This is the best book on the 1948 Israeli-Arab war. Morris has matured as a historian since his first book on the Palestinian refugees and puts various events into perspective. For example, Israeli behavior vis a vis the Arab population is seen in the context of fears created by the invasion of Palestine/Israel by the surrounding Arab states.

The book is very readable except for places when battles are described in detail apporpriate only for military historians.

To understand Benny Morris and his critics, you must recognize two things. First of all, Morris is a fervent supporter of Israel who believes that most anything necessary for the creation and maintenance of a Jewish majority state in Palestine is not only morally justified, but is obviously so. Secondly, Morris believes that it is therefore safe, and even necessary, for Israel to abandon the myths surrounding its creation. What is there to fear from the truth when you have obvious righteousness on your side?

As a strong supporter of Israel, Morris will draw all inferences that he can in favor of Israel - differing thus from more critical historians like Ilan Pappe. But he is willing to acknowledge many unpleasant facts that horrify other supporters of Israel.

Morris collects two types of critics. The first are those supporters of Israel unwilling to abandon the old mythology ("There are no Palestinians". "A land without a people for a people without a land".) The second are those, like me, who do not find it so obvious that anything and everything necessary for the creation and maintenance of a majority Jewish state is justified.

Look at the question of Palestinian refugees. Morris discards the old myth that the refugee problem was deliberately created by the Arabs themselves. He admits that nearly all of the 750,000 refugees were either deliberately expelled by Israelis or fled in fear of the fighting and chaos. Israel then refused to allow them to return to their homes. He goes further to say that the expulsion of refugees was implicit in Zionism and that the Jewish state could not have been created without it. In interviews with Avi Sharit of Haaretz and with the Atlantic Monthly he has gone even further to state that it was a "historical error" for David Ben Gurion to fail to drive out ALL the Palestinians. With Sharit he even defends ethnic cleansing as sometimes justified. See: www.logosjournal.com/morris.htm

Some supporters of Israel cannot forgive him for admitting so much. I cannot forgive him for trying to justify so much.

Morris differs with Ilan Pappe and others on whether one can find a `master plan' for ethnic cleansing in Plan Dalit - a minute analysis of Palestinian villages, their strengths, weaknesses and collaborators that provided what might be called a `Road Map' for elimination of the Arab population, and the regular meetings of Ben Gurion with a group of advisors that to Pappe seemed to oversee the implementation of this plan. Morris draws the inference favorable to Israel: there is no clear evidence of a master plan here, even though Palestinians were expelled, and this expulsion was both necessary to the creation of the Jewish state, and recognized as such by Ben Gurion and others. Pappe counters that in the post Holocaust world of War Crimes Tribunals, this is as clear a plan as you are ever likely to see. He says that Morris is biased by his reliance on Israeli sources and his failure to use Arab sources (which Morris, who writes primarily in English, cannot read) or to adequately use British sources.

On balance: you should read Morris, on 1948, in the overview "Righteous Victims", and on the Refugee question. This is ground breaking stuff for Israelis. But realize the strong pro-Israel biases here, and also read Pappe "Ethnic Cleansing". Would it be too radical to suggest actually reading some Palestinian sources, too?

To understand Benny Morris and his critics, you must recognize two things. First of all, Morris is a fervent supporter of Israel who believes that most anything necessary for the creation and maintenance of a Jewish majority state in Palestine is not only morally justified, but is obviously so. Secondly, Morris believes that it is therefore safe, and even necessary, for Israel to abandon the myths surrounding its creation. What is there to fear from the truth when you have obvious righteousness on your side?

As a strong supporter of Israel, Morris will draw all inferences that he can in favor of Israel - differing thus from more critical historians like Ilan Pappe. But he is willing to acknowledge many unpleasant facts that horrify other supporters of Israel.

Morris collects two types of critics. The first are those supporters of Israel unwilling to abandon the old mythology ("There are no Palestinians". "A land without a people for a people without a land".) The second are those, like me, who do not find it so obvious that anything and everything necessary for the creation and maintenance of a majority Jewish state is justified.

