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ilan pappe
Israeli Scholar Sees Hope for Democratic Palestine 'To Replace This Apartheid State'
"We are seeing... important processes that are leading to the collapse of the Zionist project," said Ilan Pappé, following his interrogation in the U.S.
May 21, 2024
Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, a prominent anti-Zionist, expressed hope for a free, democratic Palestine in which Jewish and Arab people can coexist, during an interview on Tuesday with Democracy Now! following his interrogation by U.S. federal agents last week.
Pappé, director of the European Center for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, was interrogated by the agents for two hours about his views after arriving in Detroit on a flight from London on May 13. The agents took his phone away before returning it. Pappé initially said the Federal Bureau of Investigation had interrogated him but later clarified that he was not sure which U.S. federal agency the agents represented.
Pappé
cited the interrogation in Detroit as an example of the "sheer panic and desperation" of Israel and pro-Israel lobbies due to fear the country will become a "pariah state." The interrogation came amid crackdowns on pro-Palestine demonstrations on U.S. college campuses, as well as arrests of protestors and cancellations of pro-Palestine intellectual activity in Europe.
In Tuesday's interview, Pappé denounced Israel's historical policy toward Palestinians, declaring it to be clearsighted in its cruelty and intentional in its methods, as he has long done in his scholarly work, most notably in his 2007 book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.
Referring to events in the late 1940s, he told Democracy Now! that "the Nakba is a bit of a misleading term, because it means, in Arabic, a 'catastrophe.' But really what the Palestinians suffered was not an actual catastrophe, but rather ethnic cleansing, which is a clear policy motivated by clear ideology."
"There is not one moment in the history of the Palestinians in Palestine, since the arrival of Zionism in Palestine, in which Palestinians are not potentially under danger of losing their home, their fields, their businesses, and their homeland," he added.
Pappé has argued that as ugly as that history may be, the current war in Gaza is even worse—a step up from ethnic cleansing to genocide, in his view. His forthcoming book, Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic, documents the influence of the pro-Zionist lobbyists in the U.S., the U.K., and elsewhere.
Despite that influence, Pappé said that he sees signs that the ideological hold of Zionism is weakening, and a freer, more democratic Palestine may be possible, tellingDemocracy Now!:
I think we are seeing processes, important processes, that are leading to the collapse of the Zionist project. Hopefully, the Palestinian national movement and anyone else involved in Israel and Palestine would be able to replace this apartheid state, this oppressive regime, with a democratic one for everyone who lives between the river and the sea and for all the Palestinians who were expelled from there since 1948 until today.
"I am really hopeful that there will be a different kind of life," he added, "for both Jews and Arabs between the river and the sea under a democratic, free Palestine."
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Israel’s Assault on Gaza Proves the Nakba Never Ended
What followed the initial displacement and killing of Palestinians in 1948 has been one of the most violent, costly, and protracted conflicts in the modern era.
May 18, 2024
Palestinians and allies marked the 76th anniversary of the Nakba, May 15—the day after the state of Israel was formally declared. “Nakba” is Arabic for “catastrophe,” and is used to describe the murder, dispossession, and forced displacement Palestinians suffered in the years up to and including 1948. As many as 900,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes. Thousands were killed, massacred by Israeli militias like the Irgun and the Stern Gang or while fleeing on foot with no food or water, and some while engaged in armed resistance. What has followed since 1948 has been one of the most violent, costly, and protracted conflicts in the modern era.
Israel’s assault on Gaza has been termed a genocide by an increasing number of United Nations member states and international legal experts. Egypt joined South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, where an emergency hearing was called this week, following Israel’s ground invasion of Rafah. In Gaza, the official death toll is now over 35,000 Palestinians. Israel’s siege is also responsible for widening famine in Gaza.
“What we are seeing now, what unfolds in front of our eyes, is a genocidal situation, by which people are targeted, whether they are children, babies, in hospital, or in schools. This is a massive operation of killing, of ethnic cleansing, of depopulation,” renowned Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, who as an Israeli soldier fought in the 1973 war, said on the Democracy Now! news hour. “The Nakba has never really ended for the Palestinians, so it’s a new horrific chapter in the ongoing Nakba that the Palestinians are suffering.”
Ironically, Israeli nationalists, many who deny that the Nakba occurred at all, are now calling for a second one.
Professor Pappé was just detained when he flew into Detroit, and described on Facebook two hours of FBI questioning before being released. He said they asked, “Am I a Hamas supporter? Do I regard the Israeli actions in Gaza a genocide? What is the solution to the ‘conflict’ (seriously, this is what they asked!) Who are my Arab and Muslim friends in America?”
This week, on Nakba Day, Professor Abdel Razzaq Takriti, a Palestinian historian and endowed Arab studies chair at Rice University,
said on Democracy Now!:
“The Nakba is continuing. We have to understand that this is a colonial continuum. This is a structural process. It is not an event. And what we’re seeing now in Gaza is very much connected to what happened in 1948.”
