Benny Morris | |
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Born |
Ein HaHoresh, Israel |
8 December 1948
Residence | Israel |
Nationality | Israeli |
Alma mater |
Hebrew University of Jerusalem University of Cambridge |
Occupation | Historian |
Known for | One of Israel's "New Historians" |
Parent(s) | Ya'akov and Sadie Morris |
Benny Morris (Hebrew: בני מוריס; born 8 December 1948) is an Israeli historian. He is a professor of history in the Middle East Studies department of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in the city of Beersheba, Israel. He is a key member of the group of Israeli historians known as the "New Historians," a term Morris coined to describe himself and historians Avi Shlaim and Ilan Pappé.
Morris's work on the Arab-Israeli conflict and especially the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has won praise and criticism from both sides of the political divide. He is accused by some academics in Israel of only using Israeli and never Arab sources, creating an "unbalanced picture". Regarding himself as a Zionist, he writes, "I embarked upon the research not out of ideological commitment or political interest. I simply wanted to know what happened."
Morris was born on 8 December 1948 in kibbutz Ein HaHoresh, the son of Jewish immigrants from the United Kingdom. He was born to Ya'akov Morris, an Israeli diplomat, historian, and poet and Sadie Morris, a journalist. According to The New Yorker, Benny Morris "grew up in the heart of a left-wing pioneering atmosphere".
His parents moved to Jerusalem when Morris was a year old. In the wake of his father's diplomatic duties, the family spent four years in New York when Morris was nine, and another two years there when he was 15.