Jan Marton Jensen
Skudeneshavn 12.desember 2025
Jan Marton Jensen
Kilde:
11. desember 2025
https://www.aftenposten.no/meninger/debatt/i/QJl56P/line-khateeb-kritiserer-nina-grunfeld-om-israel-og-eurovision
Innlegg i Haaretz 16. oktober 2016 av professor Daniel Blatman.
HELE artikkelen nederst under Kilde.
Skudeneshavn 28. desember 2021 / 31. januar 2025
Jan Marton Jensen
Kilde:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Blatman
14. oktober 2016
Daniel Blatman
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-yes-benny-morris-it-was-ethnic-cleansing-in-1948-1.5449636
HELE innlegget til Daniel Blatman i Haaretz
A good historian always examines his conclusions. If he comes to the conclusion that things he wrote previously require a reassessment, he is obligated to face that. But a historian who, at the start of his career, determined that Israel is responsible for the mass flight of the Palestinians in 1948 and later changed his views until he became the darling of the settler right, is a pathetic phenomenon. Benny Morris has followed that path.
He has betrayed two key duties of the historian: to be open-minded and recognize the extensive research literature that directly relates to his own areas of research; and not to distort his own previous conclusions due to current political insights. [Morris’ “Israel conducted no ethnic cleansing in 1948,” Haaretz, October 10, was in response to Daniel Blatman’s “Netanyahu, this Is what ethnic cleansing really looks like,” Haaretz, October 3.]
On March 10, 1948, the national Haganah headquarters approved Plan Dalet, which discussed the intention of expelling as many Arabs as possible from the territory of the future Jewish state. Morris wrote about it in his book “1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War” (2010). He stated that the plan aroused a historiographical dispute, with pro-Palestinian historians claiming it was a master plan for expelling the Arabs living in Israel. He claimed that a careful examination of the plan’s wording leads to a different conclusion.
Whose different conclusion? That of scholars who are experts on ethnic cleansing? Or legal experts who grappled with the problem? No, that of Morris, of course. He does not accept the definition of ethnic cleansing that was carried out by the Jews in 1948. Perhaps there was a “mini” ethnic cleansing in Lod and Ramle. Perhaps some marginal massacre (Deir Yassin), which caused the panicked flight of Palestinians.
The problem is that these are precisely the circumstances that lead to ethnic cleansing. Had Morris bothered to properly study the documents of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, he would understand why his statements would be considered absurd at any serious scientific conference.
The following was stated by the prosecutor in the trial of Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian-Serb leader who was convicted of responsibility for the ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Bosnia: “In ethnic cleansing ... you act in such a way that in a given territory, the members of a given ethnic group are eliminated. ... You have massacres. Everybody is not massacred, but you have massacres in order to scare those populations. ... Naturally, the other people are driven away. They are afraid ... and, of course, in the end these people simply want to leave. ... They are driven away either on their own initiative or they are deported. ... Some women are raped and, furthermore, often times what you have is the destruction of the monuments which marked the presence of a given population ... for instance, Catholic churches or mosques are destroyed.”
Exactly as in 1948: Implied instructions, silent understandings, sowing fear among the population whose flight is the objective; the destruction of the physical presence left behind. In his first book on the subject, “The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949” (1989 in English), Morris wrote: “The attacks of the Haganah and the Israel Defense Forces, expulsion orders, the fear of attacks and acts of cruelty on the part of the Jews, the absence of assistance from the Arab world and the Arab Higher Committee, the sense of helplessness and abandonment, orders by Arab institutions and commanders to leave and evacuate, in most cases was the direct and decisive reason for the flight – an attack by the Haganah, Irgun, Lehi or the IDF, or the inhabitants’ fear of such an attack.”
