Why Palestinian Oral Histories of 'Nakba' Must Be Given Weight by Scholars

A month back I criticized Benny Morris, the Israeli military historian, for relying almost exclusively on Israeli sources for his Yale University Press history, 1948. I said that he should have looked at oral histories from Arabs who were expelled from Palestine. I said that he should have consulted the Nakba Archive, which is being compiled at Oxford, Harvard and Bir-Zeit with the help of the Ford Foundation (how's that for statusy namedropping?). At that time I emailed Diana Allan, a doctoral student at Harvard who's working on the archive, to ask her about the issue. She finally emailed me back, apologizing for the delay:

I have been living in Jal el Bahar in south Lebanon working on a project with unregistered Palestinian (Bedouin) refugees living there, and have had almost no access to email for
about 6 weeks.

In terms of the oral history question and Benny Morris -- it was the same thing with 'The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem' in which he includes adisclaimer in the intro saying that oral testimony isn't reliable and so(conveniently) he is only going to draw on Israeli gov archives. an obvious ploy to delegitimize the Palestinian narrative. Unfortunately, until recently much of the work done by Arab historians has also been centered on documents and hasn't dealt with the oral histories of these events -- Walid Khalidi's book 'All That Remains' doesn't include any testimony. Even publications that have claimed to be revisionist do not include oral testimony (like the collection of essays that Eugene Rogan and Avi Shlaim published a few years ago). Same thing
with Rashid Khalidi and so on. it is a big problem, actually.

In terms of how "trustworthy" the narratives that we recorded are, of course there are going to be distortions and gaps and so on after 60 years; it would be naive to claim otherwise. but in terms of basic facts -- ie the massacres that occurred in different villages, the role of the ALA (Arab Liberation Army), the tactics of psychological warfare that were used by the Jewish fighters, the chronology of the events - I think the interviews, are, for the most part pretty reliable. While we were recording we would also finds ways to corroborate information from a previous interviewee - and incorporate new questions based on what we'd learnt from other people, particularly in cases where we were documenting massacres that had not been mentioned in any of the published literature, as in the case of Bassa etc. [I believe Allan is referring to a massacre by the British in '36] and as you say, the interview with the late Ismail Shammout is corroborated by Israeli ources.

When I did a screening for the Palestine Film Festival in London in April I met the filmmaker Eyal
Sivan, who I guess you have probably come across, who is currently working on an archive project in Israel - interviewing Israeli perpetrators about the events of 1948, a terribly important initiative. [Weiss: Amen] He has already done about 70 interviews, I think. he also noted how many of the interviews excerpts from the Nakba archive matched the narratives -- down to the small details, like the time of day etc -- that he had recorded with Israelis. in fact, we have talked about the possibility of working on a joint project which would bring these testimonies about the events in specific villages together, so that the narratives from both sides would sit side by side. I think this would do a lot to illustrate their  "trustworthiness."

In terms of access, we are still trying to raise $ to put it all on line, so Morris probably would have found it hard (though certainly not impossible!) to get access to the materials we have recorded. should he ever want to see any of the interviews in the meantime, however, I would be MORE than happy to send him copies... you can tell him that, if you'd like.

I'd note that Allan's archive is hardly the only reservoir of Palestinian memory. It's everywhere, you just shake a stick. Morris chose not to do so. The next generation of scholars will do so. Also: imagine if anyone had used qualifiers around Jewish oral testimonies of the Holocaust? WWFD? [What Would Foxman Do?]

Comments

[Diane Mason]

Palestine Remembered has been compiling a database - link at homepage - of oral histories collected from refugees in Jordan over the last five or so years, though like the Nakba Project is short of resources to get the interviews transcribed, translated and on-line. It's quite something to be able to see the names and faces behind these testimonies.

[Ozzie Maland]

Douglas Reed was a former foreign correspondent for the _Times_ (UK) whose book, _The Controversy of Zion_, is widely attacked as being anti-Semitic propaganda. In the book he quotes an alleged _Time_ (magazine) account of a massacre of Palestinians in 1948, as follows:

... the massacre of Deir Yasin on 9 April 1948 -- Time magazines account of the latter event:

"Jewish terrorists of the Stem Gang and Irgun Zvai Leumi stormed the village of Deir Yasin and butchered everyone in sight. The corpses of 250 Arabs, mostly women and small children, were later found tossed into wells". [end excerpt]

Did Reed concoct the alleged magazine reference out of whole cloth? The question seems pertinent to the history being discussed in this thread.
--
Aloha ~~~ Ozzie Maland ~~~ San Diego

[Joachim Martillo]

I am not sure why a passage from Reed's book is relevant to a discussion of Palestinian oral histories.

Reed died before he finished it and cleaned up all the references.

To be honest, narratives from Jews are much more a problem than oral accounts from Palestinians.

Fragments by Wilkomirski and Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years by Defonseca are complete fabrications.

Misrepresentations of Holocaust history are so common among Jews that Tova Reich spends a lot of time deriding them in My Holocaust. She is married to Walter Reich, who used to head the USHMM.

[D.]

An excellent video collecting some participants' oral histories of Deir Yassin--
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=341600202419569830&ei=BVy8SISIKJDo-AG0hbzXDA&q=341600202419569830

(Today Israel has fenced off the site and is using it as a mental hospital -- creating the perfect metaphor for the Zionist program.)

[Paul Easton, Bensonhurst, Brooklyn]

I dont think its appropriate to respond to Morris as if he were capable of reason. Even for a Zionist he is round the bend. It was him who recently had an op-ed in the Times which said US had better make Iran stop its nuclear program because otherwise Israel would be forced to attack and it could lead to WW3.

Someone like that should be shunned and ignored.

[Joachim Martillo]

Jewish historiography constitutes just as much a problem as Jewish oral histories. See US Politics: The Roots of Shabbesgoysim.

[Mafish Falastin]

INTERVIEWS: 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF DEIR YASSIN MASSACRE

In retrospect, Palestinians of today admit that one of the most terrible mistakes they made back in 1948 was to over-report the details of the Deir Yassin massacre. "The goal was to mobilize Arab support for the Palestinians who were slaughtered by the Zionists but what really happened was that more and more Palestinians became scared and left their country," said Hazem Nusseibeh, a leading Palestinian figure who currently lives in Jordan. In 1948 he was among the key figures of the city of Jerusalem.

..."True, there was exchange of fire with the Jews. Prior to the attack, they used to come to the village and distribute leaflets calling for the establishment of friendly and brotherly relations with us offering a formula of 'do not hit us, we won't hit you.' Our youths confronted them and did not listen to them. Our youths used to go out to the eastern side of the village and beat up whatever Jew they saw."

...Mohammed Asaad Radwan Al Yassini, 70, who currently lives in the Old City of Jerusalem, confirmed that some of the men were dressed in women's outfits.

...Did they use speakers and what did they say?

"They called on us to surrender, to throw our weapons and to save ourselves. But we did not imagine them breaking into the village.

...Ali Yousef Jaber, Abu Yousef, is also 70 years old. He lives in Am'ari refugee camp near Ramallah. Excerpts below:

"I would like to stress on the fact that no rape incidents took place. That was part of a big lie that some of the Arabs and some of our leaders invented but were refuted by our villagers. I was among a group of people who went to Saad Eddin Al Aref to talk to him about this. He told us he wanted to frame them and attribute to them a brutal crime. I said to him: if you want to frame them, do not use Deir Yassin, or our women. Do not attribute to us something that never happened, otherwise this is infamy that our village and its people do not deserve...