Efraim Karsh: Fabricating Israeli History, and
Meyrav Wurmser: Made-Up Massacre

"While leafing through the book´s English-language version (1), I came across a quote from a letter, written by David Ben-Gurion to his son Amos in 1937, stating that ´we must expel Arabs and take their places´. This rang a distant bell. Having read the book´s Hebrew edition several years earlier, I recalled the letter as saying something quite different. Indeed, an examination of the Hebrew text confirmed my recollection. It read as follows: ´We do not wish, we do not need to expel Arabs and take their place... All our aspiration is built on the assumption... that there is enough room in the country for ourselves and the Arabs.´

Though I was surprised by this fundamental contradiction, I gave Morris the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps this was merely a mistranslation, or even a typographical mistake? To set my mind at rest I looked up the entire documentation used by Morris with regard to the Zionist position regarding the expulsion of the Palestinians to the neighbouring Arab states, or ´transfer´ as it is commonly known, to which Ben-Gurion´s letter allegedly referred. To my bewilderment I discovered that there was scarcely a single document quoted by Morris which had not been rewritten in a way that distorted its original meaning altogether."

"... And indeed, an examination of the documentation used by several key ´new historians´, as well as of sources withheld from their readers, led to the disturbing conclusion that Morris´s distortions were neither a fluke nor an exception. Rather, they typified the modus operandi of a sizeable group of academics, journalists, and commentators, who had predicated their professional careers on rewriting Israel´s history in an image of their own choosing so as to cast it in the role of the regional villain. This is not a matter of contending interpretations or different readings of documents - both of which are perfectly legitimate aspects of scholarly research. It is a deliberate attempt at historical distortion. Nothing more, nothing less." (2)

Meyrav Wurmser: Made-Up Massacre

But far from being a mere accident of timing, the Tantura affair betrays a problem of genuine gravity. Post-Zionist historians now accept admitted falsehoods as historical evidence. Not only in political discussion but even in scholarship, truth has become relative. Everyone has his own "narrative." The line between subjective and objective, between fiction and fact, has been blurred, if not obliterated. All academic standards are bent to demonstrate the unjust and immoral nature of Zionism and of the state of Israel. Post-Zionist historians, who proudly style themselves slayers of the propagandistic "myths" of Israel´s creation and witnesses of truth, are actually the opposite: falsifiers of facts, for which they substitute a new mythology. (3)

(1) Benny Morris: The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949. Cambridge University Press, 1987
Benny Morris: The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. Cambridge University Press, 2004

Benny Morris´s Reign of Error, Revisited. The Post-Zionist Critique. By Efraim Karsh, The Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2005
http://www.meforum.org/article/711

(2) Efraim Karsh: Fabricating Israeli History. The ´New Historians´. 2nd Revised Edition, London 2000
http://tinyurl.com/5y678y

The Fight over ´1948´. Review of: 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War. By Efraim Karsh. The New York Sun, May 1, 2008
http://www.nysun.com/arts/fight-over-1948

(3) Made-Up Massacre. The Tantura affair, in which post-Zionist Israel libels its own past. By Meyrav Wurmser, The Weekly Standard, September 10, 2001 (!)
http://tinyurl.com/5wtwag

Das "Massaker von Tantura" revisited. 17. Juni 2008
http://www.eussner.net/artikel_2008-06-17_00-48-42.html

Hattip Johannes K. und Lizas Welt
http://www.lizaswelt.net/

28./29. Juni 2008