Israel-Palestine Debate: Finkelstein, Destiny, M. Rabbani & Benny Morris | Lex Fridman Podcast #418

1. 0:00 – 4:42

   Introduction

   1. BMBenny Morris0:00

      That's a good point. No, no, it's a good point.

   2. NFNorman Finkelstein0:02

      Now some people accuse me of speaking very slowly, and they're advised on YouTube to turn up the speed twice to three times whenever I'm on. One of the reasons I speak slowly is because I attach value to every word I say.

   3. S(Steven Bonnell (Destiny)0:20

      Norm will say this all... Over and over and over again, "I only deal in facts. I don't deal in hypotheticals. I only deal in facts. I only deal in facts." And that seems to be the case, except for when the facts are completely and totally contrary to the particular point you're trying to push. The idea that Jews would have out of hand rejected any state that had Arabs on it or always had a plan of expulsion is just betrayed by the acceptance of the '47 partition plan.

   4. NFNorman Finkelstein0:41

      I don't think you understand politics.

   5. BMBenny Morris0:43

      They forced the British to prevent emigration of Jews from Europe-

   6. S(Steven Bonnell (Destiny)0:47

      Well, they-

   7. BMBenny Morris0:47

      ... and reaching safe shores in Palestine. That's what they did.

   8. S(Steven Bonnell (Destiny)0:49

      Well, again, again, was-

   9. BMBenny Morris0:50

      And they knew that the Jews-

   10. S(Steven Bonnell (Destiny)0:51

       Was Palestine-

   11. BMBenny Morris0:52

       ... were being persecuted in Europe at the time.

   12. S(Steven Bonnell (Destiny)0:53

       Was Palestine the only spot of land on Earth?

   13. BMBenny Morris0:56

       Basically, yes. Basically, that was the problem.

   14. S(Steven Bonnell (Destiny)0:58

       What-

   15. BMBenny Morris0:58

       The Jews couldn't emigrate in Europe.

   16. S(Steven Bonnell (Destiny)0:59

       What about, what about th- your great friends in Britain, the architects of, of the Balfour Declaration?

   17. BMBenny Morris1:04

       By the late 1930s, they weren't-

   18. S(Steven Bonnell (Destiny)1:05

       What about the United States?

   19. BMBenny Morris1:06

       ... they weren't happy to take in Jews, and the Americans weren't happy to take in Jews.

   20. S(Steven Bonnell (Destiny)1:09

       And, and, and why, and why are Palestinians, who were not Europeans, who had zero role in the rise of Nazism, who had no relation to any of this, why are they somehow uniquely responsible for what happened in Europe?

   21. BMBenny Morris1:22

       Because they were w-

   22. S(Steven Bonnell (Destiny)1:22

       And uniquely culpable?

   23. BMBenny Morris1:23

       They were helping to close the only safe haven for Jews.

   24. NFNorman Finkelstein1:25

       Professor Morris, because of your logic, and I'm not disputing it, that's why October 7th happened.

   25. S(Steven Bonnell (Destiny)1:33

       Oh my God.

   26. NFNorman Finkelstein1:34

       Because there was no options left for those people.

   27. BMBenny Morris1:38

       The Hamas guys who attacked the kibbutzim, they... Apart from the attacks on the military sites, when they attacked the kibbutzim, were out to kill civilians and they killed family after family-

   28. NFNorman Finkelstein1:50

       Okay.

   29. BMBenny Morris1:50

       ... house after house.

   30. NFNorman Finkelstein1:51

       Let's, like, talk fast so people think-
2. 4:42 – 1:03:14

   1948

   1. LFLex Fridman4:42

      First question is about 1948. For Israelis, 1948 is the establishment of the State of Israel and the War of Independence. For Palestinians, 1948 is the Nakba, which means catastrophe, or the displacement of 700,000 Palestinians from their homes as a consequence of the war. What, to you, is important to understand about the events of 1948 and the period around there, '47, '49, that helps us understand what's going on today, and, uh, maybe helps us understand the roots of all this that started even before 1948? I was hoping that Norm could speak first, then Benny, then Muin, and then Steven. Norm?

