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Making Israel
Benny Morris is the founding father of the New Historians, a group of Israeli scholars who have challenged long-established perceptions about the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Their research rigorously documented crimes and atrocities committed by the Israeli armed forces, including rape, torture, and ethnic cleansing. With Making Israel , Morris brings together the first collection of translated articles on the New History by leading Zionist and revisionist Israeli historians, providing Americans with a firsthand view of this important debate and enabling a better understanding of how the New Historians have influenced Israelis' awareness of their own past.
"The study of Israeli history, society, politics, and economics over the past two decades has been marked by a fierce and sometimes highly personal debate between 'traditionalists'---scholars who generally interpreted Israeli history and society within the Zionist ethos---and 'revisionists'---scholars who challenged conventional Zionist narratives of Israeli history and society. Making Israel brings together traditionalists and revisionists who openly and directly lay out their key insights about Israel's origins. It also introduces multidisciplinary perspectives on Israel by historians and sociologists, each bringing into the debate its own jargon, its own epistemology and methodology, and its own array of substantive issues. This is essential reading for anybody who wants to understand the different interpretations of Israeli society and perhaps the central debate among students of modern Israel."
---Zeev Maoz, Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Davis, and Distinguished Fellow at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya
"Israel's 'new historians' have done a great service to their country, and to all who care about the Arab-Israeli conflict. By challenging myths, reexamining evidence, and asking truly important questions about the past they help to confront the present with honesty and realism. This book provides a sampling of the best of what these courageous voices have to offer."
---William B. Quandt, University of Virginia
Benny Morris is Professor of Middle East history at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba, Israel, and is the author of Righteous A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1999 .
"The study of Israeli history, society, politics, and economics over the past two decades has been marked by a fierce and sometimes highly personal debate between 'traditionalists'---scholars who generally interpreted Israeli history and society within the Zionist ethos---and 'revisionists'---scholars who challenged conventional Zionist narratives of Israeli history and society. Making Israel brings together traditionalists and revisionists who openly and directly lay out their key insights about Israel's origins. It also introduces multidisciplinary perspectives on Israel by historians and sociologists, each bringing into the debate its own jargon, its own epistemology and methodology, and its own array of substantive issues. This is essential reading for anybody who wants to understand the different interpretations of Israeli society and perhaps the central debate among students of modern Israel."
---Zeev Maoz, Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Davis, and Distinguished Fellow at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya
"Israel's 'new historians' have done a great service to their country, and to all who care about the Arab-Israeli conflict. By challenging myths, reexamining evidence, and asking truly important questions about the past they help to confront the present with honesty and realism. This book provides a sampling of the best of what these courageous voices have to offer."
---William B. Quandt, University of Virginia
Benny Morris is Professor of Middle East history at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba, Israel, and is the author of Righteous A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1999 .
- GenresHistoryIsraelMiddle East
384 pages, Paperback
First published October 29, 2004
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About the author
Benny Morris
21 books211 followersBenny 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".
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April 29, 2025
My review is largely confined to a critique of the essay "The History of Zionist Historiography: From Apologetics to Denial" by Yoav Gelber.
To seriously critique this essay, I've divided my review into 3 primary parts that tackle a particular segment of his essay which I believe, when examined closely alongside his bibliographic citations, proves particularly enlightening, even perhaps to the staunchest of chauvinists and supremacists.
1. On page 67, Gelber proclaims the following:
"Arab historiography has typically been obsessed with the question of injustice and unfairness. Arab scholars have largely ignored the full context; they have scarcely endeavored to find out what really happened— the how, when, and why of things. Instead they have dwelt on right or wrong, legitimate or illegitimate claims, ascribing undue significance to official, judicial, and declarative documents such as UN resolutions and disregarding the huge corpus of archival source material on the war."
What is peculiar about this, besides the needless antagonism, is that Gelber is obsessed with contributing to his own political cause, which is to silence the understanding of the past by delegitimizing Arab scholarship which has its own objective to advance the political goals of the Palestinian people, and Arabs more broadly; the peculiarity then stems from Gelber's refusal to engage with any self-reflection. It's also interesting that Gelber does not provide any example of this Arab scholarship. This may seem pedantic to point out, but Gelber gives examples of "faulty"
"Pro-Arab" scholarship throughout his entire essay whenever he can, which suggests he simply cannot make a substantiated claim. Moreover, Gelber completely ignores that fact that for the longest time, it was not the Israeli or Jewish or Zionist scholars who were publishing trailblazing scholarship on the 1948 war/exodus, but rather a handful or Arab scholars (such as Walid Khalidi, Nafez Nazzal, or Aref al-Aref) decades before more critical scholarship in Israel began being produced.
2. The only Arab scholar who Gelber seems to appreciate is Aref al-Aref, who Gelber juxtaposes with other "lesser" Arab scholars who are supposedly representative of the qualitative majority of Arab scholarship
The annotated bibliographic citation for this claim read as such:
"Nur Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians (Washington, DC, 1993 ); Walid Khalidi, All That Remains:The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948 (Washington, DC, 1992 ); Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York, 1998 ); Arif al-Arif, Al Nakba: Nakbat Beit al-muqadas wa-al-Fardus al-Mafqud [The Nakba: The Disaster of the Sacred House and the Lost Paradise], 6 vols. (Sidon, 1956 – 62 )" (see page 78).
