Benny Morris

Morris was born on a kibbutz in 1948 to parents from Britain.⁠[1]

He was born on Kibbutz Ein Hahoresh to immigrants from England and was a member of the left-wing Hashomer Hatza’ir youth movement.⁠[2]

He attended schools in Jerusalem and New York, graduating from Ramaz High School in New York, and did his military service as a paratrooper from 1967 to 1969. He earned a B.A. in European history and European philosophy from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a Ph.D. in modern European history from the University of Cambridge.⁠[3]

In 1988 Cambridge University Press published his The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1949, which examined how and why some 700,000 Palestinians left their homes and became refugees during the 1948 war and challenged traditional interpretations of whether they left voluntarily or were expelled under a systematic plan.⁠[4]

He worked as a journalist at The Jerusalem Post for more than a decade.⁠[5]

A review that year described the author as an Israeli journalist with a PhD in history and noted that the book was built almost entirely on newly declassified American, British and Israeli archives and private papers; its conclusion held that the refugee problem was largely “born of war, not by design, Jewish or Arab,” and in smaller part was deliberately created by military commanders and politicians on both sides.⁠[6]

After the book appeared, Israelis on the right denounced him as an “Israel hater,” while the Palestinian anthropologist Sharif Kanaana of Birzeit University wrote that his view was “more dangerous” than the previous line of Israeli propaganda because it was “more sophisticated.”⁠[7]

In 1988, during the first intifada, he was briefly jailed for refusing to serve when his unit was called up to the West Bank.⁠[3]

Looking back in 2023, he said he had then seen the first intifada as “a rebellion of stone throwers and pamphlets,” and that as a younger man today he would rally to the flag without hesitation.⁠[8]

In 1993 Clarendon Press in Oxford published his Israel’s Border Wars, 1949–1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation, and the Countdown to the Suez War.⁠[9]

He has said that after leaving the newspaper in the early 1990s he went years without an Israeli university post; in 1996, after President Ezer Weizman met him, the president of Ben-Gurion University phoned to assure him of a job.⁠[10]

He has taught Middle Eastern history at Ben-Gurion University since 1997.⁠[5]

His general history Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict was a nominee for the 1999 National Jewish Book Awards; on August 28, 2001, Vintage issued an edition extended to 2001.⁠[11]

In February 2002 he wrote in The Guardian that he had become convinced Yasser Arafat had no intention of compromising with Israel; he still considered the two-state solution right and practical but no longer believed the Palestinian side shared that view.⁠[10]

In early 2004 Ari Shavit published a long interview with him in Haaretz. In it he said he had always been a Zionist; by then he had completed The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, a revised version of the refugee study.⁠[2]

The commentator Michael Young argued that the interview showed Morris justifying the expulsion of the Palestinians in 1948; in it Morris said: “when the choice is between ethnic cleansing and genocide—the annihilation of your people—I prefer ethnic cleansing.”⁠[12]

Ilan Pappe, of the same generation of leftist revisionist historians, called him “a bigoted thinker, very narrow-minded.” Morris replied in a letter that he continued to oppose the settlements and believed a two-state solution was just and practical, but feared that the Palestinians wanted all of Palestine.⁠[13]

In 2007, as he began a new book exploring whether two states for two peoples was still viable, he said peace with the Palestinians and the wider Arab world might not be possible as radical Islamic movements that deny Israel’s right to exist gained ground.⁠[14]

In 2008 Yale UniversityYale UniversityYale University is a research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Its predecessor, the Collegiate School, received a charter in 1701. Trustees chose New Haven in 1716; the institution became Yale College in 1718 and Yale University in 1887. Yale provides undergraduate, graduate and professional education and has 14 undergraduate residential colleges. As of October 2026, its president was Maurie McInnis, who took office in July 2024. In 2026, Yale expanded aid for incoming undergraduates and celebrated its 325th anniversary.Open the full entry Press published his 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War. The publisher says the book stresses the “jihadi” character of the two-stage Arab assault and presents the refugee problem as a by-product of the disintegration of Palestinian Arab society.⁠[15]

The book received the National Jewish Book Award. He has also served as Goldman Visiting Israeli Professor in Georgetown University’s Department of Government.⁠[16]

The historian Janice J. Terry called the book a thorough and scholarly account, noting that although the author is a committed Zionist he does not flinch from criticizing Israeli objectives and policies; she also noted that because Arab state archives remain closed he relied heavily on Israeli, British and some U.S. materials.⁠[17]

The historian Paul Chamberlin considered the book an authoritative military history but questioned its final chapter’s conclusion that the Arab attack should be understood as religiously motivated, saying it needed more evidence than the book provides.⁠[18]

In 2009 Yale University Press published his 240-page One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict.⁠[19]

A review summarized the book as arguing that neither a one-state nor a two-state solution is workable, and as making a rather cursory case for a Palestinian confederation with Jordan.⁠[20]

By 2019 he was professor emeritus in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.⁠[21]

The Thirty-Year Genocide, which he co-wrote with Dror Ze’evi, was published by Harvard UniversityHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private research university in Massachusetts, established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislature in 1636 and named in 1639 for early benefactor John Harvard. Its principal campuses are in Cambridge and the Allston and Longwood neighborhoods of Boston. It includes Harvard College, graduate and professional schools, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Two governing boards share oversight. Alan M. Garber was president as of October 2026, and the endowment stood at $56.9 billion at the end of fiscal 2025.Open the full entry Press.⁠[22]

In an essay of May 17, 2019, the two wrote that after a decade of archival research they had concluded that Turkey’s Armenian, Greek and Assyrian communities were destroyed between 1894 and 1924 in a staggered campaign of genocide, noting that the official Turkish position denies any intent or policy of systematic elimination.⁠[23]

In 2022 Yale University Press published his 196-page spy biography Sidney Reilly: Master Spy.⁠[24]

His article with Benjamin Z. Kedar, “Cast thy bread”: Israeli biological warfare during the 1948 War, appeared in Middle Eastern Studies vol. 59, no. 5 (2023); drawing on declassified military files, a private letter and memoirs, it describes Israel’s bacteriological warfare campaign in the 1948 war.⁠[25]

In November 2023 he said that efforts to resolve the conflict had reached a dead end after the 2000 Camp David talks, which partly led him to stop studying it academically.⁠[8]

He joins the episode 418 Israel–Palestine debate.⁠[26]

In October 2025 he said he saw no prospect of Israeli–Palestinian peace in the coming years and that Hamas would not disarm; he also said the current Israeli government and, he feared, most Israelis saw the establishment of a Palestinian state as an existential threat.⁠[27]

The Jerusalem Post: Official website: https://www.jpost.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[5]

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev: Official website: https://www.bgu.ac.il/ (opens in a new window)⁠[21]