   2. NFNorman Finkelstein5:25

      After World War II, the British decided they didn't want to deal with the Palestine question anymore, and the ball was thrown into the court of the United Nations. Now, as I read the record, the UN was not attempting to arbitrate or adjudicate rights and wrongs. It was confronting a very practical problem. There were two national communities in Palestine, and there were irreconcilable differences.... on fundamental questions. Most importantly, looking at the historic record on the question of immigration, and associated with the question of immigration, the question of land. The UN Special Committee on Palestine, which came into being before the UN 181 Partition Resolution, the UN Special Committee, it recommended two states in Palestine. There was a minority position represented by, uh, Iran, India, Yugoslavia. They supported one state, but, uh, they believed that if forced to, the two communities would figure out some sort of modus vivendi and live together. United Nations General Assembly supported partition between what it called a Jewish state and an Arab state. Now, in my reading of the record, and I understand there's new scholarship on the subject, which I've not read, but so far as I've read the record, there's no clarity on what the United Nations General Assembly meant by a Jewish state and an Arab state, except for the fact that the Jewish state would be demographically, the majority would be Jewish, and the Arab state demographically would be Arab. The UNSCOP, the UN Special Committee on Palestine, it was very clear and it was re- reiterated many times that in recommending two states, each state, the Arab state and the Jewish state, would have to guarantee full equality of all citizens with regard to political, civil, and religious matters. Now, that does raise the question, if there is absolute full equality of all citizens, both in the Jewish state and the Arab state, with regard to political rights, civil rights, and religious rights, apart from the demographic majority, it's very unclear what it meant to call a state Jewish or call a state Arab. In my view, the Partition Resolution was the correct decision. I do not believe that the Arab and Jewish communities could, at that point, be made to live together, I disagree with the minority position of India, Iran, and Yugoslavia, and that not being a practical option, two states was the only other option. In this regard, I would want to pay tribute to what was probably the most moving speech at the UN General Assembly proceedings by the Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko. I was very tempted to quote it at length, but I recognized that would be, uh, taking too much time, uh, so I asked a young friend, Jamie Stern Weiner, to edit it and just get the essence of what Foreign Minister Gromyko had to say. "During the last war," Gromyko said, "the Jewish people underwent exceptional sorrow and suffering. Without any exaggeration, this sorrow and suffering are indescribable. Hundreds of thousands of Jews are wandering about in various countries of Europe in search of means of existence and in search of shelter. The United Nations cannot and must not regard this situation with indifference. Past experience, particularly during the Second World War, shows that no Western European state was able to provide adequate assistance for the Jewish people in defending its rights and its very existence from the violence of the Hitler rights and their allies. This is an unpleasant fact, but unfortunately, like all other facts, it must be admitted." Gromyko went on to say in principle he supports one state, or the Soviet Union supports one state. But he said, "If relations between the Jewish and Arab populations of Palestine proved to be so bad that it would be impossible to reconcile them and to ensure the peaceful coexistence of the Arabs and the Jews, the Soviet Union would support two states." I personally am not convinced that the two states would have been unsustainable in the long term if-... and this is a big if, the Zionist movement had been faithful to the position it proclaimed during the UNSCOP public hearings. At the time, Ben-Gurion testified, quote, "I want to express what we mean by a Jewish state. We mean by a Jewish state simply a state where the majority of the people are Jews, not a state where a Jew has, in any way, any privilege more than anyone else. A Jewish state means a state based on absolute equality of all her citizens and on democracy." Alas, this was not to be. As Professor Morris has written, quote, "Zionist ideology and practice were necessarily and elementally expansionist." And then he wrote in another book, "Transfer, the euphemism for expulsion, transfer was inevitable and in-built into Zionism because it sought to transform a land which was Arab into a Jewish state, and a Jewish state could not have arisen without a major displacement of Arab population. And because this aim automatically produced resistance among the Arabs, which in turn persuaded the yishuv's leaders..." The yishuv being the Jewish community. "... the yishuv's leaders that a hostile Arab majority or a large minority could not remain in place if a Jewish state was to arise or safely endure." Or as Professor Morris retrospectively put it, quote, "A removing of a population was needed. Without a population expulsion, a Jewish state would not have been established." Unquote. The Arab side rejected outright the partition resolution. I won't play games with that. I know a lot of people try to prove it's not true. It clearly, in my view, is true. The Arab side rejected outright the partition resolution, while Israeli leaders acting on the compulsions inevitable and in-built into Zionism, found the pretext in the course of the first Arab-Israeli war to expel the indigenous population and expand its borders. I therefore conclude that neither side was committed to the letter of the partition resolution, and both sides aborted it.

