Wednesday, November 1, 2017

The Alternative History of Israel and Zionism ....The Ethnic Cleansing of PalestineSep 1, 2007 by Ilan Pappe Paperback (One World Publications) ;The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied TerritoriesNov 8, 2016 by Ilan Pappe Hardcover (OneWorld Publications) ;Ten Myths About Israel Paperback – May 2, 2017 by Ilan Pappe (Verso) ;A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples Paperback – September 21, 2006 by Ilan Pappe (Cambridge University Press);The Idea of Israel: A History of Power and Knowledge Paperback – January 5, 2016 by Ilan Pappe (Verso)



As a teenager growing up in an unrepentant  Revisionist Zionist  family ( my grandfater was one of the founders of Betar in South Africa) ,   my reading was guided by my late Father and often included books that were contrary  to his beliefs and point of view. When making the recommendations he always added , "Know the source material of your enemies  better than they do" .  For this reason I recommend that all of Ilan Pappe's books be read.They are can be obtained from Amazon .

Former Israeli academic , professor of History at the Exeter University Center for Palestine Studies is currently on a world tour promoting his new book Ten Myths About Israel. Pappe, a long standing promoter of the boycott of Israeli Universities, gave a lecture on "ethnic cleansing of Palestine" at Tel Aviv University on May 8, 2017. He was invited by the Arab student association to commemorate the Nakba. There was no uproar by the boycott community about him speaking in an Israeli university.  His tour includes Seattle, Washington DCBrazilBuenos Aires, Cornwall, and Wales

Pappe is a controversial historian. To recall, IAM reported on an attempt by the NGO CAMERA requesting Exeter University to inquire into Pappe's falsification of a quote by David Ben Gurion, Exeter University refused to act.

Pappe himself admitted his pro-Palestinian bias in the introduction to his book A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples, "My bias is apparent despite the desire of my peers that I stick to facts and the 'truth' when reconstructing past realities. I view any such construction as vain and presumptuous. This book is written by one who admits compassion for the colonized not the colonizer; who sympathizes with the occupied not the occupiers; and sides with the workers not the bosses. He feels for women in distress, and has little admiration for men in command. He cannot remain indifferent towards mistreated children, or refrain from condemning their elders. In short, mine is a subjective approach, often but not always standing for the defeated over the victorious. At most historical junctures of this history, the Palestinians were in the inferior position, and the Zionists and later the Israelis had the upper hand."

Benny Morris, his former colleague at the New Historians fraternity described Pappe's methodology, "Pappe regarded history through the prism of contemporary politics and consciously wrote history with an eye to serving political ends." Morris added, "Unfortunately, much of what Pappe tries to sell his readers is complete fabrication... This book is awash with errors of a quantity and a quality that are not found in serious historiography. And, in Pappe’s case, it is not just a matter of sloppiness or indolence in checking facts; the problem goes deeper. It can almost be called a deliberate system of error. The multiplicity of mistakes on each page is a product of both Pappe’s historical methodology and his political proclivities."

Morris also noted "For those enamored with subjectivity and in thrall to historical relativism, a fact is not a fact and accuracy is unattainable. Why grope for the truth? Narrativity is all." To provide evidence to Pappe's sloppiness Morris lists numerous errors. Pappe was wrong on the founding date of the Stern Gang and the Palmach; wrong on the dates of the Palmach fighting against the British; wrong on the date Ben-Gurion was chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive; wrong on the date of establishment of the Arab Higher Committee; wrong the date the Arab Legion withdrew from Palestine along with the British; wrong on the voting results of the UN partition proposal; wrong to think the Jewish forces were better equipped than the Arab armies; wrong on the date of the first truce; wrong on the date of battles; wrong on the date the Grand Mufti fled Palestine; wrong on the date of the founding of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; wrong on the date Tel Aviv was founded; wrong on who established the first Zionist settlements in Palestine; wrong to suggest that the Israeli Foreign Office translated to Hebrew the U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 implying it did not have to withdraw from all the territories occupied in the Six Day War; wrong on the number of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon in 1979 and 1982; wrong on the date of the Black September in Jordan; wrong on the date of the first Israeli settlements in the West Bank; wrong on the date of the anti-Hashemite riots in Jordan; wrong to state that Palestine’s future was determined in the Husayn-McMahon correspondence and the Sykes-Picot Agreement; wrong not to notice the battle Armaggedon or Meggido of September 1918; wrong on the number of casualties in the Arab rioting of 1929. Morris ends his list with "and so on and on and on."

Morris's review of Pappe's A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples, is scathing, "Pappe allowed his politics to hold sway over his history." He noted, "Pappe's errors are not merely a matter of sloppiness born of a contempt for that leaven of dullards, 'the facts.' The book is also awash with errors resulting from the writer’s ideological preferences, his interest in blackening the Zionists and whitening the Palestinians." As an example of such bias Morris noted that Pappe described events of 1920 riots as resulting from clashes "with the most aggressive of the Zionist organizations, Beitar, whose members marched provocatively in the streets of Arab Jerusalem." But Morris scolded him, "Beitar, the youth movement of the right-wing Revisionist Movement, was founded in 1923, so clearly it could not have had a hand in the events of 1920. (Even a postmodernist can see that!)". 

Unperturbed by criticism, Pappe writes books and tours the world accusing Israel of ethnically cleansing the Palestinians. To the contrary, like many of his radical peers, he is using the Palestinians to divert attention, in this case from the bloodshed and ethnic cleansing in Syria.  

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