History and Historians

 Michael Anbar Ph.D.

History is the dominant component of a nation’s culture. The behavior of nations, like the behavior of individuals, is determined by their history. A few years ago we celebrated our bicentennial anniversary, remembering the Founding Fathers, the American Constitution and what it stands for. We have been proud of this heritage and are ready today as ever to defend this nation, its freedom and values. At about the same time, the Jewish people celebrated the three-thousand-year anniversary of Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish nation. The Jewish nation, however, was not as fortunate as the American nation, whose capital was destroyed by an enemy only once, to be recaptured and rebuilt soon after. The Jewish capital was destroyed and rebuilt many times over its much longer history.   And the desire to regain sovereignty over Jerusalem, or Zion, i.e., Zionism, has been the most prominent driving force in Jewish culture, over the ages.[1]

The overall history of a nation is the aggregate of numerous accounts written by many historians, supplemented by architecture and art. However, the ideas and writings of individual historians are usually biased and only a combination of many individual “histories” becomes after a time-span the national history. Some historians were eyewitnesses to the histories they wrote, e.g., Xenophon or Josephus, some even shaped the history they described, e.g., Julius Caesar and Winston Churchill.  But, as fascinating as these writings are to most readers, those personal histories are wrought with subjectivity. Most historians write history based on old material they collect and interpret according to their personal preconceptions. Classical cases are the socialistic biased history of H. G. Wells or the Judeophobic biased history of Arnold Toynbee. Some political activists write histories with the intent to make a political point, even if these accounts are at odds with the generally accepted understanding of the past.  These are rewriters of history or “revisionist” historians.   The classical example has been the Soviet Encyclopedia that kept on changing history in each new edition.

In recent years we have seen apologists of Islam such as Karen Armstrong,[2] who “purged” Islam of its bloody violent past, and anti-Zionists historians such as Benny Morris,[3] who tried to prove that the Jews are responsible for the Arab-Israeli conflict by expelling Arabs from Jewish area in the 1947-1949 war. At the time, Morris advocated unilateral withdrawal of Israelis from all Arab territories.  After 9/11 Karen Armstrong started to distinguish between evil Islamists and good benevolent, pacifist Muslims. She did not realize that by doing this she discouraged the “good” Muslims, who are supposed to be ideal peace lovers, from eradicating the evil ones, which is the only way Islam may avoid a bloody confrontation with the West.

After experiencing the latest onslaught of Arab terrorism, Benny Morris dramatically changed his historical perspective, summarized in his essay entitled “Peace? No Chance” published in February 2002 in the liberal Guardian.[4] Morris now concludes that the Arabs do not want peace with the Jewish state and, therefore, peace is impossible no matter how accommodating the Israelis might be. In a sequel to that article, in “Arafat didn't negotiate - he just kept saying no”,[5] Morris analyzes the Camp David negotiations, corroborating his previous conclusions. Lately he has become an advocate of population movement, bringing up in his recent book[6] historical documentation showing that also the British contemplated such a plan in 1949 in order to solve the Arab Israeli conflict.  Morris reaches this conclusion again in October 2002 in a thoughtful essay entitled “A new exodus for the Middle East?”,[7]  where he shows that a two-state solution is unworkable. 

Benny Morris has been, for many years, the darling of the Israeli left and of European and American liberals.   Here you had an Israeli Professor of History who “proves” that the Jewish state has been going on a wrong track.  These people must be in a dilemma – their idol speaks now in a different tongue. Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun who frequently quoted Morris probably ignores him now. Morris must have become an abomination for the “peace now” movement.  But to compensate for this ideological loss, the Israeli pacifists must have been recently invigorated by the platform of the Israeli Labor Party, which advocates substantial concessions to the Arabs with no meaningful reciprocity.

 Both Armstrong and Morris modified their political stance and writings in response to political reality. However, Morris manifested much more courage as an academic historian, admitting that his early projections were wrong. This gives much more weight to his recent conclusions. Both writers of history caused damage by their ideologically biased point of view. Armstrong has caused more damage by relieving the great majority of Muslim from taking responsibility for the outrages of the “Islamists,” and from the need to discredit and punish them.  We can only hope that Armstrong will learn from Morris’ brave stand and rectify severe flaws in her writings. Instead of maintaining her apologist position, expressed in her recent contribution to PBS,[8] Armstrong would have contributed far more to world peace if she said to the Muslims in public: “My friends, you have a severe cultural problem that might lead to lots of bloodshed and to a worldwide backlash against Islam. It is up to you to take care of it and suppress it before it runs out of control.”  Morris, at his end, caused unjustified damage to the image of the Jewish state, and it will take time before everybody realizes that he withdrew many of his early conclusions.

 In any case, it cannot be overemphasized that after lengthy reflection Morris reached to conclusion that a two-state solution, current advocated by President Bush, is unfeasible.  Let us hope that the Bush administration takes Morris’ thoughtful rationale into consideration when it develops a new “roadmap” for peace in the Middle East.