HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE ARAB ISRAELI CONFLICT
HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE ARAB ISRAELI CONFLICT
This electronic booklet should assist you in the completion of
your unit 4 coursework task; especially the part b question which
requires you to consider how important and significant events have
been interpreted over a hundred year period. What is
historiography?
Historiography is the study of the history and methodology of
the discipline of history. The term historiography also denotes a
body of historical work on a specialized topic. Scholars discuss
historiography topically such as the historiography of Catholicism,
the historiography of early Islam, or the historiography of China"
as well as specific approaches and genres, such as political
history and social history. Beginning in the nineteenth century, at
the ascent of academic history, a corpus of historiography
literature developed.
Furay and Salevouris (1988) define historiography as "the study
of the way history has been and is written the history of
historical writing... When you study 'historiography' you do not
study the events of the past directly, but the changing
interpretations of those events in the works of individual
historians."Who are the New Historians?
The New Historians are a loosely-defined group of Israeli
historians who have challenged traditional assumptions about
Israeli history, including its role in the Palestinian Exodus in
1948 and Arab willingness to discuss peace. The term was coined in
1988 by one of the leading New Historians, Benny Morris. Much of
the primary source material used by the group comes from Israeli
government papers declassified forty years after the founding of
Israel. Morris, Ilan Papp, Avi Shlaim, Tom Segev, Hillel Cohen and
(retrospectively) Simha Flapan are counted among the "new
historians." Many of their conclusions have been incorporated into
the political ideology of post-Zionists. The political views of the
group vary, as do the periods of Israeli history in which they
specialize. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_HistoriansWhat
are the main debates?
Avi Shlaim described the New Historian's differences from the
"official history" in the following terms, however it should be
noted that Israel has no official history and that the new
historians do not represent a unified body of thought. In addition
Israeli understanding of national history has changed over the
years, partially incorporating the ideas of the new historians.
According to Shlaim:
The official version said that Britain tried to prevent the
establishment of a Jewish state; the New Historians claimed that it
tried to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state The
official version said that the Palestinians fled their homes of
their own free will; the New Historians said that the refugees were
chased out or expelled The official version said that the balance
of power was in favour of the Arabs; the New Historians said that
Israel had the advantage both in manpower and in arms
The official version said that the Arabs had a coordinated plan
to destroy Israel; the New Historians said that the Arabs were
divided
The official version said that Arab intransigence prevented
peace; the New Historians said that Israel is primarily to blame
for the dead end. Papp suggests that the Zionist leaders aimed to
displace most Palestinian Arabs; Morris sees the displacement
happening in the heat of war. According to the New Historians,
Israel and Arab countries each have their share of responsibility
for the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Palestinian plight.Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_HistoriansCriticism:
The writings of the New Historians have come under repeated
criticism, both from traditional Israeli historians who accuse them
of fabricating Zionist misdeeds and from Arab or pro-Arab writers
who accuse them of whitewashing the truth about Zionist
misbehaviour. They are accused of ignoring four critical questions:
Who started the war? What were their intentions? Who was forced to
mount a defence? What were Israel's casualties?Early in 2002, the
most famous of the new historians, Benny Morris, publicly reversed
some of his personal political positions, though he has not
withdrawn any of his historical writings.
Anita Shapira offers the following criticism:
One of the more serious charges raised against the "new
historians" concerned their sparse use of Arab sources. In a
preemptive move, [Avi] Shlaim states at the outset of his new book
that his focus is on Israeli politics and the Israeli role in
relations with the Arab worldand thus he has no need of Arab
documents. [Benny] Morris claims that he is able to extrapolate the
Arab positions from the Israeli documentation. Both authors make
only meager use of original Arab sources, and most such references
cited are in English translation... To write the history of
relations between Israel and the Arab world almost exclusively on
the basis of Israeli documentation results in obvious distortions.
