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‘We’ll Be Seen as Losers if We Don’t Complete the Job:’ Israeli Historian Benny Morris Addresses the War Against Hamas
Israeli troops on the ground in Gaza. Photo: IDF via Reuters
“I dislike Benjamin Netanyahu intensely; he’s a crook,” the Israeli historian Benny Morris said, when asked about the future direction of the present war triggered by the pogrom executed by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7. “But he’s right that the war should continue until Hamas is crushed, if only because around the region, we will be seen as losers if we don’t complete the job.”
That observation about Israel’s prime minister, offered during an extensive telephone interview with The Algemeiner on Thursday, underlines the near impossibility of neatly slotting Morris’ views into any particular camp. One of Israel’s leading public intellectuals, who is a Cambridge University graduate, a former professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and the author of the seminal study The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, first published in 1988, Morris expresses opinions associated with the left at one moment, and with the right in the next. Ideological partisans might regard this as a contradictory; more flexible thinkers, perhaps including Morris himself, would see this as a net positive, reflecting both the Middle East’s complexity and the futility of reducing national and political conflicts to mere slogans.
For Morris is an opponent not just of Netanyahu and the right-wing coalition gathered around him; he remains, in principle, a supporter of the two-state solution as well as a longstanding critic of Israel’s presence in the West Bank. On the other hand, he doesn’t articulate any faith in the willingness of the Palestinian factions to reach a permanent settlement with Israel, and he believes that the true villain of the piece is the Iranian regime, which this week has again been trumpeting its ability to assemble a nuclear weapon, and which continues to support terrorist organizations committed to Israel’s destruction, from the Houthi rebels in Yemen to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
“What is certain is that Iran has forged with its proxies a circle around Israel, an alliance of anti-Israeli and anti-western forces,” Morris remarked. “Above and beyond all of this is the Iranian nuclear threat, which is certainly on the minds of Israelis, and also on the minds of American leaders and generals. This is the main threat, way beyond the threat posed by Iran’s proxies.” He makes no secret of his view that Israel should neutralize Iran’s nuclear ambitions as soon as possible. “It’ll be more expensive to do it later,” he argued. “If the Iranians acquire a nuclear arsenal, the region will probably come under Iranian domination.”
Morris is a little more sanguine when it comes to Israel’s other adversaries in the region. The conservative Arab Gulf states, some of whom signed up to peace treaties with Israel through the so-called “Abraham Accords” of 2018, will continue, according to Morris, balancing their need to pay “lip service” to the Palestinian cause with the imperative of retaining the protection and goodwill of the US, still Israel’s main ally. “Without America, countries like Bahrain or Qatar risk being dominated by the Iranians,” he said.
Turkey — the focus of of Morris’ 2019 book, The Thirty Year Genocide: Turkey’s Destruction of Its Christian Minorities 1894-1924, co-authored with his fellow historian Dror Ze’evi — is similarly unlikely to escalate tensions with Israel on the military front, even as its Islamist leadership engages in a fresh round of political demonization of the Jewish state. “Turkey, like Russia, is a dictatorship with the trappings of democracy,” Morris said. “They hold elections, but these are meaningless.” He nevertheless regards Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as a shrewd operator who makes strategic calculations, despite his evident detestation of Israel. “Turkey has other axes to grind — the Kurds, northern Syria, potentially Iran, so they have had the sense to remain outside the conflict,” he said. “I think that will continue.”
Further afield, Morris doesn’t see a significant threat from US rivals China and Russia, at least not immediately. “China is not in the game at all. China is interested in expanding in the Pacific Rim,” he said. Given its military backing for Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad during that country’s torrid civil war, Russia is a more likely candidate for involvement in the Middle East, but Moscow is for the time being hampered by its ongoing aggression against Ukraine as well as the robust sanctions imposed by western powers. “The situation [for the Russians] is not as it was during the Cold War,” Morris said. “Today, they are not as involved and their interests are not as bound up.”