About 15 years ago, however, Morris changed his mind. In his book “Correcting a Mistake: Jews and Arabs in Palestine/Israel, 1936-1956” (2000), he stated: “The majority of the abandonments [by the Palestinians] from most of the places, most of the time I attributed to attacks by Jewish forces. Sometimes a historian has to correct a mistake.” Hats off to a historian who admits an error. But Morris’ professional integrity is tested in light of what he told Ari Shavit (Haaretz, January 2004): “I don’t think that the expulsions of 1948 were war crimes. I think he [Ben-Gurion] made a serious historical mistake in 1948 he got cold feet during the war. In the end, he faltered. If he was already engaged in expulsion, maybe he should have done a complete job.”
At the same time, Morris argues that Ben-Gurion “never gave an order to expel the Arabs.” Indeed, no such written order has been found. And the reader will wonder: So there was an order to expel, or perhaps expulsion without an order? Or perhaps there was a mass expulsion, but it was incomplete so therefore it’s not ethnic cleansing? And does Morris regret the fact that no order was given to complete the ethnic cleansing? Morris is fortunate that he doesn’t engage in Holocaust research. He might have been capable of claiming that it wasn’t Hitler who ordered the “Final Solution,” since, as we know, no written order by him to murder European Jewry was ever found.
The expulsions were not war crimes, says Morris, because it was the Arabs who started the war. In other words, hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians who belong to the side that began the fighting have to be expelled. Maybe Morris would agree that the genocide carried out by the Germans against the Herero in 1904-1908 was justified since, after all, the Herero began the rebellion against German colonialism in Namibia.
Morris is right about one thing: The understandings that the Arabs should be expelled were not carried out in full. There were commanders who obeyed to the letter; there were others who didn’t. That’s exactly why some 160,000 Arabs remained inside the State of Israel in 1949. Just as tens of thousands of Armenians remained in Turkey after World War I, because there were government officials who didn’t carry out orders to the letter to expel or murder them. Fortunately, in 1948 there were IDF commanders who refrained from doing what they knew they could do without being held to account. If it weren’t for them, the war crime committed by Israel would have been even greater.
The writer is a historian.
Diskusjon i Aftenposten, se Kilde
Her er Benny Morris blitt tema under kommentarene.
Min kommentar 15. januar
Benny Morris?
Da er intervjuet av ham fra 2004 obligatorisk:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2004/01/16/an-interview-with-benny-morris/
Her har han gransket arkivene fra 1948 og avdekker behandlingen av palestinerne under krigen, med etnisk rensing, massakrer og voldtekter.
Morris har gjort sin dokumentasjon.
Men offisielt i Israel har det aldri vært noe NAKBA.
Det er til og med forbudt ved lov i Israel å minnes Nakba.
Skudeneshavn 15. januar 2025
Jan Marton Jensen
Kilde:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2004/01/16/an-interview-with-benny-morris/
14. mai 2015
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/5/14/israel-continues-to-criminalise-marking-nakba-day
14. januar 2025
https://www.aftenposten.no/meninger/debatt/i/73QJJ8/men-hvilken-fredsloesning-oensker-palestinerne-seg-professor-hagtvet
Benny Morris vil ha atomkrig:
"If Israel proves incapable of destroying the Iranian nuclear project using conventional weaponry, then it may not have any option but to resort to its nonconventional capabilities"
Kraftig kost av en historiker: "Preventivt atomangrep"?
Hva er det som har skjedd med Benny Morris?
Skudeneshavn 1. juli 2024
Jan Marton Jensen
På X:
1. juli 2024
https://x.com/janmarton/status/1807840229409128543
Kilde:
30. juni 2024
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-06-30/ty-article-opinion/.premium/to-survive-israel-must-strike-iran-now/00000190-69e8-d01f-abbe-7de8d2260000
Nye avsløringer om israelsk bruk av forgifting av motstandere er publisert 6. oktober i Haaretz.Fra før er kjent en rekke tilfeller av slike snikmord, tilsvarende det Russland har gjort i nyere tid i bl.a. UK
Det nye er at gift også ble brukt i 1948, slik det dokumenteres av de israelske forfatterne Benny Morris og Benjamin Kedar. Da er det blant annet snakk om bruk av tyfoid-basiller til å forgifte palestinsk drikkevann, så som i Acre, men også flere andre steder.
