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Writing the Arab-Israeli Conflict: Historical Bias and the Use of History in Political Science Jonathan B. Isacoff

When doing political science research, how do we know that one story is not just as good as the next? Every historical school of thought purports to provide a “true” account of its subject matter. But contradictory schools of thought can not all be given equal weight. While much has been written on the epistemological question of objectivity in history, remarkably little work has been done regarding the practical problem encountered by political scientists faced with multiple narratives and historical bias. This essay develops a pragmatic method, which aims to evaluate historical narratives according to their utility in solving analytic and political problems. I illustrate the approach through the case of the Arab-Israeli conflict, where multiple, conflicting accounts of the “story” are vivid and copious. I conclude that while historical objectivity is elusive, some narratives are better than others at adjudicating both political science debates and “real-world” political problems.

Introduction President Bill Clinton aptly remarked that in the Arab- Israeli conflict, “No side has a monopoly on pain, or vir- tue.”1 But does anyone have a monopoly on truth? It hardly takes a regional expert to perceive that the way the “story” of the Arab-Israeli conflict is told depends on the perspective of the storyteller. This creates a quandary for the would-be objective political scientist: to whose story do we listen? How do we know that one story is not just as good as the next? During the past decade, the story of the Arab-Israeli conflict has split into at least two conflicts: one represented by the older, Zionist history of the dis- pute and the other embodied in the sharply contrasting narrative of the Israeli new historians.2 While each body of historical scholarship purports to explain the underly- ing causes and provide a “true” account of the conflict, the old and new Israeli histories in fact allude to two distinct case studies.

I suggest that this type of historical problem is com- mon in all subfields of political science. While much atten- tion has been paid to avoiding selection bias in quantitative political science scholarship, significantly less energy has been devoted to the problem of how to determine when

an entire historical narrative, encapsulated in multiple sources, is itself biased.3 How do we know that what we are reading is relatively untainted by political and ideolog- ical sentiments? Does the truth of history really come down to who tells the best stories? Before responding to these questions, let me state that this essay is not aimed at cri- tiquing secondary-source research for its reliance on sec- ondary historical texts. I assume that many, if not most political scientists work with secondary sources—that is, texts written by historians, broadly defined—and that gen- uinely insightful, first-rate scholarship can be produced on that basis. My aim is to provide some means for polit- ical scientists to discriminate among secondary texts with regard to their value.4

In this article I assess the extent to which mainstream political science has been able to identify and account for the problem of historical bias. I formulate a method for doing so and use that method to examine the contrasting Zionist and new history narratives of the Arab-Israeli con- flict. One’s choice of narrative has a tremendous effect on the way one sees the world. This is made clear when exam- ining Randall Schweller’s and Stephen Walt’s use of the Arab-Israeli case in their research, each of which was biased, albeit unintentionally, by the Zionist narrative of the con- flict. I argue that while both narrative schools—the Zion- ist and the new history—can be said to convey truth, the latter is more useful than the former in addressing both political science research questions and current political problems. This supports my general conclusion that while there may be no ultimate truth of history, certain under- standings are in fact better than others.

Jonathan B. Isacoff is assistant professor of political science at Gonzaga University ([email protected]). The author thanks Jennifer Hochschild, Bob Vitalis, Ian Lustick, and four anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on ear- lier drafts.

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Will the Real History Please Step Forward? Recognizing that historical fact is dependent on the inter- pretation du jour, E. H. Carr remarked with tongue in cheek, “I hope that I am sufficiently up-to-date to recog- nize that anything written in the 1890s must be nonsense. But I am not yet advanced enough to be committed to the view that anything written in the 1950s necessarily makes sense.”5 Taking Carr’s point to heart, how do we know what we think we know about the past? The literature on the philosophy of history speaks at length of the debates among relativists, objectivists, and positivists during the past century and a half.6 As the matter is typically por- trayed, a pendulum was set in motion in the 1830s with the establishment of Rankean positivism, which empha- sized “feeling for and a joy in the particular in and by itself,” or what many have since referred to as the past “as it really was.”7 Since Ranke’s time, positivists and rela- tivists have each sought to prevail on the question of whether history should be either objectively or subjec- tively grounded. The debate over historical epistemology is immense, spanning many disciplines and centuries, a detailed analysis of which far exceeds the scope of this essay.8 That said, I argue for a pragmatist approach to history in the tradition of John Dewey and Richard Rorty. In this view, historical truth is not predicated on a per- ceived correspondence to ontological reality. Nor is it purely relative. Rather, understandings of history and historical knowledge are produced to solve problematic situations in human experience. Historical accounts are a function of their ability to account for and reconcile anomalous facts and their ability to further practical political needs.9

Pragmatism lets the empirically oriented political scientist approach historical research effectively.

How do we know the “real truth” of history when we see it? We may begin to answer that question by assessing the extent to which others addressed historical bias. In Designing Social Inquiry Gary King, Robert Keohane, and Sidney Verba (KKV) define data, including historical data, as “systematically collected elements of information about the world.”10 In order to test theories, the authors assert, it is necessary to select appropriate data. When working with historical data, political scientists should follow the lead of their counterparts in history: “Good historians understand which events were crucial, and therefore con- struct accounts that emphasize essentials rather than digres- sions.”11 But how can political scientists separate the historical wheat from the chaff? Prevailing methodologies for empirical analysis can not respond to this question insofar as they have no awareness of historical revision- ism. As even the most novice historical political scientist knows full well, historical narratives are constantly being challenged, amended, and sometimes forgotten alto- gether. As historiographies are revised, the answer to the question, “Which events were crucial?” depends on whom

you ask and when you ask them. KKV do not address that point.

Ian Lustick has suggested a conception of historical bias that seeks to fill the voids in KKV. Rather than take the traditional positivist view, in which history is raw, undif- ferentiated data, we can instead conceptualize history as represented by a variety of implicit theoretical perspec- tives embedded within historical texts. Lustick’s concep- tion of bias helps to expose the all-too-common practice of selecting only those historical sources whose embedded theoretical commitments are the same as the theorist’s own. When history is used in this manner, the “historical record” naturally supports the claims of the theorist. Lustick rec- ommends a number of procedures, including quasi trian- gulation, explicit triage, and discursive annotation, in order to help reduce this selection bias in historical research.12

This is a significant step forward, but it leaves unanswered the question of how we are to recognize historical bias in the first place.

Many scholars who work on the Arab-Israeli conflict— there are many exceptions—learn a difficult lesson early on: the answer to the question of what caused the Arab- Israeli conflict depends on whom you ask and when you ask it. From one perspective, Arab intransigence and un- willingness to accept the United Nations partition of historical Palestine caused the conflict. From another, Zion- ism, seen as a late extension of European colonialism- imperialism, and the expropriation of Palestinian territory are at the root of the conflict. The interesting problem here is not the debate between positivists and postmod- ernists over whether “fact” can ever be disaggregated from interpretation. Rather, it is the pragmatist’s problem: inso- far as all texts are biased, how can we use source materials in order to produce credible, useful research? Identifying bias is transformed from a dichotomous issue—text is either biased or not—to a pluralistic one—in what manner is this or that text biased, and where will various biases lead us? By approaching history in this pragmatist vein, possi- bilities are opened up for the aspirant historical political scientist. I suggest three techniques for working with his- torical texts: (1) search for and investigate multiple schools; (2) disaggregate the facts; and (3) frame historical schools of thought as Lakatosian research programs.

Multiple schools of thought Rather than look for “facts” in historical sources, political scientists’ first step when working with historical texts should be to identify the competing “schools” within the literatures under examination. Some historians are real- ists, some Marxists, some materialists, some constructiv- ists, and so forth. The point here is not to identify the correct school of thought for a given historical problem, but rather but to identify as many as possible of the various worldviews that pertain to the issues. Embedded

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theoretical and normative commitments must be assumed, not ignored.

Disaggregating facts Some scholars are interested in very specific problems involving names, dates, and locations of events, and so on. For very detail-oriented matters of historical fact, I recom- mend what Lustick refers to as quasi-triangulation. Once schools of historical interpretation have been identified, scholars may then focus on the details about which the competing schools agree. Not all facts are simple, how- ever, and many historical problems are protracted and not agreed upon. In these instances, political scientists must triangulate what they can and synthesize distinct histori- cal perspectives, while explicitly explaining their differences.

