Short answer: Yes. As of August 2026, Benny Morris, the Israeli historian best known for his archival work on the 1948 war, describes himself as a lifelong Zionist and has consistently backed Israel's wars against Hamas and Iran, including publicly rejecting the "genocide" label for the Gaza war. He is a sharp critic of specific Israeli policies, chiefly the West Bank occupation, settlements, and Prime Minister Netanyahu personally, but that criticism comes from inside a pro-Israel, Zionist framework, not from opposition to Israel's existence.
What Benny Morris has actually said and done
1967-1969: Morris served as an infantryman in the IDF Paratroopers Brigade, seeing combat at the tail end of the Six-Day War and through the War of Attrition, and was wounded by Egyptian shellfire in 1969, according to standard biographical accounts collected on Wikipedia.
1988: During the First Intifada, Morris refused reserve duty in Nablus and served 19 days in a military prison for the refusal, a protest against a specific occupation policy rather than a rejection of Israel itself, per the same biographical summary on Wikipedia.
August 2023: Morris signed a public letter, alongside roughly 700 to 900 other Israeli academics and artists, that used the word "apartheid" for the first time to describe Israel's rule in the West Bank. He said the Netanyahu government's actions had made him "far more critical" than before, and later clarified the label was aimed at the occupation, not at Israel as a state, as reported by Mondoweiss and The Jewish Independent.
Late October 2023: On a Quillette podcast discussing the October 7 Hamas attack in historical context, Morris said he "certainly didn't imagine what happened would happen" and that the attack would define Netanyahu's legacy, according to Quillette.
Mid-February 2024: Morris said Israel "will be seen as losers" in the region if it does not complete the destruction of Hamas, backing continuation of the war even as he called Netanyahu personally "a crook." He said the Israeli public was "staunch in its desire to destroy Hamas" after October 7, per the Algemeiner.
Mid-2024: Morris said Israel "should have taken Rafah at the start" of the Gaza campaign, arguing for a harder, faster military approach against Hamas rather than a gradual one, in an interview published by 18Forty.
Around June 20, 2025: In an interview originally published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Morris said the Iranian nuclear program is "Netanyahu's obsession, and that of many Israelis, myself included," backing continued and intensified Israeli strikes on Iranian infrastructure. In the same interview, he explicitly rejected the charge that Israel's Gaza campaign constitutes genocide, arguing "a genocide must be organized by the state, systematic, and targeted," and that Israel's aim was not to kill Gaza's 2.3 million residents despite the heavy destruction. Both statements were reported by K. Jews, Europe, 21st Century.
Who Benny Morris is
Benny Morris was born on December 8, 1948, in Ein HaHoresh, Israel, and is one of the country's most prominent historians. He is a member of the "New Historians," a group that used newly declassified Israeli state archives in the 1980s to challenge parts of Israel's founding narrative, particularly around the displacement of Palestinian Arabs in 1948. He worked as a Jerusalem Post journalist from 1978 to 1990 and taught Middle East history at Ben-Gurion University from 1997 to 2017, later serving as a visiting professor at Georgetown from 2015 to 2018.
Unlike fellow New Historians Ilan Pappe and Avi Shlaim, who broke sharply with Zionism, Morris has repeatedly said he was always a Zionist and objects to being labeled "post-Zionist." His own account of his arc is a move rightward after the collapse of the Oslo peace process and the Second Intifada in the early 2000s: he grew more skeptical of Palestinian intentions even as his archival research, which documented instances of Israeli expulsions and atrocities in 1948, remained unchanged. He supports a two-state solution in principle but is openly pessimistic that either side is currently ready for one.
He has been sharply critical of specific Israeli policies, most notably settlements and the West Bank occupation, and of Netanyahu personally. But on the core question of the Israel-Hamas war since October 7, 2023, and the confrontation with Iran, his public statements have consistently backed Israel's military campaigns, and he has explicitly pushed back on accusations that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. There is no record of Morris expressing anti-Israel positions, joining a boycott of Israel, or renouncing his Jewish or Zionist identity. He lives in Israel and continues to write about the current war on his own Substack, "Benny Morris's Corner."
The bottom line
Benny Morris supports Israel. He is a lifelong self-identified Zionist who has backed Israel's wars against Hamas and Iran since October 7, 2023, and has explicitly rejected the "genocide" framing of the Gaza campaign, while remaining a sharp internal critic of specific policies like the West Bank occupation and settlements, and of Netanyahu. His criticism is the criticism of an engaged Israeli citizen and historian, not opposition to Israel's existence.
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Last updated August 2026. We update these profiles as the record changes.
