A Bleak View of the Future

The liberal Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz recently published an interview with historian Benny Morris, author of Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem (1987), which was an important work that challenged some of the mainstream Israeli views of the period of the Israel's founding, particularly in documenting some of the abuses and atrocities committed against Palestinians. He is also the author of Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001 (1999), which also strenthened his reputation as a liberal or "New Historian" or "post-Zionist" historian.

Survival of the fittest Ha'aretz 01/09/04

The interview is interesting and disturbing, because although Morris reports bluntly on past events affecting the Palestinians, he has become quite conservative in recent years, i.e., much more amenable to Likud Party-type hardline approaches on Israel's part. On the one hand, it's an illustration of how people's political views can change in major ways, for a variety of reasons. It's also an illustration of how a professional journalist or scholar can also produce work that may not be entirely comfortable to those with whose view he agrees.

Americans will have to get more used to hearing the often extreme views that shape public attitudes and policy among Israelis and Arabs. Because with the occupation of Iraq, we're very much part of their neighborhood now. And are likely to be for years to come. This statement of Morris', for instance, is even more direct than the Frum/Perle view I quoted in a previous post (my emphasis):

There is a deep problem in Islam. It's a world whose values are different. A world in which human life doesn't have the same value as it does in the West, in which freedom, democracy, openness and creativity are alien. A world that makes those who are not part of the camp of Islam fair game.

In general, this sort of outlook is a hopeless one, offering only a condition of indefinite war and terrorism - which is really what the American neoconservative viewpoint offers us, as well.