Hanna Geshelin's comments deserve a full response and I ask the list's
indulgence for the length of mine.
She is correct, of course, about selecting and rejecting materials for
archives. But in my experience this is not done with any ax to grind,
rather it is a matter of choosing items that would seem to have some
reasonable importance for future research, even if they are not in
keeping with one's personal p.o.v. At least that's how a true professional
would go about the task. She seems to be saying that official acquisitions
policies always, or at least usually, reflect the opinions of those who
are making them. There is truth in this, but I think Hanna moves past that
truth, and more than a little. The archivists I know all prefer to keep
everything, simply because they are so hard pressed to determine what
scrap of paper might have relevence 200 years from now, but at the moment
looks entirely dispensable.
Segev gives many instances where documents he found in the official
Israel State Archives or the Central Zionist Archives were embarassing
(to say the least) to the 'party line'. These were kept, I believe, not
because all of the archivists working under the national archivist, or
chief librarian of the Hebrew University were against the idea of a
Jewish state, but because they were part of the treasured historical
record. After all, if what she suggests were true, then very important
documents and materials that illustrate the opposite p.o.v. would *not*
have been kept at all, or at least very minimally. And this is not the
experience of Segev, Benvenisti, or so-called post-Zionist historians
such as Ilan Pappe or Benny Morris. Morris, even though he has changed
his mind about many if not most aspects of current Palestinian-Israeli
relations, has certainly NOT revoked all he has documented and written
about Israel's past.
If Andrea Rapp (who seems to have branched out into a different line of
discourse) has information or evidence to the contrary, then I for one
would certainly like to be made aware of the details!
I've read Buber's writings on Zionism and the establishment of a Jewish
state ("On Zion: the History of an Idea"; with a new forward by Nahum N.
Glazer. London: East and West Library, 1973) and I did not find that he
denegrated the s'fardim in any way. Nor have I read anything by Yehuda
Magnes in that vein. Both of these men were certainly involved in the
establishment of the Hebrew University, and yes, they weren't in favour
of a *Jewish* state separated from the indiginous Arab people; they urged
a unified state. They and their followers were a relatively tiny minority
in the the perspective of history, and the historical record as preserved
in the various archival collections in israel and elsewhere demonstrate
that precisely. No selection policies seem to have distorted it.
Hanna's point about researchers selecting only those materials that
support their biases and theories a priori is well taken. It certainly
does happen. That's why academic discourse in an open environment is so
very important. I gave Hanna the example in an earlier communication of
ours about how Ben Gurion and the Labour party people slanted the story of
the Deir Yassin "massacre" to help force the Irgun and Lekhi into the
Hagana command structure. Now if one were in Israel at that time, but not
actually involved in the action at Deir Yassin, how would one know what
actually happened? Perhaps that would have depended on which political
group you belonged to (if you did belong) and which newspaper you read.
But the recent research into newly opened archives as well as the various
news accounts, etc. have shown that there was some significant Hagana
involvement.
Sometimes when research is published a few of those who were involved in
an event are still alive and able to come forward and verify the newly
revealed "truth". This happened when the story surfaced a few years ago
about the 3 Arab villages in the Latrun area that had been cleared of
their remaining inhabitants (all elderly and women and children) by the
IDF in the 1967 war, and forced to march into Jordan. When members of the
IDF who were involved in the action came forward and verified that this
"ethnic cleansing" had indeed taken place, Rabin publically admitted it
(he had given the command). Sometimes the information is strongly denied -
this happened recently when a young PhD student working under Ilan Pappe
determined that another massacre similar to Deir Yassin had taken place.
The veterans who had been implicated by his research protested strongly
and took legal action, and the student backed down.
The problem, as I see it, with Hanna's interesting point about the books
she read in connection with her storytelling, is that these books were all
written and published *before* the relevant archives were opened up to
researchers. But the method she used, if I can put it that way, is the one
to use in trying to discern the truth. As I said before,