Look at the question of Palestinian refugees. Morris discards the old myth that the refugee problem was deliberately created by the Arabs themselves. He admits that nearly all the refugees were either deliberately expelled by Israelis or fled in fear of the fighting and chaos. Israel then refused to allow them to return to their homes. He goes further to say that the expulsion of refugees was implicit in Zionism and that the Jewish state could not have been created without it. In interviews with Avi Sharit of Haaretz and with the Atlantic Monthly he has gone even further to state that it was a "historical error" for David Ben Gurion to fail to drive out ALL the Palestinians. With Sharit he even defends ethnic cleansing as sometimes justified. See: www.logosjournal.com/morris.htm

Morris differs with Ilan Pappe and others on whether one can find a `master plan' for ethnic cleansing in Plan Dalit - a minute analysis of Palestinian villages, their strengths, weaknesses and collaborators that provided what might be called a `Road Map' for elimination of the Arab population, and the regular meetings of Ben Gurion with a group of advisors that to Pappe seemed to oversee the implementation of this plan. Morris draws the inference favorable to Israel: there is no clear evidence of a master plan here, even though Palestinians were expelled, and this expulsion was both necessary to the creation of the Jewish state, and recognized as such by Ben Gurion and others. Pappe counters that in the post Holocaust world of War Crimes Tribunals, this is as clear a plan as you are ever likely to see. He says that Morris is biased by his reliance on Israeli sources and his failure to use Arab sources (which Morris, who writes in English, cannot read) or British sources.

On balance: you should read Morris, on 1948, in the overview "Righteous Victims", and on the Refugee question. This is ground breaking stuff for Israelis. But realize the pro-Israel biases here, and also read Pappe "Ethnic Cleansing". Would it be too radical to suggest actually reading some Palestinian sources, too?

I'm neither an historian nor an academic, so I can't vouch for the absolute accuracy of Morris's account. Nonetheless, his book is amply footnoted. In addition, it's easy to read and gives a good feel/flavor for the crises, times and battles surounding the creation of Israel as a modern nation. If you take a strong interest in Middle East affairs, you won't be disappointed in this epic narrative.

This mostly military chronicling of the first Arab-Israeli war, is a difficult read, because the prose is so dense and full of almost arcane military details. It is hard to get ones hands or head around the larger picture. I, for one was hoping for a much more coherent and self-contained piece, with larger explanatory themes to grab onto. I pretty much knew the outlines of the history here, but was hoping that this book would put the creation of the state of Israel into context, but sadly that is not what I got.

That said, it is difficult to argue with the profusion of details if one is willing to get knee deep and wade into military arcania. The story Morris tells as best I can decipher it is this:

Three years after the European Holocaust, and after the Jews had for 75 years been trickling into Palestine, a UN Mandate based on the arrangements of the Balfour Conference and a United Nations Resolution, brought the state of Israel into being.

Although the Arabs had anticipated that this would happen, they were still shocked and remained disorganized. Fighting broke out immediately, but since the Jews were more highly motivated and better organized, they set a pattern that would be repeated in all of the subsequent wars, of quickly routing the Arabs and immediately began taking over Palestinian lands as spoils of war.

At first the Jews were not bent on "ethnically cleansing" their new territory of all its Arabs. However, as Arabs who elected to stay under Israeli suzerainty were seen as traitors to the pan-Arabic cause, their voluntary exodus amounted to de facto and self-fulfilling ethnic cleansing, after which the new Jewish arrivals did not discourage.

As far as atrocities were concerned, there were enough to go around, but Morris in the kind of balanced and fair-mindedness reflected throughout the book, takes the Israelis to task as being the more brutal of the two. According to him they had less reasons to trust the Arabs and usually shot first and asked questions later.

Not enough non-military historical meat for me. Three Stars

I approached this book with caution. I had not read any of Morris' prior books, fearful of his reputation (earned or not) for bashing the Israeli side without providing context for their actions. Though when I read history I already know how the story ends, I want something fresh, with context, and an attempt to give the losing side a chance to explain what it was thinking. To my delight, and to the benefit of those who like me devour serious histories written for scholars and non-scholars, Morris accomplishes this.