With the US maintaining its role as the leading outside power in the region, talk of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been revived, causing tensions between Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden’s Administration. Morris believes that a Palestinian state alongside Israel is theoretically the correct solution, but he doesn’t see a “roadmap” — the phrase much used by successive US administrations in their peacemaking efforts — for getting there.
“The problem is that the occupation is immoral and bad,” he said. “It was forced upon us, but we didn’t do enough to get out of it.” Meanwhile, in the wake of the Hamas atrocities, Israelis have become hardened. “The Israeli public is staunch in its desire to destroy Hamas and pay them back for what happened,” he said. “It’s not just a matter of revenge, it’s understanding that without that, Israel will appear weak.”
As Morris explains it, the dilemma for Israel revolves around how to withdraw from the West Bank without turning it into a Hamas stronghold. Israel has been able to weather two decades of rocket and missile attacks from Gaza, but similar salvos from Ramallah, which is just a short drive from Tel Aviv, would amount to an “existential threat,” Morris said. “In the West Bank, there is no way of assuring the benign nature of a Palestinian state,” he said. “The want all of Palestine. That’s the essence of the problem.” Additionally, Morris has little faith in international guarantees, citing Hezbollah’s refusal to move its armed forces north of Lebanon’s Litani River, as part of a broader disarmament process envisioned by UN Security Council Resolution 1701 of Aug. 2006, as an example of the difficulty of implementing compromises that are not enforced.
“The sense among Israelis is that, along with the rapes of Oct. 7, Israel itself was raped,” Morris said. “The world didn’t seem to care about that, and there was an instant rise in antisemitic abuse and anti-Israel rhetoric even before the military response.” The political context is also changing, he observed. “The further away the western world gets from the Holocaust, particularly the younger generations, they less they know and care about World War II,” he said. At the same time, “Islam contains a large antisemitic element” that stems from the bombastic accounts in the Qur’an of the battles in the seventh century between the Jewish tribes of Hijaz and the prophet Muhammad and his followers. “There’s this inherent anti-Jewish element that’s been reinforced by Israel’s existence in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries,” Morris said. “Israel is an innovation in that sense — a Jewish state projecting power at the Muslims. That was not the situation for 1400 years since the rise of Islam.”
Israel’s future moves in this environment will be largely determined by its government. Morris does not believe that elections, which are not due for another three years, will be called early, blaming that on the “combination of crooks and cowards supporting Netanyahu.”
New elections will be elusive because those Knesset members supporting Netanyahu fear the loss of their seats, Morris said. “Most liberal and left Israelis would love to see an election now, and if one was held, Netanyahu would lose large,” he stressed. “But he’s not going to resign, and his allies aren’t going to abandon him.”
Morris is an admirer of Biden, whom he regards as “an old-style real Zionist who admires and respects Israel but doesn’t like Netanyahu.” He dreads the prospect of former President Donald Trump returning to the White House following November’s critical election. “I don’t trust Trump further than I can see,” he said. “He has no morals and he doesn’t care about Israel as [Bill] Clinton and [George W.] Bush did.” Asked about Trump’s decision while in office to move the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Morris was cynical, asserting that the “embassy should be in Jerusalem, because it’s Israel’s legitimate capital. So that made sense, but it didn’t turn [Trump] into an Israel-lover.” A Trump victory in November would be “very bad for Israel,” he emphasized.
Benny Morris will feature on an online panel titled “Hamas and the Origins of Islamic Antisemitism” sponsored by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research on Monday, Feb. 26. To register for this event, please click here.
The post ‘We’ll Be Seen as Losers if We Don’t Complete the Job:’ Israeli Historian Benny Morris Addresses the War Against Hamas first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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‘Valid For All Countries Except Israel’
US passport. Photo: Pixabay.
JNS.org – There’s an unwritten rule among governments in many Muslim countries—when things go wrong at home, turn on the State of Israel.
