WHY HAS GENOCIDE ADVOCATE BENNY MORRIS BEEN INVITIED TO SPEAK ON OUR CAMPUS ON MARCH 4TH?
"There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing.”
“Even the great American democracy could not have been created without the annihilation of the Indians. There are cases in which the overall, final good justifies harsh and cruel acts that are committed in the course of history.”
“The Arab world as it is today is barbarian. [...]The phenomenon of the mass Muslim penetration into the West and their settlement there is creating a dangerous internal threat.”
Benny Morris is a racist, Zionist, and Islamophobic advocate of ethnic cleansing and genocide. He is presented as one of the Israeli New Historians critical of the Israeli state narrative because he recognizes the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people occurred. However, he is denounced by other New Historians for publicly wishing the ethnic cleansing had succeeded in full:
“If [David Ben-Gurion] was already engaged in expulsion, maybe he should have done a complete job. [...] If Ben-Gurion had carried out a large expulsion and cleansed the whole country [...] he would have stabilized the State of Israel for generations.”
This position comes from profound dehumanisation of Palestinians, about whom Morris advises:
"Something like a cage has to be built for them. I know that sounds terrible. It is really cruel. But there is no choice. There is a wild animal that has to be locked up one way or another".
Benny Morris further stated there are circumstances in which
“acts of expulsion are entirely reasonable. They may even be essential. [...] The Israeli Arabs are a time bomb. Their slide into complete Palestinization has made them an emissary of the enemy that is among us. They are a potential fifth column. In both demographic and security terms they are liable to undermine the state.”.
His racism against Palestinians extends more generally to Arabs and Muslims, whom he views through the lens of colonialism and Great Replacement theory that undergirds much white supremacist terrorism:
“The Arab world as it is today is barbarian. [...] The phenomenon of the mass Muslim penetration into the West and their settlement there is creating a dangerous internal threat.”
Benny Morris never retracted any of these statements, and repeatedly reaffirmed his views (see, e.g., in Fathom, 2015):
“in the interview with Ari Shavit, in Haaretz in 2004, I should have said some things in a more temperate way. Not that I have a problem with what I said, but there were one or two phrases which provided ammunition to hostile critics. But I don’t think I have changed anything I have ever written. I would take nothing back regarding my views about 1948 or the conflict”.
Benny Morris neither regrets nor retracts his hate speech, which targets people based on the protected characteristics of racial and religious background. How can the LSE Law School justify his invitation and his presentation as a credible figure?
WHY SHOULD HE NOT SPEAK AT LSE?
Morris’ rhetoric is particularly dangerous at a time of rising anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, Islamophobic, racist and xenophobic violence. The danger of such speech is part of the reason the ICJ is investigating the words of military and political leaders, but also media and public figures, as inciting genocide.
In the UK, the counter-terrorism policy “Prevent” – found institutionally racist and Islamophobic (and proven to have a chilling effect on human rights and free speech) – requires staff to flag students “susceptible to radicalisation” based on arbitrary, innocent things like “intense interests [and] the drive to collect facts and figures about a topic” (Amnesty, 2023). The vast majority of these denunciations are determined to be unfounded and result in no further action by police, but they mar peoples’ records in perpetuity.
In this context, it is not only irresponsible but dangerous for a university to host someone like Morris who claims that the pro-ceasefire protests, which many in the LSE community have attended, are “pro-Hamas demonstrations” (Quillette, 2023), essentially accusing millions of people, including our students and staff, of supporting a proscribed organisation. Not to mention the wider harm of conflating all Palestinians with “terrorists”, or claiming, again, that “the phenomenon of mass Muslim penetration into the West and their settlement there is creating a dangerous internal threat.”
Presenting Morris and his speech as academic or even acceptable normalises violent rhetoric that empowers and potentially radicalises those who hold hateful and violent views about Palestinians, Muslims and Arabs. Hate speech is not a right. Being invited to a university and being presented as an expert is not a right.
Members of the LSE community have lost friends, family, homes, and livelihoods in this most recent wave of genocidal Israeli violence, and/or in the past 75 years of the protracted ethnic cleansing of the Nakba. How many Palestinians have to die before the LSE stops investing in the weapons that slaughter them and giving those who celebrate the carnage a microphone?
PRECEDENTS
In 2010, Cambridge’s Israeli Society disinvited Benny Morris on the grounds that he was “a racist”. In 2011, LSE failed to follow suit. Students silently protested his talk, and some walked beside him to raise their concerns. The only video of the incident (15:36 of this youtube video) shows students calmly informing others of Morris’ racism, challenging him on his statements, and letting him walk unimpeded into the New Academic Building of the LSE. In response, Morris took to the media to demonise these members of the LSE community as “a small mob [...]of some dozen Muslims, Arabs and their supporters [… ]surrounded me and, walking alongside me for several hundred yards... raucously harangued and bated me…Several spoke in broken, obviously newly acquired, English. Violence was thick in the air though none was actually used”, then claiming that this proves“uncurbed, Muslim intimidation [...] is palpable and palpably affecting the British Christian majority among whom they live, indeed, cowing them into silence”.
LSE’S DUTIES
The LSE has a duty of care to students and staff – a requirement to preserve physical, mental and emotional wellbeing. It is within the School’s legal duty and remit to cancel this event, as enshrined in the School’s own policies, in particular its Discrimination, Harassment and Bullying Policy (see especially sections 1.3; 2.1; 2.3; 3.1; 3.2). The School explains that this Policy exists alongside its Code of Practice on Free Speech, which expressly gives the School the right to cancel an event (see point 6.12). The Policy also makes clear that the School can take preventative action when members of the community have been harmed before; it also affirms (1.3) that the School is “dedicated to focusing on initiatives that will work to prevent such unacceptable behaviour arising”. Morris’ racist demonisation of LSE students in 2011 and hate speech about Palestinians, Muslims, and Arabs in general clearly oblige the School to take such preventative measures.
Under the Equality Act 2010, the LSE also has a legal duty to protect students and staff from discriminatory treatment on the basis of protected characteristics such as religion/belief or race. This includes protection from the affliction of emotional distress and protection from harassment (defined as unwanted behaviour which violates a person's dignity or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for the person on the basis of a protected characteristic). Yet that is precisely what staff and students are saying this event represents for them.
The LSE has already failed on both of these duties of care. By letting this event pass through “risk spotting” and other steps of formal approval, the LSE exposes students and staff to Morris’ violent speech, at a time of a genocide and heightened state harassment based on precisely this rhetoric. It further forces students and staff to explain endlessly to management why this is verbally abusive speech, why it is harmful, and why they should be considered and treated as fully human, like everyone else.
We therefore call on the LSE, LSE Law School specifically, and David Kershaw as the Dean of the Law school and Chair of this event, to revoke Benny Morris’ invitation.
If you agree that inviting Morris to our campus and legitimising his rhetoric is a shameful act of harm towards our community, please sign this letter below.