"1948" skillfully weaves together the political and military history of Israel's war of independence. The atrocities of war being what they are, he places those committed by Israelis, whose command was not always unified, against the Arabs' threats to destroy them Those threats remained largely (though far from completely) unfulfilled due to incompetence, and not a lack of desire. The Arab countries surrounding Israel had no interest in allowing the Arabs who lived in Mandate Palestine to form their own country, and the the Arabs who lived within the Mandate territory (whom we now call Palestinians) lacked the will to better their situation militarily, economically, educationally and politically. If they had succeeded in driving out the Jews, they would not have been Palestinians, but Egyptians, Syrians, and Jordanians. Their land would probably still be impoverished, disease ridden, and lacking any serious institutions of higher learning. They did not want a nation-- they just wanted the Jews to leave.

The men and women who formed modern Israel determined that they would be victims no more. Few gentiles complained when, wherever they lived, Jews' land, chattel and lives were stolen or destroyed. The Israelis' story, as told by Morris, is not always a comfortable one for Western sensibilities, but it holds up well compared to the birth of most other nations in the last one hundred years. That Morris could write a book that seems to contradict many of the theories he has put forward in the past is a credit to his intellectual honesty. That he can relate the tale in such an accessible package is to the history book reading public's benefit.

In 1948 Benny Morris shows himself to be a first-rate historian with an accurate and detailed command of the events leading up to the first Arab Israeli War and the war itself. The book is primarily the military history of the conflict, and Morris is a well informed chronicler of military engagements. Morris, also considered one of the grandfathers of the "revisionist" school of Israeli historiography, here shows that he is not afraid to document both Jewish/Israel and Palestinian/Arab excesses and missteps in the war, opportunities missed or failed to be exploited. By and large Morris is very sympathetic to the Zionist enterprise in the Holy Land in this book. He views war in 1948 as inevitable given the demographic/strategic situation in Palestine since the arrival of the first Zionist settlers in the 1880s. This is in keeping with some of his more recent utterances about the Israeli Arab/Palestinian conflict. Given the pressure the Yishuv and early state of Israel were under, he states, conflict was unavoidable. In 1948 Morris seeks to show that calls for jihad against the Jews in Palestine was no mere bluster; that it was just as powerful (if not more so) source of Arab ire against Israel as the rising sense of Arab nationalism following WWII. It is here, I suppose, where Morris makes his most original contribution to the study of the 1948 war.

Less famous than the 1967 or 1973 wars between Israel and the Arab world, the 1948 War of Independence has faded from memory. Best remembered from the book "Exodus" by Leon Uris (or the Paul Newman movie of the same name), the 1948 War has been exhaustively researched by Mr. Morris now. The seeds of the current Israeli-Arab conflict were sown in 1948 where Israel was fighting for its life, three years removed from the Holocaust. Ironically, Israel would had an Arab majority soon, had not more than a half million Arabs fled during the fighting. The Arab nations were poorly organized and armed in comparsion to the Israelis. Mr. Morris notes the atrocities on both sides and spares neither. For the reader wishing a follow-up, they are referred to Michael Oren's "Six Days Of War: June, 1967."

In the past, Efraim Karsh presented evidence that forced Benny Morris to admit to distortions. Wikipedia has links to primary documents in the Morris/Karsh conflict.

Karsh presents a different view of the Arab-Israeli War in the May, 2008 issue of Commentary: "1948, Israel, and the Palestinians--The True Story."
For instance, in Gaza in 1949, Sir John Troutbeck, head of the British Middle East office in Cairo found that while the Palestinian refugees "express no bitterness against the Jews (or for that matter against the Americans or ourselves) they speak with the utmost bitterness of the Egyptians and other Arab states. `We know who our enemies are,' they will say, and they are referring to their Arab brothers who, they declare, persuaded them unnecessarily to leave their homes....I even heard it said that many of the refugees would give a welcome to the Israelis if they were to come in and take the district over."

