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I came across Benny Morris recently. He's an Israeli historian who exploded the myth that the Arabs left their homes in Palestine voluntarily in 1948 and the myth that the Arab monarchies asked them to do so.
In his book just published called "The Thirty Year Genocide" he and Dror Ze'evi look at the reasons for the Armenian genocide in 1895 and 1915 and the expulsion of the Anatolian Greeks in 1923. With both genocides we have little evidence about the proximate reasons for them or how long planned they were.
The authors are careful not to offend readers by suggesting that Islam is warlike (the word Sandy Arbuthnot uses, in Greenmantle, talking about Islam to Richard Hannay). He will offend Jews and Turks, in any case, by comparing the genocides. What is obvious from the Armenian genocide and the Jewish one is that "homo lupus est homini" and that ethnic mosaics lead to massacres, in an era where authority derives not from raw power but from rule by the demos (which demos?) and the principle of national self determination. So it will be again, unless we take very great care indeed.
In his book just published called "The Thirty Year Genocide" he and Dror Ze'evi look at the reasons for the Armenian genocide in 1895 and 1915 and the expulsion of the Anatolian Greeks in 1923. With both genocides we have little evidence about the proximate reasons for them or how long planned they were.
The authors are careful not to offend readers by suggesting that Islam is warlike (the word Sandy Arbuthnot uses, in Greenmantle, talking about Islam to Richard Hannay). He will offend Jews and Turks, in any case, by comparing the genocides. What is obvious from the Armenian genocide and the Jewish one is that "homo lupus est homini" and that ethnic mosaics lead to massacres, in an era where authority derives not from raw power but from rule by the demos (which demos?) and the principle of national self determination. So it will be again, unless we take very great care indeed.
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