Ilan Pappé facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Ilan Pappé
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| אילן פפה | |
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Pappé in 2023
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| Born | 7 November 1954 Haifa, Israel
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| Thesis | British Foreign Policy Towards the Middle East, 1948–1951: Britain and the Arab–Israeli Conflict (1984) |
Ilan Pappé (Hebrew: אילן פפה [iˈlan paˈpe]; born 7 November 1954) is an Israeli historian, political scientist, and former politician. He is a professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, director of the university's European Centre for Palestine Studies, and co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies. Pappé was also a board member of the Israeli political party Hadash, and was a candidate on the party list in the 1996 and 1999 Israeli legislative elections.
Pappé was born in Haifa, Israel, in 1954. Pappé is one of Israel's New Historians; since the release of pertinent British and Israeli government documents in the early 1980s, he has written extensively on the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight. Pappé's work makes the case that the expulsions were the result of a systematic ethnic cleansing, for which Plan Dalet served as a blueprint. Prior to coming to the United Kingdom, he was a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Haifa (1984–2007) and chair of the Emil Touma Institute for Palestinian and Israeli Studies in Haifa (2000–2008). He left Israel in 2008 after being condemned in the Knesset and receiving several death threats.
He is the author of Ten Myths About Israel (2017), The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006), The Modern Middle East (2005), A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples (2003), and Britain and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (1988). With regard to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, Pappé supports a one-state solution, advocating for a unitary state for both Palestinians and Israelis. As a critic of Israel, he has called for an international boycott of Israeli academics. He has also written articles for The Electronic Intifada.
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Early life and education
Pappé was born in Haifa, Israel, to German Jewish parents who fled Nazi persecution in the 1930s. At the age of 18, he was drafted into the Israel Defense Forces, serving in the Golan Heights during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. He graduated from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1978, and in 1984 obtained his PhD in history from the University of Oxford, under the guidance of Albert Hourani and Roger Owen. His doctoral thesis became his first book, Britain and the Arab-Israeli Conflict.
Academic career
Pappé was a senior lecturer at the Middle Eastern History Department and the Political Science Department of the University of Haifa between 1984 and 2006. He was the Academic Director of the Research Institute for Peace at Givat Haviva from 1993 to 2000, and chair of the Emil Touma Institute for Palestinian Studies.
Pappé left Israel in 2007 to take up his appointment in Exeter, after his endorsement of the boycott of Israeli universities led the president of the University of Haifa to call for his resignation. Pappé said that he found it "increasingly difficult to live in Israel" with his "unwelcome views and convictions." In a Qatari newspaper interview explaining his decision, he said: "I was boycotted in my university and there had been attempts to expel me from my job. I am getting threatening calls from people every day. I am not being viewed as a threat to the Israeli society but my people think that I am either insane or my views are irrelevant. Many Israelis also believe that I am working as a mercenary for the Arabs." He joined Exeter as Professor of History, and has been director of its European Centre for Palestine Studies since 2009.
Political views and activism
In 1999, Pappé ran in the Knesset elections as seventh on the Communist Party-led Hadash list.
After years of political activism, Pappé supports economic and political boycotts of Israel, including an academic boycott. He believes boycotts are justified because "the Israeli occupation is a dynamic process and it becomes worse with each passing day. The AUT can choose to stand by and do nothing, or to be part of a historical movement similar to the anti-apartheid campaign against the white supremacist regime in South Africa. By choosing the latter, it can move us forward along the only remaining viable and non-violent road to saving both Palestinians and Israelis from an impending catastrophe."
As a result, then University of Haifa President Aaron Ben-Ze'ev called on Pappé to resign, saying: "it is fitting for someone who calls for a boycott of his university to apply the boycott himself." He said that Pappé would not be ostracized, since that would undermine academic freedom, but he should leave voluntarily. In the same year, Pappé initiated the annual Israeli Right of Return Conferences, which called for the unconditional right of return of the Palestinian refugees who were expelled in 1948. According to Pappé, while national movements deserve a state of their own, this principle does not extend to Jews because they constitute a religious group rather than a nation.
