Ilan Pappe - Ten Myths About Israel

time once again for community forum and we are very lucky to have with us live in the studios this morning elon pape alon pape is an internationally known historian and author he was formerly a senior lecturer in political science at the university of haifa he's currently a professor with the college of social sciences and international studies at the university of exeter in the uk he's the author of numerous books including britain and the arab israeli conflict the modern middle east the ethnic cleansing of palestine a history of modern palestine one land two people and his latest book 10 myths about israel and he is also speaking this coming monday evening at town hall seattle elon thank you very much for coming in and spending time with us this morning a pleasure to be here so start out uh tell us what was your motivation in writing your latest book 10 myths about israel the main motivation was to allow people who are who are either activists or are newcomers to the field of israel and palestine to have a kind of an overview of the gap that exists between popular perceptions about palestine and israel and the updated research on the question the basic notion of the book is that the history of the place is an important factor in explaining what goes on today and is also a key for understanding what could be done in the future and there's a lot of mythology about the history of the place there's a lot of fabrication misrepresentation that is not only intellectually wrong but politically is undermining the chances for a solution and reconciliation now it's very difficult to ask average activists or people who are interested to read all the recent books and articles that came on palestine and israel there's a huge output on this so i thought it would be a good idea to take one myth against every miss against the updated research on that myth so i chose ten common myths that are prevalent in the public sphere about israel and palestine shared this mythology by the way is shared by heads of governments senior politicians senior academics and the common person in the street so i there is really a kind of an industry about the history of the place and also the contemporary reality in the place that needs to be challenged needs to be encountered with truth with facts not just with uh you know emotions and and and beliefs and there was the idea to do it as con in a concise manner as possible almost like a pocketbook that people could have because there's a lot of ignorance ignorance and misunderstanding about israel and palestine and again i stress the point this is not only wrong because the facts are wrong i really strongly believe that this misunderstanding does not allow us there in israel and palestine to progress towards peace and reconciliation and weren't you born in israel yes i was okay and you served in the idf i did so um and i asked because um they're discussing this topic for those of us uh who didn't grow up in israel and or who are not jewish can make one extremely uncomfortable with the subject matter um and one of those uh words and terms that is used a lot these days is zionism and i was hoping you would define that for us because again that's a word that immediately um at least used to make me want to just you know run away from um even discussing the topic yeah and you're absolutely right this is a sensitive charged topic in the book there are two myths out of the ten that relate to zionism the first myth is that zionism is only a national liberation movement of the jews and i will come back to it in a moment and the other one is that anti-zionism is anti-semitism so these are two chapters out of the ten chapters of the book so let me say something about the first one it is important to know the history of zionism and it started as a movement of jews in europe who rightly felt insecure in europe and were looking for a way to save themselves and the other jews and they they had the foresight one should say they started thinking about it in the late 19th century and 70 years after that the holocaust happened so they had the right impulse to leave europe because europe did not want at least in certain parts of europe jews really were under existential danger the second reason that zionism emerged was that like many other cultural and religious groups in europe this was the age of nationalism or what we call the spring of of nations when a lot of groups felt more comfortable to redefine their religious identity as a national identity uh it felt more modern it felt more secular and so jews and they were not the only ones a lot of other groups underwent such a process so zionism was at first the movement of people trying to get out of europe and redefine judaism as a nation-state and there was nothing wrong with it the problem is that for a religious reasons mainly and because of a lot of pressure from christian zionists who were already active then palestine was chosen as a destination or the place where these two impulses can be met you know the the search for security and the wish to be redefined as a nation uh it's happened often with such projects in the past uh the places you chose already had someone living there uh for centuries now most of these movement and zionism included and that's very unfortunate decided that the only way they can implement the wish to be safe and to be a nation was by uprooting the native population your listeners should be familiar with american history there's a similar chapter here with the way the white settlers uh genocided the native americans it's not different we call in in the scholarly world we call these movements settler colonialism we distinguish between them and and colonialism because the settler colonialists are intent on destroying and eliminating the natives and i think that's what happened in palestine so zionism became from a movement of liberation a movement that dispossessed the local native palestinians and its very existence is an existential threat to the palestinians has been from the very beginning and still is