Historical revisionism as Lakatosian research programs Many subjects have undergone extensive historical revi- sion. One example is the Israeli literature on the Arab- Israeli conflict, where the basic understanding of the causes and character of the dispute have been revised almost beyond recognition by a new generation of historians, sociologists, and political scientists, known collectively as the “new historians.” But is the new literature “better” or more accurate than the old? There is no definitive answer. However, we can turn this problem into a useful tool itself by thinking of historical schools as Lakatosian research programs. Lakatos rightly observes that most schools of thought (“research programs”) have a “negative heuristic,” or “hard core” of underlying assumptions, which are never called into question. Research programs also have a “pos- itive heuristic,” which is the set of research questions that are askable and soluble according to the terms of the pro- gram.13 Serious problems arise, however, when the research program is unable to answer any additional research ques- tions, and an increasing proliferation of “new facts” chal- lenges the solidity of the program’s negative heuristic.

We can conceive of historical schools of thought as Lakatosian research programs, each with its own negative heuristic of embedded assumptions and commitments. Adopting this perspective allows scholars to evaluate his- torical revisionist schools by asking to what extent the new research program resolves dilemmas of whatever it replaces by accounting for the problems that the latter left unanswered. If a school of revisionist literature can rea- sonably account for all of the historical problems that the old school did as well as those that the old school could not, then we can justify a preference for the revisionist school on pragmatic grounds. That is, the pragmatist approach to history stresses historical interpretation of the past as necessary to resolving problematic situations in the present. This is not to say that revisionist history is more or less objective than older historical narratives per se;

revisionism may produce narratives that are less factually consistent that their predecessors and even introduce their own problems. However, insofar as new narratives can answer old questions, they may be useful. Below, I evalu- ate the Israeli new historians’ “better” answers to old questions.

Writing the Arab-Israeli Conflict of 1956 The abundance of the literature on the Arab-Israeli conflict makes assuming multiple competing historical schools easy. On the Israeli side alone there are two volu- minous and coherent schools of thought, in addition to various Arab, European, and American perspectives on the conflict.14

On one hand are the older, Zionist accounts of the Arab-Israeli conflict, written and translated into English by public officials and state-builders who sought to garner international sympathy for the Zionist cause and for the Israeli perspective of its conflict with the Arabs. While these accounts may not be “scholarly” by contemporary historical and social science standards, they are nonethe- less critical insofar as they have been widely used as pri- mary sources by many social scientists who have studied the conflict.15 They have also powerfully influenced the worldview of some contemporary academic historians who are sympathetic to the Zionist historical narrative. This small collection of “new-old historians” includes influen- tial figures such as Anita Shapira, Avraham Sela, Efraim Karsh, and, most notably, Michael Oren, whose recent Six Days of War has generated a great deal of scholarly as well as popular interest. Indeed, Oren, a Princeton-trained historian and Senior Fellow at the pro-Zionist Shalem Center in Jerusalem, has become a poster-child for con- temporary Zionists and conservative defenders of Israel. It is not surprising, then, that Oren also serves as contribut- ing editor to the Shalem Center’s journal, Azure, which “champions the strength and relevance of Jewish tradition and the centrality of a strong, free and Jewish State of Israel for the future of the Jewish people.”16

On the other hand are the Israeli new historians, a group of academic historians, sociologists, and political scien- tists who have worked extensively with recently released archival documents to create a revised picture of the ori- gins of the Arab-Israel conflict. The first three “founders” of this school are Benny Morris, Avi Shlaim, and Ilan Pappé. Important subsequent contributors include Yoav Peled, Gershon Shafir, Motti Golani, Uri Ram, Yagil Levy, and Uri Ben-Eliezer. While both schools purport to pro- vide a narrative that is ostensibly true, their respective literatures differ significantly. Whereas the Zionists depict Israel as a weak, benign victim desperately seeking to eke out an existence in the Hobbesian Middle East of the 1940s and 1950s, the new historians portray Israel as a

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strong, deliberate state that aggressively exploited oppor- tunities to expropriate land and gain strategic advantage at the Arabs’ expense.

Zionism and Israel as state under siege Who started the 1956 Arab-Israeli war, and why? The older Zionist Israeli literature provides clear answers to these questions: the Arabs started it, and the cause of the war was the stubborn refusal of the Arab states to coexist peacefully with Israel.

The conception of Israel as the victim of Arab belligerence—and therefore not an aggressive actor—is important because, while it is clear to many contempo- rary analysts, although not necessarily to the public, that Israel “initiated” the second Arab-Israeli war of 1956, the carefully stylized portrayal of Israel as the victim casts a substantial measure of doubt over the seemingly straight- forward matter of who was attacked by whom. As David Ben-Gurion asserted in a speech delivered in August of that year, “The situation of the State of Israel is unique. It is doubtful whether there is another state in the world which, like Israel, is subject even in normal times to con- stant danger to its security.”17 Similarly, Abba Eban, Israel’s first Ambassador to the UN, wrote that, “The special theme of [Israel’s] existence has been the implacable hostility of her neighbors. Being unable to mitigate against the Arab assault, Israel has, at least, contrived to resist it.”18

By stressing Israel’s victimization in the face of Arab aggression, Zionist history is able to portray the Sinai Campaign as part of a war that had already been going on for some time. Many Israeli leaders and official pub- lications at the time made this point. According to For- eign Ministry Director General Walter Eytan: “This is the crux of the Arab-Israel conflict. The Arabs maintain that the war has never ended and that, so far from being under any obligation to end it, they are liberty to pursue it by any means they have at their disposal to choose to use.”19 Deputy Prime Minister Yigal Allon wrote: “The infiltration of armed gangs from the Arab states into Israel began as early as 1949 . . . Before long, it became clear that this harassment . . . essentially constituted the first stage of a small and unrecognized war.”20 This sen- timent was articulated by the Israel Office of Informa- tion as well: “Since the signing of the Armistice Agreements in 1949, Israel has been the victim of constant Arab infiltration and rapine and has suffered heavy casualties . . . It was not until 1953 that Israel took its first protec- tive action. By that time there had been 7,896 cases of Arab infiltration, sabotage and murder, and 639 Israeli casualties. Nevertheless, Israel practices self-restraint.”21

The theme of Israel-as-victim was advanced even by polit- ical moderates, such as Eban, who believed that “[t]he Arab governments saw the armistice [in 1949] as a tem- porary phase in a continuing war which had never been

renounced.”22 Thus, it was crucial for the international community to understand that

the Egyptians were trying to make the Negev uninhabitable; and the Syrians now attempted to drive Israeli fishing boats and patrol vessels out of the Sea of Galilee . . . Raids by Arab armies and fedayeen were taking a heavy toll; it was becoming unsafe to live in an Israeli border settlement and insecure to go about one’s business in the interior of the country; the blockade of Eilat by sea had been compounded by the promulgation in Cairo of regulations against flying over the Straits of Tiran to or from Israel.23

Zionist history also goes to some lengths to suggest that Israel actively sought peace with the Arabs during the 1950s, but that the Arab world was not interested in recip- rocating. Ben-Gurion recounts that during the year prior to the 1956, he “was prepared to meet [Gamal Abdel] Nasser or any other Arab ruler, without prior conditions, at the earliest possible moment” in order to achieve a peace agreement or arrangement. Ben-Gurion “offered the Arabs the chance to show the world what they really wanted: war or peace.” 24 On August 2, 1956, Ben- Gurion asserted that “[t]here never was nor is there now any reason for political, economic, or territorial conflict between the two neighbors [Egypt and Israel] . . . It never occurred to us to exploit Egypt’s difficulty in order to attack her or take revenge upon her, as she did to us when our State was established.”25 Indeed, Ben-Gurion ridi- culed an Egyptian radio report asserting that if Egypt did not attack Israel, Israel would attack Egypt first; he sug- gested instead that an Israeli attack would never occur.26

The old Israeli history, then, asserts that the 1956 war was inevitable: As Eban puts it, “As one looks back, it seems that there was not a wide area of choice . . . In the absence of some sharp change of fortune, Israel’s eruption from siege could at most have been postponed. By Octo- ber 1956 the policies of Israel’s foes and Israel’s friends converged to destroy all other possibilities.”27 Official Israeli accounts also view the war as an inevitability: “Israel’s defensive action in Sinai and in the Gaza Strip at the end of 1956 eliminated Fedayin bases,” which were assumed to be a primary cause of the Sinai Campaign.28 IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan provided a similar rationale for the campaign, suggesting that “If the Arab States, led by the ruler of Egypt, had not pursued a policy of increasing enmity towards her, Israel would not have resorted to arms, even when the Suez crisis between Egypt and Britain and France exploded into a military clash.”29

The preceding account answers basic, important ques- tions regarding Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict. It sug- gests that the Arab states, rather than Israel, are to be blamed for conflict generally and the 1956 war specifi- cally. While Israel’s initiation of the Sinai Campaign is never explicitly denied, the campaign is presented as merely a response to the violence of ongoing war rather than as the start of war. Regarding the causes of the war, almost

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every author cites the violent fedayeen raids into Israel along with the blockade of the Straits of Tiran, both of which had been ongoing since 1950. The fedayeen raids are presented solely as the waging of interstate war by the Arab states, Egypt in particular. The possibility that Arab “incursions” into Israel are explainable as a function of the Palestinian refugee crisis is completely absent from the narrative. Nor is the Israeli collusion to devise the cam- paign mentioned in the literature. In sum, in depicting the Sinai Campaign as a responsive act in the context of interstate war, the Israeli history decidedly does not view the conflict as a function of a long-planned “second round” war with the Arabs.

