Benny Morris

Published in 1969, it is extremely detailed in terms of military history and covers both Arab and Israeli failures and atrocities, though there’s nothing uncontroversial in this area. Arab nationalism and Zionism were both locked in opposition and mutually reinforcing as Jews poured into Palestine, spurred by the Holocaust and the world reaction to it, and the British tried to appease their Arab clients without pissing off the far more pro-Jewish and then pro-Israeli Americans. The UN show more proposed a partition, which the Arab states didn’t accept and which initially proposed to leave a substantial (approaching close to half the population) Arab minority in the Jewish territory. Instead, the Arab states invaded (Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Egypt), but were hampered by poor equipment, limited manpower, and a focus on making sure that no independent Palestine came into existence; they preferred to divide the territory among themselves and the existence of Israel didn’t necessarily seem that much worse than a Palestinian state, not that any of the leaders could say so publicly. Things got worse for them in terms of materiel because of an arms embargo once the war started, whereas the Jews were used to buying weapons on the black market and successfully got a lot through, with the help of substantial funds from Jews in the US and elsewhere and of trained military personnel (including a number of Christians), many of whom had learned their skills fighting against the Nazis.

Though the nascent state was in real danger of disappearing, things got better for Israel as the fighting went on. Nonetheless the entire Jewish state was mobilized for war, as the Arab countries weren’t, and the war footing couldn’t go on forever. With a lot of international pressure, mostly against the militarily more successful Israelis, it didn’t. But it turns out that an absence of peace can last a very long time, especially since the Arab states didn’t do much to integrate Palestinian refugees. Although the number of Jews expelled from Arab states was roughly equivalent to the number of Arabs expelled from Israeli territory, Israel made many more efforts to integrate the former (though they apparently remained a seriously right-wing, anti-Arab voting bloc), while Arab states kept the refugees segregated in camps, creating a reserve army of potential anti-Israel fighters. Weak states have trouble making peace, and the first two Arab leaders who seriously conducted peace negotiations were murdered (King 'Abdullah in 1951 and Anwar Sadat). show less

I was nine years old when my parents took me to see the movie Exodus; since I wasn’t allowed to borrow books from the “adult” section of the public library I obtained a clandestine copy of the book and devoured that. As a result of these accounts a brave Jewish settlers struggling against fanatical and bloodthirsty Arabs, I became a “pro-Semite” to the extent that I began answering the phone “Shalom”. This annoyed my parents and drove more distant Missouri Synod Lutheran show more relatives – at least one of which was an unreconstructed Hitler Youth – into frenzy.


Alas for the shattering of yet another childhood illusion. In 1948, Ben-Gurion University history professor Benny Morris covers the birth of the Israeli state with all the warts exposed. The realities are quite a bit different from the Leon Uris romanticized version.


(Before I get much further, I must explain that Morris uses “Jews” to describe Jewish inhabitants of the area before the UN partition vote, and uses “Israelis” afterward. Although technically correct, and actually a useful distinction, this makes for some very anti-Semitic sounding language – “The Jews attacked an Arab village” for example. Similarly with “Zionist”, which has now become a term of opprobrium in some circles, is used in its original form in 1948.) Morris divides the conflict into a “Civil War” phase, when there was still a British mandate in Palestine and Jews and ALA fought with varying degrees of interference from the British government, and a “War of Independence” phase, when the Israelis took on invasions from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq (allowed to move through Jordan to get there), Jordan, and Egypt (supported by detachments from Saudi Arabia and Sudan. Morris uses Yishuv (Hebrew for “settlement”) to describe the Jewish community in the Mandate before independence, and “Israeli government” afterward; this can get a little confusing, too, especially when the situation changes in a few pages. Jewish/Israeli military and paramilitary organizations are usually referred to be initials or Anglicized Hebrew, which can be a little confusing if you’re used to other terms:


* Irgun Hahaganah, “Defense Organization”, usually Haganah, latter IDF (Israeli Defense Forces). An underground organization during the Mandate years, but usually not active against British forces or Arabs, instead preparing for the future. There was an uneasy truce between the Haganah and the British during WWII, to the extent that the British trained Haganah members to undertake guerrilla warfare in case the Afrika Korps reached Palestine; this group was the Palmach (from Plugot Macḥatz, “Strike Force”). The Palmach went underground after El Alamein.


* IZL = Irgun zvai leumi = “National Military Organization”. Always IZL in 1948, but non-Israeli histories usually just call it the Irgun. Engaged in terrorist acts against both the British and Arabs, including bombings (the King David Hotel being the most famous) and assassinations.


