Efraim Karsh to speak on April 4

New twist on Israeli history is just that

By Michael B. Shavelson

Efraim Karsh has a succinct way of dismissing Israel's self-styled "new historians," a group that claims that the received understanding of Israel's birth is a myth. "They are neither new nor historians," he says.

The group, which includes Israeli academics and journalists Avi Shlaim, Benny Morris, Ilan Pappé, and Tom Segev, insists that many of the foundations of Israeli history -- such as Israel's birth with an ad hoc army in the midst of overwhelming Arab military superiority -- are false. Karsh, who spoke to the B.U. Bridge from his home in London, says that the new historians are "refashioning the past to suit contemporary political objectives."

Efraim Karsh

Professor and head of the Mediterranean Studies Programme at King's College, University of London, Karsh will develop his argument at BU on April 4 -- as he has done in numerous articles and in his 1997 book Fabricating Israeli History: The New Historians.

Karsh appears frequently on European and U.S. news programs as an expert on Middle Eastern affairs. His latest book is Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East, 1789-1923 (Harvard University Press, 1999).

"The new historians are rewriting the Israel-Arab conflict in a way that does injustice to history," says Karsh. "If you are pro-Palestinian, that's fine with me; I don't have any problem. If you think the Palestinians deserve this or that, then argue your case. But don't twist the record in order to justify what you want to achieve for them today."

Karsh raises one sensitive example, which remains key to a comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement: the fate of Arabs living in what was the British Mandate of Palestine before the United Nations voted to partition the country into Jewish Israel and Arab Transjordan (later Jordan) in 1947.

Most Israeli histories describe the early Israeli leaders' stated desire to coexist with the Arabs who were living in the areas designated by the U.N. as Israel. When Israel declared its independence in 1948, the armies of Egypt, Transjordan, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon and a contingent from Saudi Arabia attacked. In spite of many official Israeli calls for them to stay, thousands of Arabs began streaming out of Israel in response to the fighting -- urged by Arab leaders to get out of the way while they "drive the Jews into the Sea."

Like most Arab sources, the new historians say, on the contrary, that the Arabs were thrown out en masse by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) under orders from Israel's political leaders and that claims to the contrary are part of the "Zionist myth."

"Benny Morris, who is the most formidable of the new historians, argues on the basis of very scant evidence -- which, in any case, he falsified -- that [the Israelis] expelled the Arabs," says Karsh.

Morris and the other new historians, he explains, base their assertions on their use of recently declassified archival material. But, counters Karsh, the old-guard historians have looked at the same materials and "have come up with very different conclusions. . . . Look at what Morris does with the meeting of June 16, 1948."

At a meeting with the Israeli cabinet during a cease-fire in the war of independence, the records show that Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion expressed surprise that so many Arabs had run away. "He and [Foreign Minister] Moshe Sharett discussed whether or not those who fled should be allowed to come back," says Karsh. "Morris claims that the Israeli government made a decision at this meeting that the Arabs who fled should be prevented from returning. But if you look at the sources, you'll see no government debate at all -- no vote, just a discussion.

"Ben-Gurion and Sharett gave their opinions that in principle as long as the Arabs were fighting, they should not be allowed back because it would be too dangerous. Another minister who spoke said they should be allowed to come back. That was it. Then the ministers went on to discuss other matters. Morris twists the record."

In other cases, continues Karsh, "Morris didn't even use the basic documents. In his book The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, he portrays the Haganah [the pre-independence army] and the IDF as the main villians. But if you look at his sources, you'll see that he didn't bother to go to the archives of the Haganah or the IDF. It is really mind-boggling.

"Political views are fine, and you can articulate them, but you don't have to rewrite history in order to support them."

Efraim Karsh will speak on The Creation of Israel: Myths and Reality, on Tuesday, April 4, at 5 p.m., at Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, Room 102, 635 Commonwealth Ave. The talk is sponsored by the Center for Judaic Studies, the CAS Department of Political Science, the Jewish Law Students Association, Hillel, and the Institute for the Study of Conflict, Ideology, and Policy. For more information, call 353-8096.