Benny Morris's Interview by Baruch Kimmerling

[BowlingForPalestine]

Benny Morris's Interview
by Baruch Kimmerling

---snip---

The Israeli Demographic Discourse

Morris's latest controversy involves the public position he has taken on the possibility of a second act of ethnic cleansing. It is impossible to understand this controversy without understanding the demographic background to it. The issue is a complex one, but stated briefly, if current demographic trends continue, Jews will cease to be the majority population even within pre-1967 Israel within the next 40 to 50 years. A younger Arab population with a far higher birthrate makes this almost inevitable, even if there is continued immigration from the Diaspora. This fact creates a great deal of anxiety among all segments of the Israeli polity.

The radical solution to this dilemma is "transfer" of the Arab populations. "Moderate" versions of these proposals call for exchanges of territories with their populations. In these scenarios, areas in Israel with large Arab populations like the lower Galilee would be given to a Palestinian state in exchange for Jewish settlements in the territories being incorporated into Israel. More extreme solutions to this dilemma call for forcible expulsions of Palestinians, not only from the occupied territories, but even from Israel itself. This fringe opinion, in the last years has become somewhat respectable.

Formerly, solutions involving transfer were voiced openly only by followers of Meir Kahane. Yet by 1990, another party endorsing "voluntary transfer," General Rehavam Ze'evi's Moledet Party, had become part of the Israeli government coalition. The "voluntarily" was added only to preserve the party from being accused of inciting a crime. Presently, Moledet (as part of a parliamentary bloc headed by Benny Elon, another supporter of "transfer") is again part of the government. In 2002, the National Religious Party chose a new leader, General Effie Eitam, who has called for transfer of hostile Arabs to other countries if a major war presented an opportunity. Indeed, most transfer scenarios, including that newly proposed by Benny Morris, are based on a "War of Armageddon." which would provide the cover for massive ethnic cleansing. The recent American assault on Iraq heightened this atmosphere of "anticipation." No wonder that under those circumstances, in which the Israeli government was the most enthusiastic foreign supporter of the war, that a group of Israeli academics published in the Guardian (October 2, 2002) a "hysterical warning" about the possible intention to commit such an act under the cover of a regional war.

As the Palestinian armed resistance and terror continued, public opinion polls consistently indicate a perpetual increase in the number of Israelis wishing to expel Palestinians from the occupied territories and even Israeli Arab citizens. For example, according to surveys conducted by Asher Arian for Jaffe Center of Strategic Studies of Tel Aviv University, in 1991, 38 percent of the Jewish population supported the "transferring" of the Palestinians out of the occupied territories through force while 24 percent favored expelling also the Israeli Arabs. In 2002, the percentages rose to 46 and 31 consecutively.

The alternative solution is to use the remaining time to withdrawal from the occupied territories and to achieve a major reconciliation between the Jews and the Arab citizens of Israel and their full integration as individual and ethnic group within the Israeli state on a complete equalitarian basis. Proponents of this solution argue that the vast majority of the Arab citizens of Israel is committed to the Israeli state, its values and culture, and appreciates its potential democracy. Furthermore, this alternative solution is necessary to save Israel from being another pariah-state (like South Africa under Apartheid regime). Benny Morris's recent contribution to this controversy is to adopt a solution on the more radical end of a continuum of possible strategies for dealing with the so-called "demographic problem."

---snip---

Read much more in link

[BowlingForPalestine]

1. Interesting:

But hatred toward the Arabs, their society and culture crush any logic in Morris's thought. The Palestinians are "the barbarians who want to take our lives. The people the Palestinian society sends to carry out the terrorist attacks... At the moment, that society is in the state of being a serial killer. It is a very sick society. It should be treated the way we treat individuals who are serial killers." After thirty five years of oppression, colonization of their land, expropriation of their water, ignoring almost all of their freedoms, administrative detention of tens of thousands of Palestinians, systematic destruction of their social and material infrastructure, it is more than ironic to talk about the Palestinians as barbarians and a sick society. If the Palestinian society is sick, who is responsible for this sickness and which society is sicker and an institutionalized serial killer?

[JohnLocke]

2. Never mind.

[drdon326]

3. Never Mind 2.

.....

[Name removed]

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[Name removed]

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[Aidoneus]

6. forget it..

[_Jumper_]

7. Is ethnic cleansing progressive?

Even Pat Buchanan, who also believes that his country has a "demographic problem", doesn't advocate or even insinuate that the US should resort to ethnic cleansing.

[Fight_n_back]

8. Then do you support the settlements in the West Bank?

The first settlers were Jews returning to homes they were "cleansed" from in the 1948 war.

[Aidoneus]

9. Not really

The first "settlers" in '67-occupied Palestine were an American Rabbi and other Gush Emunim tourists ("fundamentalists", "fanatics", or "terrorists", if you wish.. or other terms I tend to avoid using) who shacked in a Hebron/al-Khalil hotel and decided that they weren't leaving.

[Fight_n_back]

14. No

the first settlers were the children of people who were farmers, in Hebron I believe, and petitioned Golda Maeir to settle near there origanal homestead.

If you are going to use fanatics to damn the other side of an argument then you are going to have to support someone other than the PLO.

[_Jumper_]

10. Yes

But I don't support the building of more illegal settlements because they are an impediment to peace and are a major PR problem for the US.

[tinnypriv]

11. Then do you support

The right of return of Palestinians to historic Palestine?

This argument is pointless. I'm sure it would interest the Bar-llan university types.

[Jack Rabbit]

12. Do you support the right of return for Palestinians?

No matter how much one tries, the two issues cannot be unlinked.

The best argument put forward by those who support a binational democratic state is that it renders irrelevant the issue of right of return for Palestinians to Israel proper versus right of return for Jews to the West Bank and Gaza.

Of course, a binational democracy still cannot be a Jewish state unless Jews are an overwhelming majority; this is not the case in the total territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Consequently, if the Palestinians are to be denied their right of return to property lost in what is now Israel proper in order to preserve a Jewish state, then the Jews who lost property in what is outside Israel proper, (i.e., the West Bank and Gaza) must also be denied that right.

ON EDIT

My own position is that there should be a two state solution. I long ago accepted that such a solution implies that the right of return is denied for both Palestians; that also implies that there is no such right for Jews.

[Fight_n_back]

13. Those are all nice questions

but they don't actually answer what I asked.

I am against both the settlements and right of return for Palestinians. I find that a consistent position. The Palestinains should consider the land stolen for them an equitable swap with what they gave up when they left their homes so they wouldn't have to have Jewish neighbors. Hey, something that the Palestinians have in common with William Rehnquist!

I also think that right if return for all Jews has served its purpose and should be restricted but that isn't really up to me.