A month back I criticized Benny Morris, the Israeli military historian, for relying almost exclusively on Israeli sources for his Yale University Press history, 1948. I said that he should have looked at oral histories from Arabs who were expelled from Palestine. I said that he should have consulted the Nakba Archive, which is being compiled at Oxford, Harvard and Bir-Zeit with the help of the Ford Foundation (how's that for statusy namedropping?). At that time I emailed Diana Allan, a doctoral student at Harvard who's working on the archive, to ask her about the issue. She finally emailed me back, apologizing for the delay:
about 6 weeks.
In terms of the oral history question and Benny Morris — it was the same thing with 'The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem' in which he includes adisclaimer in the intro saying that oral testimony isn't reliable and so(conveniently) he is only going to draw on Israeli gov archives. an obvious ploy to delegitimize the Palestinian narrative. Unfortunately, until recently much of the work done by Arab historians has also been centered on documents and hasn't dealt with the oral histories of these events — Walid Khalidi's book 'All That Remains' doesn't include any testimony. Even publications that have claimed to be revisionist do not include oral testimony (like the collection of essays that Eugene Rogan and Avi Shlaim published a few years ago). Same thing
with Rashid Khalidi and so on. it is a big problem, actually.
In terms of how "trustworthy" the narratives that we recorded are, of course there are going to be distortions and gaps and so on after 60 years; it would be naive to claim otherwise. but in terms of basic facts — ie the massacres that occurred in different villages, the role of the ALA (Arab Liberation Army), the tactics of psychological warfare that were used by the Jewish fighters, the chronology of the events – I think the interviews, are, for the most part pretty reliable. While we were recording we would also finds ways to corroborate information from a previous interviewee – and incorporate new questions based on what we'd learnt from other people, particularly in cases where we were documenting massacres that had not been mentioned in any of the published literature, as in the case of Bassa etc. [I believe Allan is referring to a massacre by the British in '36] and as you say, the interview with the late Ismail Shammout is corroborated by Israeli ources.
When I did a screening for the Palestine Film Festival in London in April I met the filmmaker Eyal
Sivan, who I guess you have probably come across, who is currently working on an archive project in Israel – interviewing Israeli perpetrators about the events of 1948, a terribly important initiative. [Weiss: Amen] He has already done about 70 interviews, I think. he also noted how many of the interviews excerpts from the Nakba archive matched the narratives — down to the small details, like the time of day etc — that he had recorded with Israelis. in fact, we have talked about the possibility of working on a joint project which would bring these testimonies about the events in specific villages together, so that the narratives from both sides would sit side by side. I think this would do a lot to illustrate their "trustworthiness."
In terms of access, we are still trying to raise $ to put it all on line, so Morris probably would have found it hard (though certainly not impossible!) to get access to the materials we have recorded. should he ever want to see any of the interviews in the meantime, however, I would be MORE than happy to send him copies… you can tell him that, if you'd like.
I'd note that Allan's archive is hardly the only reservoir of Palestinian memory. It's everywhere, you just shake a stick. Morris chose not to do so. The next generation of scholars will do so. Also: imagine if anyone had used qualifiers around Jewish oral testimonies of the Holocaust? WWFD? [What Would Foxman Do?]
