернули.
- Еще был добровольческий корпус Каукаджи в Галилее, он пытался вести боевые действия и постепенно был разбит, в итоге евреи захватили всю Галилею.
- Изгнание/бегство палестинских арабов сначала происходило естественным образом, в результате боевых действий, панических слухов и т.д. На более позднем этапе это зависело от конкретного командира на месте. Например, население Лода и Рамлы было изгнано, а офицер, командовавший войсками в Назарете отказалася давать приказ об изгнании местных.
- После мая 48 года было дано указание не пускать никого обратно, хотя многие беженцы пытались вернуться в свои деревни, особенно во время периодов перемирия. Их просто обстреливали и заставляли вернуться назад. Солдаты планомерно проходили по покинутым деревням и взрывали все дома.
- Автор утверждает, что количество "зверств" было относительно небольшим. Евреи отличились несколько больше, чем арабы - например резня в деревне Дир Ясин под Иерусалимом. На этапе войны с арабскими армиями все было прилично, пленных не убивали.

[Fred Kohn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had previously read two books on this period by Ilan Pappè prior to reading Benny Morris. Pappè is a vocal critic of Benny Morris, and I felt it was only fair to read some of Morris's stuff to see if Morris is really as biased as Pappè claims. In fact, I enjoyed this book very much and didn’t detect much bias.

One issue I paid particular attention to was that of land purchases. According to early Zionist writers such as Theodor Herzl and Ahad Ha'am, the original Zionist plan was to buy the land bit by bit. This, to me, seems like a more reasonable plan than taking the land by force. According to Morris, the main brake on Jewish land purchases, at least in the '20s and '30s, was lack of funds, not unwillingness of the Arabs to sell. So it seems given enough time Herzl's plan would have worked, without the interference of the British and the U.N. In a somewhat schizophrenic move (contrary to the Balfour declaration), a Whitehall paper in May 1939 limited land purchases and Jewish immigration.

Benny Morris's statements about Plan Dalet conflict somewhat with what Anita Shapira writes in her history of Israel: "Pro-Palestinian researchers present Plan Dalet as the draft of a preplanned, total population transfer of the Arabs of Palestine. But as the plan text shows, while it did order commanders to destroy villages and expel the inhabitants if they resisted, it also instructed commanders to leave them where they were if they did not resist, while ensuring Jewish control of the village." Morris's statements show that this is not quite right: "The plan gave the brigades carte blanche to conquer the Arab villages and, in effect, to decide on each village's fate—destruction and expulsion or occupation."

Concerning Operation Nahshon, Morris writes: "The commanders were given discretion whether to evict the inhabitants of villages and urban neighborhoods sitting on vital access roads. The individual brigades were instructed in detail about which British police stations and army camps they were to occupy, the particular roads they were to secure, and the particular villages and towns they were to conquer and either depopulate, destroy, and mine or garrison."

One thing I am confused about is why the Arabs left Haifa. Shapira claims that Arab residents chose to leave the city and not remain under Jewish rule. Morris agrees, saying that the Jewish leaders were flabbergasted at the Arab's choice to leave. But he also says the Jews harassed the Arabs, sometimes torturing them. Google AI says, "Jewish forces used mortar bombardments, infantry assaults, and psychological tactics, including loudspeaker broadcasts with sounds of gunfire and explosions, to cause panic among the civilian population." Neither Shapira nor Morris make any mention of psychological warfare. Did the Israelis use it or is AI chasing a ghost? I wish I knew.

Why did the Arabs lose the war? Morris gives us some clues. The Arabs, he claims, had a well-established tradition of disunity, corruption, and organizational incompetence. The Yishuv fought not a "people," but an assortment of regions, towns, and villages. And "Just as the Arabs tended to overestimate the Jewish strength, the Jews tended to overestimate the Arab strength. … The Arab armies were much smaller [than Haganah estimates] and severely underequipped, leaving large numbers of troops at home to guard against internal uprisings."

Both Morris and Pappè are excellent and reputable historians, but if I had to choose one over the other, I would choose Morris. Pappè tends to fly his pro-Palestinian banner a little too proudly for my tastes. But if you really want to get a feel for the field, you should read them both.

