The true and savage mystery of the New York Times is why the paper of record turned to Benny Morris yesterday to tell people how to think about Gaza. This is one reason why the internet is surpassing newspapers as an information source, not because kids like to text, but because at a critical moment like this websites are providing leadership, and the Times isn't. Here's scholar David Bromwich at Huffpo, taking Benny Morris apart when the Times turned to Morris last July, telling us to bomb Iran, advice we have somehow dispensed with.
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 well-known interviewwith Ari Shavit, published in Haaretz on January 5, 2004, Morris described the Israeli problem with the Palestinians:
"Something like a cage has to be built for them. I know that sounds terrible. It is really cruel. But there is no choice. There is a wild animal there that has to be locked up in one way or another."
In the years since Benny Morris spoke those words, the construction of the Israeli wall in the West Bank, and the blockade of Gaza by land, sea, and air have created the cage he believed was necessary.
Now, writing from Israel for the American newspaper of record, Morris offers his advice concerning the proper treatment of Iran and Iranians. Since Iran is five years from being able to make a nuclear bomb (Morris says one-to-four years), Israel is compelled to bomb Iran "in the next four to seven months."
I don't think of Palestinians as animals requiring to be caged, nor regard it as wise to bomb Iran. (There could be occassions in which I would change my mind.)
One reality of conducting sincere and fearless research, is that one discovers wrongs, cruelties.
One discovers wrongs that members of one's own community commits, AND wrongs and cruelties that members of opposing communities commit.
It is to Morris' credit that he candidly reports both.
He does NOT self-censor about what he discovers about Hamas for example, as Phil does here (in solidarity or relevance).
'In the years since Benny Morris spoke those words, the construction of the Israeli wall in the West Bank, and the blockade of Gaza by land, sea, and air have created the cage he believed was necessary.' — David Bromwich
Yet Benny's 'cage' is not working so well, is it? As the increased range of rockets fired from Gaza shows, within a few more years the cage's inmates will have acquired the ability to strike anywhere in Israel, including Tel Aviv.
And at that point, it will become obvious that Israel's concrete apartheid wall is just another Maginot Line — militarily useless.
Another wall which became militarily useless was the Berlin Wall. Ultimately both the ideology and the economic structure of the communist wall-builders proved to be hopelessly defective, and simply imploded.
The Old Grey Lady delivered electrifying reporting from eastern Europe in the autumn of 1989, during the communist collapse. But being a zionist organ, it can't see the analogies to Israel, increasingly crippled by its fantasyland zionist ideology and its fatal economic dependence on a bankrupt U.S. patron state.
Well, that's what bloggers are paid to do — tell people what they need to hear. As opposed to the narcissistic MSM, which parrots the naive self-affirmations we want to hear — 'we're the fairest of them all,' 'change we can believe in,' etc.
Patience, Phil. You may be able to pick up some useful shards of the demolished Times empire in its coming Chapter 7 liquidation, and yet make an honest woman out of the ghastly Croaking Crone of Eighth Avenue.
RE Witty: "I don't think of Palestinians as animals requiring to be caged, nor regard it as wise to bomb Iran. (There could be occassions in which I would change my mind.)"
And, pray tell, Richard W, what scenarios could happen that you would deem it time to treat the Pals as caged animals, and that required the bombing of Iran?
We breathlessly await your good hearted wisdom.
Dear Witty, I have an idea! Let's send all the settlers back to Brooklyn.