   3. LFLex Fridman15:35

      Thank you, Norm. Norm asked that we make a lengthy statement in the beginning. Uh, Benny, I hope it's okay to call everybody by their first name in the name of camaraderie. Norm has quoted several things you said. Uh, perhaps you can comment broadly on the question of 1948 and maybe respond to the things that Norm said.

   4. BMBenny Morris15:53

      Yeah. UNSCOP, the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine, um, recommended partition. The majority of UNSCOP recommended partition, which was accepted by the UN General Assembly in November 1947. Eh, essentially looking back, eh, to the Peel Commission in 1937, 10 years earlier, a British commission had looked at the problem of Palestine, the two warring, eh, national groups who refused to live together, if you like, or um, eh, um, consolidate a, a unitary ste- state between them. Um, and Peel said, eh, there should be two states. That's the principle. The country must be partitioned into two states. This would give a modicum of justice to both sides, if not, eh, all their demands, of course. Um, and the United Nations followed suit. Eh, the United Nations, UNSCOP, and then the UN General Assembly representing the will of the international community, um, said two states is the just solution in this complex situation. The problem was that immediately with the passage of the resolution, eh, the Arabs, the Arab states and the Arabs of Palestine said no, as No- Norman Finkelstein, eh, said. Eh, they said no, they, eh, rejected the partition, eh, idea, the principle of partition, not just the idea of what percentage which side should get, but the principle of partition, they said no to. The Jews should not have any part of Palestine for their sovereign, eh, territory. Eh, maybe Jews could live as a minority in Palestine. That also was problematic in the eyes of the P- the Palestinian-Arab leadership. Husseini had said only Jews who were there before 1917 could actually get citizenship and conti- continue to live there. But the Arabs rejected partition, and the Arabs of Palestine launched, i- in very disorganized fashion, war against the resolution, against the implementation of the resolution, against the Jewish community in Palestine. Um, and, eh, this w- their defeat in that civil war between the two communities while the British were withdrawing from Palestine, um, um, led to the Arab invasion, the Arab, the invasion by the Arab states in May 1948, eh, of, of the country. Again, basically with the idea of eradicating or preventing the emergence of a Jewish state in line with the United Nations, um, decision and the will of the international community.N- Norman, uh, said that the Zionist enterprise, a- and he quoted me, meant from the beginning, um, to transfer or expel the Arabs of Palestine or some of the Arabs of Palestine, um, and I think he's sort of, um, quoting out of context. The context in which the statements were made that, that the, um, the Jewish state could only emerge, um, if there was a transfer of Arab population was preceded in the way I wrote it and the way it actually happened by Arab resistance and hostilities towards the Jewish community. Had the Arabs accepted partition, there would have been a large Arab m- minority in the Jewish state which emerged in '48, '47. And in fact, Jewish, um, economists and state builders took into account that there would be a large Arab minority and, uh, its, uh, needs would be cared for, et cetera, um, uh, but this was not to be because the Arabs attacked. And had they not attacked, um, uh, perhaps a, a, a Jewish state with a large Arab minority could have emerged, but this didn't happen. Uh, they went to war, the Jews resisted, and in the course of that war, um, uh, Arab populations were driven out. Uh, some were expelled, some left because Arab, uh, leaders, uh, advised them to leave or ordered them to leave, uh, and at the end of the war, uh, Israel said, "They can't return 'cause they just tried to destroy the Jewish state." Um, um, and, and that's the basic, uh, reality of what happened in '48. Uh, the Jews created a state. The Palestinian-Arabs never bothered to even try to create a state, uh, before '48 and in the course of the 1948 war, and for that reason, they have no state to this day. Uh, the Jews do have a state 'cause they prepared to establish a state, fought for it, and, uh, um, established it, um, uh, uh, hopefully lastingly.

   5. LFLex Fridman20:11

      When you say hostility, in case people are not familiar, there was a full-on war where Arab states invaded, and Israel won that war.

   6. BMBenny Morris20:23

      Le- let me just add, uh, to clarify, the war had two parts to it. The first part was the Arab community in Palestine, its militiamen, attacked the Jews, um, uh, uh, from November 1947. In other words, from the day after the UN Partition Resolution, uh, was passed, Arab gunmen were busy shooting up Jews, and that snowballed into a full-scale civil war between the two communities in Palestine. In May 1948, a second stage began in the war in which the Arab states invaded the new state, attacked the new state, um, a- and, and they too were defeated, and thus, an, uh, state of Israel emerged. In the course of this two-stage war, um, a vast Palestinian refugee problem, um, um, occurred.