What's peculiar about this is that there's no real reason for Gelber to dismiss these works. Let's be clear, there is no reason to believe that Gelber is more knowledgeable on the issue of 'transfer' in Zionist political thought than Professor Nur-Eldeen Masalha, who has written most extensively and comprehensively on this subject-matter. Nor is there any reason that Gelber is more knowledgeable on the issue of Palestinian Nationalism compared to Rashid Khalidi (who is among the most prolific and respected scholars on the subject alongside Yehoshua Porath, Muhammad Y. Muslih, and Baruch Kimmerling). Walid Khalidi *edited* 'All That Remains' and this is widely acclaimed as an authoritative encyclopedic source on the occupied and depopulated and Palestinian-Arab villages of 1948 (including having praise from the Editor of the book 'Making Israel,' Benny Morris). It should be further noted that Gelber has written extensively about *none* of subjects of research of the works he points to.
3. But even more interesting is that although Gelber attempts to convey that *recent* Arab scholarship is poor-quality, he later reiterates this claim in the next sentence by stating the following:
"The recent Arab writings invoke postmodern terminology and theorization but still suffer from extraordinary factual and chronological errors. Often they are based on a single dubious or unreliable source (such as a book of memoirs), adopting arguments without bothering to verify what is behind them" (see page 67).
Yet, this claim has a new bibliographic citation which states the following:
"Musa S. Braizat, The Jordanian-Palestinian Relationship: The Bankruptcy of the Confederal Idea (London, 1998 ); Ghada Hashem Talhami, Syria and the Palestinians:The Clash of Nationalisms (Gainesville, FL, 2001 )" (see page 78).
Interestingly, the exact annotated bibliographic citation that I provide in Part 2 of this review is also meant to substantiate the following claim that, and let's keep in mind the sequence of words and sentences, reads as such:
"One exception worth mentioning— despite its apologetic character— is Arif al-Arif ’s six volumes on the war written in the 1950 s. Unfortunately, this work has not been translated and is inaccessible to most readers, Israeli or otherwise. Recent Arab works on the conflict may be more sophisticated, using the fashionable jargon of Western universities, but none approximates al-Arif’s thoroughness, self-critical method, and accuracy" (see page 67).
Why the switch-up? Why is it that, in the previous paragraph, Gelber makes a broad qualitative statement in which he cites some of the best most well-regarded works, but when he makes a more precise statement (that more easily opens itself up to empirical testing), he substantiates his claim with, what I will, for the sake of argument, assume to be particularly bad pieces of scholarship? The answer, at least to me, is obvious: Gelber can only make a claim based on cherry-picked data to support his broader 'just-so story' which enforces and provides (psuedo-)intellectuall support for his own political goals.
4. A much better study of Zionist historiography and the politics of memory is "Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict" (see 2nd/latest edition) by Political Scientist/Theorist/Historian and International Jurist Norman Gary Finkelstein; and a much better study of Arab/Palestinian historiography of The 1947-1949 War for Palestine and its attendant exodus takes form in chapter 1 of "NAKBA AND SURVIVAL: The Story of Palestinians Who Remained in Haifa and the Galilee, 1948–1956" by Historian Adel Manna, titled "Al-Nakba and Its Many Meanings in 1948." Another alternative collection of essays critical of Zionist or anti-Palestinian (psuedo-)historiography is "Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question" which is edited by Preeminent Scholar Edward Said and writer Christopher Hitchens.
Overall, I can't say the entire book is bad, but at least some of these essays (like the essay my Avi Shlaim) I've read alongside other much better scholars. In the case of Gelber, perhaps he is correct, but his evidence and base assumptions, coupled with his dubious framing, weakens his claims and causes them to falter when placed under even mild scrutiny (such as, hopefully, this review).
To seriously critique this essay, I've divided my review into 3 primary parts that tackle a particular segment of his essay which I believe, when examined closely alongside his bibliographic citations, proves particularly enlightening, even perhaps to the staunchest of chauvinists and supremacists.
1. On page 67, Gelber proclaims the following:
"Arab historiography has typically been obsessed with the question of injustice and unfairness. Arab scholars have largely ignored the full context; they have scarcely endeavored to find out what really happened— the how, when, and why of things. Instead they have dwelt on right or wrong, legitimate or illegitimate claims, ascribing undue significance to official, judicial, and declarative documents such as UN resolutions and disregarding the huge corpus of archival source material on the war."