Less famous than the 1967 or 1973 wars between Israel and the Arab world, the 1948 War of Independence has faded from memory. Best remembered from the book "Exodus" by Leon Uris (or the Paul Newman movie of the same name), the 1948 War has been exhaustively researched by Mr. Morris now. The seeds of the current Israeli-Arab conflict were sown in 1948 where Israel was fighting for its life, three years removed from the Holocaust. Ironically, Israel would had an Arab majority soon, had not more than a half million Arabs fled during the fighting. The Arab nations were poorly organized and armed in comparsion to the Israelis. Mr. Morris notes the atrocities on both sides and spares neither. For the reader wishing to follow-up to the next war, they are referred to Michael Oren's "Six Days Of War: June, 1967."

In tackling the controversial and important, but gigantic, subject of the 1948 war, the Nakba, the Israeli was of independence, Mr. Morris has come full circle from his original study The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949 (Cambridge Middle East Library). This journey was a process that has already involved one revision of that celebrated thesis on the Palestinian refugees. Undoubtedly it was inevitable that this book had to be written in order not only to show the context and the military side of 1948 but also to show the Jewish side, the fate of Jewish areas conquered by Arabs, the fate of Jewish refugees from Arab lands, and the agency, the decisions, made by Arab leaders and local Arabs that led to the war.

There have been other stand alone studies of the war by Gelber, Palestine 1948: War, Escape And The Emergence Of The Palestinian Refugee Problem and The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine and War in Palestine, 1948: Strategy and Diplomacy (Israeli History, Politics, and Society). But each has had its own weaknesses, either because it concentrates on the military aspects or because it is terribly biased.

Here, at last, is a full account that is not biased and is not overly focused on the military side and does not take for granted the conclusion that the Zionists would prevail and therefore all their actions should be judged as if they knew the results beforehand. Morris also sheds light on the fate of Christian Arab villages in the war and the many nuances of the war, including the very controversial issues of massacres and 'ethnic-cleansing'.

This book is a tour de force, a masterpiece of writing that should be read by anyone interested in the conflict, the Middle East, Israel, the Palestinians or the Holy Land. It strips away the clichés of 'conceived in sin' and the old narratives of right and wrong and heroism and suffering and presents a balanced historical view based on archival sources.

The organization of the book is first class. It is chronological and divides the war by phases, especially the civil war between November 29th, 1947 and May 15th, 1948. It gives the reader a complete understanding of the military situation and how the Jewish forces, which were composed originally of an underground militia and several smaller units, was able to gain mastery over not only Arab militias but also Arab armies that were supplied with modern European weaponry. How they overcame both the air forces, artillery and armour that was thrown at them and how they succeeded, using interior lines, to actually bring the war into the Sinai and Lebanon.

Seth J. Frantzman

Benny Morris, considered by many to be the"Dean" of Israeli Middle Eastern historians, is noted for "revisionist" works on the genesis of the Palestinian Arab refugee issue and rewriting of Israeli historical hagiography. This book, a comprehensive history of the dual-phase 1947-1948 war (civil war between Jews and Arabs antedating Partition, followed by invasion by a constellation of Arab professional militaries and various ad hoc militias) reviews the entire enterprise from both a military and political perspective.

The book can be divided into three segments: 1). an introductory section, which places in context the, 2). major middle-section, which exhaustively deals with military affairs and, 3). a summary/conclusion section, which presents the author's perspectives based on presently available evidence. As Arab archives have not been opened to researchers as of the 2008 publication date, this work cannot be considered "definitive", but certainly holds this status as of now.

There is one major shortcoming of this book: the lack of maps. The barrage of detail on virtually every military and paramilitary engagement becomes confusing and frustrating, as the reader cannot readily follow the strategy and tactics elaborated in the text. Further, many of the maps have inadequate legends, rendering the majority of them difficult to understand.

