Ilan Pappe: I'm not a traitor
Controversial historian Ilan Pappe left Israel last
year after his endorsement of an academic boycott
of Israel exposed him and his family to death threats.
Now a professor in England, Pappe maintains that a
cultural boycott on his homeland is the only way to
end the occupation
Ayelet Negev
Last summer, the Pappe family packed its belongings,
rented out its spacious house in Israel and moved to Britain.
Ever since his support of an academic boycott on Israel's
universities became public, historian Ilan Pappe, 54, has
felt like public enemy number one. Pappe says he had
received death threats by phone almost on a daily basis.
Did it not occur to you that calling for an academic
boycott on Israel might incite the public against you?
"I supported the boycott because I believe that without
pressure, Israel will not end the occupation. Even before
then I reached the conclusion that the peace process enables
Israel to stall for time. When in 2003 several international
organizations approached me and asked whether I would
support the boycott I replied positively.
"I believe that things would change only if Israel receives
a strong message that as long as the occupation continues
it would not be a legitimate member of the international
community, and that until then its academics, doctors and
authors would not be welcome. A similar boycott was
imposed on South Africa. It took 21 years, but it eventually
led to the end of Apartheid."
Do you also call for an economic boycott of Israel?
"I am currently editing a book that compares the situation
in Israel to the situation in South Africa, and I'm becoming
convinced that there too, the economic boycott was less
effective than the cultural one. As the son of German
Jews, I know how important it is for our elites to be a
part of Europe."
Did you wholeheartedly support the boycott?
"No, you can’t wholeheartedly recommend a boycott
of your society, especially when it includes you place
of work, the Haifa University… The last thing I enjoy
is being the person that holds up a mirror to his
society's face and says, 'Look how ugly you are.'
Some people like to challenge and incite their neighbors.
I'm not like that, I don't write in order to annoy and I
certainly don't hate myself, and I also love many people
in Israel. I did not commit treason.
"But, I'm a historian, and this is the truth the way
I see it: The story of a victim and a victimizer. And
the victim is the Palestinians. Without idealizing
the Palestinians -victims are not necessarily nice
people, but they are still victims."
Pappe claims that his promotion at Haifa University
has been blocked due to his political activity. "Provincial
Haifa was unwilling to grant me the rank of a professor.
I left for England as a doctor and in two days I climbed
two ranks and became a faculty professor at the University
of Exeter," he states.
However, Haifa University President Aharon
Ben-Zeev claims that the university applied only
relevant considerations in the question of Pappe's
promotion. "We applied the regular criteria according to
the university's constitution: Not only the list and quality
of publications, but other considerations pertaining to the
contribution to the university, teaching and so on,"
he explained.
Claims of ethnic cleansing
In an article published in the Israeli Mita'am Review
for Literature and Radical Thought this week, titled
"On the destruction of the Palestinian cities, spring
1948," Pappe maintains that the claim that the Arab
residents fled or left their homes willingly during the
war is false, and that a policy of "cleansing" the area from
Arabs was employed as part of a plan to establish a
Jewish-only state.
Pappe made similar claims in his book The Ethnic
Cleansing of Palestine, which was published in England
in 2006, in which he also presented testimonies of
alleged massacres of Palestinians by Jewish soldiers.
These claims have been contested by many historians
in Israel and abroad. Dr. Mordechai Bar-On, a
research fellow at the Yad Ben-Zvi Institute and
a former MK, calls Pappe "a propagandist, not a historian."
Bar-On said that "the term ethnic cleansing is a vicious one,
because it has never been used prior to the wars in former
Yugoslavia. Indeed, there were places where Arab were expelled…
but to say that there was an evil plan since the inception of Zionism
for a forceful transfer – this is simply wrong and vicious."
However, Pappe insists that allowing the Palestinian refugees
to return to Israel is the only thing that could secure peace in
the region.
Would you be willing to vacate your home when
they return to what used to be their villages near
your house in Tivon?
"After years of working with refugees around the world and
attending conferences on the right of return, I believe
that no such notion exists on the Palestinian side.
They want to return while understanding that they
will live alongside the Jews. They don't want to expel
anyone. What turned me into a great lover of the
Palestinians is the will of many among them to share
the land with us. Even people in Hamas.
"The reason most of my friends in the territories
voted for Hamas wasn't because they didn't want to share
the land with the Israelis, but because they thought
Hamas would be more effective in the struggle
against the occupation."
By using terror?
"They don't consider this to be terror. Fatah and Hamas
employ the tools of the weak, because they don't have planes
or tanks. They are as violent as the Israelis, no more or less,
with only one difference: The difference between the violence
of the occupier and the violence of those fighting occupation."
An article you wrote titled "Genocide in Gaza, ethnic
cleansing in the West Bank" was published in the Tehran
Times about a month ago. Are you providing the enemy
with weapons against us?
"On the contrary, I wish to speak to the people in Iran.
A Jordanian newspaper wrote in its editorial a year ago
that absurdly, I am Israel's best ambassador in the Arab
world, because they say – if such Israelis exist, maybe
there's hope for peace with the Jewish state."
Would you like your sons to serve in the army?
"It's their decision, but I preferred it if they didn't.
As long as Israel has an occupying army, a rather cruel
army, I wouldn’t want them to be part of it… I don't
think there is one moral person in the world that
supports what Israel stands for. And it pains me to
say this. I truly love the country, I would very much
like to live in it, but I very much dislike my state.
Everything related to its policy against the Palestinians
makes me very angry.
Pappe denies being more sensitive to the suffering
of Palestinians than to that of Israelis. "I'm shocked
when I see the child who lost his leg in Sderot, and
I'm shocked when I see a child killed in Gaza. But as
long as Israel maintains its stance that the Palestinian
issue can be resolved by force, the Palestinian side
will respond with force.
"Once we realize that the only way is to relinquish
some of out holy ideas, and once the Palestinians give
up the idea of nationalism, and once they realize that
there needs to be one state here that isn't Jewish nor
Palestinian, but a state of all its citizens, like in the US,
we will have peace."
0 Have Your Say!:
Post a Comment