While most contemporary Israeli historians take seri- ous issue with the Zionist account of the 1956, a minority of scholars, such as Michael Oren, are sympathetic to it. As a professionally trained historian, Oren’s idiom is not as polemical as that of Ben-Gurion, Eytan, or Dayan. Yet like the earlier authors, he sees the Arab-Israel conflict generally and the 1956 War specifically through a Zionist perspective. “The process of rising Arab belligerency,” writes Oren, “expedited by Israel and the Powers and unimpeded by secret contacts,” ultimately led to the second Arab- Israeli war.30 Oren maintains David Ben-Gurion’s stance that the war was very much a reaction to its security situ- ation. “It was only a matter of time, Ben-Gurion rea- soned, before the Egyptian army absorbed its massive influx of arms and Nasser lost the excuse not to use them. His prediction proved accurate: the six months following the Czech arms deal witnessed large-scale border fighting, retal- iations, and guerilla attacks that took the lives of hun- dreds.”31 While there is a factual basis for these positions, Oren sustains Ben-Gurion’s cover in the face of substan- tial evidence raised by the Israeli new historians that Israel had in fact provoked much, if not all, of that violence, and had been “searching for war” for at least several years prior to 1956. I discuss this argument below.

Zionism and political science What does this story tell us about political science? Schol- ars from the international relations (IR) subfield would likely conclude that the Zionist story of the Arab-Israeli conflict affirms the claims of the realist paradigm. This is precisely what we find in Randall Schweller’s “Domestic Structure and Preventive War,” which relies exclusively on the older, Zionist narrative to assess the conflict.32 Schweller argues that “[t]he Suez Campaign of 1956 came in the wake of a terrorist campaign by the fedayeen, accompa- nied by the blockade of Israeli shipping in the Gulf of Aqaba and the Suez Canal.”33 In addition, “Israeli mili- tary doctrine, which is based on preemption and reprisal, offers strong support for the realist proposition that the anarchic structure of the international system overrides variations in domestic structure.” Thus “Israel faces extreme

systemic constraints: it is a small state, geographically iso- lated from other democracies, that is continuously fight- ing to survive.”34

Israel is the only state in history to be surrounded by hostile countries that do not recognize its legitimacy as a sovereign state and that possess far greater demographic and material resources. Moreover, Israel does not belong to any formal military alli- ance. . . . [E]ncircled by four hostile Arab states and threatened by naval blockade during war . . . , “Israel’s geographic position until 1967 was,” in the words of Michael Brecher, “a strategist’s nightmare.” . . . Israel is a state under siege.35

Israel paradoxically responded to systemic threats within the self-help systemic context in a fashion similar to that of other states, despite the fact that its position within the international system is said to be strategically and geopo- litically unique. As a result of the uniquely intense pres- sures that it faced, Israel launched the 1956 war as a “responsive” rather than a preventive war. While Schweller concedes that Israel’s unique strategic and geopolitical posi- tion make it a likely candidate to initiate a preventive war in the future, he asserts that, with the exception of the 1981 preventive strike against the Osiraq nuclear facility, “Israel has not launched a preventive war.”36

Clearly Schweller’s representation of Israel accords with the old Israeli history. Israel is depicted as a “state under siege,” surrounded by implacably hostile enemies “who possess far greater demographic and material resources,” belonging to no “formal military alliance.” In the context of Ben-Gurion’s claim that “the State of Israel . . . is sub- ject even in normal times to constant danger to its secu- rity,” Schweller’s characterization makes sense. Furthermore, such an interpretation of Israel during the 1950s lends itself to a systemic IR orientation according to which stra- tegic factors are weighted much more heavily than domes- tic ones in explaining the causes of events.

This Zionist narrative is reflected in another oft-cited political science study of the Middle East, Stephen Walt’s Origins of Alliances, which argues that Nasser’s national- ization of the Suez Canal Company in 1956 “brought his principal adversaries together against him.” Israel joined the Anglo-French coalition in light of the events of the two years prior to 1956: “Britain’s withdrawal from Suez, the expanded Arab blockade, the rising level of fedayeen activity, the Soviet-Egyptian arms deal, and the tripartite alliance of Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia,” which “had already led the Israelis to begin planning for offensive action on their own.”37 It was for purely strategic reasons, then, that Israel initiated the 1956 war. Israel grew fearful of the strategic consequences of the growth and consolidation of Egyptian and Arab power. The British withdrawal from the Sinai removed an important buffer against Egyptian adventurism, while the tripartite alliance of Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia indicated a dangerous growth in Arab strategic solidarity. Whereas Czech arms propelled Israeli fears over the balance of power, Egyptian orchestration of

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fedayeen raids into Israel provoked Israeli concerns over the “balance of threat.”38 Importantly, Walt cites the 1956 war as an instance of France, Great Britain, and Israel forming an alliance to balance against the threat and power of Egypt. The case enables Walt to support his claim that balancing is in fact more prevalent than bandwagoning in the modern history of the Middle East—one of the key conclusions of his book. It is also fully consistent with the Zionist narrative, portions of which are used in Walt’s sources, that Israel was a state under constant threat dur- ing the 1950s and not an aggressive expansionist actor seeking to revise the status quo.39

The new historians and 1956 as a “war of choice” In contrast to the Zionist narrative, the new history has concerned itself to a much greater extent with Israeli inter- nal political competition and the importance of Israeli militarism in understanding Israel’s relationship with the Arabs during the 1940s and 1950s. The Israeli new his- torians see 1956 as an aggressive “war of choice,” which had been long in the planning and was anything but a response to Arab hostility.

Among the most prominent themes of the Israeli new history of the 1950s is the seemingly forgotten but fierce political clash between two opposing camps within the ruling Mapai party during that period. Ben-Gurion headed one camp, while Israel’s second prime minister, Moshe Sharett, led the other. The political struggle was not merely between individual adversaries, but was rather a broader, ideational conflict between strongly opposing world- views about Israeli grand strategy and the trajectory of Israeli state-society relations: “Israel’s behavior in the con- flict was the product of an internal struggle between two schools of thought: one hawkish, the other dovish; one activist, the other moderate; one favoring retaliation. These two schools were epitomized by David Ben-Gurion and Sharett.”40 The struggle over the Ben-Gurion versus the Sharett “lines,” as the positions were typically referred to at the time, “was a struggle between hardliners and soft- liners, security-centredness and diplomacy, intractability and conciliation, and the certainty of war and a chance for peace.”41 As his biographer suggests, Sharett’s strug- gle with David Ben-Gurion “is also a history of the mod- erate camp in the Yishuv and Israel Labour movement, of the compromise reached between the moderates and the activist hard-liners, and of their respective contribu- tions to the establishment and well-being of the Jewish state.”42

Ben-Gurion and his followers advocated a hard-line approach on retaliation against Arab incursions, violent or otherwise, into Israel territory. As Dayan asserted in 1955, the IDF “had the power to set a [high] price on our blood, [a price] that no Arab village, army, or government would feel was worth paying.”43 According to the Ben-

Gurion line, then, foreign relations with the Arab world were most effectively communicated through force.

