Ilan Pappé

Ilan Pappé (born 1954) is an Israeli pseudo-historian who teaches political science at Haifa University. He is one of the "New Historians" who have re-examined and hold controversial views of the history of Israel and of Zionism, basically endorsing the Arab or Islamofascist version of history. Pappe recently called for Iran to get nuclear weapons and use them against his own country. He has also long endorsed the Hamas.

Education and writings

Pappé was born in Haifa. He graduated from the Hebrew University in 1978, and obtained his D.Phil. from the University of Oxford in 1984. He was the head of the academic institute for peace in Givat Haviva from 1993 to 2000, and is currently the chair of the Emil Touma institute for Palestinian studies.

Pappe hates Israel, calls for its destruction, and writes books devoted to demonizing Israel. His early books dealt with Israeli policy in 1948, a subject he has returned to in his latest book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. His A History of Modern Palestine covers the last two hundred years and focuses on cultural and social issues. His The Modern Middle East is a textbook that brings to the fore the social and cultural developments in the region in the last century.

Politics

In 1996 Pappé ran in the Knesset elections as number seven on the neo-Stalinist Hadash list . After years of being involved in the peace camp and talks, Pappé supported the boycott of Israel in 2005, including the academic boycott. According to Pappé, the reason for wanting the boycott is the "need to apply external pressure on Israel as the best means of ending the worst occupation in recent history". As a result, University of Haifa President Aharon 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.

Pappé was involved in a fraud and fabrication invoving the M.A. thesis by Teddy Katz, about an supposed massacre by Israeli troops in 1948 in the Palestinian village of Tantura.. No such massacre ever took place. Pappe and Katz invented the "theory" that one did, with no evidence of any sort. Pappé publicly supported Katz. In December 2000, as defendant in a libel case, Katz admitted fabricating the story of the massacre, but then retracted his retraction. The M.A. thesis, which had originally received from Pappe an unprecedented 97% mark, was reconsidered and eventually disqualified by the University of Haifa because of alleged research errors. Katz was subsequently awarded a "non-research" MA. The anti-Semitic neo-Stalinist Counterpunch magazine saw this as an abuse of "academic freedom".

Books

• Britain and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, Macmillan, 1988, ISBN 0312015739
• The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1947-1951, I.B. Tauris, 1992, ISBN 1850438196
• The Israel/Palestine Question, Routledge, 1999, ISBN 0415169488
• A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples, Cambridge University Press, 2003 , ISBN 0521556325
• The Modern Middle East, Routledge, 2005, ISBN 0415214092
• The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Oneworld Publications, 2006, ISBN 1851684670

External links

• archive on the Tantora fraud
• Pappés website
• "Power and History in the Middle East: A Conversation with Ilan Pappe", Logos, Winter 2004
• extract from an Interview with Ilan Pappe - YouTube video
• "The '48 Nakba & The Zionist Quest for its Completion", Between The Lines, October 2002
• "Politics by Other Means", Benny Morris's review of Pappé's History of Modern Palestine, The New Republic, March 22 2004
• "Response to Benny Morris", Ilan Pappé, Electronic Intifada, March 30 2004
• Interview with Ilan Pappé about Teddy Katz and the AUT boycott, Haaretz, 2005
• Background on the Katz case
• Interview with Ilan Pappe — Resonance FM Radio, London, UK, 27 October 2006 (part 1)
• Interview with Ilan Pappe — Resonance FM Radio, London, UK, 27 October 2006 (part 2)
• SkyNews1 or Sky News2 — brief debate between Ilan Pappé and Ephraim Karsh on Sky News, 18 October 2006.
• An Interview with Ilan Pappe by Baudouin Loos, Brussels, 29 November 1999]
• "Post-Zionism Only Rings Once" — Neri Livneh]