Benny Morris

This book looks at the development of Israeli-Arab relations during the formative years 1949 to 1956, focusing on Arab infiltration into Israel and Israeli retaliation. Palestinian refugee raiding and cross-border attacks by Egyptian-controlled irregulars and commandos were a core phenomenon during this period and one of the chief causes of Israel's invasion of Sinai and the Gaza strip in 1956.Benny Morris probes the types of Arab infiltration and the attitude of Arab governments towards the phenomenon, and traces the evolution of Israel's defensive and offensive responses. He analyzes Israeli decision-making processes, including the emergence and ultimate failure of Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett's dissident policy of moderation, and describes in detail the history of the Arab infiltration, including the terrorist-guerrilla raids by state-organized Fedayeen in 1955-6, and of the IDF raids of Qibya, Nahhalin, Kinneret, and the Sabha.This was a precedent-setting period in the making of Israeli defense policy, and this pattern of raiding and counter-raiding served to define Israeli-Arab relations during the subsequent four decades. In this pioneering study Morris deepens our understanding of the current situation in the Middle East and of the prospects for a lasting peace there.

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.

A New York Times Notable BookAt a time when the Middle East has come closer to achieving peace than ever before, eminent Israeli historian Benny Morris explodes the myths cherished by both sides to present an epic history of Zionist-Arab relations over the past 120 years.Tracing the roots of political Zionism back to the pogroms of Russia and the Dreyfus Affair, Morris describes the gradual influx of Jewish settlers into Palestine and the impact they had on the Arab population. Following the Holocaust, the first Arab-Israeli war of 1948 resulted in the establishment of the State of Israel, but it also shattered Palestinian Arab society and gave rise to a massive refugee problem. Morris offers distinctive accounts of each of the subsequent Israeli-Arab wars and details the sporadic peace efforts in between, culminating in the peace process initiated by the Rabin Government. In a new afterword to the Vintage edition, he examines Ehud Barak’s leadership, the death of President Assad of Syria, and Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon, and the recent renewed conflict with the Palestinians. Studded with illuminating portraits of the major protagonists, Righteous Victims provides an authoritative record of the middle east and its continuing struggle toward peace.

A reappraisal of the giant massacres perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire, and then the Turkish Republic, against their Christian minorities.Between 1894 and 1924, three waves of violence swept across Anatolia, targeting the region's Christian minorities, who had previously accounted for 20 percent of the population. By 1924, the Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks had been reduced to 2 percent. Most historians have treated these waves as distinct, isolated events, and successive Turkish governments presented them as an unfortunate sequence of accidents. The Thirty-Year Genocide is the first account to show that the three were actually part of a single, continuing, and intentional effort to wipe out Anatolia's Christian population.The years in question, the most violent in the recent history of the region, began during the reign of the Ottoman sultan Abdulhamid II, continued under the Young Turks, and ended during the first years of the Turkish Republic founded by Ataturk. Yet despite the dramatic swing from the Islamizing autocracy of the sultan to the secularizing republicanism of the post-World War I period, the nation's annihilationist policies were remarkably constant, with continual recourse to premeditated mass killing, homicidal deportation, forced conversion, mass rape, and brutal abduction. And one thing more was a constant: the rallying cry of jihad. While not justified under the teachings of Islam, the killing of two million Christians was effected through the calculated exhortation of the Turks to create a pure Muslim nation.Revelatory and impeccably researched, Benny Morris and Dror Ze'evi's account is certain to transform how we see one of modern history's most horrific events.

“What is so striking about Morris’s work as a historian is that it does not flatter anyone’s prejudices, least of all his own,” David Remnick remarked in a New Yorker article that coincided with the publication of Benny Morris’s 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War. With the same commitment to objectivity that has consistently characterized his approach, Morris now turns his attention to the present-day legacy of the events of 1948 and the concrete options for the future of Palestine and Israel. The book scrutinizes the history of the goals of the Palestinian national movement and the Zionist movement, then considers the various one- and two-state proposals made by different streams within the two movements. It also looks at the willingness or unwillingness of each movement to find an accommodation based on compromise. Morris assesses the viability and practicality of proposed solutions in the light of complicated and acrimonious realities. Throughout his groundbreaking career, Morris has reshaped understanding of the Israeli-Arab conflict. Here, once again, he arrives at a new way of thinking about the discord, injecting a ray of hope in a region where it is most sorely needed.

Morris' earlier work exposed the realities of how 700,000 Palestinians became refugees during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. While the focus of this edition remains the war and exodus, new archival material considers what happened in Jerusalem, Jaffa and Haifa, and how these events led to the collapse of urban Palestine. Revealing battles and atrocities that contributed to the disintegration of rural communities, the story is harrowing. The refugees now number four million and their cause remains a major obstacle to regional peace. First Edition Hb (1988): 0-521-33028-9 First Edition Pb (1989): 0-521-33889-1