Bangladesh, one of the poorest and most densely populated countries in Asia, provides the latest example of this tactic. Last week, the authorities in Dhaka announced that they were reintroducing what is essentially a disclaimer on the passports issued to its citizens: “Valid for all countries except Israel.” That shameful inscription was abandoned in 2021 by the government of recently ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, although it was never followed up with diplomatic outreach to Israel, much less recognition of the Jewish state’s right to a peaceful and sovereign existence.
The rationale for the move in 2021 was that Bangladeshi passports had to be brought up to date with international standards. However, the war in the Gaza Strip triggered by the Hamas pogrom in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, has apparently canceled out that imperative.
“For many years, our passports carried the ‘except Israel’ clause. But the previous government suddenly removed it,” Brig. Gen. Mohammad Nurus Salam, passports director at the Department of Immigration, told the Arab News. Somewhat disingenuously, he added: “We were used to seeing ‘except Israel’ written in our passports. I don’t know why they took it out. If you talk to people across the country, you’ll see they want that line back in their passports. There was no need to remove it.”
It’s been 25 years since I was in Bangladesh, where I spent several months as a BBC consultant assisting with the launch of the country’s first private TV news station. One of the aspects that struck me profoundly—in contrast to Salam’s claim that the people want their passports to preclude travel to Israel—was the lack of hostility towards Israel among the many Bangladeshis I met and worked with, and I have no reason to believe that this attitude has fundamentally shifted. Most Bangladeshis are consumed by their own country’s vast problems, and the distant Israeli-Palestinian conflict does not impinge in any way on the resolution of those.
When I told people that I was Jewish, had family in Israel and had spent a great deal of time there, the most common response was curiosity. For the great majority, I was the first Jew they had ever met, and they eagerly quizzed me about the Jewish religion, often noting the overlaps with Islamic practices, such as circumcision and the prohibition on consuming pork.
“What is Israel like? What are the people like?” was a conversation I engaged in on more than one occasion. I remember with great affection a journalist called Salman, a devout Muslim who invited me to his home for an iftar meal during Ramadan. Salman was convinced that there were still a couple of Jews living in Bangladesh, and he combed Dhaka trying to find them so that he could introduce me (he never succeeded because there were no Jews there, but I appreciated his efforts.) I also remember members of the Hindu community, who compose about 8% of the population, drawing positive comparisons between Bangladesh’s Indian-backed 1971 War of Independence against Muslim Pakistan and Israel’s own War of Independence in 1947-48.
To understand why Bangladesh has taken this regressive decision requires a hard look at its domestic politics. In August of last year, the government of Sheikh Hasina—the daughter of independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the dominant political figure over the past 30 years—was overthrown following a wave of protest against its well-documented corruption, discriminatory practices and judicial interference. Her downfall was accompanied by a surge of sectarian violence against Hindu homes, businesses and temples, with more than 2,000 incidents recorded over a two-week period. In the eyes of many, Hindus were associated with Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League Party, and the violence against them suggested that Islamist positions were making headway in a country that flew the banner of secular nationalism in its bid to win freedom from Pakistani rule.
The passport decision can be viewed in a similar light: Bangladesh asserting its identity as a Muslim country standing in solidarity with the Palestinians, the Islamic world’s pre-eminent cause, at the same time as breaking with the legacy of Sheikh Hasina’s rule. Yet that stance will not alleviate the fiscal misery of Bangladeshi citizens, with more than one in four people living below the poverty line. Nor will it address the chronic infrastructure problems that plague the country’s foreign trade, or tackle the bureaucracy and red tape that crushes entrepreneurship and innovation.
In short, supporting the Palestinians brings no material benefits for ordinary Bangladeshis, who would doubtless gain from a genuine relationship with Israel that would introduce, among many other advantages, more efficient water technology to counter the presence of arsenic and the lack of sanitation that often renders Bangladesh’s large reserves of water unusable and undrinkable.