Morris attributes the Israeli military victories to a combination of better planning, better logistics, better preparation, better motivation, better training, fighting along "interior lines", internal cohesion in the form of communality of purpose and international sympathy. Surprisingly (at least for many readers) much of the initial political and military support came from the Soviet Union, later an ardent partisan of the Arab cause and foe of Israel. Czechoslovakian arms, supplementing those bought from international weapons dealers, helped turn the tide, in addition to the above factors. Conversely, lack of purpose, infighting, jockeying for advantage vis-a-vis rival regimes and cynical manipulation of Arab public opinion by Arab political elites did little to fashion a force capable of opposing the Jews. Heated rhetoric, in other words, did not serve as an adequate substitute for assiduous planning and training. Worse, innumerable inflammatory and "eliminationist" statements regarding the Jews tended to provoke, amplify and reinforce pre-existing reciprocal thoughts and statements in their enemies, hardening positions to the point of ossification; thus, the genesis of the current mess. The complexity of the situation is further enhanced by complicity of various Arabs in the acquisition of lands by the Jews. The branding of numerous Arabs as "traitors" by the mercurial Mufti of Jerusalem, Husseini, heightened internecine disputes, often with lethal consequences, not only for the "perpetrators", but also for the cause; this behavior continues to the present day.

As for presenting a "balanced" perspective on the "Middle East Problem", the author makes every effort to be scrupulously objective. Israeli military and paramilitary actions that resulted in war crimes against civilians were frankly acknowledged, as was the policy that underlay them, to wit, generally ad hoc, rather than the result of the product of Macheavellian scheming and malevolence. Whle Morris states that the Israelis committed more atrocities than did the Arabs, he notes that this was an accident of opportunity, rather than evidence of moral superiority of the Arabs and their fighters. His synopsis of the motivations of Zionist, British, Arab and Ottoman participants in the genesis of the modern Middle East is fair and bluntly accurate.

Certainly, one could conclude that the Zionist enterprise was not any more or less "fair" than the "Manifest Destiny" of the white invaders of the Americas (murdering, cheating, displacing and finally segregating the indigenous inhabitants into "reservations", where many continue to reside under rank and disgraceful conditions) or of the British in Australia, to cite but two examples. Similarly, the displacement of Arabs from their land is not much different from the massive population transfers that occurred after WW-II in, for example, the case of the German (civilian) expulsions from Poland and Czechoslovakia. Perhaps a better example would be the displacement/population exchange of millions of Hindus and Muslims during the Partition of India and Pakistan, which occurred around the same time (circa 1947). That division, accompanied by generally involuntary "repatriation" based on ethnic and religious affiliation, was accompanied by considerable violence, property damage/confiscation and left a residue of bitter inter-communal hatred, with intermittent terrorist attacks and threatened international war. These examples are not cited by Morris and are not offered by me as justifications; they merely illustrate a fundemental aspect of human nature.

In summary, this is an excellent history which would benefit from inclusion of more detailed maps to accompany the more important military engagements. It is objectively written, comprehensively referenced and the conclusions drawn by the author are buttressed by data and temperately drawn.

Benny Morris, considered by many to be the"Dean" of Israeli Middle Eastern historians, is noted for "revisionist" works on the genesis of the Palestinian Arab refugee issue and rewriting of Israeli historical hagiography. This book, a comprehensive history of the dual-phase 1947-1948 war (civil war between Jews and Arabs antedating Partition, followed by invasion by a constellation of Arab professional militaries and various ad hoc militias) reviews the entire enterprise from both a military and political perspective.

The book can be divided into three segments: 1). an introductory section, which places in context the, 2). major middle-section, which exhaustively deals with military affairs and, 3). a summary/conclusion section, which presents the author's perspectives based on presently available evidence. As Arab archives have not been opened to researchers as of the 2008 publication date, this work cannot be considered "definitive", but certainly holds this status as of now.

There is one major shortcoming of this book: the lack of maps. The barrage of detail on virtually every military and paramilitary engagement becomes confusing and frustrating, as the reader cannot readily follow the strategy and tactics elaborated in the text. Further, many of the maps have inadequate legends, rendering the majority of them difficult to understand.

