From Critic to Cheerleader: The Clarifying Example of Benny Morris' ‘Conversion’

Abstract

Benny Morris attributes his ‘conversion’ to the political events of the year 2000. This article offers an explanation of his conversion that is internal to his work as a historian of the events of 1948. Through the 1990s Morris was faced with overwhelming evidence that made it difficult for him to continue to escape the fundamental insight that a Jewish state could not have been established in Palestine in 1948 without large-scale Palestinian displacement. Once he started taking this insight fully to heart he confronted a stark choice. Either he had to reject the worthiness of the Zionist dream, or he had to find a means of justifying the displacement it necessitated as a lesser evil than the evil of leaving the dream unrealised. His conversion is a coming to terms with this choice. Anyone who is interested in adopting a coherent position towards the establishment of the state of Israel and the Palestinian Nakba is confronted with a similar choice. Morris's pre and post conversion attitudes clarify the two options available to anyone who is so committed to the Zionist dream that no amount of evidence about its disastrous consequences to Palestinians can dissuade him from its worthiness.