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From time to time, I receive some hate emails and comments from sick Zionist with the very infamous subject line: “Palestinian people do not exist.”

Just a while ago, one of these history denial comments were attempted to be posted here by someone calling himself Doron Zielinski. The spam comment was long enough and full of naive and unsupported lies that the Zionist like to spread all over. Of course there is no point in arguing with such ignorant people, specially that we know that their objective is not discussion, but spreading poison.

Never the less, this incident reminded me of a video interview I saw recently (although it goes back to 2002). In this interview, the Israeli famous historian Ilan Pappe talks about exactly the same subject: “Zionist denial of Palestinian ID and existence.” Therefore, I see this as a good opportunity to link to this video (unfortunately the video is not available for sharing).

This 45 min interview with leading Israel academic and “New Historian” Dr Ilan Pappe, videoed in Manchester in September 2002. Dr. Ilan Pappe is an Israeli historian at Haifa University who writes on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the history of the 1948 war. He was interviewed before addressing a public meeting and open debate at the University of Manchester. It is a ‘must see’ interview to learn more about the history of “Ethnic Cleansing” and “Nakbah (Catastrophe) Denial.”

Excerpts from the interview:

I think there are 3 main myths that inform mainstream Israeli Jewish society. A lot of them still believe, because that’s the way they have been educated, that Palestine had been empty when the Jewish settlers came there in the late 19th century. There is still a feeling there that basically the Palestinian inhabitants of Palestine are either a nuisance or newcomers, or irrelevant. They are an obstacle, but not people with rights or indigenous rights.

The second myth is more directly connected to 1948. Most Israeli Jews believe that the Palestinians left voluntarily in 1948. They are not aware, or do not want to be aware of the fact that an ethnic cleansing took place in 1948.

[…]

Going back to 1948 for a bit, could you give a little more detail of your own historical research.

A group of us are called the “New Historians”, those who revise and challenge the main Israeli version of 1948. We debunk several myths. The first myth is that Israel was fighting the whole of the Arab world in a kind of David and Goliath war. Although there was a lot of war rhetoric from the Arab side, very few Arab soldiers were sent into the battlefield, and actually for most of the war there was superiority on the side of the Israeli army. In fact one of the most important Arab armies, the Jordanian army, had colluded with the Israelis before the war to divide Palestine. So the first myth we undermine is the “few against many” - which is very important in the Israeli psyche, the Israeli mentality.

The second and most important myth is that the Palestinians left voluntarily. We found out that there was a systematic expulsion of Palestinians and an ethnic cleansing operation taking place. We also found there had been willingness on the Arab side in general and on the Palestinian side in particular, to conclude some sort of an agreement with the Jewish State after the war, and it was the Israeli intransigence and inflexible position that failed the peace efforts after the 1948 war.

The strategy was set out even well before 1948 with the Transfer Committee.

Yes. The Transfer Committee was part of the outfit in pre-1948 Palestine, that belonged to the Jewish Agency, to the Jewish leadership. And its main position was actually to evaluate the “quality” of the 500 - 600 Arab villages, i.e. to find out which village had fertile land, what was the wealth of each and each village. It was preparing for the day that Israel would take over these villages. And then, after the ethnic cleansing took place, it was renamed and became more like a distribution committee. It had to divide the spoils between the various Kibbutzim movements, and the various Jewish agencies that dealt with Settlement. And so it was an important official facet of the leadership. But it was all conceived by the leader of the Jewish Agency and later the first Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion.

[…]

How was all of this covered up? If one of the myths was that this never happened, how could this be sustained?

It’s an interesting question! I still try to find my answers to that. One way was by creating an indoctrinating system of education, in which the people who perpetrated the ethnic cleansing cooperated. From the moment the war ended the people who fought in the war were also the people who wrote the history books of the war. And they already had a story they made up about what had happened, and that story was integrated into the Israeli education system, the media, the political discourse. And with the help of the launderette of words all kind of new words were invented to hide what had really happened on the ground. Because of the Holocaust it was easier for Israel to do it than for any other nation, I think. And it succeeded.

The second reason is that the Palestinians were under such a shock and trauma, that when they started to tell the story it was a bit too late. It was so many years after, that it was less relevant in the eyes of many good people in the world.

[…]

So that’s on one level. The second level is no less important, that there is what I call the “Nakbah Denial”, “Catastrophe Denial”. I think there is a similar “Holocaust Denial” on the Palestinian side, and I am a great believer that in order to further the chances of reconciliation, you have to have a kind of link, an association between the ability of the Israelis to stop denying the Nakbah, and the Palestinians accepting that the Holocaust plays a role in the life of Jews in Israel, and the life of Jews everywhere. I’m not inventing the wheel, this was first mentioned by Edward Said in his book “The Dispossession of the Palestinians”, but I think it’s a good idea. That we are all there victims also of the Holocaust, not only of what we are doing to each other.

Does it cause ripples in Israeli society now when people see these things?

Oh no, unfortunately not. No the Israeli society is still numb, and very indifferent. We have a national singer who was appalled when she saw that, Yaffa Yarkoni, probably The National Singer, and she’s boycotted ever since she dared to say that it reminded her of Nazi Germany. No no, in a way it’s a non-starter in Israeli political debates, you’re not allowed to do this. I think you should, but you’re not allowed to. No unfortunately there is no sensitivity in the Israeli Jewish society. On the contrary I think the major thing that Israelis are doing now is blaming anyone who criticises them of being pro-Nazi, at worst, or someone who doesn’t understand the Holocaust, at best.

You yourself have also suffered some victimisation.

Well I suffer it in 3 levels. One is that I’ve written several books in English, but they are not translated into Hebrew, so this is a kind of boycott of books which goes on. The second one is the more sort of personal intimidation through the phone and letters, and so on. And the third one is sort of the climax of this whole campaign, there was an attempt to expel me from my University in May 2002. And it was difficult because I have tenure, I have a permanent position at the University. It was a legal procedure that has been suspended, because of international pressure.

The concrete reasons for the last phase was that I protected a student, not my student but someone I know very well, who in his MA dissertation revealed that there was a massacre in the village of Tantura in the 1948 war, one of the worst massacres in that war. And although he received the highest grade possible for his excellent thesis, because the veterans of the Unit that he accused of perpetrating the massacre sued him in court, the University changed its attitude. He is being disqualified and robbed of his title. And I accused the University of certain things because of that, and because of these public accusations I was myself brought to trial, which can still be resumed next academic year.

[…]

Download a full transcript of this interview (PDF File).

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