Morris attributes the Israeli military victories to a combination of better planning, better logistics, better preparation, better motivation, better training, fighting along "interior lines", internal cohesion in the form of communality of purpose and international sympathy. Surprisingly (at least for many readers) much of the initial political and military support came from the Soviet Union, later an ardent partisan of the Arab cause and foe of Israel. Czechoslovakian arms, supplementing those bought from international weapons dealers, helped turn the tide, in addition to the above factors. Conversely, lack of purpose, infighting, jockeying for advantage vis-a-vis rival regimes and cynical manipulation of Arab public opinion by Arab political elites did little to fashion a force capable of opposing the Jews. Heated rhetoric, in other words, did not serve as an adequate substitute for assiduous planning and training. Worse, innumerable inflammatory and "eliminationist" statements regarding the Jews tended to provoke, amplify and reinforce pre-existing reciprocal thoughts and statements in their enemies, hardening positions to the point of ossification; thus, the genesis of the current mess. The complexity of the situation is further enhanced by complicity of various Arabs in the acquisition of lands by the Jews. The branding of numerous Arabs as "traitors" by the mercurial Mufti of Jerusalem, Husseini, heightened internecine disputes, often with lethal consequences, not only for the "perpetrators", but also for the cause; this behavior continues to the present day.

As for presenting a "balanced" perspective on the "Middle East Problem", the author makes every effort to be scrupulously objective. Israeli military and paramilitary actions that resulted in war crimes against civilians were frankly acknowledged, as was the policy that underlay them, to wit, generally ad hoc, rather than the result of the product of Macheavellian scheming and malevolence. Whle Morris states that the Israelis committed more atrocities than did the Arabs, he notes that this was an accident of opportunity, rather than evidence of moral superiority of the Arabs and their fighters. His synopsis of the motivations of Zionist, British, Arab and Ottoman participants in the genesis of the modern Middle East is fair and bluntly accurate. Certainly, one could conclude that the Zionist enterprise was not any more or less "fair" than the "Manifest Destiny" of the white invaders of the Americas (murdering, cheating, displacing and finally segregating the indigenous inhabitants into "reservations", where many continue to reside under rank and disgraceful conditions) or of the British in Australia, to cite but two examples. Similarly, the displacement of Arabs from their land is not much different from the massive population transfers that occurred after WW-II in, for example, the case of the German (civilian) expulsions from Poland and Czechoslovakia. These examples are not cited by Morris and are not offered by me as justifications; they merely illustrate a fundemental aspect of human nature.

In summary, this is an excellent history which would benefit from inclusion of more detailed maps to accompany the more important military engagements. It is objectively written, comprehensively referenced and the conclusions drawn by the author are buttressed by data and temperately drawn.

I bought "1948" through the mail and did so with a bit of trepidation because of the author's reputation as a "new historian" (in other words, a revisionist). Too often, revisionist history amounts to left-wing attacks on the West.

But having read 1948, I didn't get the impression that the author was challenging his country's legitimacy at all. Instead, I think he was giving an honest account of the fighting that broke out in 1947 and which didn't end until 1949.

What does "honesty" in the case of "1948" amount to? It recognizes:

-The fact that the Yishuv was not heavily overwhelmingly outnumbered and out-gunned by the Arabs. Far from it, the Yishuv was far better organized and ready for war than the Palestinians and the neighboring Arab states ever were.

-The fact that the Israelis did engage in what could be called "ethnic cleansing" but which was of a sort that was morally defensible since the Palestinians had flatly refused to accept peaceful partition of Israel and would have "cleansed" their Jewish neighbors if they had won the conflict.

-The fact that the Arab nations bewailing the plight of the Palestinians drove out their own native Jewish populations.

-The fact that both the Israelis and the Arabs and Palestinians committed war crimes in the course of the fighting, but the Israelis committed more (but only because being the victors put them in a position where they had more opportunities to commit them).

That final point is something people ought to keep in mind when considering the terrible situation of the Palestinian people. Had they been the winners and not the losers in the 1947-1949 conflict, they would have cheerfully expelled the Jews that they perceived as interlopers in their midst. So if they are "victims," they aren't quite the innocent victims that the Bosnian Muslims in the 1990s.