   7. LFLex Fridman21:11

      And so after that, the transfer, the expulsion, the, the thing that people call the Nakba, uh, happened. Um, Lee, and could you speak to 1948 and the historical significance of it?

   8. MRMouin Rabbani21:23

      Sure. Um, there's, there's a lot to unpack here. I'll try to limit myself to just a few points. Regarding Zionism and transfer, I think Chaim Weizmann, uh, the head of the World Zionist Organization, had it exactly right when he said that the objective of Zionism is to make Palestine as Jewish as England is English or F- France is French. Um, in other words, um, as, as Norman explained, um, a Jewish state requires Jewish political, demographic, and territorial supremacy. Without those three elements, um, a state would be Jewish in name only. And I think what distinguishes Zionism is its insistence, supremacy, and exclusivity. That would be my first point. The second point is, um, I think what the Soviet foreign minister at the time, Andrei, uh, Gromyko said is exactly right, (laughs) with one reservation. Um, Gromyko was describing a European savagery unleashed against Europe's Jews. At the time, you know, it wasn't Palestinians or Arabs. Uh, the savages and the barbarians were European to the core. Um, it had nothing to do with developments in Palestine, um, uh, or the Middle East. Secondly, at the time that Gromyko was speaking, um, those Jewish, uh, survivors of the Holocaust and, and others who were in need of safe haven were still overwhelmingly on the European continent and not on Palestine, not in Palestine. And I think, um, given, um, the scale of the savagery, I don't think that any one state or country, um, should have borne the responsibility, uh, for addressing this crisis. I think it should have been an international, uh, responsibility. Um, the Soviet Union could have contributed. Germany certainly could and should have, uh, contributed. Um, the United Kingdom and the United States, uh, which slammed their doors shut to, um, uh, the persecuted Jews of Europe as the Nazis were rising to power, they certainly should have, uh, played a role. But instead, what passed for the international community at the time decided to partition Palestine, and here, I think we need to, um, uh, judge the partition resolution against the realities that obtained at the time.Um, two, two-thirds of the population of Palestine was Arab. Uh, the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine constituted about one-third of the total population and controlled even less of, um, of, of the land, uh, within Palestine. As, as a pre-eminent Palestinian historian, uh, Walid al-Khalidi has pointed out the partition resolution in giving roughly 55% of Palestine to the Jewish community, um, and I think 41, 42%, uh, to the Arab community, to the Palestinians, did not preserve the position of each community or even, um, uh, favor one community at the expense of the others. Rather it thoroughly inverted and revolutionized, uh, the relationship, uh, between, between the two communities. And as many have written, the Nakba was the inevitable consequence of partition given the nature of Zionism, um, given the territorial disposition, given the weakness of the Palestinian community whose leadership had been largely den- uh, decimated during a major revolt at the end of the 1930s, um, given that the Arab states, uh, were still very much under French and British influence. Um, uh, the Nakba was, um, inevitable, the inevitable product of the, um, partition, uh, resolution. And, and one last point also about, um, the, the UN's partition resolution is yes, um, formally that is what the international community decided in, on the 29th of November 1947. It's not a resolution that could ever have gotten through the UN General Assembly today for a very simple reason. It was a very different General Assembly, most African, most Asian states, um, were not yet independent. Um, were the resolution to be placed before the international community today, and I find it telling that, um, uh, the minority opinion was led by India, Iran, and Yugoslavia, I think they would have represented the clear, um, uh, majority. So, partition given what we know about Zionism, given that it was entirely predictable what would happen, given, um, uh, the realities on the ground in Palestine, um, was deeply unjust, and the idea that either the Palestinians or the Arab states could have accepted, um, such a resolution is, is I think, um, uh, an illusion. That was in 1947, and we saw what happened in '48 and '49. Palestinian society was essentially, um, uh, destroyed over 80% I believe of Palestinians resident in the territory that became the State of Israel were either expelled or fled, uh, and ultimately were ethnically cleansed because ethnic cleansing consists of two components. It's not just forcing people into refuge or expelling them, it's just as importantly preventing their return. And here and, and, and Benny Morris has written I think an article about Yosef Weitz and the transfer committees. Um, there was a very detailed initiative to prevent their return and it consisted of razing hundreds of Palestinian villages to the ground, which was systematically implemented and so on. And so Palestinians became a stateless people. Now, um, what is the most important reason that no Arab state was established, um, in Palestine? Well, since the 1930s, um, the Zionist leadership and, um, the Hashemite, um, uh, leadership of, uh, Jordan as has been, uh, thoroughly researched and written about by the Israeli-British historian Avi Shlaim essentially colluded, um, to prevent the establishment of an independent Arab state, um, in Palestine, uh, in the late 1940s. Um, there's, there's much more here, but I think, um, those, those are the key points I-I would make about, uh, 1948.

