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."
