Welcome to the Quillett Podcast. I'm your host Jonathan Kay, a senior editor at

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articles and early access to Colette social events. And this week I'll be

talking to Benny Morris, one of the best known and most influential historians of Israel.

In books such as the birth of the Palestinian refugee problem, Morris challenged Israel's traditionally

heroic understanding of its own creation and its treatment of local Palestinian populations.

As a result, he has often been criticized by hawkish Zionists who disagree with and even resent his revisionist tendencies.

But as we will hear in the interview that follows, Morris is no dove when it comes to assessing

Israel's response to Hamas's October 7 terrorist attacks. In our discussion we talk

about the emotional trauma caused by Hamas's acts of slaughter in southern

Israel and the question of whether Israel's response has been excessive.

He also offers a grim analysis of Hamas's ideology, as well as the question of whether Gazan's society

can ever rid itself of the nihilistic and theocratic worldview that led to these extraordinarily horrific terrorist attacks.

Professor Morris, thank you so much for agreeing to speak with Colette.

Last time we spoke it was late

2020 and the subject of our interview and this seems like a long time ago was your

then recently co-authored book, The 30 Year Genocide, Turkey's destruction of its Christian minorities.

And as we discussed at the time, your previous, I think, 10 or 11 books, most of your work had been about Israel and its Arab neighbors.

Was there a part of you at that time which maybe felt like the relationship between

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