The Revisionists and New Historians

            During the 1980s, the "new historians" or revisionists (Benny Morris, Avi Shlaim, Ilan Pappe, and others) rose to challenge the established, orthodox history regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict.  The topic of choice and challenge was the 1947-1949 war for Israel/Palestine.  The new historians believed that only two diametrically opposed narratives existed, the official Israeli line, and the Arab line.  The Israeli orthodox narrative, as explained by the new historians, was that Zionism was a well-meaning progressive national movement.  Israel was attacked by the Arabs who sought to prevent the establishment of the Jewish State.  During the war for independence, Arab leaders called for the Palestinians to vacate their homes and land in order to allow their armies to defeat the Zionists, at which point the Palestinians would return to their homes as victors.  The poorly armed and vastly outnumbered Jewish community or Yishuv fought bravely and defeated the Arab armies - David defeated Goliath.  All peace and reconciliation attempts made by Israel in the wake of the war were rebuffed by the Arabs.

            Conversely, the Arab narrative held that Zionism was a foreign, colonial, and thoroughly unjust enterprise with the goal of forcefully ejecting most if not all Arabs from both 1947 partition areas.  The cause of the refugee problem was Israel's systematic leveling of Arab towns and villages, wholesale massacre of Arabs in selected areas, and their deliberate attempt to expel as many Arabs as possible and prevent their return.

            According to author and new historian, Benny Morris, "The old historians offered a simplistic and consciously pro-Israeli interpretation of the past, and they deliberately avoided mentioning anything that would reflect badly on Israel...In short, raison d'etat often took precedence over telling the truth."^[1]  In order to set the record straight, Benny Morris and the new historians set out to refute the old historians and orthodox narrative. 

            Two factors precipitated the rise of the new historians.  The first was the opening of the Israeli archives that thanks to the 1955 Archives Law, afforded the historian with hundreds of thousands of new documents, including memos, correspondence, and minutes from the prime minister's office and other key ministries.  The second factor was the nature of the new historian.  They were typically born around 1948 and matured around the time of the 1982 Lebanon War when Israel grew more self-critical.  According to Morris, the old historians who lived through 1948 "were unable to separate their lives from this historical event, unable to regard impartially and objectively the facts and processes that they later wrote about."  Therefore, the new historians were able to be more impartial.^[2]

            The purpose of this paper is to explore the thought process and writing of Benny Morris and follow his transition from a historian who forced the world to re-examine Israel's role in the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in his 1987 book, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949 (hereafter, The Birth) through the transition that led him to declare in The Guardian in 2002: "The rumour that I have undergone a brain transplant is (as far as I can remember) unfounded - or at least premature.  But my thinking about the current Middle East crisis and its protagonists has in fact radically changed during the past two years."^[3]  In so doing, this work seeks to answer:  How different is the 'new' history from the 'old' history?  Is it more objective or selectively focused?  How does Benny Morris' writing differ from Avi Shlaim, another revisionist historian?

            The central thesis here is that the new historians provided more detail than was previously available to the orthodox or old historians, but more detail does not mean more objective history.  While their accounts are rich in detail, they tend to inflate certain items at the expense of larger issues - like discussing the Titanic without mentioning the iceberg.  A historian should allow all of the available sources guide their conclusions; it should not be guided by a determination to debunk a narrative.  By and large, the revisionists argue points based on a selective focus and the full context of the time in question becomes blurred.  They have an agenda and they do not attempt to disguise it.  As Ilan Pappe explained in what amounts to the "new historian's" manifesto, the "new history" is a revolutionary movement whose goal is to "reconsider the validity of the quest for a Jewish nation-state in what used to be geographic Palestine."^[4]

           The new availability of Israeli archives in the 1980s sent the revisionists to scrutinize Israeli actions.  There was no new archival evidence available in the Arab world.  Some revisionists, including Benny Morris, could not read Arabic even if Arab archives were opened.  Thus, the focus was on Israeli actions and the context was lost.  The selective focus and lack of context has remained a revisionist tradition through the present day.