Haaretz har valgt tittelen:
"Meshal Poisoning Provided Only a Glimpse Into Israel’s Biological Warfare Arsenal"
Skudeneshavn 7. oktober 2022
Jan Marton Jensen
På Twitter:
10. oktober 2022
https://innkast.blogspot.com/2022/10/avdekket-israel-har-brukt-biologisg.html
Kilde:
https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biologisk_krigf%C3%B8ring
HELE artikkelen i Haaretz 6. oktober 2022:
New article by Benny Morris and Benjamin Kedar indicates that well before the botched assassination attempt 25 years ago, Israel attempted mass poisoning during the war in 1948
On September 25, 1997, Mossad operatives from the special forces’ unit of Kidon (Hebrew for Bayonet) poisoned Khaled Meshal, the chairman of the political bureau of Hamas, in Amman, Jordan. One of the operatives held a small tube and sprayed Meshal’s ear with the material.
The
Mossad modus operandi is to send one of its doctors into the arena of
operation in case an operative is injured and needs medical treatment,
without risking exposure at a local hospital. A female doctor,
accompanied by Mishka Ben David, one of Mossad intelligence officers,
was chosen for the mission in Jordan. They posed as an Israeli couple on
vacation in an Amman hotel. The doctor and Ben David possessed an
antidote, which would neutralize the poison if it leaked and injured the
operatives by mistake. Israel kept a backup antidote at another
location in Amman.
The mission failed. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu showed negligence and arrogance in executing an operation on Jordanian soil, Israel’s most strategic ally in the Middle East. Just three years earlier, Jordan had signed a peace treaty with the Jewish state. However, the intelligence was also poor and the performance by the operatives in the field was inadequate. Mossad operatives holding falsified Canadian passports were arrested. Four others found shelter at the Israeli embassy.
Jordan’s King Hussein threatened to storm the embassy and to execute the operatives. To placate the king, Israel agreed to release from prison Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, and to save Meshal’s life. The doctor and Ben David gave one of the antidotes to a Jordanian intelligence officer, who forwarded it to a Jordanian doctor. Israel saved the life of Meshal, a bitter enemy of Israel until today.
On top of these self-inflicted wounds to Israel’s own national interests, one of the most troubling ramifications was the fact that the Meshal affair forced Israel to publicly admit that it had used poison – a form of biological warfare by at least one measure. Until then, the reports about the use of poison by Israeli intelligence agents were always attributed to “foreign sources.”
At least two other incidents of this nature were revealed in the world
press. One was in 1978 after the death of Wadie Haddad, the operational
officer of the Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine. Haddad was the
architect of the spectacular hijacking of Israeli and international
airliners in the 1970’s, including the Air France flight diverted to
Entebbe, Uganda, in 1976. In a daring operation, Israeli commandos
killed Haddad’s terrorists, who included German members of the Bader
Meinhof gang, and saved most of the hostages.
The Mossad retaliated. Knowing that Haddad had a sweet tooth, it
recruited one of his aides to be a spy. As instructed by Mossad
handlers, the aide purchased English-made Cadbury Chocolate in Belgium.
The chocolate was filled with poison prepared by Israeli scientists for
the Mossad. The Palestinian aide personally delivered it to Haddad, who
ate it without sharing. Haddad, who had suffered from severe underlying
illnesses, died a few weeks later in an East Berlin hospital. Until
today, Mossad veterans debate whether Haddad died of the poison or due
to his sickness, or because of the combination of the two factors.
However, while 183 states have ratified the treaty, Israel, together with Egypt, Somalia, Eritrea and Comoros, have refused to join it.
It is widely assumed and reported that the various poisoning materials used by the Mossad for the already published cases, and few more which have remained secret, were manufactured at the Israel Institute for Biological Research in Nes Ziona, 20 kilometers south of Tel Aviv.