On the other hand, Sharett and his supporters, includ- ing Abba Eban and, at times, future Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, were averse to military conflict with the Arab states and the Palestinians and preferred diplomacy and negoti- ation as the means to address Israel’s security problems. According to the Sharett line, international legitimacy and diplomatic prestige were long-term means towards the end of a secure existence and a just society. Sharett was “[p]ro- foundly appalled by Ben-Gurion’s strategic conclusions and recommendations,” and searched for “political solu- tions to the Arab-Israeli conflict that would avert the pos- sibility of another war. He felt an overriding need to ‘consider dealing with this danger [of a new war] through non-military means.’ ” In this way, “Sharett proved that it was possible to conduct a moderate foreign policy with- out harming essential Israeli interests.” Thus was he able to keep “the conflict manageable if not comfortable— certainly below the level where a pre-emptive war was necessary.”44

On no issue was the clash between Sharett and Ben- Gurion more bitter than with regard to Israeli policy of retaliation against Arab incursions, both violent and non- violent, into Israeli territory. Sharett “had never been enthu- siastic about retaliation, doubting its political and military efficacy either as a punishment or deterrence.”45 This is evidenced clearly in numerous diary entries in which he sharply criticized a growing Israeli lust for revenge under the guise of security-based reprisal. In March 1954 Sharett wrote, “I said to [Teddy Kollek]: here we are, back at the point of departure—are we headed for war or do we want to prevent war? According to Teddy the army leadership is imbued with war appetites . . . Completely blind to eco- nomic problems and to the complexities of international relations.”46

In response to calls for retaliation against an Arab raid during January 1955, Sharett wrote: “The [Israeli public’s and army’s] rage must be defused. That alone is the logic, none other [e.g., launching retaliatory strikes] . I do not believe that the reprisal will help in any way in terms of [improving] security. On the contrary . . .” Haunted years later by the murder of five Bedouin boys by IDF troops in the aftermath of the 1955 Gaza Raid, Sharett wrote:

The phenomenon that has prevailed among us for years and years is that of insensitivity to acts of wrong . . . For us, an act of wrong is in itself nothing serious; we wake up to it only if threat of a crisis or a grave result—the loss of a position, the loss of power or influence—is involved . . . Once, Israeli soldiers mur- dered a number of Arabs for reasons of blind revenge . . . and no conclusion was drawn from that, no one was demoted, no one was removed from office.47

Even while out of government for most of 1954, Ben- Gurion was able to thwart Sharett’s more moderate line through his proxies in the government, particularly, Dayan.

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“Dayan’s ideas on the paramount role of force in regulat- ing relations between Israel and the Arabs were intimately connected to his conception of the nature of the conflict. He perceived the Arab-Israel conflict as a struggle for sur- vival between two communities whose interests were irrec- oncilable . . . Israel’s only hope lay in vigilance, strength, and determination.”48 As a result of the activist institu- tional preference toward force most prolifically advocated and symbolized by Dayan, “Sharett was constantly under pressure to authorize reprisals in order to avoid being dis- credited inside Mapai, in the Knesset, in the press, and in the country at large. Reports reached Sharett that the army leaders were growing restive and more militant and that they were heading for war.”49

By 1955, relations between Sharett and Ben-Gurion further deteriorated, and it soon became clear that the Sharett line in Israeli politics was steadily losing support among both elites and the public. Cognizant of the reali- ties surrounding him, Sharett wrote in his diary in April 1955:

Ben-Gurion was heading towards war and any barrier that would be erected on his way should be removed. . . . [H]is belief in reprisals remained strong as ever, and he justified it by saying that the masses of citizens in this country as well as military leaders, like Moshe Dayan and Yigal Allon, would not tolerate murderous actions without punishment. . . . a strange justifica- tion for the doctrine of revenge.50

Ben-Gurion’s response was straightforward: “Contrary to Moshe [Sharett]’s opinion . . . reprisals are imperative. There is no relying for our security on UN observers and foreign states. If we do not put an end to these murders now—the situation will get worse.”51 Upon his return to the defense ministry in February 1955, Ben-Gurion tell- ingly remarked to an aide that Sharett “is raising a gen- eration of cowards. Infiltrators are coming in and we are hiding behind fences again. I will not let him. This will be a fighting generation.”52

Woven into the new history narrative is the claim that the victory of the Ben-Gurion line led to the ultimate institutionalization of Israeli militarism. Thus “during the two decades beginning in 1936 the idea of a military solu- tion to the Arab-Israeli conflict was gradually legitimated first within the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Pales- tine, then within the new state and crystallized into a value, a formula, and an ideology.”53 According to Ben- Gurion’s militaristic line, an “institutional trade-off was undertaken” in which “the military solution was univer- sally accepted as the legitimate and desirable way to end the Israeli-Arab conflict. It became part of the natural order and was preferred over possible political solutions involving diplomacy and compromise.”54 Thus Israeli pol- icy decisions, such as large-scale reprisal raids leading up to 1956 as well as the Suez War itself, were choices that were to an extent predetermined by institutional norms rather than strategic calculations.

New historical sociologists, such as Yagil Levy, explain Israeli militarism as a function of the benefits it afforded to the Ashkenazi elite.55 Ashkenazi leaders in both the government and the military furthered a “legitimation of inequality owing to the war-driven internal empower- ment of the state.”56 Increased militarization and bellicos- ity helped the Ashkenazim to assert their dominance over other ethnic groups in the hierarchy of the military as well as in the larger society. The more violent and aggressive the operations planned by the military leadership, the more admiration and prestige were given the military from the Ashkenazi political leadership, especially from Dayan and Ben-Gurion. The more admiration and prestige the lead- ers gave, the more the elite units of the military responsi- ble for implementing the most bellicose operations became magnets for Ashkenazi youth. Thus “the military had taken part in aggravating the external threat and concomitantly acquired prestige by repulsing this very threat. Self- creation of symbolic resource was at work.”57

The new history and political science The Israeli new history provides a totally different politi- cal science interpretation of the Arab-Israeli conflict— seriously at odds with the IR realist interpretation. Contrary to the assumptions of structural realism, Israeli strategic decisions were taken not in response to systemic stimuli per se. On the contrary, “agents did not rationally calcu- late several alternatives in terms of losses and gains; at least in the long term they could have partly satisfied their interests even had the state selected a more pacifist policy. Rather, agents reconciled their interests to the newly cre- ated reality that satisfied them relative to a past reality, not necessarily to a tentative one.”58 In other words, in this view, militarism strengthened groups that were already dominant in society, inspiring them to press for further bellicosity regardless of the long-term strategic conse- quences. This led directly to the outbreak of the 1956 war, which was planned secretly by Ben-Gurion and a small handful of advisors who kept the war plan secret from the government until the brink.59

Looking more carefully at Schweller’s claim that the second Arab-Israeli war was an Israeli response to Arab aggression, we see a number of serious problems, as a Lakatosian strategy would suggest. First, a significant num- ber of Israeli new historians argue that Israel intentionally provoked fedayeen activity along its borders in several key ways: (1) refusing to alleviate the fundamental problem of the Palestinian refugees of the 1948–49 war; (2) encour- aging settlement in strategically prone border areas; and (3) maintaining a policy of intentionally belligerent and escalating reprisal raids aimed at provoking a war.60 Thus, according to the newer interpretations of the case, some of the very factors that led to Arab raids and intransi- gence, such as the refugee crisis and Israel’s inflammatory

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retaliation policy, were themselves circumstances created by Israel.

Second, the new history suggests that the 1956 war was a war of choice long in the planning and not a response to specific Arab hostilities, as Schweller argues. Gabriel Shef- fer points out that as early as October–November 1953 Ben-Gurion sought to reorganize the Israeli military “based on the assumption that the ‘second round’ would occur in 1956 when . . . the Arab armies would be ready to launch a new war against Israel. This assessment dictated Ben- Gurion’s future political and military actions and moves and would contribute to the decision to launch a ‘war of choice’ in 1956.”61 Similarly, Motti Golani, the first his- torian to read declassified documents pertaining to the second Arab-Israeli war, was led “to conclude that Israel had been ‘in search of a war’ before the onset of the Suez Crisis and without any connection to it.”62

Third, Schweller essentially recapitulates the tradi- tional Zionist rhetorical position regarding Israel’s strate- gic situation. That is, Israel was a weak and benign David in the face of the vastly superior and aggressive Arab Goli- ath. However, Israel in fact fielded comparable or superior battlefield forces, both quantitatively and qualitatively, in both the 1948 and 1956 wars.63 Insofar as this is the case, then the hypothetical demographic and material resources of the Arab states are irrelevant to the strategic balance. In addition, the claim that Israel is the “only state in history” surrounded by steadfast enemies that refuse to acknowl- edge its legitimacy is not empirically supportable, which is important since Schweller tries to make a case for Israel’s unique strategic insecurity within the international system.64

Perhaps most importantly, the validation Schweller seeks for realist claims that anarchic pressures guide strategic decisions is seriously undermined by the Israeli new his- torians. According to the new history, the principal moti- vation for Israeli military engagement with the Arab world was the victory of the Ben-Gurion line over the more moderate Sharett line and the accompanying institution- alization of Israeli militarism, which had been ongoing since the 1930s. If the 1956 war is viewed in this light, it could hardly be interpreted as a self-help response under severely constrained systemic pressures produced by anar- chy. Rather, as the new historians Shlaim, Morris, Ben- Eliezer, Levy, and Golani agree, the war was the product of a choice of strategy among viable alternatives.65 That choice stemmed from the fact that militarism and the use of force addressed a number of problems for Israeli state- builders and helped the Ashkenazi elite to consolidate their hold on the political and military institutions of the state.