Every Israeli contingency plan, every flicker of a far-fetched idea
expressed by David Ben-Gurion and other Israeli planners, finds its
way into history as conclusive evidence for the Zionist state's
plans for expansion. What we know about Nasser's schemes regarding
Israel, by contrast, derives solely from secondary and tertiary
sources.Israeli historian Yoav Gelber criticized New Historians in
an interview, saying that aside from Benny Morris, they did not
contribute to the research of the 1948 ArabIsraeli War in any way.
He did however note that they contributed to the public discourse
about the war.Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_HistoriansPost-Zionism
Some commentators have argued that the historiography of the New
Historians has both drawn inspiration from, and lent impetus to, a
movement known as post-Zionism. Generally the term "post-Zionist"
is self-identified by Jewish Israelis who are critical of the
Zionist enterprise and are seen by Zionists as undermining the
Israeli national ethos.[7] Post-Zionists differ from Zionists on
many important details, such as the status of the law of return and
other sensitive issues. Post-Zionists view the Palestinian
dispossession as central to the creation of the state of
Israel.
Zionists and old Historians argue that Post-Zionism is a total
denial of the Zionist project and endangers the very legitimacy and
existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish nation state, by
viewing Zionism as a colonial phenomenon and not as a national
movement. Shlomo Avineri in "Post-Zionism doesn't exist" printed in
Ha'aretz has said that "post-Zionists are simply anti-Zionists of
the old sort."Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_HistoriansBenny Morris and his
Critique of the Old Historians
The "Old Historians" lived through 1948 as highly committed
adult participants in the epic, glorious rebirth of the Jewish
commonwealth. They were unable to separate their lives from this
historical event, unable to regard impartially and objectively the
facts and processes that they later wrote about.[9]
The Old Historians have written largely on the basis of
interviews and memoirs and at best made use of select batches of
documents, many of them censored.
Benny Morris has been critical of the old Historians, describing
them, by and large, as not really historians, who did not produce
real history: "In reality there were chroniclers and often
apologetic", and refers to those who produced it as "less candid",
"deceitful" and "misleading".Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_HistoriansMajor Debates:
On a few occasions there have been heated public debates between
the New Historians and their detractors. The most notable:
Benny Morris and Avi Shlaim versus Shabtai Teveth. Teveth is
best known as a biographer of David Ben-Gurion. Teveth: Middle
Eastern Studies, Vol. 26 (1990) 214249; Morris: 1948 and After;
Teveth: Commentary; Morris and Shlaim: Tikkun.
Benny Morris versus Norman Finkelstein and Nur Masalha. This
took place in three articles in the Journal of Palestine Studies
Vol. 21, No. 1, Autumn, 1991. While acknowledging that Morris had
brought to light a vast quantity of previously unknown archival
material, Finkelstein and Masalha accused Morris of presenting the
evidence with a pro-Zionist spin. Finkelstein wrote "Morris has
substituted a new myth, one of the "happy medium" for the old. ...
[T]he evidence that Morris adduces does not support his temperate
conclusions. ...[S]pecifically, Morris's central thesis that the
Arab refugee problem was "born of war, not by design" is belied by
his own evidence which shows that Palestine's Arabs were expelled
systematically and with premeditation." Masalha accused Morris of
treating the issue as "a debate amongst Zionists which has little
to do with the Palestinians themselves", and of ignoring the long
history that the idea of "transfer" (removal of the Palestinians)
had among Zionist leaders. In his response, Morris accused
Finkelstein and Masalha of "outworn preconceptions and prejudices"
and reiterated his support for a multifaceted explanation for the
Arab flight.
Benny Morris, Avi Shlaim and Ilan Papp versus Efraim Karsh
Efraim Karsh of King's College, London, is a founding editor of
Israel Affairs. Starting with an article in the magazine Middle
East Quarterly, Karsh alleged that the new historians
"systematically distort the archival evidence to invent an Israeli
history in an image of their own making". Karsh also provides a
list of examples where, he claims, the new historians "truncated,
twisted, and distorted" primary documents. Shlaim's reply defended
his analysis of the Zionist-Hashemite negotiations prior to 1948.
