Margaret MacMillan, The Uses and Abuses of History (2008), p. 124
“

Historians who have examined Israeli history, as they would any other, trying to disentangle myth from fact and challenging accepted wisdom, have similarly found themselves in a minefield. The “new history” by historians such as Avi Shlaim and Benny Morris is, said Shabtai Teveth, a journalist and biographer of Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, “a farrago of distortions, omissions, tendentious readings, and outright falsifications.” Israel, as we shall see, is by no means the only society to have its history wars, but because so much is at stake there, from the very identity of the nation to its right to exist on its land, the conflict can get ferocious.

— Margaret MacMillan

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Historians who have examined Israeli history, as they would any other, trying to disentangle myth from fact and challenging accepted wisdom, have similarly found themselves in a minefield. The “new history” by historians such as Avi Shlaim and Benny Morris is, said Shabtai Teveth, a journalist and biographer of Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, “a farrago of distortions, omissions, tendentious readings, and outright falsifications.” Israel, as we shall see, is by no means the only society to have its history wars, but because so much is at stake there, from the very identity of the nation to its right to exist on its land, the conflict can get ferocious." in the context of "Margaret MacMillan, The Uses and Abuses of History (2008), p. 124" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

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Source: Wikiquote: "Benny Morris" (Quotes about Benny Morris) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Benny Morris

About Benny Morris

Benny Morris (בני מוריס; born 8 December 1948) is an Israeli historian and former professor of history in the Middle East Studies department of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in the city of Beersheba, Israel.