Walt asserts that “[f ]ailure to understand the origins of alliances can be fatal.” Alliances typically form in order to engage in balancing, “which is defined as allying with oth- ers against the prevailing threat.”66 Walt demonstrates this claim by listing all of the Middle Eastern alliances in effect

between 1955 and 1979, including the so-called Suez War Coalition of Israel, France, and Great Britain. In light of the new Israeli history, this claim is problematic. Accord- ing to the new historians, the notion that Israel was responding to a prevailing threat in 1956 is simply incor- rect. If the evidence of domestic politics is taken into account,67 then it is difficult to view the “Suez War Coali- tion” as “balancing against a prevailing threat” so much as a measure of convenience in a long-term state-building strategy institutionalized within the Ben-Gurion wing of the Mapai party.

While this is a significant finding in itself, it is all the more important if the Israeli case fits a paradigm shared with other countries that have adopted similar state- building strategies. It is possible, in other words, that some of the states Walt codes as balancing against threat may have in fact been “bandwagoning for profit.” This calls into question the premise of Walt’s argument insofar as it suggests that the predominance or lack of balancing in international politics might have more to do with the way “balancing” is defined and operationalized than it does with state behavior. After all, most states work hard to characterize their aggressive adventures as defensive, or security-based, after the fact.68

Writing the Arab-Israeli Conflict of 1967 Zionism and 1967 as a war of survival What if the history of 1956 is merely an anomalous case with regard to the degree to which its narrative has been revised? In order to demonstrate that paying careful atten- tion to historical narratives really does suggest different normative and empirical results, I argue in this section that the same points of tension between the Zionist and new historical narratives discussed above also resonate clearly in the debate over the 1967, or Six-Day, War.69

From the Zionist perspective, we again view Ben-Gurion interpreting from a system-strategic perspective of Israeli insecurity. Recounting the war, he asserted that “the Egyp- tian leader concentrated his forces on the Israel border in order to implement his avowed purpose of many years’ standing—Israel’s destruction.” President Nasser, recalled Ben-Gurion, “had been making open preparations for the war for at least three weeks, if not for several months before the outbreak.” As a result of these actions and of Egypt’s closure of the Straits of Tiran, “Israel had no choice but to invoke Article 51 of the United Nations Charter which allows member states freedom to act in self-defense.”70

In spite of Israel’s breathtaking military victory in 1967, Ben-Gurion continued to interpret Israel as the victim of acute strategic insecurity: “Despite the brilliant victo- ries . . . peace is still far away, and behind the Arab leaders who have not ceased threatening to destroy Israel stand

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two mighty powers, the Soviet Union and Red China, and their satellites in Europe and Asia.” The Six-Day War thus not only failed to resolve the question of Israel’s sur- vival, but even perpetuated the problem: “The great prob- lem raised by the Six-Day War is how we will survive in the future . . . not one Arab leader in the Middle East is prepared to discuss peace with us. The main question is how we can safeguard our security and avoid ending up as a minority.”71

Like Ben-Gurion, Moshe Dayan, despite being the most confident military commander in Israel’s history, ironi- cally still saw Israel as vulnerable, even in a war that by his own assessment he expected to win with ease. “Nasser’s aggressive moves came upon Israel like thunder out of the blue. It may be that the immediate prompting was Syria’s call for help against an Israel that was stronger than she, but after May 15 the picture was reversed.” After that time, the threat of impending war was initiated “by Egypt against Israel.”72 Though Dayan was less pessimistic than Ben-Gurion regarding the possibility of Israel’s destruc- tion, he too believed that survival was at stake. “On the surface,” wrote Dayan, the issue of the Egyptian mobili- zation and Arab threats against Israel “seemed to be political-military problems. But I knew in my bones that they were basically historical Jewish problems which were rooted in our past. How we tackled them would deter- mine our future.”73

Like the early Zionist authors, contemporary Zionists such as Michael Oren allude to Arab factors leading to the Six-Day War. Thus Oren begins the first chapter of his widely cited Six Days of War by describing in melodra- matic detail the first al-Fatah guerilla operation launched from Lebanon into northern Israel and led by Yasser Arafat. Included in Oren’s list of contextual factors leading to the Six-Day War are the “Palestinian dimension,” “terror and Syrian support for it,” “Soviet support for Syria,” and water.74 Absent from the list is any mention of Israel’s “search for war” or the institutionalization of Israeli mili- tarism. Oren echoes Ben-Gurion’s message, discussed above, that the Six-Day War was hardly a panacea for Israel’s existential struggle and that, to the contrary, survival was still very much at stake. Thus “the Six-Day or June War opened the door to even deadlier conflagrations . . . Though roundly defeated, the Arabs could still mount a formida- ble military campaign. The status of territories could be negotiated but the essential issues—Israel’s right to exist, the demand for Palestinian repatriation and statehood— remained.”75

Like Oren, “new-old” historian Avraham Sela sees the Six-Day War as a function of Arab belligerence. Tension between Syria and Israel in the months preceding the war “was sparked by a series of guerilla sabotage raids by Syrian- backed Palestinian groups led by Fatah, and exacerbated by artillery battles along the border.” Egyptian provoca- tions “set in motion a rapid escalation to the brink of war

and beyond, culminating in a total Arab-Israeli confron- tation.” This fostered a united Arab front against Israel, entailing the deployment of Egyptian and Iraqi forces into Jordan, which “tightened an all-Arab siege on Israel . . . and posed a threat to Israel’s very existence.”76

The new historians and 1967 as Israeli provocation In contrast to Ben-Gurion and Dayan, new historian Benny Morris describes the Six-Day War as the “product of error and mutual miscalculation.” Morris sees Zionist Israelis seeking to portray themselves as the “righteous victims” of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He notes that IDF Chief-of-Staff Yitzhak Rabin “assumed—probably correctly—that the Egyptian” troop concentrations were “deterrent and polit- ical, meant to persuade Israel not to attack Syria, and to demonstrate Egypt’s fraternity, resolve, and strength to the Arab world.” Moreover, Morris argues that “IDF intel- ligence had concluded only a few weeks before . . . that war was highly unlikely in the near future.” He stresses that the IDF knew that Egypt was preoccupied militarily in the Yemeni civil war and “would probably not seek war with Israel; and without the Egyptians, the other Arab states were not likely to march.”77 This is not to say that there had not been any discernible tensions in the years prior to the war. While the Egyptian border was relatively quiet, Israel suffered a number of incursions from Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria during the 1965–66 period. How- ever, Morris rejects the notion that these constituted a serious threat to Israel’s existence, as per the Zionist narrative.78

While it may indeed be the case that Nasser did not want war, he crossed the Israeli line in the sand on May 23, 1967 by closing the Straits of Tiran to Israeli ship- ping. The Egyptian leader’s need to appear strong in chal- lenging Israel directly clashed with Israel’s interest in defending its right to open waterways. “In retrospect, this can be seen as the decisive act that made war inevitable— though apparently Nasser did not realize it.”79 The other most important miscalculations leading to the war were the direct result of the false Soviet report, on May 17, of an Israeli troop mobilization against Syria. Egypt failed to seek adequate confirmation of the mobilization before mov- ing its forces into the Sinai Peninsula. Israel, for its part, either failed to calculate or ignored its own estimation that Nasser’s mobilization was for show only.

Even more than does Morris, fellow new historian Shlaim sees the war as an indirect and perhaps unintended product of aggressive Israeli relations with the Arabs. While Israel may not have sought a “war of choice” in the man- ner it had in 1956, its actions ultimately produced that outcome. Shlaim emphasizes the role of “Israel’s strategy of escalation on the Syrian front” as “probably the single most important factor in dragging the Middle East to war in June 1967, despite the conventional wisdom on the

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subject that singles out Syrian aggression as the principal cause of war.”80 In response to Syrian provocations, Shlaim argues, combating the increasingly hostile strategy of the Syrian regime became a key element of the Israeli national interest—so much so that many, including Shlaim, refer to the IDF leadership at the time as suffering from the “Syrian Syndrome.” He argues that Israel’s senior officers were accordingly “determined to retaliate” and so in early 1967 “resumed cultivation of land in the DMZ in a man- ner calculated to provoke clashes with the Syrians.”81 Yagil Levy sees the source of the conflict even more clearly as the product of Israeli militarism, arguing that the roots of acceleration predated the Syrian Syndrome. Rather, “A massive military buildup was the main pillar on which the Six-Day War was grounded.” This was reinforced by “the institutionalization of Israel’s offensive doctrine,” where the strategic and tactical planning of the military was pred- icated on a strike-first operational structure.82