   9. LFLex Fridman29:00

      We may talk about Zionism, Britain, UN Assemblies, and all it, all the things you mentioned there's a lot to dig into. So again, if we can br- keep it to just one statement moving forward-

   10. MRMouin Rabbani29:11

       Sure.

   11. LFLex Fridman29:11

       ... a-a-after Steven if you want to go longer. Uh, also we should acknowledge the fact that s- the speaking speeds of, of people here are different. Steven speaks about 10 times faster, uh, than me. Uh, Steven, do you want to comment on 1948?

   12. S(Steven Bonnell (Destiny)29:25

       Yeah, I think it's interesting where people choose to start the history. Um, I notice a lot of people like to start at either '47 or '48 because it's the first time where they can clearly point to a catastrophe that occurs on the Arab side that they want to ascribe 100% of the blame to the newly emergent Israeli state to. Uh, but I feel like when you have this type of reading of history, it feels like the goal is to moralize everything first and then to pick and choose facts that kind of support the statements of your initial moral statement afterwards. Um, whenever people are talking about '48 or the establishment of the Arab state, uh, I never hear about, uh, the fact that a civil war started in '47, uh, that was largely instigated because of the Arab rejectionism of the '47 partition plan. Uh, I never hear about the fact that the majority of the land that was acquired happened by purchases from Jewish organizations of, uh, Palestinian Arabs of the Ottoman Empire before the mandatory period in 1920 even started. Um, funnily enough, King Abdullah of Jordan, uh, was quoted as saying, "The Arabs are as prodigal in selling their land as they are in weeping about it." Uh, I never hear about the multiple times that Arabs rejected partition, uh, rejected living with Jews, um, rejected any sort of state that would've even, uh, had any sort of Jewish exclusivity. It's funny because it was brought up before that the partition plan was unfair and that's why the Arabs rejected it, and so they rejected it because it was unfair, because of the amount of land that Jews were given and not just due to the fact that Jews were given land at all. As though a 30% partition or a 25% partition would have been accepted when I don't think that was the reality of the circumstances.I feel like most of the other stuff has been said. But I, I, I noticed that, um, whenever people talk about '48 or the years preceding '48, um, I think the worst thing that happens is there's a, there's a cherry-picking of the facts where basically all of the blame is ascribed to this, uh, this built-in idea of Zionism that because of a handful of quotes or because of an ideology, we can say that transfer or population expulsion or the, the, basically the mandate of all of these Arabs being kicked off the land was always going to happen when I think there's a refusal sometimes as well to acknowledge that regardless of the ideas of some of the Zionist leaders, there is a political, social and military reality on the ground that they're forced to contend with. And unfortunately, the Arabs, because of their inability to engage in diplomacy and only to use tools of war to try to negotiate everything going on in mandatory Palestine, basically always gave the Jews a reason or an excuse to fight and acquire land through that way, uh, because of their refusal to negotiate on anything else, whether it was the partition plan in '47, whether it was the, uh, the 2007 Peace Conference afterwards where Israel even offered to annex Gaza in, in '51, where they offered to take in 100,000 refugees. Every single deal is just rejected out of hand because the Arabs don't want a Jewish state anywhere in this region of the world.

   13. NFNorman Finkelstein32:12

       I would like to engage Professor Morris. If you don't mind, I'm not with the first name. It's just not my-

   14. S(Steven Bonnell (Destiny)32:17

       Okay.

   15. NFNorman Finkelstein32:18

       ... way of relating.

   16. BMBenny Morris32:19

       You can just call me Morris. You don't need the Professor.

   17. NFNorman Finkelstein32:21

       Okay.

