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The New York Times Repeats Its Error regarding Ben-Gurion's Position on Giving Up Territories

(Sandbox) Martin Kramer - Max Fisher of the New York Times has taken to Twitter to defend his claim that David Ben-Gurion "emerged from retirement in July 1967 to warn Israelis they had sown the seeds of self-destruction" if Israel did not give up the territories it had conquered in the Six-Day War. Fisher sourced this story to a recollection by the late Arthur Hertzberg, writing in the New York Review of Books in 1987, who claimed to have heard the grim prophecy during an encounter between Ben-Gurion and American Conservative rabbis at Beit Berl in July 1967. I'd grown suspicious of this story, so I tracked down the transcript of Ben-Gurion's remarks in his archives. I found no evidence of his having said anything of the sort. I published my findings back in April 2018, so imagine my surprise when Fisher repeated the fable on the front page of the Times on July 23. I've uploaded the transcript of Ben-Gurion's meeting here, dated July 12, 1967. The transcript doesn't include even a hint that Ben-Gurion made the dramatic renunciation of territorial acquisition. Moreover, in Ben-Gurion's diary of July 12, his own summary of his remarks includes nothing whatsoever on territorial concessions. I've uploaded it here. Nor is there any corroboration in the Mapai party newspaper Davar of July 14. It summarized Ben-Gurion's remarks and made no attribution to Ben-Gurion of any territorial position, except this quote about Jerusalem: "We will not return Jerusalem - and no force in the world can take it from us." In fact, Ben-Gurion issued a press release immediately after the war that appeared in almost all the Hebrew newspapers on June 19, in which he said: "We will propose to the inhabitants of the West Bank to choose representatives with whom we will conduct negotiations on a West Bank autonomy (excluding Jerusalem and its environs), which will be tied to Israel in an economic alliance....A Jewish army will be stationed on the western bank of the Jordan river to protect the independence of the autonomous West Bank." The writer teaches Middle Eastern history at Shalem College in Jerusalem.
2018-08-07 00:00:00
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