Shlaim appears to agree with the Zionist narrative that the Six-Day War precipitated significant uncertainties for Israel, but he disagrees completely with the Zionist view that Israel’s survival was the crux of that uncertainty: “[T]he victory reopened the old question about the territorial aims of Zionism. . . . The question was what to do with” all of the newly acquired Syrian, Egyptian, and Jordanian territory Israel had acquired, “and to this question, there was no simple answer.”83 Israel came out of the Six-Day War having to contend with a problem of “luxury,” namely, how to use Arab territory in order to meet long-term interests, not with the existential problem of surviving under acute strategic insecurity. Yagil Levy takes this one step further, arguing that the Six-Day War afforded Israel “control over huge conquered territories and a regional monopoly on nuclear capabilities,” thus allowing Israel “to retake a defense posture” and to insist that “any future peace agreement include Israeli control over part of the territory conquered during the Six-Day War.”84

History of Politics: Politics of History History in political debates The 1967 war provides a good example of the way in which historical debates and “real” politics are inter- twined. In Israel the two continuously reinvent each other in ways that can be actively observed. For example, the largest overhaul of public school history texts in Israeli history, initiated by then-Education Minister Yossi Sarid, was widely covered internationally for its use of the new historians’ scholarship.85 The new historians also interact in very public and influential ways with high-ranking regional leaders. When the late King Hussein of Jordan gave his final, broadly cited interview in the New York Review of Books, Avi Shlaim sat in the interviewer’s chair. More recently, Benny Morris interviewed former Prime Minister Ehud Barak in a much discussed article, also

published in the New York Review.86 Even Morris’s per- sonal politics have been matter of international contro- versy, as I discuss below.

That historians have an influence in politics does not suggest a unity of historical interpretation in political debates. To the contrary, different historical interpreta- tions lend themselves more readily to different current politics. On the subject of the Six-Day War, for example, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon himself recently remarked that the war “really started in 1964 when Arabs started to divert the sources of the Jordan.” That diversion was, in Sharon’s view, “a matter of life and death to us.”87 For Sharon, then, the Zionist narrative of the conflict still reigns. The Six-Day War informs a contemporary politics of no compromise with the Arabs, or in more contempo- rary parlance: “no rewarding terror,” for to do otherwise could endanger the existence of the Israeli state.

Sharon’s predecessor, Ehud Barak, draws a very differ- ent inference from 1967 as revealed, not by coincidence, in his interview with Morris. As Morris characterizes the issue: “Barak pointed to 1967 as the crucial mistake, when Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza (and Sinai and the Golan Heights) . . . Barak recalled seeing David Ben- Gurion . . . on television in June 1967 arguing for the immediate withdrawal from all the territories occupied in the Six-Day War in exchange for peace, save for East Jeru- salem.”88 At that point, Barak asserted that, “Many of us—me included—thought that he was suffering from [mental] weakness or perhaps a subconscious jealousy of his successor [Levi Eshkol, who had presided over the unprecedented victory and conquests] . Today one under- stands that he simply saw more clearly and farther than the leadership at that time.”89 Whereas Sharon interprets 1967 in the Zionist historical terms of existential struggle, Barak echoes the new historians’ point that victory over the Arabs and acquisition of Arab territory provided new political problems, not added security for Israel. Barak’s politics certainly bear out this historical perspective: as prime minister, he ordered a total withdrawal of Israeli forces from South Lebanon—after an occupation of 17 years—in a mere 24 hours.

Political debates over history Another wrinkle to the politics of history is the fact that, in principle, revisionists may “revise themselves.” Perhaps no contemporary historian has generated more headlines for his political views than Benny Morris, who is widely regarded as the “founding father” of the new historians. Though he remained politically silent on the matter, Mor- ris was for years assumed to be an ardent left-wing critic of Zionist policies toward the Arabs. During the past few years, however, Morris has surprised both supporters and critics alike with his blunt remarks in a series of increas- ingly controversial interviews. Conservative Zionist critics

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of the new history have been quick to assert that Morris had “recanted” his historical understandings. The right- wing Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) writes, “[I]n a surprising recent interview, Morris now argues that others have misconstrued his thesis. He argues that the Palestinians, not Israel, are to blame for the ongo- ing conflict and for the current state of affairs.”90 Simi- larly, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel C. Kurtzer, in a 2002 address noted that Morris has “recanted and decided that much of the research that he had pursued over the years in a sense assigning more blame on Israel for some issues than it had been assigned in traditional historical research may have been wrong. In fact he is now revising some of his thinking.”91 But has Morris really recanted anything? In the first widely cited interview, published in the Guardian of London in 2002, Morris stated, “The rumour that I have undergone a brain transplant is (as far as I can remember) unfounded—or at least premature. But my thinking about the current Middle East crisis and its protagonists has in fact radically changed.”92 If one reads the remainder of the interview carefully, however, there is not one line in which Morris retracts any of his historical scholarship.

Morris created a substantially larger stir in 2004 with his disclosure that he sympathized with many of the early Zionist policies that others had assumed him to con- demn. Asked if Ben-Gurion was a “transferist” (i.e., advo- cate of expelling Palestinians), Morris responded, “Of course Ben-Gurion was a transferist. He understood that there could be no Jewish state with a large and hostile Arab minority in its midst.” Morris added, “Because I investigated the conflict in depth, I was forced to cope with the in-depth questions that those people coped with. I understood the problematic character of the situation they faced. . . . But I do not identify with Ben-Gurion. I think he made a serious historical mistake in 1948.” The real shock of the interview, however, came next:

Even though [Ben-Gurion] understood the demographic issue and the need to establish a Jewish state without a large Arab minority, 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. I know this stuns the Arabs and the liberals and the politically correct types. But my feeling is that this place would be quieter and know less suffering if the mat- ter had been resolved once and for all. If Ben-Gurion had carried out a large expulsion and cleansed the whole country— the whole Land of Israel, as far as the Jordan River. It may yet turn out that this was his fatal mistake. If he had carried out a full expulsion—rather than a partial one—he would have sta- bilized the State of Israel for generations. . . . In other circum- stances, apocalyptic ones, which are liable to be realized in five or ten years, I can see expulsions . . . If there is a general Arab attack on us . . . acts of expulsion will be entirely reasonable. They may even be essential.93

These words sparked tremendous controversy, and they demonstrate how clearly history is a politicized phenom-

enon; however, they do not represent a retraction or recant- ing of his research or his scholarship. To the contrary, Morris states plainly that the 2004 revised edition of his 1987 The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem “shows that there were far more Israel acts of massacre than I had previously thought. To my surprise, there were also many cases of rape . . . I believe this revised edition adds sub- stantially to our understanding of what happened in 1948 and of the deep roots of the Israeli-Arab enmity in our time.”94 Thus the new edition of Morris’s landmark book provides more, not less, damaging material for revisionist critics of the Zionist enterprise, despite the fact that Mor- ris may personally feel that Israeli atrocities were justified. This case is important because it shows how political actors can manipulate historical interpretation, regardless of the “facts,” to support their cause. Morris’s “revision,” so quickly championed by conservative Zionists, is not so much a reconsideration of his original narrative as a clarification of his personal views about the subject matter of his research. Regardless of whether the new history is seen to blemish or validate Zionism, it has proved successful in that it is now considered the preferred account on which to base political debates over history.

Old Problems, New Solutions Is the Israeli new history truer, more accurate, or “better” than the old? Historical narratives are usually evaluated according to one of two rather tired methods. The first entails debating historical objectivity, or whether and how it is possible to discover the truth of history. While there have been many interesting perspectives on the matter, much of the discussion fluctuates somewhere between what Heikki Patomaki and Colin Wight call the bound- aries of “boredom” and “negativity”—the former devolv- ing into self-referentialism and the latter risking radicalism for its own sake.95 The second approach entails predicat- ing historical validity on purely normative commit- ments, which ultimately devolves into equating “truth” with the reinforcement of prevailing social norms. From a Zionist perspective, the Israeli new history is “bad” because it denigrates the legitimacy and moral authority of the state of Israel. Thus the Shalem Center, a contem- porary Zionist group, criticizes the new history through its journal, Azure, because it undermines their project to revitalize the idea of a uniquely Jewish State. Azure editor Daniel Polisar writes that “while the main targets of the new historians’ animus are no longer alive, the assault on the legacy of Zionism poses a grave threat to Israeli’s future.”96 Groups like the Shalem Center are more com- fortable with the old narrative of Ben-Gurion, Eytan, Eban, and Allon, which provides a more flattering por- trayal of past Israeli actions.

Approaching history pragmatically, we should evaluate the degree to which historical programs, or narrative

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schools, can resolve problematic situations rather than think in terms of true/untrue or good/bad. To do this, we first need a history that provides a relatively complete package of answers to pertinent questions. Second, we must iden- tify a historical interpretation that is most likely to resolve “real” political problems.

