On Friday July 18 the New York Times published an op-ed by the Israeli historian Benny Morris. It is entitled “Using Bombs to Stave Off War.” Morris chose this American venue to announce that Israel would “almost surely” attack Iran some time in the next few months. And he indicated that America would be well advised to support the attack.
The reputation of Benny Morris is founded on unquestioned scholarly achievement and a far more dubious political stance. As one of Israel’s “new historians,” he recovered the record of harassment, murder, and expulsion of the Palestinians in the war of independence — a finding that largely discredits the Israeli myth that the inhabitants fled from their own timidity, or because they were told to flee by Arab governments.
But speaking as an Israeli citizen, more recently, Morris has declared his view that the mistake of Ben-Gurion and the leadership of 1948 was that they did not carry the expulsion of the Palestinians all the way. Morris sees Israel in 2008 as a state under perpetual siege and the focus of a clash of civilizations; he sees Palestinians — and to a degree, all Arabs; and Iranians, too — as a species of animals not yet inducted into full humanity. Thus in a >>>
