Reply #1: seems the NYTImes might be trying to get people psychologically ready

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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/17/arts/17MORR.html?pagewanted=1&th

An Israeli Who's Got Everybody Outraged
By JONATHAN D. TEPPERMAN

Published: April 17, 2004

JERUSALEM ? Benny Morris is used to making enemies. When his first groundbreaking book appeared in 1988, marshaling evidence that Israel's founders had deliberately ? and often violently ? forced Arabs to flee during the war for independence, Mr. Morris was reviled and called an anti-Zionist. For years he was unable to find work as a professor in Israel; when he finally landed a job at Ben-Gurion University, named for Israel's first prime minister, Ben-Gurion's son tried to have the radical young historian fired.

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"Ethnic cleansing has a bad name, and rightly so, but in 1948 it was justified because the 650,000 Jews who lived here were under existential threat," Mr. Morris said recently as he sat in the high-ceilinged lobby of the King David Hotel here. "It was the only way to win that war."

If Ben-Gurion bore any moral responsibility for expelling the Palestinians, Mr. Morris added, it was for not having been more thorough. Having decided on transfer, he said, Israel's leaders should have resolved to "do it properly."