Morris declined immediate reply, accusing Karsh of a "mlange of
distortions, half-truths, and plain lies", but published a lengthy
rebuttal in the Winter 1998 issue of the Journal of Palestine
Studies. Morris replied to many of Karsh's detailed accusations,
but also returned Karsh's personal invective, going so far as to
compare Karsh's work to that of Holocaust deniers. Karsh also
published a review on an article of Morris, charging him with
"deep-rooted and pervasive distortions". Teddy Katz versus
Alexandroni Brigade: In 1998, Teddy Katz interviewed and taped
Israeli and Palestinian witnesses to events at Tantura in 1948 and
wrote a master's thesis at Haifa University claiming that the
Alexandroni Brigade committed a massacre in the Arab village of
Tantura during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. The veterans of the
brigade sued Katz for libel. During the court hearing Katz conceded
by issuing a statement retracting his own work. He then tried to
retract his retraction, but the court disallowed it and ruled
against him. He appealed to the Supreme Court but it declined to
intervene. Meanwhile a committee at Haifa University claimed to
have found serious problems with the thesis, including "quotations"
that were contradicted by Katz's taped records of interview. The
university suspended his degree and asked him to resubmit his
thesis. The new thesis was given a "second-class" pass. The Tantura
debate remains heated, with Israeli historian Ilan Papp, now
teaching at the University of Exeter, continuing to support
allegations of a massacre.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_HistoriansArab Revolt:
http://www.meforum.org/1413/one-palestine-completeBritish Mandate:
http://www.meforum.org/1413/one-palestine-completeSuez Crisis:
http://un_org.tripod.com/suez/historiography.htmhttp://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=7912Creation
of the state of Israel and the war of Independence:
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~ssfc0005/The%20War%20of%20the%20Israeli%20Historians.htmlDavid
Ben Gurion:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/09/books/the-new-new-historians.htmlGamal
Abdel Nasser: http://traubman.igc.org/history.htmSix Day War:
http://www.asmeascholars.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1245&catid=9&Itemid=64http://www.jewishjournal.com/articles/item/historiographical_struggles_archives_dispel_claims_israel_sought_sixday_war/http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~hireview/content.php?type=article&issue=spring04/&name=notebookYom
Kippur War:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=z58nmWqS94MC&pg=PA70&lpg=PA70&dq=yom+kippur+war+historiography&source=bl&ots=pr3ZdZXvmo&sig=2NFv6g_wm790SwrDRuLK3iH5KSQ&hl=en&ei=rS_VTIarNdjPjAew77XdCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CCkQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q&f=falseHamas:
http://www.mediate.com/articles/benjaminbenami.cfmOslo
Accords:
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~ssfc0005/The%20War%20of%20the%20Israeli%20Historians.htmlUseful
Journals/Further Reading:
Rewriting History by E. Karsh:
http://www.meforum.org/302/rewriting-israels-history The Unbearable
Lightness of My Critics by E. Karsh:
http://www.meforum.org/207/the-unbearable-lightness-of-my-critics
Benny Morris Reign of Error by E. Karsh:
http://www.meforum.org/711/benny-morriss-reign-of-error-revisited
Post Zionism and Israeli Politics by L. Livnat:
http://www.meforum.org/185/post-zionism-and-israeli-politics
Israeli Historical Revisionism from Left to Right; book review:
http://www.meforum.org/1585/israeli-historical-revisionism-from-left-to-right
My Non-Zionist Narrative by I.