* LHI = Lohamei herut yisrael = “Freedom Fighters of Israel”. Always LHI in 1948 but usually “the Stern gang” in non-Israeli publications, sometime “Lehi” from the initials. Even more radical than the IZL and extremely anti-British, to the extent that they twice contacted the Wehrmacht offering assistance; assassinated Count Folke Bernadotte, the UN mediator in Palestine.


* ALA = Arab Liberation Army, more or less organized Palestinian Arabs (as opposed to the formal military forces of Arab countries).


*Arab Legion = The Jordanian Army, mostly British officered.

Now that we have the player identified, we might as well jump head first into the ugliness:


*The Zionist slogan of “A Land Without a People for a People Without a Land” was more or less true. That doesn’t mean that there weren’t any Arabs living in Palestine before 1948, but rather that there were no Palestinians. Instead Arabs saw themselves as residents of a particular village or area, or owing allegiance to one of the two powerful families in the area, the Husseinis and Nashashibis. In particular the Husseinis and Nashashibis spent a great deal of effort fighting each other, either militarily or politically, rather than the Jews. Therefore when Morris speaks of (for example) “Palestinian leaders” he means leaders who happened to live in the territory of the Mandate, not leaders who were identified as such by people who, in turn, identified themselves as Palestinians. The upshot of all this, of course, is the modern, self-identified Palestinian people was essentially created by the establishment of Israel.


* Conventional mythology of the founding of Israel often claims that Arab villagers and city residents left their homes on the urging of neighboring Arab states, ostensibly to keep them out of the area of conflict until the war was over. Although there were a few Arab radio broadcasts suggesting this, Morris admits that most Arabs were driven out by the Haganah/IDF under the explicit instructions of higher authority, often using the unpleasant term “cleansing”. To be fair, Morris notes that huge number of Jews were expelled from the Arab countries after the founding of Israel and subsequent Israeli victories in the Sinai and 6 Day Wars – 43000 from Yemen, “thousands” from Iraq, 65000 from Egypt, 15000 from Syria, 40000 from Libya, and 60000 from Morocco. (I remember reading that prior to the Egyptian recognition of Israel the few remaining Jews in Cairo had to borrow American Embassy personnel to make a minyan.) Ironically, according to Morris the expelled Jews were mostly Sephardic, have created something of a racial divide in Israel, and are generally more right-wing than Ashkenazi descendants.


* Most atrocities during the war were committed by Jewish/Israeli forces upon Arabs, rather than the other way around. Morris notes that there was a profound disparity of opportunity, with the Jews/Israelis advancing into Arab villages rather than the other way around. Morris claims that a lot of the atrocities were committed by IZL/LHI forces or recent immigrants from Eastern Europe; however, especially in the Civil War phase it was seemingly routine for Haganah/IZL/LHI to advance into a Arab village, summarily execute all the males of military age, force everybody else out, and raze all the buildings. Somewhat cynically, troops were ordered to stop demolishing buildings later in the war so they could be used for incoming Jewish immigrant housing. The Palmach units in the Haganah tended to be the most professional.


* Morris has considerable, if sometimes understated, praise for King ‘Abdullah and the Arab Legion, who generally behaved with military correctness whether their officers were British or Jordanian. Golda Meir – disguised as an Arab - visited ‘Abdullah just before the Invasion phase and found him generally sympathetic to the Jews but unwilling to risk the opinion of the “Arab street”. ‘Abdullah went as far as offering a Jewish state in federation with Jordan, although the details of what that would have meant were never pursued. Although the Arab Legion was far and away the most capable of the Arab armies, ‘Abdullah confined his advance to the West Bank, even though in the confused early invasion period he might have been able to advance all the way to the sea.


* David Ben-Gurion comes across as an able politician but militarily illiterate, demanding retention of every single Jewish settlement even in untenable defensive positions and believing that the Arabs could be forced to surrender by bombing their cities (at a time when the Israeli Air Force consisted of four B-17s, a few C-46s converted to bombers by rolling bombs out the cargo doors, miscellaneous WWII surplus fighters and some civilian light aircraft, including Piper Cubs that bombed by throwing grenades out the windows). Ben-Gurion halted a number of promising military offensives, including an Israeli drive on el-Arish that would have encircled the entire Egyptian expeditionary force, out of fear of international repercussions (which, of course, could well have been the correct decision).


