Israel-Palestine Mega Fact Check!

Benny Morris correctly points out that Ilan Pappe has made several mistakes in his books regarding dates, the proper delineation of quoted text, and the like.

In turn, Pappe points out that Morris also makes mistakes: “When something is burning in your bones you might mistake names and dates as did Morris in his review in the New Republic when he … accuses Shlaim for identifying with a British diplomat of the 1940s whom he calls James Troutbeck and whom he sees as an anti-Semite. There was never such a person. Morris probably means John Troutbeck who was not an anti-Semite as Morris writes, quite the contrary. Does this misspelling of the name, or that of almost all the Arab and Palestinian names he mentions in his first book disable us from understanding the points he makes or miss the zeal with which he drives them home? Or does his manipulation of the Ben-Gurion diary's text, as has been exposed unfortunately by a rival of both of us, Ephraim Karsh … undermine our respect for his work? Not in my books at least.”

The reality is that everyone makes mistakes, even professional historians like Pappe and Morris. And, statistically speaking, the larger and more complex the written work (such as history books), the more likely it is to contain errors.

But Morris goes further and claims to be an objective reconstructor of the past while claiming that Pappe is not. Pappe in turn points out that Morris has racist anti-Arab views and justifies the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians (such as in The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited), which is not an objective stance.

All in all, Morris has simply shown us that he too is human—that he too makes mistakes and sometimes applies his own subjective interpretation to the facts at hand.