In 2023, Pappé described Israel as committing an "incremental genocide" of the Palestinian people. During the 2023- Israel-Hamas war, Pappé reaffirmed his opposition to Zionism, writing that "this violence is not a new phenomenon," and called for a "de-zionised, liberated and democratic Palestine from the river to the sea." He called for the Israeli government to conduct a prisoner exchange in order to release the hostages held by Hamas. Pappé's comments following the 7 October Hamas-led attack on Israel in 2023 drew criticism from The Telegraph and parts of the student body at the University of Exeter, namely in stating he had admiration for Hamas militants' courage and ability to take over military bases in Israel and rejected the claim that Hamas is a terrorist organisation, although he condemned the attack. In May 2024, Pappé said he was questioned at Detroit airport for two hours by the Department of Homeland Security, and that his phone was copied.
In an op-ed to Al-Jazeera on 7 October 2024, Pappé argued that terms like "Iran-backed terrorist group Hamas" or "peace process," commonly used by Western and U.S. media, are misleading. He suggested that it is more accurate to speak of "Palestinian resistance" and the "decolonization of Palestine from the river to the sea." He mentioned that "mainstream academia and media still refuse to define the Zionist project as a colonial, or as it is referred to more accurately a settler-colonial project", and further contended that the original Zionist vision "of planting a European Jewish state at the heart of the Arab world through the dispossession of the Palestinians was illogical, immoral and impractical from the onset."
Critical assessment
Israeli scholar Emmanuel Sivan, reviewing Pappé's 2003 political biography of the al-Husayni family, praised the book's treatment of the development of Palestinian nationalism and that of Haj Amin's exile in Germany, but criticised the view taken on the mufti's visit to the German consul and the scant attention given to Faisal Husseini.
In a review for Arab Studies Quarterly, Seif Da'Na described Pappé's 2006 book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine as a "highly documented narrative of the events" surrounding the Nakba and an example of "serious scholarship that only a virtuoso historiographer could produce". Arab Studies Quarterly also praised Pappé's 2017 book Ten Myths About Israel, describing it as "well-documented" and an "invaluable and courageous contribution" from an "insightful" historian. In a review for the journal Global Governance, Rashmi Singh praised Pappé's 2014 book The Idea of Israel as a "courageous and unflinching study of the role of Zionism in the creation of [...] the state of Israel". However, Singh did feel that the book assumes the reader has prior knowledge of the Arab-Israeli conflict and thus may be difficult to follow for "those who are not conversant with the facts".
Uri Ram, a professor of Ben-Gurion University, reviewed The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine for the Middle East Journal and described the book as "a most important and daring book that challenges head-on Israeli historiography and collective memory and even more importantly Israeli conscience". The same book was reviewed by Hugh Steadman for the New Zealand International Review, in which he called Pappé's book the "definitive record of the caesarean operation by which the state of Israel was born" and "essential reading" for those who wish to see a "peaceful and internationally acceptable Middle Eastern home for Jewish people".
Those critical of his work include Benny Morris, Efraim Karsh, and activist Herbert London as well as professors Daniel Gutwein and Yossi Ben-Artzi from Haifa University. Morris, in particular, described some of Pappé's writing as "complete fabrication" due to alleged factual errors, and called him "at best...one of the world's sloppiest historians; at worst, one of the most dishonest". Pappé has replied to this criticism, condemning Morris for holding "abominable racist views about the Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular."
Pappé's approach to historiography has been characterised as post-modernist. According to Morris, "Pappé is a proud postmodernist. He believes that there is no such thing as historical truth, only a collection of narratives as numerous as the participants in any given event or process; and each narrative, each perspective, is as valid and legitimate, as true, as the next. Moreover, every narrative is inherently political and, consciously or not, serves political ends. Each historian is justified in shaping his narrative to promote particular political purposes." In response, Pappé stated that all historians are necessarily "subjective human beings striving to tell their own version of the past" and that he is worried about "moral issues not the natural human follies of professional historians."
