Meeting of legends with sources: at the FU Berlin there was a talk about the historian Benny Morris and the Arab-Israeli war of 1948.

Celebrations of the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 Photo: akg

On Friday afternoon, in conference room A of the Henry Ford building at the Free University of Berlin, the room is full: when the metal door slams shut, heads turn quickly towards the entrance.

One expects disruptors, pro-Palestinian activists who have made headlines in recent weeks by aggressively disrupting readings, performances or debate events. But the troublemakers don't come. Today is about the founding of the State of Israel and the Arab-Israeli War of 1948.

Israeli historian Benny Morris wrote the book “1948. A history of the first Arab-Israeli war. The German translation was published last year. As part of the week of action against anti-Semitism, the Jewish student initiative Chevarim@FU invited people to a book presentation.

The occasion? The escalation of anti-Semitic incidents at the Free University. As Dr. Alexander Libman, moderator and FU professor, explained at the beginning of the event, the weeks of action were jointly announced by professors and students to counter the growing hatred with science education.

It's not a hero story

On the podium: Dr. Nora Pester, editor of the German translation, Jörg Rensmann of the Mideast Freedom Forum Berlin (MFFB), and Andreas Stahl of the Society for Critical Education, who edited Benny Morris's monograph. For those invited to the panel, enlightenment means countering legends about the founding of the State of Israel with a story based on sources and full of contradictions. “It is not a heroic story,” as Pester says, but a controversial look at what is probably the most important historical context of the war currently being fought between Israel and Hamas.

Whether Slavoj Žižek or Judith Butler, the post-October 7 historical context often served for anti-Zionist narratives of exoneration, the glorification of anti-Semitic terror, or the reversal of blame: Zionism is a racist ideology, the State of Israel is a colonial project and the so-called Nakba, the expulsion of some 750,000 Palestinians as a result of the Arab-Israeli war of 1948, Israel's genocidal original sin. A genealogy of evil that continues to this day from the war in Gaza.

With Benny Morris as a key witness, these legends will be exposed on the podium. The historian provides a good 600 pages of detailed evidence of this. It is briefly reproduced in the conference room: It was the Arab-Palestinian side that unanimously rejected the UN partition plan and, therefore, the two-state solution based on democratic constitutions.

The reason was not the colonial settlement of Jews, but the political assertiveness of anti-Semitic factions on the divided Arab side, such as that of the Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, a war criminal and friend of Hitler. But there were also Arab-Palestinian actors, local politicians and influential families who were well disposed towards the Zionist project and opposed the “pan-Arab war of aggression”, according to Jörg Rensmann.

Controversial highlighter

Morris is concerned with “factuality versus narrative,” Rensmann says. This makes him a controversial illustrator who is needed right now, but who should be delegitimized by romanticizing historical narratives. For example, Benny Morris makes no secret of the looting of Arab-Palestinian villages by the precursor of the Israeli army, the Haganah.

It also addresses isolated massacres and the mass expulsion of Palestinians; For Morris, however, this is not genocide, but the horrible but necessary defense against a genocide of Jews. To do this, he points to the reason for the war and the simultaneous exodus of some 800,000 Jews who were expelled from the Arab world with pogroms and smear campaigns after the founding of the State of Israel.

Finally, the panel emphasizes the topicality of the issue: The Palestinian aid organization UNRWA was recently criticized because its employees were shown to have been involved in the terrorist act of October 7. Morris describes the founding of UNRWA in 1949 as a result of the Arab-Israeli war and highlights an elementary fallacy: refugee status is inherited. This raises the crucial question of all previous negotiations between two states, namely the right of return of six million Palestinian refugees to the heart of Israel: it would amount to abolishing Jewish sovereignty.

This is also the reason for the misery in the refugee camps in southern Lebanon, run by UNRWA and considered Hamas recruitment camps. Indoctrination is also carried out with history books in UNRWA-run schools. Books that fuel anti-Semitic hatred towards Israel. The organizers contrast these books with those of Benny Morris: historical contradictions rather than historical-political indoctrination; This may also be the reason why activists will not attend this Friday afternoon.