   18. S(Steven Bonnell (Destiny)32:22

       (laughs)

   19. NFNorman Finkelstein32:23

       There's a real problem here, and it's been a problem I've had over many years of reading your work apart perhaps from, as grandchild, I suspect nobody knows your work better than I do. I've read it many times, not once, not twice, at least three times, everything you've written. And the problem is, it's a kind of quicksilver. It's very hard to grasp a point and hold you to it. So we're gonna try here to see whether we can hold you to a point, and then you argue with me the point. I have no problem with that. Uh, your name, please?

   20. S(Steven Bonnell (Destiny)33:08

       Stephen Bonnell.

   21. NFNorman Finkelstein33:09

       Okay. Mr. Bonnell referred to cherry-picking and handful of quotes. Now, it's true that when you wrote your first book on the Palestinian refugee question, you only had a few lines on this issue of transfer.

   22. BMBenny Morris33:28

       Four pages.

   23. NFNorman Finkelstein33:29

       Yeah. In the first book.

   24. BMBenny Morris33:31

       In the first book, four pages.

   25. NFNorman Finkelstein33:32

       Maybe four. You know, I'm not gonna quarrel. My memory is not clear. We're talking about 40 years ago. I read it, I read it, but then I read other things by you. Okay. And you were taken to task, if my memory is correct, that you hadn't adequately documented the claims of transfer. Let me... Allow me to finish. And I thought that was a reasonable challenge because it was an unusual claim for a mainstream Israeli historian to say, as you did in that first book, that from the very beginning, transfer figured prominently in Zionist thinking. That wasn't unusual. If you read Anita Shapira, Shapira, you read Shabtai Tevet, that was an unusual acknowledgement by you. And then I found it very impressive that in that revised version of your first book, you devoted 25 pages to copiously documenting the salience of transfer in Zionist thinking. And in fact, you used a very provocative and resonant phrase. You said that transfer was inevitable and inbuilt into Zionism. We're not talking about circumstantial factors, a war, Arab hostility. You said it's inevitable and inbuilt into Zionism. Now, as I said, so we won't be accused of cherry-picking, those were 25 very densely argued pages. And then in an interview, and I could cite several quotes, but I'll choose one, you said, "Removing a population was needed." Let's look at the words. "Without a population expulsion, a Jewish state would not have been established." Now, you're the one, again, I was very surprised when I read your book. Here, I'm referring to Righteous Victims. I was very surprised when I came to that page 37, where you wrote that territorial displacement and dispossession was the chief, chief motor of Arab resistance to Zionism. Territorial displacement and dispossession were the chief motor of Arab resistance to Zionism. So you then went on to say, because the Arab population rationally feared territorial displacement and dispossession, it, of course, opposed Zionism. That's as normal as Native Americans opposing the Euro-American manifest destiny in the history of our own country, because they understood it would be at their expense.It was inbuilt and inevitable. And so now, for you to come along and say that it all happened just because of the war, that otherwise the Zionists made all these plans for a happy minority to live there, that simply does not gel, it does not cohere, it is not reconcilable with what you yourself have written. It was inevitable and inbuilt. Now, in other situations, you've said that's true, but I think it was a greater good to establish a Jewish state at the expense of the, uh, indigenous population. That's another kind of argument. That was Theodore Roosevelt's argument in our own country. He said, "We don't want the whole of North America to remain a squalid refuge for these wigwams and teepees. We have to get rid of them and make this a great country." But he didn't deny that it was inbuilt and inevitable.

   26. BMBenny Morris38:25

       I think you've made your point there. First, I'll take, uh, up something that Muin said. He said that the Nakba was inevitable.

   27. MRMouin Rabbani38:33

       As have you.