today so it is important as my book tries to show to know the history of zionism and to differentiate what was positive about this ideology and what is negative and from the palestinian perspective this is really bad news throughout the history the second point i was making in the book is about anti-zionism is anti-semitism and i tell the story of the jewish the general jewish perception of zionism when it started a lot of jews did not accept it when they either because they were very religious and they thought that the idea of returning to a holy land without a religious imperative was meddling with god's ways most of the liberal jews created the reform movement and regarded this country as a far better destination for saving jews and making them a modern community which was as at least as successful as the zionist project one should say the american jewish experience was not a bad one if anything it was a very positive one so there were alternatives to zionism even if the problem that zionism pointing to pointed to the existential danger in europe was the right one it was not the only way of doing it and even after the holocaust and after the creation of the state of israel israel is not the safest place for jews in fact the united states is far far safer for jews more than 25 000 jews died in israel since the creation of the state so you can't say this is the safest place for jews jewish communities around the world are much safer you don't have to subscribe to the idea that to be a jew you need to colonize palestine or dispossess the palestinians and therefore you can have a legitimate argument against zionist ideology as a jew even in my case as an israeli jew i'm not a self-hating jew i'm not a self-hating anti-semite and none of you are anti-semites if you think that zionism has a very strong colonialist ideology in it which is not fitting and inappropriate for the 21st century and challenging it is very much like challenging apartheid in south africa and people were not called anti-christian because they challenged apartheid and we are not anti-islamic if we don't accept al-qaeda's ideology so we need to know the facts and then people can have a proper discussion with us but i'm afraid that people are throwing the anti-semitic accusation in order to stifle the necessary debate about the future of israel and palestine it seems that is also used with uh some people who criticize um israel itself and the government of israel that they are labeled as being anti-semitic uh what is your thoughts on that yes uh that's even more ridiculous in a way i mean it's it's uh i can understand at least people uneasiness when i talk about the ideology of the state that i really think that the ideology of the state at least to me is unacceptable on a moral basis also on a political from a political perspective but it's even more pathetic i think and ridiculous to accuse people who criticize a policy of a state as being against a religion it's almost like people in the united states who would have an issue with an american policy domestic or foreign it doesn't matter and would be regarded as anti-christian uh in fact what i think the book shows at least tries to show and i hope it comes across quite clearly for those who read it is that a lot of issues which would be very sensical and a common sensical if you want in other cases do not work in the case of israel so it is very normal to criticize policies of governments around the world without being silence of being a racist only in the case of israel if you criticize israeli policy it means that you are anti-semitic it's a ridiculous accusation and it is being used because israel has lost the moral argument israel has no moral justification for what it is doing to the palestinians and what it had done to the palestinians and when your moral justification is shaky you are becoming aggressive we know it from our human behavior i mean it's not just nations that behave in such a way human beings behave such a way and i think it's time to be less timid and not to be you know afraid because of these kinds of tactics uh in fact it's for the benefits of the jews in israel as well if americans would tell them you have repugnant policies on the ground that either you identify with or you're not willing to challenge and therefore i'm i'm a great supporter of the idea of boycotting official israel as long as it continues its aggressive and oppressive policies towards the palestinians did i read correctly that one of your motivations in no longer teaching uh at the university of haifa was related to your support of the the bds movement not only the bds movement started in 2005. i was already targeted by the university in 2000 so i have a long history of being a descending voice i think that the university could not tolerate someone whose profession is history so i mean israel had dissident academics before me but they were teaching other topics so it seemed like this is there what they're doing in the free time but they're not doing it in the classroom because they're teaching chemistry or you know architecture i think i was one of the first to destined to teach history and history of israel but i decided to do it from a different perspective from the mainstream ideological uh kind of point of view and it they just couldn't tolerate it so you know when they when they started the proceeding against me in 2006 eventually uh their kind of indictment was 10 pages long so i i was guilty of many many things all of them have to do with not being loyal to the hegemonic ideology of the state i mean that's that was the bottom line you cannot teach the history of zionism as an anti-zionist that was their main conclusion so i had to leave so it wasn't because your classes weren't filling up and you weren't oh no it was actually quite ridiculous on the year that decided to get rid of me i was chosen by the students of the university is the best lecturer so the guy who chucked me out had to give me the award for being the best lecturers that was his last there was my last official capacity was getting