Papperhttp://www.meforum.org/91/my-non-zionist-narrativeFurther
Reading from Google Books:
Efraim Karsh:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&tbo=1&tbs=bks:1&&sa=X&ei=smPSTNv7NMTCswa40dWDDA&ved=0CCcQBSgA&q=efraim+karsh&spell=1Benny
Morris:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&tbo=1&tbs=bks%3A1&q=benny+morris&aq=f&aqi=g1&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=Illan
Pappe:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&tbo=1&tbs=bks:1&&sa=X&ei=DWPSTMHuEs_Gswaly4z7DA&ved=0CCcQBSgA&q=ilan+pappe&spell=1
Tom Segev:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&tbo=1&tbs=bks%3A1&q=tom+segev&aq=f&aqi=g1&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=
Anita Shapira (New Historian Critic):
http://www.google.com/search?tbs=bks%3A1&tbo=1&q=anita+shapiraAvi
Shlaim:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&tbo=1&tbs=bks%3A1&q=avi+shlaim&aq=1&aqi=g1&aql=&oq=avi+sh&gs_rfai=Extension
and Further Reading: Historians and their contribution to
Historiography:Fifty Thinkers on
History:http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=8WS8p33iBkkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=fifty+key+thinkers&hl=en&ei=RAXYTMO6M5SZhQfu84CABQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false
AJP Taylor:
Taylor argued against the widespread belief that the outbreak of
the war was the result of an intentional plan on the part of
Hitler. He began his book with the statement that too many people
have accepted uncritically what he called the "Nuremberg Thesis",
that the Second World War was the result of criminal conspiracy by
a small gang comprising Hitler and his associates. He regarded the
"Nuremberg Thesis" as too convenient for too many people and
claimed that it shielded the blame for the war from the leaders of
other states, let the German people avoid any responsibility for
the war and created a situation where West Germany was a
respectable Cold War ally against the Soviets.
Taylor's thesis was that Hitler was not the demoniacal figure of
popular imagination but in foreign affairs a normal German leader.
Citing Fritz Fischer, he argued that the foreign policy of the
Third Reich was the same as those of the Weimar Republic and the
Second Reich. Moreover, in a partial break with his view of German
history advocated in The Course of German History, he argued that
Hitler was not just a normal German leader but also a normal
Western leader. As a normal Western leader, Hitler was no better or
worse than Stresemann, Chamberlain or Daladier. His argument was
that Hitler wished to make Germany the strongest power in Europe
but he did not want or plan war. The outbreak of war in 1939 was an
unfortunate accident caused by mistakes on everyone's part.
The Origins of the Second World
War:http://www.google.co.uk/search?tbs=bks%3A1&tbo=1&q=ajp+taylor+origins+of+the+second+world+war&btnG=Search+BooksEric
Hobsbawm Hobsbawm has written extensively on many subjects as one
of Britain's most prominent historians. As a Marxist
historiographer he has focused on analysis of the "dual revolution"
(the political French revolution and the industrial British
revolution). He sees their effect as a driving force behind the
predominant trend towards liberal capitalism today.
Nations and
Nationalism:http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=-MycJ9mCn14C&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:%22Eric+John+Hobsbawm%22&hl=en&ei=8jLVTJ6AIMfBhAe2wcCrBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=falseEP
Thompson Edward Palmer Thompson was an English historian, writer,
socialist and peace campaigner. He is probably best known today for
his historical work on the British radical movements in the late
18th and early 19th centuries, in particular The Making of the
English Working Class (1963). Thompson was one of the principal
intellectuals of the Communist Party in Great Britain. Although he
left the party in 1956 over the Soviet invasion of Hungary, he
nevertheless remained a "historian in the Marxist tradition,"
calling for a rebellion against Stalinism as a prerequisite for the
restoration of communists' "confidence in our own revolutionary
perspectives". Thompson played a key role in the first New Left in
Britain in the late 1950s. He was a vociferous left-wing socialist
critic of the Labour governments of 196470 and 197479, and during
the 1980s, he was the leading intellectual light of the movement
against nuclear weapons in Europe.The Making of the English Working
Class:http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Aoapz_ry-BkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=ep+thompson&hl=en&ei=HDPVTMn1McKKhQe6mqHWBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=ep%20thompson&f=falseGeoffrey
Elton
Elton was a staunch admirer of Thatcher and Churchill. He was
also a fierce critic of Marxist historians, who he argued were
presenting seriously flawed interpretations of the past. In
particular, Elton was opposed to the idea that the English Civil
War was caused by socio-economic changes in the 16th and 17th
centuries, arguing instead that it was due largely to the
incompetence of the Stuart kings. Elton was also famous for his
role in the Carr-Elton debate when he defended the nineteenth
century interpretation of empirical, 'scientific' history most
famously associated with Leopold von Ranke against Carr's views.
