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.
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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 Pappé, 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_Historians
What are the main debates?
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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:
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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
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Historians said that Israel is primarily to blame for the dead end.
Pappé 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_Historians
Criticism:
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 world—and 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 Arab–Israeli 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_Historians
Post-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
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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_Historians
Benny Morris and his Critique of the Old Historians
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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_Historians
Major Debates:

On a few occasions there have been heated public debates between the New
Historians and their detractors. The most notable:
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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)
214–249; 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.
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Benny Morris, Avi Shlaim and Ilan Pappé 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
"mélange 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 Pappé, now teaching at the University
of Exeter, continuing to support allegations of a massacre.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Historians
Arab Revolt: http://www.meforum.org/1413/one-palestine-complete
British Mandate: http://www.meforum.org/1413/one-palestine-complete
Suez Crisis: http://un_org.tripod.com/suez/historiography.htm
http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=7912
Creation of the state of Israel and the war of Independence:
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~ssfc0005/The%20War%20of%20the%20Israeli%20Historians.htm
l
David Ben Gurion: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/09/books/the-new-newhistorians.html
Gamal Abdel Nasser: http://traubman.igc.org/history.htm
Six Day War:
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http://www.asmeascholars.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1245&c
atid=9&Itemid=64
http://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
=notebook
Yom Kippur War:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=z58nmWqS94MC&pg=PA70&lpg=PA70&dq=yom+k
ippur+war+historiography&source=bl&ots=pr3ZdZXvmo&sig=2NFv6g_wm790SwrDRuL
K3iH5KSQ&hl=en&ei=rS_VTIarNdjPjAew77XdCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&res
num=5&ved=0CCkQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q&f=false
Hamas:
http://www.mediate.com/articles/benjaminbenami.cfm
Oslo Accords:
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~ssfc0005/The%20War%20of%20the%20Israeli%20Historians.htm
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Useful Journals/Further Reading:
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‘Rewriting History’ by E. Karsh: http://www.meforum.org/302/rewriting-israelshistory
‘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/bennymorriss-reign-of-error-revisited
‘Post Zionism and Israeli Politics’ by L. Livnat: http://www.meforum.org/185/postzionism-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. Papper’http://www.meforum.org/91/my-nonzionist-narrative
Further Reading from Google Books:
Efraim Karsh:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&tbo=1&tbs=bks:1&&sa=X&ei=smPSTNv7NMTCs
wa40dWDDA&ved=0CCcQBSgA&q=efraim+karsh&spell=1
Benny Morris:
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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&s
pell=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+shapira
Avi 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&r
esnum=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
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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+se
cond+world+war&btnG=Search+Books
Eric 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=e
n&ei=8jLVTJ6AIMfBhAe2wcCrBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0C
C4Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false
EP 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 1964–70
and 1974–79, 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_ryBkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=ep+thompson&hl=en&ei=HDPVTMn1McKKhQe6mqHWB
A&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=e
p%20thompson&f=false
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Geoffrey 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&resn
um=2&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false
Hugh 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-Roper’s
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 Schöffer, 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
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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 Röhl 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 Röhl for finding and publishing two
previously secret documents that showed German responsibility for the war.
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