recognition from the university of being the best lecturer in haifa uh and yet the one who had to leave uh that was a really a funny moment i should say yes so you mentioned previously that um uh israel was set up uh similar to the uss settler colonialism is settler colonialism still the uh mandate in israel currently i think so and i think that's what's so unique about israel i mean the united states was built on this idea you know europeans running away from europe encountering the native population happening south africa south america australia new zealand but in all these countries these are the projects of the past probably the most recent one we have in south africa and the settler colonialist project there was dismantled in the late 1980s so israel is the only active settler colonialist project a state project that still works and there may be some other cases like the polisario the the saharan desert people and their struggle against the moroccan government but this is the main active one uh and it's part of the state ideology it's part of the state's educational system it's part of the perception set of colonialism unfortunately is not only about removing the native as much as you can or taking a very superior attitude towards the native has happened in south africa through apartheid there is unfortunately also a kind of dehumanization of the native of the local and my educational struggle in israel is really to humanize the palestinians in the eyes of the israelis which is not a an easy project the the whole educational system is built on the dehumanization of the palestinians so even liberal israelis are israelis who regard the palestinians as aliens but they are tolerant enough to let them be there or have some of the land there's a basic misunderstanding even a more liberal zionist that zionism emigrated into the homeland of someone else not that these natives emigrated they are not immigrants not that we should treat immigrants in any bad way of course we shouldn't but it's funny that the whole liberal discourse in israel about the palestinians is the discourse of immigrants so if you are a liberal person you tolerate immigrants you are willing to let them be absorbed into the society but this is not the situation these are not immigrants you are the immigrants and you ask you have to ask the palestinians to allow you to stay and this is something very difficult after the 100 years of oppression to understand that the oppressor needs the legitimacy from the oppressed is very difficult to to accept i think also the palestinians suddenly realize that this is their mission it took them a long time the palestinian national movement for too many years was depicting the zionist movement as a classical colonialist movement by this i mean that they thought they had the ability to drive these people back to their homeland but they had no homeland so the palestinians i think very cleverly in the last 20 30 years understood that their mission is not to think of how to get rid of the jews in israel but how to tell them that they are welcome but it has to be within a political system that grants equality to everyone not that kind of apartheid system that we have today in israel well then that kind of jumps to one of the uh points in your new book 10 myths about israel that israel is currently portrayed in corporate media as the only democracy in the middle east um is that uh true no no i think it's one of the biggest fabrication is to call israel a democracy i always tell my students i did in haifa as i do in the in the uk if you take any general book you have in political science of what defines the democracy israel doesn't pass the test on every aspect israel was not a democracy until 1967 because it puts one-fifths of its citizens under military rule military rule means that citizens don't have any basic human rights and civil rights this is the palestinian minority so definitely if one-fifths of the american population would have been under military rule namely that only a military person would determine your basic rights you wouldn't have called the united states a democracy and after 1967 they have occupied another group of palestinians millions of them and denied them even in a more in a harsher way any basic right at least the first palestinian group was allowed to vote and to be elected the new palestinian group that israel incorporated doesn't even have the right to vote or to be elected they have no say in their own fate the same military regulation that israel used against the palestinian community before 67 are now used against the palestinian community in the west bank so um in many ways israel reminds me of south africa because whites in south africa enjoyed a certain level of democracy but the africans did not enjoy any level of democracy and the same is true about israel so you can say that for the jews in israel israel is a democracy but anyone who is not a jew he's a second rate if not a third rate citizen and there are legal discrimination against the palestinians whether they are citizens of israel or they live in the occupied territories that is official apartheid there are practices which are not officially admitted but are very known to everyone that discriminate against you i will just give you one fact which i think is very important and i think you list most of your listeners probably don't know i'm talking about israel within the pre-1967 borders so uh to make it clear according to the israeli law most of the land of israel belongs to the jewish agency according to the charter of the jewish agency it is not allowed to sell land to non-jews so 97 of the land of israel is not for sale to the palestinian citizens of israel who are 20 of the population so they have no access to buying land to purchase land uh to expand in fact in the last 70 years only jewish settlements and jewish towns have been built not one palestinian citizen another example we have a law in israel which allows a jewish community to reject the presence of a palestinian citizen and talk about citizens in their midst because