Professor Takriti assigned historical blame on the United Nations, the United States, and Britain:
“You had a very aggressive settler-colonial movement develop in Palestine under British rule. It was armed under British rule. It was trained under British rule.”
Professor Takriti continued, “The Israeli project is very much intertwined with American foreign policy toward the Palestinian people. They don’t see us as human beings. They want to destroy us. But they know that they have to present it in self-defense terms so that it’s palatable to the broader public… this is just a racist, criminal project that is leading and causing immense pain and suffering.”
South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice is seeking to do just that. On Thursday, human rights attorney Adila Hassim spoke at the ICJ emergency hearing, her voice betraying emotion as she recited grim statistics:
Children have suffered particularly severely. More than 14,000 have been killed. Thousands more have been injured or lost family members, while an estimated 17,000 children are unaccompanied or separated. Make no mistake. These conditions are a direct result of Israel’s military onslaught on the besieged enclave with full knowledge of the destructive consequences of this humanitarian crisis. In these circumstances, the thwarting of humanitarian aid cannot be seen as anything but the deliberate snuffing out of Palestinian lives, starvation to the point of famine, obstructing aid in the face of famine, and killing of at least 200 aid workers.
Hassim concluded, “Israel must be stopped.”
Ironically, Israeli nationalists, many who deny that the Nakba occurred at all, are now calling for a second one. “Right now, one goal: Nakba! A Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of 48,” wrote Knesset member Ariel Kellner. On Tuesday, at an Israeli Independence Day march, far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir addressed thousands, saying, “First, we must return to Gaza now! We are coming home to the Holy Land! And second, we must encourage emigration. Encourage the voluntary emigration of the residents of Gaza!”
Israel’s mass slaughter in Gaza must end immediately. Ultimately, the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and U.S. support for the occupation, also must end. It’s not good for Israel or its national security. It’s devastating for Palestinians. It’s illegal and immoral.
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'Dark Times': Israeli Historian Ilan Pappé Detained, Interrogated by FBI
"The good news is—actions like this by the USA or European countries taken under pressure from the pro-Israeli lobby or Israel itself smell of sheer panic and desperation," the renowned author said.
May 16, 2024
In what one observer called "a whole new level of insanity and paranoia," renowned Israeli historian and professor Ilan Pappé—a staunch critic of Zionism—was detained and interrogated this week by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents as he entered the United States at Detroit's airport.
In a Wednesday Facebook post, Pappé said that he was questioned by FBI agents for two hours after arriving at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport on Monday.
He wrote:
The two-men team were not abusive or rude, I should say, but their questions were really out of the world! Am I a Hamas supporter? Do I regard the Israeli actions in Gaza a genocide? What is the solution to the "conflict" (seriously this what they asked!) Who are my Arab and Muslim friends in America... What kind of relationship [do] I have with them?
"They had [a] long phone conversation with someone, the Israelis?" he added, "and after copying everything on my phone allowed me to enter."
"I know many of you have fared far worse," Pappé wrote, referring to Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a British Palestinian plastic surgeon and rector of Glasgow University in Scotland who last month was denied entry to Germany—and by extension all 29 Schengen Area nations—before the ban was overturned earlier this week.
"The good news is—actions like this by the USA or European countries taken under pressure from the pro-Israeli lobby or Israel itself smell of sheer panic and desperation in reaction to Israel's becoming very soon a pariah state, with all the implications of such a status," he added.
Pappé's treatment sparked outrage among Palestine defenders.
"The detention and interrogation of internationally renowned Israeli anti-Zionist historian Ilan Pappé at Detroit airport by the FBI is latest in the long list of episodes of intimidation and bullying across the West to defend the indefensible—the Israeli genocide of Palestinians," University of California, Berkeley history professor Ussama Makdisi said on social media Wednesday.
Entrepreneur and geopolitical commentator Arnaud Bertrand said, "We've reached a whole new level of insanity and paranoia."
Pappé, 69, is a scholar of Palestinian history at the University of Exeter in England. He's published over 20 books including The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, an examination of the Nakba expulsion of more than 750,000 Arabs from Palestine by Zionist militants—who sometimes massacred Palestinians to sow terror among them—during the establishment of the modern state of Israel in the late 1940s.
He has also been a leading Israeli critic of Israel's ongoing assault on Gaza, which according to Palestinian officials has killed, maimed, or left missing more than 125,000 people since the October 7 attacks. During a Wednesday interview with Al Jazeera marking the 76th anniversary of the Nakba, Pappé asserted that Israel's current onslaught is "even worse" than the 1948-49 ethnic cleansing in many ways.
"What we see now are massacres which are part of the genocidal impulse, namely to kill people in order to downsize the number of people living in Gaza," he said. "Ethnic cleansing is a terrible crime against humanity but genocide is even worse."
Pappé's latest title, Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic, details "how pro-Israel lobbying groups influence the Middle East policies of Britain, the U.S., and others."
Reacting to the author's detention, ACLU human rights lawyer and New York University professor Jamil Dakwar said, "One wonders if this 'VIP welcome' related to his anti-genocide activism and his new book."
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