History as arbitrator for political science The older, Zionist school answers important questions: (1) Why is there an Arab-Israeli conflict? (2) Who started the conflict? (3) What are the causes of the Arab-Israeli wars? According the Zionist program, the main reason for the Arab-Israeli conflict is the unwillingness of the Arab states and leaders to accept the partition of Palestine and the existence of a Jewish state in the region. That intran- sigence produced a systemic condition of acute strategic insecurity under which Israel was forced to exist as a state under siege, constantly fearful of and preparing to defend against imminent war and even total annihilation. The Zionist program thus clearly depicts the Arab-Israeli con- flict as having been started and continued by the Arabs. Focusing for illustrative purposes on 1956 war, the causes of the war are clear: increasing fedayeen terrorist raids; the blockade of the Straights of Tiran; and the Czech arms deal—all of which perpetuated the ongoing state of war between Israel and the Arabs and further increased Israel’s strategic vulnerability. This in turn supports a structural realist political science analysis of the Arab-Israeli conflict. That is, Israel’s wars with the Arabs can be seen as a small and insecure state’s response to an unfavorable balance of power in the subsystemic context of the Middle East.

However, problems are left unresolved in this narrative. First, if Israel was in fact strategically insecure, how was it capable of defeating the Arab armies convincingly in 1948 and devastatingly in 1956 and 1967? Did the same Israeli leaders who were writing the history of that time not know the “real” military balance between themselves and the Arabs? Clearly, there is a piece to this puzzle that is miss- ing in the old accounts: barring miracles of a biblical nature, Israel could not be both David and Goliath at the same time.

Second, if Israel wanted to make peace with the Arabs continually since 1948, why was it unable to do so during the late 1950s and early 1960s? After all, it had won not just one, but two smashing military victories and enjoyed a preponderance of military power relative to the Arabs. The Middle East generally and Israel’s borders specifically were in a phase of relative calm. The old Israel narrative can not really respond to this question other than to reiter- ate the ongoing theme of Arab intransigence. But in light of the conditions just listed, this explanation is at best unfulfilling.

I believe that the Israeli new history can explain all that is accounted for in the old history as well as the questions

just raised. The Israeli new history is quite clear that the Arab states refused to accept the UN partition plan. But it also shows that Israel valued territory and power at least as much as, if not more than, peace with the Arabs. The Israeli strategy toward territorial consolidation and strate- gic advantage manifested itself in the struggle between the Ben-Gurionists and the followers of Moshe Sharett within the ruling Mapai Party. Ben-Gurion believed that the choice between his approach and Sharett’s was one of raising Israeli “cowards” versus “warriors.” Closely associated with this struggle was the institutionalization of a distinct mil- itarism within the Israeli state and society. As a result, military solutions to political problems were preferred over diplomatic ones. Thus, the Arab-Israeli conflict generally and the 1956 and 1967 wars specifically were the result of multiple causation: Arab intransigence and the Israeli desire for strategic gain both played critical roles. The Israeli new history also takes serious issue with the Zionist narrative over the question of who started the second and third Arab-Israeli wars. Whereas the latter view the wars as iter- ations of a war already in progress, the new historians believe that Israel started it.

In terms of political science paradigms, the newer inter- pretation of the conflict reveals a “second-image,” or lib- eral, analysis of conflict, in which the role of domestic political actors and institutions is crucial to understand- ing the decisions that states make in international rela- tions. Indeed, Israeli new history scholars make a point of arguing that Israeli policy was decidedly not a response to systemic threats and that the policy-making process pro- ceeded according to its own internal logic of militarism and the language of force. In sum, then, I suggest that the Israeli new history is “better” than the Zionist history, but not because the older account is objectively false. Rather, I argue that the Israeli new history can answer the same questions as does the Zionist narrative plus those that the latter can not, and that it can do so in ways that are logical and compelling, if not definitive.

Nevertheless, the new history is not the final word on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Questions remain for the new interpretations. Why would a generation of Israeli histor- ians now write texts that are so unflattering to Israel? Many nasty things have been said about this on Zionist Web sites and in chat rooms, though no one has presented a compelling answer to that question.

Historical interpretation and solving “real” political problems Finally, the historical narrative one chooses plays an im- portant role in “real” politics; new historians have had a significant influence on Israeli politics and society. In pragmatist terms, the way we write the past can have important effects on the politics of the present and future. Internalization of the Zionist program shows Israel as a

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weak, insecure state, surrounded by hostile enemies and continuously struggling for survival, despite its critical vic- tories. This view informs the policies of most Likud Party leaders. Consider, for instance, former Prime Minister and current Finance Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, for whom the Palestinian-Israeli peace process is a strategic military problem rather than a domestic political prob- lem. “Given the specifics of the West Bank,” Net- anyahu contends, “the slo- gan ‘land for peace’ is singularly inappropriate: To achieve a sustainable peace, Israel must main- tain a credible deterrent long enough to effect a lasting change in Arab attitudes. It is precisely Israel’s control of this strategic territory that has deterred all-out war and has made even- tual peace more likely.”97

The Israeli new history yields a totally different form of politics, encapsulated in the political platforms of the Left wing of the Labor Party and the Leftist Meretz Party. Like the new historians, some leaders—for example, current Labor Party Chair Shimon Peres—have concluded that mil- itary power and strategic considerations will ultimately fail to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict: “To achieve peace, the basic problems of the Middle East need to be approached realistically. First and foremost, we must all acknowledge the futility of war: the Arabs cannot defeat Israel on the bat- tlefield; Israel cannot dictate the conditions of peace to the Arabs.”98 Peace, in Peres’ view is a political rather than a strategic problem. Informed by a cosmopolitan historical perspective, Peres argues that “the key to maintaining an equitable and safe regional system is in politics and eco- nomics . . . True power—even military power—is no longer anchored in the boot camp, but on the university campuses. Politics should pave the way from pure military strategy to an enriched political and economic repertoire.”99

While we should not overstate the case that history drives politics, it is nonetheless important to acknowledge that all historical inquiry is initiated in response to con- temporary stimuli.100 In the case of Israel, the acute ten- sion caused by the ongoing conflict with the Palestinians is the problematic situation that drives the need to inter- pret the past. However, as this analysis shows, variation in the way the story is told can suggest and inform very different political positions and policies.

Conclusion Historical political science research is not as simple as “mining for quotes” from the pages of most widely cited texts. To the contrary, historical bias—a ubiquitous prob- lem in the field—results from the inability to see that all

historical texts have embedded normative and theoretical commitments. By adopting a pragmatist approach to his- torical research, we can see that even though history is constructed, what is important is not the degree of objec- tivity of the texts we use, but rather their usefulness in helping us to answer questions and anomalies left unad-

dressed by other sources and accounts. Rather than search for the “best” or most accurate his- torical texts, political scientists must assume multiple competing his- torical schools and seek to uncover what prompts their respective answers to important questions. Uncritical reliance on a

single program is likely to produce biased and skewed research that fails to explain historical causation rigor- ously and accurately. Finally, accounting for historical bias is not only a matter for political scientists. As philosoph- ical pragmatists like John Dewey persuasively argued— and this examination of the Arab-Israeli conflict affirms— historical inquiries can and do have in impact on real- world politics.

Many policy implications might arise from this last point, one of which I note in closing. The type of history used as a backdrop for understanding the present will lend itself to quite different political platforms. If Israel has been a weak and vulnerable state under siege for many decades, then the notion of a neighboring Palestinian state as a haven for terror and violence seems more real. If, however, Israeli rhetoric regarding its victimhood is a facade for its expansionist state-building aspirations, then the need to make serious compromises with the Palestinians becomes a more logical option. It is not surprising that Ariel Sharon and Ehud Barak see both the past and the present of the Arab-Israeli conflict in such different terms.

Of course, during the past year or two, Barak has begun to sound more like Sharon. And Sharon, with his plan to disengage from Gaza and a small portion of the northern West Bank, sounds more like Barak. But this only goes to show that history, like everything in politics, is fluid.

Notes 1 Lynfield 1999. 2 There are a number of possible histories—Israeli,

Arab, European—of the Arab-Israeli conflict. This article focuses primarily on the debate among the “old” versus the “new” Israeli historians. For over- views and discussion regarding that debate, see Diner 1995; Heydemann 1991; Kimmerling 1995; D. Levy 1999; Pappé 1995; Pappé 1997; Pappé 1999;

Even though history is constructed, what is

important is not the degree of objectivity of the

texts we use, but rather their usefulness in

helping us to answer questions and anomalies

left unaddressed by other sources and accounts.