What is peculiar about this, besides the needless antagonism, is that Gelber is obsessed with contributing to his own political cause, which is to silence the understanding of the past by delegitimizing Arab scholarship which has its own objective to advance the political goals of the Palestinian people, and Arabs more broadly; the peculiarity then stems from Gelber's refusal to engage with any self-reflection. It's also interesting that Gelber does not provide any example of this Arab scholarship. This may seem pedantic to point out, but Gelber gives examples of "faulty"
"Pro-Arab" scholarship throughout his entire essay whenever he can, which suggests he simply cannot make a substantiated claim. Moreover, Gelber completely ignores that fact that for the longest time, it was not the Israeli or Jewish or Zionist scholars who were publishing trailblazing scholarship on the 1948 war/exodus, but rather a handful or Arab scholars (such as Walid Khalidi, Nafez Nazzal, or Aref al-Aref) decades before more critical scholarship in Israel began being produced.
2. The only Arab scholar who Gelber seems to appreciate is Aref al-Aref, who Gelber juxtaposes with other "lesser" Arab scholars who are supposedly representative of the qualitative majority of Arab scholarship
The annotated bibliographic citation for this claim read as such:
"Nur Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians (Washington, DC, 1993 ); Walid Khalidi, All That Remains:The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948 (Washington, DC, 1992 ); Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York, 1998 ); Arif al-Arif, Al Nakba: Nakbat Beit al-muqadas wa-al-Fardus al-Mafqud [The Nakba: The Disaster of the Sacred House and the Lost Paradise], 6 vols. (Sidon, 1956 – 62 )" (see page 78).
What's peculiar about this is that there's no real reason for Gelber to dismiss these works. Let's be clear, there is no reason to believe that Gelber is more knowledgeable on the issue of 'transfer' in Zionist political thought than Professor Nur-Eldeen Masalha, who has written most extensively and comprehensively on this subject-matter. Nor is there any reason that Gelber is more knowledgeable on the issue of Palestinian Nationalism compared to Rashid Khalidi (who is among the most prolific and respected scholars on the subject alongside Yehoshua Porath, Muhammad Y. Muslih, and Baruch Kimmerling). Walid Khalidi *edited* 'All That Remains' and this is widely acclaimed as an authoritative encyclopedic source on the occupied and depopulated and Palestinian-Arab villages of 1948 (including having praise from the Editor of the book 'Making Israel,' Benny Morris). It should be further noted that Gelber has written extensively about *none* of subjects of research of the works he points to.
3. But even more interesting is that although Gelber attempts to convey that *recent* Arab scholarship is poor-quality, he later reiterates this claim in the next sentence by stating the following:
"The recent Arab writings invoke postmodern terminology and theorization but still suffer from extraordinary factual and chronological errors. Often they are based on a single dubious or unreliable source (such as a book of memoirs), adopting arguments without bothering to verify what is behind them" (see page 67).
Yet, this claim has a new bibliographic citation which states the following:
"Musa S. Braizat, The Jordanian-Palestinian Relationship: The Bankruptcy of the Confederal Idea (London, 1998 ); Ghada Hashem Talhami, Syria and the Palestinians:The Clash of Nationalisms (Gainesville, FL, 2001 )" (see page 78).
Interestingly, the exact annotated bibliographic citation that I provide in Part 2 of this review is also meant to substantiate the following claim that, and let's keep in mind the sequence of words and sentences, reads as such:
"One exception worth mentioning— despite its apologetic character— is Arif al-Arif ’s six volumes on the war written in the 1950 s. Unfortunately, this work has not been translated and is inaccessible to most readers, Israeli or otherwise. Recent Arab works on the conflict may be more sophisticated, using the fashionable jargon of Western universities, but none approximates al-Arif’s thoroughness, self-critical method, and accuracy" (see page 67).
Why the switch-up? Why is it that, in the previous paragraph, Gelber makes a broad qualitative statement in which he cites some of the best most well-regarded works, but when he makes a more precise statement (that more easily opens itself up to empirical testing), he substantiates his claim with, what I will, for the sake of argument, assume to be particularly bad pieces of scholarship? The answer, at least to me, is obvious: Gelber can only make a claim based on cherry-picked data to support his broader 'just-so story' which enforces and provides (psuedo-)intellectuall support for his own political goals.
4. A much better study of Zionist historiography and the politics of memory is "Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict" (see 2nd/latest edition) by Political Scientist/Theorist/Historian and International Jurist Norman Gary Finkelstein; and a much better study of Arab/Palestinian historiography of The 1947-1949 War for Palestine and its attendant exodus takes form in chapter 1 of "NAKBA AND SURVIVAL: The Story of Palestinians Who Remained in Haifa and the Galilee, 1948–1956" by Historian Adel Manna, titled "Al-Nakba and Its Many Meanings in 1948." Another alternative collection of essays critical of Zionist or anti-Palestinian (psuedo-)historiography is "Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question" which is edited by Preeminent Scholar Edward Said and writer Christopher Hitchens.
Overall, I can't say the entire book is bad, but at least some of these essays (like the essay my Avi Shlaim) I've read alongside other much better scholars. In the case of Gelber, perhaps he is correct, but his evidence and base assumptions, coupled with his dubious framing, weakens his claims and causes them to falter when placed under even mild scrutiny (such as, hopefully, this review).
Displaying 1 of 1 review