Benny Morris is a Jewish historian and the author of Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001. I think "righteous victims" is intended as a description of how, in Morris's view, both sides see themselves, and the subtitle indicates the subject matter of virtually all his work. Though a Zionist and an Israeli, he has said that his work as a historian has been motivated by deep curiosity about what actually happened. I don't know in what context he made this remark but it seems likely that he was defending himself against countrymen wondering about how a Jew could write such things. I re-read last night the chapter in Righteous Victims on "what happened" at the time of the formation of the Jewish state, beginning with the vote on the UN partition of Palestine in November, 1947, and then on to the aftermath of war. Some excerpts:
On November 28, in the hours before the crucial vote, the Arabs succeeded in obtaining a short delay. But only a serious compromise proposal could have warded off the vote for partition, and this the Arabs proved unable to put together. . . .
The voting was broadcast live on radio around the world. Nowhere was attention more riveted than in Palestine. When the tally was complete, thirty-three states had voted yes, thirteen no, and ten had abstained. Partition had passed, but not very comfortably (had three of the ayes voted nay, the resolution would have failed). The nays had consisted of the Arab and Muslim states, Cuba, and India; the ayes, of the United States, the British Commonwealth states, Western Europe, the Soviet bloc, and most of Latin America. Among the abstainers had been Britain, Argentina, Mexico, Chile, and China.
The Zionists and their supporters rejoiced; the Arabs walked out of the hall after declaring the resolution invalid. They could not fathom, a Palestinian historian was later to write, why 37 percent of the population had been given 55 percent of the land (of which they owned only 7 percent). And "the Palestinians failed to see why they should be made to pay for the Holocaust . . . they failed to see why it was not fair for the Jews to be a minority in a unitary Palestinian state, while it was fair for almost half of the Palestinian population—the indigenous majority on its own ancestral soil—to be converted overnight into a minority under alien rule." The Arab delegates asserted that any effort to implement the resolution would lead to war. [Zionist leader and later Israel's first Prime Minister David] Ben-Gurion knew that there would be war. But still, he said, "I know of no greater achievement by the Jewish people . . . in its long history since it became a people" . . . .
The Zionists had effectively exploited the unusual situation, in which, for a brief moment, there was Soviet-American agreement on the Palestine problem. Helped to a great extent by the nations' feeling of guilt about the Holocaust, the Zionists had managed to obtain an international warrant for a small piece of earth for the Jewish people. What remained was for the Jews to translate the formal leasehold into concrete possession and statehood, in war—and for the Palestinians to pay the price. . . .
Operation Hiram resulted in the IDF [Israeli Defense Force] occupying all of northern Palestine up to the international frontier, as well as a small slice of southern Lebanon, and in the crushing of the ALA [Arab Liberation Army], which ceased to be a military force. The Syrian and Lebanese armies failed to interfere significantly in the fighting, leaving Qawuqji for all practical purposes to fight alone. During Hiram, IDF troops carried out at least nine massacres of Palestinian civilians and prisoners of war (at Eilaboun, Saliha, Safsaf, Jish, Hule, Majd al-Kurum, Bi'na, Deir al-Assad, and Arab al-Mawassa). . . .
During the first stage, there was no Zionist policy to expel the Arabs or intimidate them into flight, though many Jews, including Ben-Gurion, were happy to see the backs of as many Arabs as possible. And, without doubt, Jewish—both Haganah and IZL—retaliatory policies and the IZL/LHI terror bombings were precipitants. . . .
During the second stage, while there was no blanket policy of expulsion, the Haganah's Plan D clearly resulted in mass flight. Commanders were authorized to clear the populace out of villages and certain urban districts, and to raze the villages if they felt a military need. Many commanders identified with the aim of ending up with a Jewish state with as small an Arab minority as possible. Some generals, such as Allon, clearly acted as if driven by such a goal. . . .
In the course of 1949-50, most of the abandoned Arab fields, groves, and orchards were parceled out to and cultivated by kibbutzim or immigrant settlements. . . .
It was mainly the plight of the Palestinian refugees that fueled Arab animosity toward Israel. Their massive presence served as testimony to the Arab world's humiliation, as proof of the injustice that had befallen the Palestinian people, and as a spur to anti-Israel action. Of the 700,000 or so refugees, about half were in Jordan, most of them in the West Bank. Another 200,000 were in the Gaza Strip; about 100,000 in Lebanon; and more than 60,000 in Syria.
The epigraph to Righteous Victims is from a poem of Auden's, "September 1, 1939":
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.