Even so, ideology and Muslim identity may not be the only explanations for the Bangladeshi decision. It can also be seen as a gesture towards Qatar, the wealthiest country in the Islamic world, which has artfully cultivated trade and diplomatic ties with a slew of less developed countries, Bangladesh included. Last year, Qatar’s ruler, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, paid a two-day state to Bangladesh that showcased Doha’s contributions in the form of bilateral trade worth $3 billion as well as millions of dollars in Qatari grants for school and higher education. Such largesse on the part of the Qataris is a critical means of ensuring that governments in Bangladesh and other Muslim nations stay away from the Abraham Accords countries that have made a peace of sorts with Israel.
Bangladesh is not, of course, the only country to prevent its citizens from traveling to Israel or denying entry to Israeli passport holders. A few days after the Bangladeshi decision, the Maldives—another Muslim country that enjoys close relations with Qatar—announced that Israelis would no longer be permitted to visit. None of these bans is likely to be lifted as long as Israel is at war with the Hamas terrorists in Gaza, Iran’s regional proxies and the Iranian regime itself.
The ripple effects of that war—antisemitic violence in Western countries, cold-shouldering of Israel by countries without a direct stake in the conflict—will continue to be felt. None of that changes the plain fact that this remains a war that Israel must win.
The post ‘Valid For All Countries Except Israel’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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US, Iran Set for Second Round of Nuclear Talks as Iranian FM Warns Against ‘Unrealistic Demands’
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi attends a press conference following a meeting with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow, Russia, April 18, 2025. Tatyana Makeyeva/Pool via REUTERS
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said a deal could be reached during Saturday’s second round of nuclear negotiations in Rome if the United States does not make “unrealistic demands.”
In a joint press conference with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, Araghchi said that Washington showed “partial seriousness” during the first round of nuclear talks in Oman last week.
The Iranian top diplomat traveled to Moscow on Thursday to deliver a letter from Iran’s so-called Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, briefing Russian President Vladimir Putin on the ongoing nuclear talks with the White House.
“Their willingness to enter serious negotiations that address the nuclear issue only, without entering into other issues, can lead us towards constructive negotiations,” Araghchi said during the joint press conference in Moscow on Friday.
“As I have said before, if unreasonable, unrealistic and impractical demands are not made, an agreement is possible,” he continued.
Tehran has previously rejected halting its uranium enrichment program, insisting that the country’s right to enrich uranium is non-negotiable, despite Washington’s threats of military actions, additional sanctions, and tariffs if an agreement is not reached to curb the country’s nuclear activities.
On Tuesday, US special envoy Steve Witkoff said that any deal with Iran must require the complete dismantling of its “nuclear enrichment and weaponization program” — reversing his earlier comments, in which he indicated that the White House would allow Tehran to enrich uranium to a 3.67 percent threshold for a “civil nuclear program.”
During the press conference, Araghchi also announced he would attend Saturday’s talks in Rome, explaining that negotiations with the US are being held indirectly due to recent threats and US President Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran — which aims to cut the country’s crude exports to zero and prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
“Indirect negotiations are not something weird and an agreement is within reach through this method,” Araghchi said.
He also indicated that Iran expects Russia to play a role in any potential agreement with Washington, noting that the two countries have held frequent and close consultations on Tehran’s nuclear program in the past.
“We hope Russia will play a role in a possible deal,” Araghchi said during the press conference.
As an increasingly close ally of Iran, Moscow could play a crucial role in Tehran’s nuclear negotiations with the West, leveraging its position as a veto-wielding member of the UN Security Council and a signatory to a now-defunct 2015 nuclear deal that imposed limits on the Iranian nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.
Known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Trump withdrew the US from the deal in 2018.
Since then, even though Tehran has denied wanting to develop a nuclear weapon, the UN’s nuclear watchdog – the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – has warned that Iran has “dramatically” accelerated uranium enrichment to up to 60 percent purity, close to the roughly 90 percent weapons-grade level and enough to build six nuclear bombs.
During the press conference on Friday, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov said that “Russia is ready to facilitate the negotiation process between Iran and the US regarding Tehran’s nuclear program.”
Moscow has previously said that any military strike against Iran would be “illegal and unacceptable.”
