The University of Leipzig said it had planned the lecture by Prof. Benny Morris as a critical discussion but had to cancel it over students’ opposition and security concerns
The University of Leipzig in Germany canceled a planned lecture by Israeli historian Professor Benny Morris following student protests. In a statement released on Friday, the university explained that students objected to Morris’s planned appearance because of comments in recent interviews that they described as offensive and racist.
The lecture, titled “The 1948 War and Jihad,” was set to take place next week at the Faculty of Theology as part of a series on antisemitism. University officials said the event had been planned as an opportunity for a critical discussion with Morris. However, the school ultimately canceled following student complaints and what it called security concerns.
The statement explaining why the event had been scheduled and later canceled was signed by a German sociologist and Yemima Hadad, an Israeli scholar specializing in Jewish thought. They voiced objection to a “double standard” against Israeli scholars who are “excluded from events,” while other academics, including those affiliated with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, are “granted unrestricted access to the university.” Hadad has yet to respond to a request for comment.
Students opposing the lecture accused Morris of being “a person who justifies the expulsion, killing and rape of hundreds of thousands of people.” They cited statements from Morris’ past interviews with various media outlets, including a 2004 interview with Haaretz in which he said that “in certain conditions, expulsion is not a war crime… When the choice is between destroying or being destroyed, it’s better to destroy… when the choice is between ethnic cleansing and genocide – the annihilation of your people – I prefer ethnic cleansing.”
Morris discussed the Palestinians during the interview, saying, “Something like a cage has to be built for them. I know that sounds terrible. It is really cruel. But there’s no choice. There is a wild animal there that has to be locked up in one way or another.”
Speaking with Haaretz, Morris said the cancellation of the lecture was “disgraceful, especially since it resulted from fear of potential violence by students. It is sheer cowardice and appeasement.”
Morris said the statements used to attack him “were made in an interview published two decades ago, during the second intifada, when terrorists were bombing buses and restaurants in Israel almost daily.”
“The word ‘cage’ that I used was indeed inappropriate, but my intention was correct – the need to place the Arab population in the West Bank and Gaza behind fences so they could not enter and explode in Israeli cities,” he continued. “Israel eventually did so, and it ended the phenomenon of mass killings by suicide bombers. Perhaps today, the word ‘cage’ might very well be fitting for the Hamas murderers and their enthusiastic supporters.”
Morris added that he does not know what the protesters were basing their claim on when they said he supported “the killing and rape of hundreds of thousands of people.” He called it “nonsense and a vile fabrication.”
Morris, 75, is an emeritus professor of history at Ben-Gurion University. He is well known for his groundbreaking research on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In an opinion piece published in Haaretz last month, Morris called on Israel to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Referring to crime in Israel’s Arab community in a 2019 interview with Haaretz, Morris said it was the community’s “nature.” In that interview, he added that it would have been better for both sides if “the War of Independence had ended with an absolute separation of populations.” He also said that “Israeli Arabs have rights here that are far beyond what the citizens of the Arab states possess, but they automatically get swept up in anti-Zionist propaganda led by [Yasser] Arafat in the past or by Hamas today.”
At the beginning of his career, in the late 1980s, Morris was condemned by the right as a “leftist” and “traitor” when his research revealed that, contrary to Israel’s official stance at the time, many Palestinians did not leave their homes voluntarily during Israel’s War of Independence but were expelled, with some murdered and raped by Israeli soldiers.
In recent decades, especially after the second intifada, Morris was relabeled as a right-winger and supporter of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by left-wing circles, following a political shift. The shift saw him placing the primary blame for the conflict on the Palestinians.
“There will not be a territorial compromise [and] there will not be peace on the basis of the country’s division, mainly because the Palestinians cling to their desire to have control of the whole Land of Israel and to eradicate Zionism,” he told Haaretz in 2019.