[LB · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is the most horrible book about the 1948 war that I've read and I've read many. This so called historian lies and distorts history on every page. To be honest, I didn't finish the book, I was too appalled by its obnoxious lies. The very name that the writer gives to the Israeli War of Independence is wrong from the get-go. He calls it a civil war. A historian not knowing the difference? Where did he get his degree? In the Ramallah bomb making university? Second and probably the most important lie is that the writer places the blame for the war and displacement of the Arabs on Israel. Morris enligthens us that the five Arab states attacked Israel only bc of the massacre of Deir Yassin, not bc they hated the idea of a Jewish state in their midst and Jews in general, which they still do now, hence the 1967 and 1973 attempts. Were those caused by Deir Yassin too? The Deir Yassin affair, as it's known to us today, is based largerly on the testimonies of the Arabs themselves. Of course, Arab lies matter, no doubt, they did then and do now. In the 1967 war, the honest Arabs declared to the world that it was Americans and Brits who attacked them. Why is it that the writer doesn't say much about the massacres of the Jewish convoys that went through Bab el Wad to supply Jerusalem that was starving under the Arab siege, why not about the convoys en route to Kfar Etzion, why not the destruction of Kfar Etzion itself when the great, kind hearted Arabs shot those ppl who had already surrended? It was the fault of the Jews too, right?

The book is full of fake pics meant to elicit sympathy for the Arabs. One photo, for instance, depicts a group of men w/o any insignia, one holding a sack in his hands. The inscription informs us that it's Arab soldiers holding a Jewish baby. Really? The sack is just a sack, nobody knows what's in it. There is no indication it's a baby, no face, nothing. Even if it is a baby, how is it a Jewish baby? How is it a live baby? Where did Arab soldiers get a Jewish baby?

I have a feeling that writers like Morris take blood money from enemies of Israel to produce opuses like this one and help them with their ideological war. I think that here, in the USA, if somebody falsified our history like that, they would be prosecuted.

[Raymond Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent examination of the causes and course of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War from an unbiased source. Critical examination of the motivations, actions, and decisions of all sides involved in the conflict. Details some of the darker aspects of the war and the reasons for their existence.

Additionally, I would like to add that the author does a brilliant job pointing out the frankly ridiculous position the Arab governments put themselves into when reacting to the 1947 UN Partition Plan, Israeli statehood, and the post-conflict peace process. Very interesting read, definitely recommend.

[Adam Glantz · Rating 4 out of 5]

True to his gadfly form, Benny Morris' book on the 1948 war is bound to upset doctrinaire adherents of moral positions on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Committed Zionists will be put off by Morris' demolition of the notion that Israel adhered to a "purity of arms" code. Though there was no abstract master plan to depopulate Israeli territory of Arabs, the Haganah/IDF permanently exiled entire villages when it made brute military sense, even when the inhabitants were reasonably friendly and willing to come to terms. We read about intimidation, looting, rape, even atrocities, calculated or not. Less morally problematic but bound to attenuate Israeli national pride is Morris' sometimes unfavorable commentary on Israel's war effort. The Israeli forces were of relative high quality, but they sometimes succeeded not so much out on their own merits but because their opponents were poorly trained, led, and motivated, and despite blunders and conflicts in the Israeli chain of command.
This will provide little comfort to those championing the Arab side, as Morris controversially locates Arab animus less in a fathomable national conflict and more in the primordial Islamic hatred of Jews. The Israelis were only spared a nasty ravage by the Arabs' inability to overrun most besieged Israeli positions, and the harsh actions of the Haganah/IDF were partly motivated by the fear occasioned by Arab expulsionist rhetoric. And anyone trying to salvage Arab pride will have an uphill battle with Morris's account of Arab disunity: Indeed, the Arabs' defeat might have been far worse had not the international community intervened to save them.

[Oren Mizrahi · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you want to know about the Israeli War of Independence, read this book and no other.

In this frighteningly even-handed account of the 1948 Arab Israeli War, Benny Morris lays down the law. The book is a culmination of his work investigating the recently released Israeli war archives and likely the best among other works by the "new historians." He covers atrocities and mistakes on both sides and weaves together large ideas and minute details to stitch an excellent picture of the conflict and the state of the middle east at the time.

At a time when so much misinformation is being disseminated by incredibly under-read (and occasionally incredibly "over-read") individuals, this book fixes its feet in the ground and establishes the authority of fact. I highly encourage anyone interested in this conflict (read: everyone) to dive into this book. The middle gets a bit pedantic but it's there for those who want to nitpick at military history. Much of the book is based on primary sources, is incredibly well-cited, and replete with notes.

[Shawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

An in-depth, detailed account of the Arab-Israeli conflict of 1948. Starting with the historical background of the Zionist movement and immigration into the area, Morris then moves to the UN and the steps taken towards partition. The conflict is broken into two main parts. First what Morris calls the civil war. This is the small-scale battles and skirmishes between the Yishuv (the Jewish community) and the Arab community in Palestine/Israel-to-be. The Yishuv was relatively well-organized and prepared, while the Arabs were divided, unprepared, and lacking any kind of strategy or direction. The leadership was divided and various quarters squabbled with each other for control. As a result, this part of the war was decisively won by the Yishuv and the Palestinian Arab society more or less collapsed and many, with the means, left the country at this point. The state of Israel was declared and the Yishuv institutions transitioned into state agencies.