   28. BMBenny Morris38:33

       And predictable. No, no, no, I, I've never said that. It was inevitable and predictable only because the Arabs assaulted the Jewish community and state in 1947, '48. Had there been no assault, there probably wouldn't have been a refugee problem. There's no reason for a refugee problem to have occurred, expulsions to have occurred, uh, dispossession, massive dispossession to occur. These occurred as a result of war. Now, Norman has said that I said that transfer was inbuilt into Zionism in one way or another, and this is certainly true. In order to buy land, they had, uh, the Jews, uh, bought tracts of land on which some Arabs sometimes lived. Sometimes they bought tracts of land on which there weren't Arab villages, but sometimes they bought land on which there were Arabs, and according to Ottoman law and the British, at least in the initial, uh, years of the, the British mandate, uh, the law said that, uh, the pe- people who bought the land could do what they liked with the people who didn't own the land, who were basically squatting on the land, which is the Arab tenant farmers, which is, we're talking about a very small number, actually, of Arabs who were displaced as a result of land purchases, uh, in the Ottoman period or the mandate period. But there was dispossession in one way. They didn't possess the land, they didn't own it, but they were removed from the land, and this did happen in Zionism, and there's, uh, uh, uh, if you like, um, an inevitability in Zionist ideology of buying tracts of land and starting to work it yourself and settle it, uh, with your own people and so on. That made sense. But what we're really talking about is what happened in '47, '48, and in '47, '48, uh, the Arabs started a war, and actually, people pay for their mistakes, and the Palestinians have never actually agreed to pay for their mistakes. They make mistakes, they attack, they suffer as a result, and we see something similar going on today in Ga- in the Gaza Strip. They do something terrible, they kill 1,200 Jews, they abduct 250 women and children and babies and, um, old people and whatever, and then they s- start screaming, "Please save us from what we did, because the Jews are counterattacking." And this is what happened then, and this is what's happening now. Uh, it, it... there's something fairly similar in this situation here. Expulsion, and, uh, this is important, uh, Norman, you should pay attention to this. You didn't raise that. Expulsion, transfer were never policy of the Zionist movement before '47. It doesn't exist in, uh, uh, Zionist platforms of the various political parties, of the Zionist organization, of the Israeli state, of the Jewish Agency. Nobody would have actually made it into policy, because there was always a large minority of... there were people who wanted it, always a large minority of Jewish politicians and leaders would have said, "No, this is immoral. We cannot, uh, uh, start a state on the basis of an expulsion." So it was never adopted and actually was never adopted as policy even in '48, even though Ben-Gurion wanted as few Arabs in the course of the war staying in the Jewish state after they attacked it. He didn't want disloyal citizens staying there, because they wouldn't have been loyal citizens, but, uh, th- this made sense in the war itself. But the movement itself and its political parties never accepted it. It's true that in 1937, when the British, as part of the proposal by the Peel Commission, um, to divide the country into two states, one Arab, one Jewish, which the Arabs, of course, rejected, uh, Peel also recommended the sh- the Arabs, most of the Arabs in the Jewish state to be should be transferred, because otherwise if they stayed and were disloyal to the emerging Jewish state, uh, this would cause endless disturbances, warfare, killing, and so on. Um, so Ben-Gurion and Weizmann latched onto this proposal by the fa- most famous Ameri- uh, democracy in the world, the British democracy, uh, when they proposed the idea of transfer side-by-side with the idea of partition, because it made sense. Um, and they said, "Well, if the British say so, we should also advocate it." But they never actually tried to pass it as Zionist policy and they fairly quickly stopped even talking about transfer after 1938.

   29. LFLex Fridman42:52

       So just to clarify-

   30. BMBenny Morris42:53

       Yeah.
3. 1:03:14 – 2:07:47

   Partition

   1. MRMouin Rabbani1:03:14

      I just want to respond to a point you made earlier, which was that people express their rejection of the partition resolution, um, on the grounds that it gave the majority of the, of Palestine to the Jewish community, which formed only a third. Um, whereas, in fact, uh, if I understood you correctly, you're saying the Palestinians and the Arabs would have rejected any partition resolution.

   2. S(Steven Bonnell (Destiny)1:03:41

      Yeah.

   3. MRMouin Rabbani1:03:42

      I, I think I-

   4. S(Steven Bonnell (Destiny)1:03:42

      A couple things. That one, they would have rejected any. Two, a lot of that land given was in the Negev. It was pretty terrible land at the time.

   5. MRMouin Rabbani1:03:49

      Well-

   6. S(Steven Bonnell (Destiny)1:03:49

      And then three, the land that would have been partitioned to Jews I think would have been, um, I think I saw it was like 500,000 Arab... Uh, it would have been 500,000 Jews, 400,000 Arabs, and I think like 80,000 Bedouin would have been there. So the, the state would have been divided pretty close to-

   7. MRMouin Rabbani1:04:01

      Well, I, I, I think you raise a valid point, um, because I think the Palestinians did reject the partition of their homeland in principle. And I think the fact that, um, the United Nations General Assembly then awarded the majority of their homeland, um, uh, to the Zionist movement only added insult to injury. I mean, um, uh, one doesn't have to sympathize with the Palestinians, um, to recognize that they have now been a stateless people for 75 years. Can you name any country, yours for example, or yours, that would be prepared to give 55%, 25%, 10% of your country to the Palestinians? Of course not. And so, um, the issue was not the existence of Jews in Palestine. Um, they had been there for centuries and of course they had ties to Palestine and particularly to Jerusalem and, and other places g- going back centuries if not millennia. Um, but the idea of establishing an exclusively Jewish state at the expense of those who were already living there, I think it was right to reject that. And I don't think we can look back now, 75 years later, and say, "Well, you should have accepted losing 55% of your homeland because you ended up losing 78% of it and the addition, and the remaining 22% was occupied in 1967." That's, that's not how things work.