In August 2021, following the translation of his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine into Hebrew, the historian Adam Raz published a review in Haaretz criticizing Pappé as a historian whose work "suffers from negligence, manipulations and mistakes galore, and the result is not serious research". In the article, Raz presents various examples of "lies", inaccuracies, and the lack of sources for Pappé's various claims.
Published work
Books
See also The Israel Lobby Is Real. This Is How It Works | Aaron Bastani meets Ilan Pappé, Youtube, 2024 Jun 16, and The Israel Lobby with John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt | Outside the Box Podcast, Youtube, 2024 Apr 17.
- Ten Myths About Israel. New York: Verso. 2017. ISBN: 9781786630193
- (with Noam Chomsky) Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians (Hamish Hamilton, 2010). ISBN: 978-0-241-14506-7
- The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (London and New York: Oneworld, 2006). ISBN: 1-85168-467-0
- The Modern Middle East (London and New York: Routledge, 2005). ISBN: 0-415-21409-2
- A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples (Cambridge University Press, 2004), ISBN: 0-521-55632-5
- (With Jamil Hilal). Parlare Con il Nemico, Narrazioni palestinesi e israeliane a confronto (Milano: Bollati Boringhieri, 2004).
- The Aristocracy: The Husaynis; A Political Biography (Jerusalem: Mossad Byalik, (Hebrew), 2003).
- The Israel-Palestine Question (London and New York: Routledge, 1999; 2006). ISBN: 0-415-16948-8
- (with M. Maoz). History From Within: Politics and Ideas in Middle East (London and New York: Tauris, 1997). ISBN: 1-86064-012-5
- (with J. Nevo). Jordan in the Middle East: The Making of a Pivotal State (London: Frank Cass, 1994). ISBN: 0-7146-3454-9
- The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1947–1951 (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 1992; 1994). ISBN: 1-85043-819-6
- Britain and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1948–1951 (London: St. Antony's College Series, Macmillan Press; New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988). ISBN: 0-312-01573-9
Articles
- "What drives Israel?", Essay of the week, Herald Scotland (6 June 2010). Archived from the original on 25 Jan 2013.
- "Towards a Geography of Peace: Whither Gaza?", The Electronic Intifada (18 June 2007).
- "Calling a Spade a Spade: The 1948 Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" , article in al-Majdal Magazine (Spring 2006). [retrieved 17 May 2007].
- "Back the boycott," The Guardian, (24 May 2005).
- "Haj Amin and the Buraq Revolt", Jerusalem Quarterly, Issue 18 (June 2003). Archived from the original on 3 May 2013.
- "The '48 Nakba & The Zionist Quest for its Completion" , Between The Lines (October 2002). [retrieved 23 February 2012].
- "The Husayni Family Faces New Challenges: Tanzimat, Young Turks, the Europeans and Zionism 1840–1922, Part II", Jerusalem Quarterly, Issue 11–12 (Winter-Spring 2001). [retrieved 23 February 2012]
- Ilan Pappé, "The Tantura Case in Israel: The Katz Research and Trial," Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Spring 2001), pp. 19–39. [retrieved 23 February 2012].
- Ilan Pappé, "The Rise and Fall of the Husainis (Part 1)," Jerusalem Quarterly, Issue 10 (Autumn 2000).
- Ilan Pappé, "Review Essay, Israeli Television's Fiftieth Anniversary "Tekumma" Series: A Post-Zionist View?," Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 27, No. 4 (Summer 1998), pp. 99–105, Institute for Palestinian Studies.
- Ilan Pappé, Destruction of al-Aqsa is no conspiracy theory, The Electronic Intifada, 10 November 2015.
See also