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Penslar 1995; Ram 1995; Shapira 1995; Slater 1994. Note that while there are many relatively less- noted Arabic sources on the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Arabic literature has not undergone a prolific revision in any way comparable to that of the Israeli literature. This, of course, may change in the future. For important Arabic sources, see Haykal 1998; Khalidi 1998; Khalidi 1987; Khalidi 1992; Kha- lidi and Khadduri 1974; Khouri 1985; Said 1995; Said 1996. See also Matar and Hilal 1983.

3 A notable exception is Lustick 1996. 4 The logic of this essay should also be of use to schol-

ars who work in archives and with other primary texts. After all, archival texts, like secondary ones, are still texts, authored by a someone who had biases, opinions, et cetera.

5 Carr 1961, 4. 6 For especially clear examples of the relativism-

positivism dichotomy in history, see Iggers 1997; Jenkins 1997; Novick 1988.

7 von Ranke 1973, 30. 8 For important contributions to the debate, see

Berkhofer 1995; Collingwood 1963; Jenkins 1999; Rorty 1991; White 1980.

9 For illustrations of Dewey’s and Rorty’s views on his- tory and knowledge more generally, see Dewey 1938; Rorty 1979; Isacoff 2002; Shook 2000.

10 King, Keohane, and Verba 1994, 23. 11 Ibid., 53. 12 Lustick 1996, 616. 13 Lakatos 1970, 132–38. 14 For discussion of other literatures on the Arab-Israeli

conflict, see note 1. 15 Randall Schweller (1992), for instance, cites former

Israeli General Yohoshafat Harkabi’s book. Similarly, Stephen Walt (1987) cites Moshe Dayan’s autobio- graphical texts (1966, 1976), the work of former Israeli General and Head of Military Intelligence Chaim Herzog (1982), and of Howard Sachar (1979)—an unambiguously pro-Zionist account that accords fully with Ben-Gurion’s and his colleagues’ narratives.

16 See Azure: Ideas for the Jewish Nation 2004. 17 Ben-Gurion 1971, 462. 18 Eban’s general agreement with Ben-Gurion on mat-

ters of security in his early writings is especially signif- icant in that Eban was a supporter of Moshe Sharett, Ben-Gurion’s chief rival for power within the ruling Mapai party. Eban 1968, 488.

19 Eytan 1958, 96. 20 Allon 1970, 230. 21 Israel Office of Information 1960, 62. 22 Eban 1972, 124. 23 Ibid., 124, 138. 24 Ben-Gurion 1963, 72–73. 25 Ben-Gurion 1971, 461.

26 Ibid., 464. 27 Eban 1972, 141. 28 Israel Office of Information 1960, 54. 29 Dayan 1966, 3. 30 Oren 1992, 8. Oren seems to have become more sym-

pathetic to Zionism over time. In his 1992 work, he acknowledges the fact of Palestinian refugees as well as Israeli provocation of Arab hostility (pp. 1–8). His more recent account discounts these factors (Oren 2002).

31 Oren 2002, 10. 32 Schweller employs six sources for his Israeli case

(Brecher 1972; Brecher 1975; Handel 1973; Har- kabi 1983; Peleg 1987; Roberts 1973), only one of which, Harkabi, is Israeli, although Harkabi’s work is clearly Zionist. Though he may not cite Ben- Gurion by verse and chapter, Schweller’s overall nar- rative is nonetheless fully consistent with the Zionist perspective of Israel as a state under siege.

33 Schweller 1992, 264. 34 Ibid., 264. 35 Ibid., 265–66. 36 Ibid., 264. 37 Walt 1987, 63. 38 Walt argues that states are not concerned with mate-

rial power alone; they also respond to threat, defined as power plus intent. Whereas the Czech arms deal changed the balance of power, the orchestration of fedayeen raids demonstrated belligerent intent. Walt’s description of the evidence is correct, but his claim that this led to balancing is problematic, as I discuss below.

39 See reference to Walt’s sources in note 15. 40 Shlaim 2000, 95. 41 Morris 1993, 227. 42 Sheffer 1996, 2. 43 Morris 1993, 176. 44 Sheffer 1996, 836–37. 45 Ibid., 684. 46 Sharett, 1954 diary entry, reprinted in Sharett 1980,

32–33. Teddy Kollek was an aide to the prime minis- ter at the time and later gained great esteem as mayor of Jerusalem from 1965 to 1993.

47 Ibid, 36 (January 11, 1961). 48 Shlaim 2000, 101. 49 Ibid., 107. 50 Ibid., 798. 51 Morris 1993, 233; and Morris 1999, 280. 52 Shlaim 2000, 124. 53 Ben-Eliezer 1998, x. 54 Ibid., 13–14. 55 Ashkenazim refers to Jews of central and Eastern Euro-

pean ancestry. Nearly all of the first generation of Zionist leaders where Ashkenazim. Many critics and scholars, such as Yagil Levy, portray the Ashkenazim

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as using their position of privilege and power to oppress the Mizrachim, or later Jewish immigrants to Israel, who were of Middle Eastern and Asian origin.

56 Levy 1997, 23. 57 Ibid., 85–86. 58 Ibid., 92. 59 Ibid., 93. 60 Yagil Levy describes the cycle of border violence as fol-

lows: “Once a new settlement was built on the site of an abandoned Palestinian village, it became a mag- net for infiltration regardless of its distance from the border . . . By establishing border settlements as a means of coping with infiltration and fixing the state borders, the state exposed the settlers to existen- tial danger. Yet it concurrently took measures to repulse that danger, mainly in the form of reprisal raids in which Israel escalated the military frictions by its reactions to the infiltrations; those reactions made the infiltrators and the neighboring states more hostile and willing to translate their hostility into active violence, aggravating the potential danger to Israel.” Levy 1997, 64.

61 Sheffer 1996, 690. 62 Golani 1998, viii. 63 See, for example, Dayan 1966. For statistical mea-

sures of battlefield capabilities, see O’Ballance 1957; Rothenberg 1979; Safran 1969.

64 Schweller’s claim is especially problematic in the face of the robust tradition in the historical sociology of Europe describing how protostates failed to sur- vive the predatory behavior of their neighbors. See Tilly 1985; and Tilly 1992. Similarly, a number of aspir- ant states in the contemporary world suffer from the hostility of their neighbors, including East Timor, Kurdistan, Nagorno-Karabagh, Western Sahara, Tibet, Kosovo, and Chechnya.

65 See Shlaim 2000; Morris 1999; Ben-Eliezer 1998; Levy 1997; Golani 1998.

66 Walt 1987, 17, emphasis added. 67 Sheffer 1996, 690. 68 Even the current “War on Terror,” which semanti-

cally implies offense, is almost always justified in the name of legitimate self-defense.

69 For discussion of debate over the Six-Day War from an IR perspective, see Isacoff and Widmaier 2003.

70 Ben-Gurion 1971, 754, 770, and 772. 71 Ibid., 833, 837. 72 Dayan 1976, 313. 73 Ibid., 317. 74 Oren 2002, 1–2. 75 Ibid., 327, emphasis added. 76 Sela 1998, 90, 93. 77 Morris 1999, 302. 78 Ibid., 303–5. 79 Ibid., 306.

80 At one point, Shlaim argues that a disproportionate response to provocation from within Jordan in November 1966, or the Samu raid “was a terrible blunder, and the IDF leaders knew it. Thereafter they reverted to targeting Syria, which was under- going a process of radicalization.” Shlaim 2000, 233–34.

81 Ibid., 234. On the “Syrian Syndrome,” see 228– 36.With regard to the Egyptian front, Shlaim devi- ates from Morris’s narrative, asserting that Nasser knew that the Soviet report of Israeli mobilization “was untrue, but he was in a quandary . . . politi- cally, he could not afford to remain inactive, because his leadership of the Arab world was being chal- lenged” (p. 237). Whether Nasser knew the report to be true or false is a moot point: his national interest was predicated on pursuing a policy of stand- ing up to Israel.

82 Levy 1997, 104–5. 83 Ibid., 250–51. 84 Ibid., 18. 85 Bronner 1999a; Bronner 1999b. 86 Shlaim 1999; Morris 2002a. 87 Safire 2002. For elaboration on this point in an

IR-context, see Isacoff and Widmaier 2003. 88 Morris 2002a. 89 Barak, quoted in Morris 2002a. 90 Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI)

2001. 91 Kurtzer 2002. 92 Morris 2002b. 93 Shavit 2004. 94 Morris 2004, 7. 95 Patomaki and Wight 2000, 214. For reference to sig-

nificant contributions to that debate, see note 8. 96 Polisar 2000, 16. Azure counts among its contribut-

ing editors the prominent historian Michael Oren, as well as Yehoshua Porath, Hillay Zmora, and Shalem Center President Yoram Hazony.

97 Netanyahu 2000, 319. 98 Peres 1993, 49. 99 Ibid., 34–35.

100 Dewey 1938, 232–39.

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