they are the only reason that there are palestinians that are not jewish imagine if there would be a neighborhood in seattle that could be by law decide that african-americans could not live there i'm talking about official racism i'm not talking about informal racism that definitely exists in every society i don't think israel is unique in that but i think it's quite unique for a country that pertains to be the only democracy in the middle east to have laws that discriminate against people just because of their identity that's for me is the definition of a non-democratic society actually seattle used to have redlining which prevented people of color blacks from purchasing property in major portions of the city absolutely and there was a dark chapter in the history of the united states uh it still goes on in israel in 2017. so um so the settlements continue as of today isn't that correct absolutely uh there is an uh i write about in one of the last myths that i described in the book that there is kind of a myth that there are two different political camps in israel a peace camp that uh wants to believes in a two-state solution he wants to get out of the west bank in the gaza strip and hand it over to the palestinians and the kind of war camp the right wing that is opposed to any uh settlement with the palestinians where actually most of the settlement activity was done under the so-called peace camp when a peace camp was in government uh colonizing palestine whether before 1948 under british rule or until 1967 within the pre-67 borders of israel or after 1967 in the west bank and the gaza strip is a zionist project that everybody in the zionist parties believe in they have tactical discussion where to settle the right wing wants to settle even in densely populated arab areas in the west bank because they believe that these are the biblical sites the left-wing so so-called left-wing and israel believes that it's not necessary to settle where palestinians live so you settle anywhere else in the west bank which made the whole idea of a two-state solution unviable non-viable um settlements continue because most of the israelis believe in them and because the government throughout the history of the occupation since 1967 very cleverly divided in the perception of people the west bank into two areas there's the jewish west bank where everybody agrees you can settle and supposedly even the international community doesn't mind if you settle there and there is the palestinian west bank which is sort of 40 of the west bank which is densely populated by palestinians that if you are a reasonable israeli you don't think it's necessary to settle there even you don't mind if these areas would be called the palestinian state uh i noted a similar in a book i wrote a year ago which compared south africa to israel i noted there was a similar view among liberal apartheid people so so to speak in south africa who who thought that the bantu stands the idea that the africans would have their independent autonomous uh kingdoms would enable the whites to sustain the apartheid system uh forever so i think settlements are have to be understood as a consensual zionist project from the very beginning because of the settler colonialist nature of the state and the movement that created the state so just a few minutes left so do you believe uh you support a one-state solution and do you see a a reasonable um compromise that can be met um in your lifetime yes well first of all i think that um one has to realize the imbalance between the palestinians and the israelis the israelis have the strongest army in the middle east they are the most probably the most powerful state in the middle east in the region and probably beyond palestinians are the weakest political group in the area and so the first thing i believe even before one state solution and i devote my life to this is to convince the international community that it's in the interest of the international community to put pressure on israel to first of all change its immediate policies of oppression even before we talk about solution in order to create conducive circumstances for a solution we need to get the israelis out of the life of the palestinians in the west bank to lift the siege over the gaza strip to stop the discrimination against the palestinians in israel and to seriously consider the right of the palestinian refugees to return now if i take all these three basic rights that israel violates the rights to live in peace in the west bank and the gaza strip in a democracy inside israel and to come back home for the refugees i can only see one political outfit that would enable us to implement these rights and that's one democratic state for all because i think otherwise we any other political solution would perpetuate it would would make make it even worse than it is today when i say worse it's mainly worse for the palestinians but i don't i also think it's not a very positive for the jews so the sake for everyone we should live democratically as you do here in the united states as human beings regardless of our identity religious identity national identity gender or color so one person one vote one person one vote i'm willing to take a bi-national state if that is what people want it's much better than what we have today maybe people would want the collective identity i can appreciate it especially on the jewish side if because they have built a culture of their own i think a lot of palestinians would go along with this but the state has to be a state for everyone and should not be divided should not be petitioned and the third generation of settlers and the native people have a very good chance of making palestine and israel and whatever we will call it one of the best places on earth all right well with that we are unfortunately out of time i want to thank you very much for coming and spending time with us today it was a pleasure thank you you

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Length: 29min 0sec (1740 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 16 2017