* Conventional mythology also has a heavily outnumbered IDF achieving quasi-miraculous against massive invading Arab armies. In fact, the IDF outnumbered the combined Arab military forces. The invading Arab countries were all only recently independent and hadn’t had much time to develop native military strength; plus most of them had to commit considerable forces to rear areas to keep down unrest. In terms of officer quality, the IDF was orders of magnitude ahead, with many of its officers experienced WWII veterans (including non-Jews). A few British deserters joined the Arab forces (and participated in a car bombing during the Civil War period, using stolen British vehicles); however, there were also some deserters to the IDF including some who managed to steal a Cromwell tank. Morris claims there were a handful of ex-Wehrmacht officers in Arab service, plus some Bosnians, but provides no details; if there were they certainly didn’t help much.


* The Communist bloc supported Israel at its founding; it was seen as a nascent Socialist state (and, in fact, the first Israeli political parties were characterized as “leftist” versus “extremely leftist”) opposed to reactionary Arab monarchies and the imperialist British empire. This lead to considerable unease in the Truman administration, which waffled over its support of the Israeli state. The IDF was essentially saved by arms imports from Czechoslovakia (violating the arms embargo imposed by the US and Britain); ironically, the Czechs provided the Israelis with masses of Kar98s, MG38s and 42s, and Messerschmitt fighters to pit against Arab Lee-Enfields, Brens, and Spitfires. (the Messerschmitts were technically Avia S-199s, which coupled an Me-109 airframe with a Junkers Jumo 211-F bomber engine that made for a contender for the world’s worst handling aircraft; the low revs of the bomber engine were compensated by an enormous propeller which in turn made torque characteristics almost unmanageable). It’s again an article of mythology that the Israelis were denied weapons while the Arabs were not; however, the Israelis had an extensive network of illicit arms suppliers (in addition to the Czech supplies the Israelis got numerous American halftracks as “agricultural equipment”; this isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds – when I was doing geology in upstate New York in the 1970s I heard of a farmer who was using an M3 to plow). The Arabs had no clandestine supply network and failed to build up stocks of arms and spare parts before the embargo was enforced. The Egyptians eventually acquired some Macchi and Fiat fighters to replace lost Spitfires, which must have made air-to-air combats even more surreal.


Once you get over the disturbing surprises, 1948 is a well done military/political history. There are a lot of maps of the various military operations, although they suffer slightly from poor terrain depiction. The infighting among the various Arab factions (and, to a much lesser extent, the Jewish ones) illustrates that you have to win the war before you can divide up the spoils; this might make a terrific military/political war game in the old SPI style. Morris’ understanding of contemporary military technology and effectiveness is sometimes a little suspect; he describes the Bren carrier as an “armored car” (a more correct description might be “self-propelled death trap”) and seems to think that the 2-pounder and 6-pounder guns on some of the Arab armored cars were artillery weapons. There are extensive references. I expect the book is probably pretty controversial in Israel; It was sadly disillusioning for me – although I reflect that as I sit here in a Starbucks I don’t see any Arapahoe around. show less

"Realpolitik," according to Wikipedia, "refers to politics or diplomacy based primarily on practical considerations, rather than ideological notions." In the Middle East, of course, politics is drenched in emotions and in "ideological notions," but Morris' account of the 1948 War places these all-too-familiar dimensions of the Arab-Israeli conflict within a realpolitik framework, illuminating the practical considerations that influenced both Arab and Israeli decision-making during the first show more of their wars. Neither side is spared in Morris' meticulous retelling. He portrays the Arab leaders, by and large, as somewhat less than fully committed to the Palestinian cause, doing the minimum to satisfy “the Arab street” or to secure pieces of Palestine for themselves. And he makes clear that Ben Gurion and other Israeli leaders pursued a strategy of removing Palestinians from their villages to make way for the flood of Jewish settlers that would strengthen the fledgling state to face future Arab onslaughts. Neither side, Morris demonstrates, was immune from murderous brutality. What emerges is a human tragedy born of an unwillingness of peoples to share land. It reminds us as Americans just how fortunate we are that we’ve found a way to accommodate so many emotions and ideologies within our borders. show less

Clear, concise presentation of history based on good research. It doesn't paint a pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian picture; it just presents the facts and conclusions that can readily be drawn from those facts. It's a little dry, though, so don't pick it up thinking it's going to read like a historical fiction novel.

Update (almost 2 years after the first reading): Read through it a second time, this time for a graduate seminar in the Arab-Israeli Conflict. I think I got a lot more from it this show more time, but I could still give it a third and probably a fourth reading. This thing is rich in detail and presents a complex and nuanced approach to the causes and continued existence of the refugee problem. Maybe it's a sign that I've been studying history for too long, but this time around I found some parts of the book exciting. Still, it's definitely not something I would call pleasure reading. Worth it though if you have an interest in Israeli history in general, the 48 war, or current Middle Eastern politics. show less