Interview with Norman Finkelstein
How do you evaluate the "Movement of New Historians" in Israel?
The New Historians (the "revisionists") perform a splendid service because they have clarified the historical record. To be sure, their discoveries were not all new. For example it has been known since the beginning of the sixties that the Zionist claim that there were Arab radio stations that urged the Palestinians to leave their homes in 1948 was a pure lie. Despite that, historians like Benny Morris presented important documentation for that from within the Israeli archives.
Here I would like to bring up two points of criticism.
--- First, on the academic, research level, the New Historians are inclined to regard the Israeli records as the truth and the only truth. This means that often they deal with these archive sources in a largely uncritical way and they absolutely do not refer to other sources. Take for example Morris's latest history of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. It is an excellent history of the 1948 and 1956 wars because he was able to get access to the Israeli archives. As to the wars of 1967 and 1973, he was not able to obtain access to the archives so, instead, he relied on secondary sources. Morris only believes in the Israeli reports, and therefore he repeats the completely vacuous Israeli propaganda.
--- Secondly, the New Historians cannot bring their discussions to their logical conclusions. All of them affirm that the aim of the Zionist movement from the beginning was to build a Jewish state in Palestine, and that this movement was determined to attain that goal by expelling the original Arab inhabitants. Despite that, those New Historians accuse the Palestinians of "rejectionism." They portray the struggle as if it were a struggle "between two rights." But is it "rejectionism" (stubborn resistance) for the Palestinians to resist being expelled? Did both the original inhabitants and those who sought to expel them have an equal "right"?
fpp.co.uk |