Russia’s diplomatic role in the ongoing negotiations could also be important, as the country has recently solidified its growing partnership with the Iranian regime.
On Wednesday, Russia’s upper house of parliament ratified a 20-year strategic partnership agreement with Iran, strengthening military ties between the two countries.
Despite Tehran’s claims that its nuclear program is solely for civilian purposes rather than weapon development, Western states have said there is no “credible civilian justification” for the country’s recent nuclear activity, arguing it “gives Iran the capability to rapidly produce sufficient fissile material for multiple nuclear weapons.”
The post US, Iran Set for Second Round of Nuclear Talks as Iranian FM Warns Against ‘Unrealistic Demands’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Reps. Dan Goldman and Chris Smith Issue Statement Condemning Shapiro Arson Attack As ‘Textbook Antisemitism’
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) holds a rally in support of US Vice President Kamala Harris’ Democratic presidential election campaign in Ambler, Pennsylvania, US, July 29, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Rachel Wisniewski
Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) and Rep. Chris Smith (D-NJ) issued a statement condemning the recent arson attack against Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) as a form of “textbook antisemitism.”
“Governor Shapiro is the Governor of Pennsylvania and has nothing to do with Israel’s foreign policy, yet he was targeted as an American Jew by a radicalized extremist who blames the Governor for Israel’s actions. That is textbook antisemitism,” the statement read.
Shapiro’s residence, the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion, was set ablaze on Sunday morning, hours after the governor hosted a gathering to celebrate the first night of the Jewish holiday of Passover. Shapiro said that he, his wife, and his children were awakened by state troopers knocking on their door at 2 am. The governor and his family immediately evacuated the premises and were unscathed.
Goldman and Smith added that the arson attack against Shapiro serves as “a bitter reminder that persecution of Jews continues.” The duo claimed that they “strongly condemn this antisemitic violence” and called on the suspect to “be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”
Pennsylvania State Police said that the suspect, Cody Balmer set fire to Shapiro’s residence over the alleged ongoing “injustices to the people of Palestine” and Shapiro’s Jewish faith.
According to an arrest warrant, Balmer called 911 prior to the attack and told emergency operators that he “will not take part in [Shapiro’s] plans for what he wants to do to the Palestinian people,” and demanded that the governor “stop having my friends killed.”
The suspect continued, telling operators, “Our people have been put through too much by that monster.”
Balmer later revealed to police that he planned to beat Shapiro with a sledgehammer if he encountered him after gaining access into his residence, according to authorities.
He was subsequently charged with eight crimes by authorities, including serious felonies such as attempted homicide, terrorism, and arson. The suspect faces potentially 100 years in jail. He has been denied bail.
Shapiro, a practicing Jew, has positioned himself as a staunch supporter of Israel. In the days following Hamas’s brutal slaughter of roughly 1,200 people across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Shapiro issued statements condemning the Palestinian terrorist group and gave a speech at a local synagogue. The governor also ordered the US and Pennsylvania Commonwealth flags to fly at half-mast outside the state capitol to honor the victims.
Shapiro’s strident support of the Jewish state in the wake of Oct. 7 also incensed many pro-Palestinian activists, resulting in the governor being dubbed “Genocide Josh” by far-left demonstrators.
US Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (NY) chimed in on the arson attack Thursday, urging the Justice Department to launch a federal investigation, claiming that the incident could be motivated by antisemitism.
Schumer argued that the arson attack targeting Shapiro, who is Jewish, left the Pennsylvania governor’s family in “anguish” and warned that it could serve as an example of “rising antisemitic violence” within the United States. He stressed that a federal investigation and hate crime charges may be necessary to uphold the “fundamental values of religious freedom and public safety.”
Thus far, Shapiro has refused to blame the attack on antisemitism, despite the suspect’s alleged comments repudiating the governor over his support for Israel. The governor has stressed the importance of allowing prosecutors to determine whether the attack constitutes a hate crime.
The post Reps. Dan Goldman and Chris Smith Issue Statement Condemning Shapiro Arson Attack As ‘Textbook Antisemitism’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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