Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on February 24, 2022

Israeli historians who have challenged traditional versions of Israeli history

The New Historians (Hebrew: , HaHistoryonim HaChadashim) are a loosely defined group of Israeli historians who have challenged traditional versions of Israeli history, including Israel's role in the 1948 Palestinian exodus and Arab willingness to discuss peace. The term was coined in 1988 by Benny Morris, one of the leading New Historians. According to Ethan Bronner of The New York Times, the New Historians have sought to advance the peace process in the region.[1]

Much of the primary source material used by the group comes from Israeli government papers that were newly available as a result of being declassified thirty years after the founding of Israel.[2] The perception of a new historiographical current emerged with the publications of four scholars in the 1980s: Benny Morris, Ilan Papp, Avi Shlaim and Simha Flapan. Subsequently, many other historians and historical sociologists, among them Tom Segev, Hillel Cohen, Baruch Kimmerling, Joel Migdal, Idith Zertal and Shlomo Sand have been identified with the movement.[3][4]

Initially dismissed by the public, the New Historians eventually gained legitimacy in Israel in the 1990s.[1] Some of their conclusions have been incorporated into the political ideology of post-Zionists. The political views of the individual historians vary, as do the periods of Israeli history in which they specialize.

Avi Shlaim described the New Historians' differences from what he termed the "official history" in the following terms:[5]

Papp suggests that the Zionist leaders intended to displace most Palestinian Arabs; Morris believes the displacement happened in the heat of war. According to the New Historians, Israel and Arab countries each have their share of responsibility for the ArabIsraeli conflict and the Palestinian plight.[6]

Michal Ben-Josef Hirsch argues that, prior to the advent of the New Historians, "Israelis held to a one-sided historical narrative of the circumstances leading to the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem, and that any other counter-narratives were taboo." According to Ben-Josef Hirsch, the conclusions of the New Historians, and the wide-ranging debate that they provoked, ended that taboo and changed the way in which the Palestinian refugee problem and its causes were viewed in Israel. Ben-Josef Hirsch says that the traditional Israeli narrative, that Arabs were responsible for the exodus of the Palestinians, held from 1948 to the late 1990s. She says that the arguments of the New Historians significantly challenged that narrative, leading to a broad debate both in academia and in the wider public discourse, including journalists and columnists, politicians, public figures, and the general public.

Ben-Josef Hirsch believes that a significant change has occurred in how the Palestinian refugee issue is viewed in Israeli society since the late 1990s, with a more complex narrative being more accepted; it recognizes there were instances where Israeli forces expelled Palestinians with the knowledge and authorization of the Israeli leadership. Ben-Josef Hirsch attributes that change to the work of the New Historians and the resulting debate.[7]

The New Historians gained respect by the 1990s. A 1998 series on state television marking Israel's 50th anniversary drew much from their work, as did textbooks introduced to ninth graders in 1999.[1]

Critics of the New Historians have acknowledged this shift. Avi Beker, writing in the Jerusalem Post, states that the effect of the New Historians work on the history of the ArabIsraeli conflict "cannot be exaggerated". He says the work of the New Historians is now the mainstream in academia, and that their influence was not confined to intellectual circles. To illustrate his point he cites examples from changes to Israeli school text books to the actions of Israeli political leaders and developments in the IsraeliPalestinian peace process.[8]

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.[citation needed] Efraim Karsh has accused them of ignoring questions which he says are critical: Who started the war? What were their intentions? Who was forced to mount a defence? What were Israel's casualties?[9]

Early in 2002, the most famous of the new historians, Benny Morris, publicly reversed some of his personal political positions,[10] though he has not withdrawn any of his historical writings. Morris says he did not use much of the newly available archival material when he wrote his book: "When writing The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem 19471949 in the mid-1980s, I had no access to the materials in the IDFA [IDF Archive] or the Haganah Archive and precious little to first-hand military materials deposited elsewhere."[11]

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 worldand 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.[12]

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 ArabIsraeli War in any way. He did however note that they contributed to the public discourse about the war.[13]

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.[14] 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 dispossession as central to the creation of the state of Israel.[citation needed]

Baruch Kimmerling criticised the focus on "post-Zionism", arguing that debates around the term were "nonsense and semi-professional andmainly political". According to Kimmerling the term has been arbitrarily applied to any research on Israeli history, society or politics that was critical or perceived to be critical. Kimmerling saw this discussion as damaging to research in these areas because it took the focus away from the quality and merit of scholarship and onto whether the work should be characterized as Zionist or post-Zionist. Further, Kimmerling asserted that academics were diverted away from serious research onto polemical issues and that the environment this fostered inhibited the research of younger academics who were fearful of being labeled as belonging to one of the two camps.[15]

On a few occasions there have been heated public debates between the New Historians and their detractors. The most notable:

Originally posted here:
New Historians - Wikipedia

Category: Zionism
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