The
institute, which jointly belongs to the Prime Minister’s Office and the
Defense Ministry, was founded in 1952, replacing the army’s Scientific
Corps. Its first director was Alexander Keynan.
This unit now stars in a fascinating article revealing the clandestine history of the biological warfare that Israel conducted during its War of Independence in 1948. The article is written by two historians, Benny Morris, professor emeritus at Ben-Gurion University in Be’er Sheva, and professor emeritus Benjamin Ze’ev Kedar of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The article – “‘Cast Thy Bread’: Israeli Biological Warfare during the 1948 War” – was recently published by Middle Eastern Studies.
This article is a rarity for two reasons. First, it was researched and published against the wishes of the Israeli security establishment, which has tried for years to block any embarrassing historical documents about that war exposing war crimes against Arabs, like murdering prisoners, ethnic cleansing and destroying villages. Second, the article is based on original documents stored in the Israel State Archive and other archives.
Morris and Kedar had already discovered that the codename for the
operation was “Cast Thy Bread” – taken from a verse in the Book of
Ecclesiastes (11:1). Based on their research, they detail how scientists
from the Scientific Corps, together with battlefield units, were
involved in a systematic campaign to poison water wells and spread
typhoid bacteria in Arab villages and cities as well as among the
invading armies of Egypt and Jordan. The purpose was to frighten the
Arab-Palestinian population, to force them to leave and to weaken the
Arab armies.
The order to use the biological warfare was given or at least approved
by the founder of the Jewish state, David Ben-Gurion, who was its first
prime minister and defense minister. Ben-Gurion consulted with the top
scientists at the time including Prof. David Erenst Bergman, who is
consider the father of the Israeli nuclear program, Prof. Ephrain
Katzir, a future president of the state, and Prof. Alex Keynan, the
founder of the biological research institute. The top military echelon
privy to the clandestine operation included generals Yohanan Ratner and
Yigal Yadin, who was the de facto chief of staff during the 1948 war and
then-Lt. Col. Moshe Dayan. Dayan, a future chief of staff and foreign
minister, was given by the scientists tubes with typhoid bacteria. His
assignment was to deliver them to his subordinates. The instruction was
to spread it in water wells near Jericho, where the Jordanian army was
deployed, and in Jerusalem area villages where the most fierce battles
took place.
However, one of Dayan’s tubes broke, and his 3-year-old son Assi (a future writer, actor and film director) was infected and had to stay in bed for days.
Typhoid germs were also sent in bottles to the southern front. But local left-leaning commanders refused to participate in the operations. They complained to their senior commander Haim Bar-Lev, also a future chief of staff and cabinet minister. Bar-Lev told them to get rid of the bottles. Nevertheless, a few Israeli troops thought the bottles contained soft drinks and drank them. Luckily, they were not seriously ill.
The article by Morris and Kedar also sheds light on a few more cases in which Israeli soldiers were sent with the poison to Acre and the Galilee village of Ilabun. According to British Arab and Red Cross documents, dozens of local residents of Acre were poisoned and became severely ill. An unknown number of them died.
The same method was also used in May 1948, a week after Israel proclaimed independence, in Gaza. Two Jewish soldiers from a special forces unit posed as Arabs and infiltrated Gaza with tubes containing the typhoid germs. Their mission was to poison the Gaza water well in order to stop the advancement of the Egyptian army. But they were arrested, tortured and sentenced in August 1948 to death by an Egyptian military court.
Israel has never admitted the true nature of their mission but recognized them as fallen soldiers. The article does not specify what was the actual number of casualties caused by these biological warfare operations. Its probably was not significant and was not widespread due to the amateurish nature of the operation Cast Thy Bread and the logistical difficulties. Yet, it’s no wonder that the Israeli security establishment is ashamed of some chapters of its past and has been trying to suppress the information.