   8. S(Steven Bonnell (Destiny)1:05:41

      Yeah. I, I-

   9. MRMouin Rabbani1:05:41

      Um, and I can, I can imagine... I can imagine an American rejecting giving 10% of the United States to the Palestinians, and if that rejection leads to war and you lose half your country, I doubt that 50 years from now you're going to say, "Well, maybe I should have accepted that."

   10. S(Steven Bonnell (Destiny)1:06:01

       Sure. So, I like this answer more than what I usually feel like I'm hearing when it comes to the Palestinian rejection of the 47 partition plan 'cause sometimes I feel like a weird switch happens to where the Arabs in the area are actually presented as entirely pragmatic people who are simply doing a calculation and saying like, "Well, we're losing 55% of our land. Jews are only maybe one third of the people here and we've got 45..." And no, the math doesn't work basically. But it wasn't a math problem. I think, like you said-

   11. MRMouin Rabbani1:06:28

       It was a matter of principle.

   12. S(Steven Bonnell (Destiny)1:06:29

       It was an ideology problem.

   13. MRMouin Rabbani1:06:30

       No, it was a matter of principle.

   14. S(Steven Bonnell (Destiny)1:06:31

       Yeah, ideologically driven that, that they, uh, as a, as a people have a right to or are entitled to this land that they've never actually had an independent state on, that they've never had even a guarantee of an independent state on, that they've never actually ruled or governed on their own.

   15. MRMouin Rabbani1:06:43

       That, that, that last point is actually not correct because-... for all its injustice, um, the mandate system recognized Palestine as a class A mandate, which provisionally recognized the independence of, of that territory.

   16. S(Steven Bonnell (Destiny)1:07:00

       Of what would emerge from that territory, but not-

   17. MRMouin Rabbani1:07:02

       Of that terr-

   18. S(Steven Bonnell (Destiny)1:07:03

       ... of the Palestinians.

   19. MRMouin Rabbani1:07:03

       It was provisionally-

   20. S(Steven Bonnell (Destiny)1:07:04

       Mm-hmm.

   21. MRMouin Rabbani1:07:04

       ... recognized.

   22. S(Steven Bonnell (Destiny)1:07:06

       But not... But the, the territory itself was, but not of the Palestinian people to have a right or a guarantee to a government that would emerge from that.

   23. MRMouin Rabbani1:07:11

       Well, it was a British mandate of Palestine, not the British mandate of Israel.

   24. BMBenny Morris1:07:15

       The word exclusive, which you keep using-

   25. MRMouin Rabbani1:07:17

       Yes.

   26. BMBenny Morris1:07:17

       ... is nonsense. The state which Ben-Gurion envisioned would be a Jewish majority state, as they accepted the 1947 partition, eh, eh, resolution, as Steven said, eh, that included 400,000 plus Arabs in a state which would have 500,000 Jews. So the idea of exclusivity wasn't anywhere in the air at all among the Zionist leaders-

   27. NFNorman Finkelstein1:07:39

       I think it was-

   28. BMBenny Morris1:07:39

       ... in '47, '48. They wanted a Jewish majority state, but were willing to accept a state which had 40% Arabs. That's one point. The second thing is the Palestinians may have regarded the land of Palestine as their homeland, but so did the Jews. It was the homeland of the Jews as well. The problem was the Arabs were unable and remain to this day, unable to recognize that for the Jews, that is their homeland as well. And the problem then is how do you share this homeland? Either with one binational state or separate th- partitioned into two states. The problem is that the Arabs have always rejected both of these ideas.

   29. MRMouin Rabbani1:08:17

       Does-

   30. BMBenny Morris1:08:17

       The homeland belongs to the Jews, as Jews feel, as much as it does-

Episode duration: 4:57:14