Response to Benny Morris
Letter published in The Guardian on February 22, 2002

Benny Morris belongs to a category of "Israeli liberals" who believe that since they have said the truth--or part of the truth--at one moment, the entire world should be grateful to them up to eternity and that they have been propelled to the status of a moral compass that can decide and dictate the possible and the permissible in the realm of political discourse and finalities.

Israeli revisionist historians have said nothing new compared to what Palestinian historians (Walid Khalidi, Ibrahim Abu Lughod, Elias Sanbar..) had written decades earlier. Their importance resided in the fact that they belonged to the oppressor community at last indulging in an exercice of critical introspection.

Benny Morris surprisingly considers Barak's offer of 85-91% of the occupied territories as "reasonable, sincere and courageous". Sharon's brutal repression of the Palestinians' cry for freedom is described as a policy of "great restraint" while "targetted killings" and political assassinations are "an eminently moral form of reprisal, deterrence and prevention" of a "semi-occupier".

Benny Morris again parrots Abba Eban: the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. I invite him to ponder on Helgel's diagnosis that: "from History we learn that we have not learnt from History". Since most of the "Israeli doves" are on the same wave length as Benny Morris, I was myself converted to the idea that peace in the Middle East is too important to be left to the Israelis alone to decide upon.