A revealing biography of Sidney Reilly, the early twentieth-century virtuoso of espionage “Mr. Morris’s dogged research . . . lends impressive rigor to this portrait of an often-cryptic figure.”—Diane Cole, Wall Street Journal Sidney Reilly (c. 1873–1925) is one of the most colorful and best-known spies of the twentieth century. Emerging from humble beginnings in southern Russia, Reilly was an inventive multilingual businessman and conman who enjoyed espionage as a sideline. By the early twentieth century he was working as an agent for Scotland Yard, spying on émigré communities in Paris and London, with occasional sorties to Germany, Russia, and the Far East. He spent World War I in the United States, brokering major arms deals for tsarist Russia, and then decided to become a professional spy, joining the ranks of MI6, Britain’s foreign intelligence service. He came close to overthrowing the Bolshevik regime in Moscow before eventually being lured back to Russia and executed. Said to have been the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s iconic James Bond character, Reilly was simultaneously married to three or four women and had mistresses galore. Sifting through the reality and the myth of Reilly’s life, historian Benny Morris offers a fascinating portrait of one of the most intriguing figures from the golden age of spies.

General Sir John Glubb was the last British pro-Consul of the region and commander of the Arab Legion during the crucial years between 1936 and 1956, which were to witness the collapse of Palestine and the final foundation and establishment of the State of Israel. As well as an analysis of Glubb's personal vision of the Middle East and its peoples - a surprisingly racial vision that would condition his politics - this book examines his reactions to the Arab Revolt in Palestine and the periodic plans to partition Palestine and establish a Jewish state. It offers an in-depth account of his thinking and actions during 1948, as he led his small army into Palestine and war against Israel.

These essays by a leading Israeli historian focus on Israeli decisions and the reasons behind the mass Arab exile from Palestine in 1948. Benny Morris addresses the transfer of Majdal's Arabs to Gaza in 1950, the initial absorption of the Palestinian refugees in Arab host countries in 1948-9, and why some Arabs remained in their villages. He then explores attitudes toward the Palestinian Arabs from the 1948 war to the differing perspectives of Israel's two main parties. By examining past and present Israeli historiography, Morris identifies and analyzes the major points of controversy between the "old" official Israeli histories and the "new" histories of the 1980s and beyond.

The National Interest is the premier venue for debate on international affairs. Covering topics as varied as terrorism, nuclear proliferation, energy security and international trade, TNI is regularly read by government officials and members of Congress, key members of the foreign-policy establishment, and prominent academics. A more sophisticated foreign policy starts here.Culling the right minds on the right topics, The National Interest delivers in-depth and cutting edge analysis of politics, matters of national security and economics. More than just news, TNI is the source for what readers truly need to know to master the issues of the day.Since 1985: the thinker's guide to foreign policy.The Kindle Edition of The National Interest includes all essays and book reviews found in the print edition.

תיקון טעות הוא קובץ מאמרים שעניינם היבטים שונים במערכת היחסים בין יהודים לערבים בארץ-ישראל למן "המרד הערבי" ועד מערכת "קדש". בין שאר האירועים והסוגיות הנדונים: העברת ערביי מג'דל (אשקלון) לעזה ב 1950, פועלו של יוסף נחמני איש "השומר" והקרן הקיימת לישראל במלחמת תש"ח, תגובת העיתונות הישראלית לפעולת קיביה (1953); מדיניות הגירוש כלפי האוכלוסייה הערבית במבצע "חירם" (1948).מבקרים על ספריו הקודמים של פרופ' בני מוריס ב"ספרית אפקים":על לידתה של בעיית הפליטים הפלסטינים: 1949-1947 (1991):"מחקר מעמיק, שיטתי ומדוקדק" (עמנואל סיון, ידיעות אחרונות)"הוא (מוריס) מציג את הצד הישראלי והצד הערבי בכל אמיתותם האמיתית - שואפים, טועים, מצליחים, נכשלים ומעצבים אט-אט את עמדותיהם. (רונלד סאנדרס, New York Times book review)."ספר בעל עוצמה ויושרה נדירים" (פואד עג'מי, (Washington Post).

This study sheds new light on the development of British public opinion in the build up to the Second World War.

היחסים בין מדינת ישראל לשכנותיה, מדינות ערב, ניצבים במוקד מפעל המחקר הענף של ההיסטוריון בני מוריס. בספר זה מובאים מחקרים היסטוריים, מאמרים עיתונאיים ורשימות אישיות פרי עטו. לצד דיונים על קרבות מלחמת השחרור בדיר יאסין וטנטורה, ימצא המעיין בקובץ זה דיון ביחסו של חיים ויצמן לערבים, ביחסו ופועלו של אלברט איינשטיין לסכסוך הציוני־ערבי וזיכרונות משהות המחבר בכלא 4 (על סירוב לשרת בשטחים) ומימי הלחימה והפציעה במלחמת ההתשה ב־1969.המחבר, שהיה עיתונאי בראשית דרכו, מרבה להביע את דעתו בנוגע לבעיות השעה ומפרסם דברי ביקורת והערכה בתחומי עניינו. מוריס הוא מבקר חריף וחד עין, והמאמרים המובאים כאן משקפים זאת. במאמרים על שותפיו למלאכת ההיסטוגרפיה - אילן פפה, אבי שליים והילל כהן - הוא גם בוחן את קורות שנות העשרים והשלושים ואת אירועי תש"ח והשנים 2004-2000.