The second part of the conflict begins with the invasion by Arab armies from without: mainly Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq. Through his analysis, Morris shows that, at first, the Israeli goal was purely defensive: to hold the land it controlled and prevent the Arab armies from penetrating. As the Israeli forces proved effective and the Arab armies less so, Israel shifted towards a more offensive mindset and looked to gain strategic ground around Jerusalem and in the north.

For their part, the Arab armies were shockingly incompetent. Except for the Jordanian Arab Legion (which was trained and armed by the British), the armies lacked resources, training, and direction. The various countries, while sharing similar rhetoric about “saving Palestine,” all had their own divergent agendas. There was little cooperation or coordination between the invading armies. The soldiers were not training or prepared. There was a view that the fight would be quick and easy. Instead, they faced fierce resistance from a well-trained, highly motivated opponent who was fighting for its very existence.

The UN repeatedly tried to step into to stop the fighting and seek some kind of settlement. The main result, according to Morris, of this seemed to be avoiding a total rout of the Arab armies, in particular Egypt. Whether a more total and decisive victory by the Israelis would have avoided future wars and the refugee problem is impossible to say, but Morris doesn’t think it would have. There was far too much animosity towards the Jewish state. The so-called Arab Street would likely have continued the pressure to attack Israel.

Most of this was not new to me. But there were several interesting parts of the book that were new.
First, the insight that Morris gives into the mindset of the British and Arab leaders was fascinating. I didn’t realize the extent to which the Arab leaders (especially Jordan’s King) understood their weakness relative to Israel and that the war was unlikely to yield the stated public aims. And yet all felt the pressure of the street and felt compelled by this to move forward. I also didn’t realize the extent to which the British were more or less active against Israel—even threatening to attack at certain points.

Second, Morris disabused me of the idea of Israeli “purity of arms.” The Israel army at times acted like every army ever has in the field of battle. There were killings of civilians and POWS, rapes, and other abuses. This was hard to swallow, but also not surprising that such things happen in war. It is tragic, awful, unnecessary, but such is the awfulness of war. This doesn’t excuse or justify, but it does contextualize it. Nevertheless, Morris is quick to point out that these sorts of horrors occurred less than in other wars in the 20th century. Both sides were relatively constrained in terms of such atrocities.

Related to this second point, is the extent to which Israel took active measures to push out the local Arab populations. While I understood that some of this happened, I didn’t appreciate the extent to which there were direct expulsions made by the Israeli army. Still, contrary to the harsh critics of Israel, Morris explains that this was not a concerted effort at mass population movement, but as the facts on the ground shifted, the Israel army and command were more than willing to help things along. Militarily it makes sense: leaving a hostile population behind your lines is a bad idea. And as the Israelis pushed forward to push back the invading armies, they felt compelled to expel local populations that were hostile. For the most part, Morris showed that when villages quickly surrendered and didn’t have a history of attacking nearby Jewish communities or convoys, these were not expelled. Such people become the Israeli-Arabs of today. Still it happened more than I realized, and that too is an unpleasant truth to process.

I found the book strongest when getting into the discussion of strategies, policies, and ideas. His evaluation and digestion of the evidence was clear and carefully presented. Where I found myself drifting away was the detailed descriptions of battles. There was a lot of taking this hill or attacking that hill; this division moved here and there. It was hard to keep track of and to follow; or to see how meaningful that level of detail was to the overall through line of the work. The best I can say about it was that it did allow you to experience the war at a bit more of a fine-grained perspective, than the grand sweep that one might otherwise get.

If one is interested in military history or the history of the Arab-Israeli, I think this is an important work to read. Still, it can be a bit of slog at times, but only because of how in-depth it is.

[Stu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Though dry in parts, this history of Israel's War of Independece is a must read for anyone interested in the history of the modern Middle East. It is by far the most balanced (yet not revisionist) history on the subject I have read. In retrospect, all sides (both state and non-state actors) acted according to their interests, not according to the popular myths of both the Jewish and Arab sides. No more, no less.

I could have used better maps throughout, but the maps that were provided allowed for a decent picture of the changing strategic situations throughout the war.

[Behzad · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very insightful read which raises many intriguing questions in mind. Generally the book is very easy to read but contains a lot of details that may make it incoherent and sometimes tedious.