Nothing like a reasonable person.

Maybe Richard would force us much less to raise our eyebrows if he had a different hero?

I hope your dog will be fine soon.

No, Slomo, Richard is afraid, compared with Bill a moderate living in the shadows of the Holocaust.

http://pbsmonitor.blogspot.com/2008/07/ny-times-op-ed-claims-israel-will.html

It looks like Morris borrowed Bush's crib sheet from Chaney-Wolfowitz-Pearl-Wurmser-Feith et al…

Will America awake too late? Over the next months we will find out.

is the most accurate statement in the "review".

As Phil resents the hatchet job's of Walt/Mearsheimer's work by people insufficiently informed to undertake a hatchet job, I wish that Phil would have the same humility that he demands of others.

I haven't read the book. I don't know Morris personally at all.

To not include Pappe or Segev in a bibliography is not a serious omission. They are self-avowed advocates, and secondarily historians.

Kimmerling is a better source.

In Righteous Victims, Morris did describe Deir Yassin as a massacre, and was one of the first credible (then not so credible) historians, to consider the Palestinian experience as important.

This work is most likely more his opinion, his conclusion, having studied the originating documentation now for three decades.

I can understand how it would gall an activist to hear that he has concluded that there was not ethnic cleansing as in intended permanent forced removal as a primary aim.

"Betrayal" (a very emotional term), is a word often quoted by leftists to describe Morris work (including Palestinian activists that have widely quoted Morris for decades until 2005).

They are hoping for an objective slam-dunk. "See, I knew it." "I was wrong in my earlier conclusions about the character of the original settlement and independance effort" is not what they want to hear.

And, Phil apparently does not want to hear that it was a war, and that military objectives superceded civil. It is truth that under the cover of military legitimacy, illegitimate means were employed.

For example, even if it were militarily legitimate to capture and control Deir Yassin, it was not necessary to conduct anything resembling mass killing.

Maybe after reading the book, I'll have the same reaction as Phil, that Morris folded on his conscience.

Or, maybe after reading the book, I'll have the oppossite reaction, that Phil folded on his journalistic standards and commitment to truth (in criticizing the way the truth was told).

In hearing a first-person account, say of the holocaust (which I have), or of the nakba (which Phil describes), I can trust "I statements".

"I was moved from x to y. A gun was pointed at my head at z. I felt…"

It is IMPOSSIBLE to rationally conclude "The IDF sought to do x…" That conclusion is outside of their experience, their possible experience. It is unknowable.

Pappe and others have added their conclusions that persons A, B, C each described similar, and x statement in the archives confirms that A,B,C's conclusion is possible.

The historical question is is their math conclusive, or is Phil and others being told and repeating an embellishment.

They've concluded that what THEY took in from "Exodus" was not the complete or accurate sentiment, and have REACTED against interpretations or interpreters that incorporate any element of the sentiment as truth, even if they derived that sentiment AFTER thorough investigation.

"How could Morris betray us?" "He should live by what we conclude."

So much for free speech.

That said, Witty's response is coherent; it needs some context:
link to counterpunch.org