Lots of activity on the business side yesterday, so there was little time for posting, but I did not miss the controversial interview in Ha’aretz with Benny Morris (hat tip: Roger Simon), a formerly left-wing Israeli historian who has abandoned some of his left-liberal viewpoints, to put it mildly. After you have digested his findings of war crimes by Jews during the 1948 war for independence and his take on the moral bankruptcy of Arab society, as well as his comparison of barbarians destructing the Roman Empire from within to the relationship of the West with the rest of the world today, you know he’s essentially a realist, neither left nor right.

Trained as historian myself I always identify with detached historical comparisons and Morris definitely strikes a chord. In abandoning the left but equally criticizing those on the right, he’s not just a realist, but a bitter one at that. That bitterness comes through in the end of the interview when he throws doubt on the ability to ever achieve peace between Israelis and Palestinians. My argument has been that a peace deal could never work if it’s asymmetrical which is what it would boil down if one was signed today, so give it another ten or twenty years. By that time, according to Morris however, the Arab world (where fundamentalist takeovers of Egypt and Syria are practically guaranteed) is well equipped to destroy Israel with nuclear and biological weapons, and a fifth column of Arab Israelis is ready to rise up. There are a few weaknesses in the Morris view, notably his terrorism analogy with Europe and Africa falls flat and he completely discounts the potential for democratic development in the Arab world, Iraq is not mentioned once in the entire interview. Still this is a worthwhile read, a must-read I should say.

Update: Michael Totten is putting a name to the likely implications of what Morris foresees: total war, introducing us to a world where our current strategies against terror have failed. Not exactly stuff for your morning coffee read.