Elton wrote his 1967 book The Practice of History largely in
response to E. H. Carr's 1961 book What is History?.
The Practice of History
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=JRMeEW7cqT4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=geoffrey+elton&hl=en&ei=ATTVTM7mIMfMhAeG09TaBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=falseHugh
Trevor Roper:
A notable thesis propagated by Trevor-Roper was the general
crisis of the 17th century. He argued that the middle years of the
17th century in Western Europe saw a widespread break-down in
politics, economics and society caused by a complex series of
demographic, social, religious, economic and political problems. In
this general crisis, various events, such as the English Civil War,
the Fronde in France, the climax of the Thirty Years' War in
Germany, troubles in the Netherlands, and revolts against the
Spanish Crown in Portugal, Naples and Catalonia, were all
manifestations of the same problems. The most important causes of
the general crisis, in Trevor-Ropers opinion, were the conflicts
between Court and Country; that is between the increasingly
powerful centralizing, bureaucratic, sovereign princely states
represented by the court, and the traditional, regional, land-based
aristocracy and gentry representing the country. In addition, the
intellectual and religious changes introduced by the Reformation
and the Renaissance were important secondary causes of the "general
crisis.The general crisis thesis generated much controversy between
those, such as the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, who believed in
the thesis, but saw the problems of 17th-century Europe as being
more social and economic in origin than Trevor-Roper would allow. A
third fraction comprised those who simply denied there was any
general crisis, such as the Dutch historian Ivo Schffer, the Danish
historian Niels Steengsgaard, and the Soviet historian A.D.
Lublinskaya. Trevor-Roper's "general crisis" thesis provoked much
discussion, which led to experts in 17th century history such as
Roland Mousnier, J. H. Elliott, Lawrence Stone, E. H. Kossmann,
Eric Hobsbawm and J. H. Hexter all expressing themselves as to the
pros and cons of the theory. At times, the discussion became quite
heated; the Italian Marxist historian Rosario Villari, speaking of
the work of Trevor-Roper and Mousnier, claimed that: "The
hypothesis of imbalance between bureaucratic expansion and the
needs of the state is too vague to be plausible, and rests on
inflated rhetoric, typical of a certain type of political
conservative, rather than on effective analysis. Villari went on to
accuse Trevor-Roper of downgrading the importance of what Villari
called the English Revolution (the usual Marxist term for the
English Civil War), and insisted that the "general crisis" was part
of an idealistic Europe-wide revolutionary movement. Another
Marxist critic of Trevor-Roper was the Soviet historian A. D.
Lublinskaya, who attacked the concept of a conflict between "Court"
and "Country" as fiction, and thus argued there was no "general
crisis;" instead Lublinskaya maintained that the so-called "general
crisis" was merely the normal workings of the emergence of
capitalism.
In 1973, Trevor-Roper in the foreword to a book by John Rhl
endorsed the view that Germany was largely responsible for the
World War I Trevor-Roper wrote that, in his opinion, far too many
British historians had allowed themselves to be persuaded of the
theory that the outbreak of war in 1914 had been the fault of all
the great powers. He went on to note that this theory had been
promoted by the German government's policy of selective publication
of documents, aided and abetted by most German historians in a
policy of "self-censorhsip. Finally, he praised Rhl for finding and
publishing two previously secret documents that showed German
responsibility for the war.
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