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The History Of Israel Reconsidered, By Illan Pappe by Afam(m): 8:08pm On Oct 30, 2007 |
From my inbox. Issues please, no cursing, no diversion, no name calling. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ----------------------------------------------------------- Editor's Note: I really think this issue is intriguing as we have a special selection from the Israeli historian, Illan Pappe. If you like it, please forward to friends and family. ----------------------------------------------------------- Video Clip Of The Week Off Duty Policeman Beats Up Lady Bartender In this just released video, an off duty Chicago policeman pummels a lady bartender because she refused to serve him any more alcohol. He repeatedly punches and kicks her. He is out on bail and will most likely be fired. View: <a href=" http://www.evtv1.com/player.aspx?itemnum=7139 "> Off Duty Policeman Beats Up Lady Bartender</a> ----------------------------------------------------------- The History of Israel Reconsidered, by Illan Pappe I was born in Israel and I had a very conventional, typical Israeli education, and life, until I finished my B.A. studies at Hebrew University, which was many years ago in the mid-1970s. Like all Israeli Jews, I knew very little on the Palestinian side, and met very few Palestinians. And although I was a very keen student of history, already in high-school -- I knew I would be a historian -- I was very loyal to the narrative that I was taught in school. I had very little doubt that what my teachers taught me in school was the only truth about the past. My life was changed, in a way -- definitely my professional life, but after that also my private and public life -- when I decided to leave Israel and do my doctoral dissertation outside the country. Because when you go out, you see things that you would find very difficult to see from within. And I chose as a subject for my doctoral thesis the year of 1948, because even without knowing much the past, I understood that this is a formative year. I knew enough to understand that this is a departure point for history, because for one side, the Israelis, 1948 is a miracle, the best year in Jewish history. After two thousand years of exile the Jews finally establish a state, and get independence. And for the Palestinians it was exactly the opposite, the worst year in their history, as they call it the Catastrophe, the Nakba, almost the Holocaust, the worst kind of year that a nation can wish to have. And that intrigued me, the fact that the same year, the same events, are seen so differently, on both sides. Being outside the country enabled me to have more respect and understanding, I think, to the fact that maybe there is another way of looking at history than what I lived? Not only my own world, my own people's way, my own nation's way. But this was not enough, of course. This was not enough to revisit history, this attitude, this fact that one day you wake up and you say: wait a minute, there's someone else here, maybe they see history differently -- and if you are a genuine intellectual, you should strive to have respect for someone else's point-of-view, not only yours. I was lucky that the year I decided to study the other side was the year when, according to the Israeli law of classifi- cation of documents -- every 30 years the Israeli archives declassify secret material, 30 years for political matters, and 50 years for military matters. When I started in Oxford, in England, in the early 1980s, quite a lot of new material about 1948 was opened. And I started looking at the archives in Israel, in the United Kingdom, in France, in the United States, and also the United Nations opened its archives when I started working on this. They had interesting archives in Geneva, and in New York. And suddenly I began to see a picture of 1948 that I was not familiar with. It takes historians quite a while to take material and turn it into an article or a book, or a doctoral thesis, in this case. And after two years, I, at least, found that I had a clear picture of what happened in 1948, and that picture challenged, very dramatically, the picture I grew up with. And I was not the only one who went through this experience. Two or three, maybe four, historians -- partly historians, partly journalists, in Israel -- saw the same material and also arrived at similar conclusions: that the way we understood Israel of 1948 was not right, and that the documents showed us a different reality than what we knew. We were called -- the group of people who saw things differently -- we were called the New Historians. And whether it's a good term or not we can discuss later, but it's a fact that they called us the New Historians, this is not to be denied. Now what did we challenge about 1948? I think that's very important to understand, the old picture, and the new picture, and then we can move on. The old picture was that, in 1948, after 30 years of British rule in Palestine, the Jewish Nation of the Zionist Movement was ready to accept an international offer of peace with the local people of Palestine. And therefore when the United Nations offered to divide Palestine into two states, the Zionist movement said yes, the Arab world and the Palestinians said no; as a result the Arab world went to war in order to destroy the state of Israel, called upon the Palestinian people to leave, to make way for the invading Arab armies; the Jewish leaders asked the Palestinians not to leave, but they left; and as a result the Palestinian refugee problem was created. Israel miraculously won the war, and became a fact. And ever since then the Arab world, and the Palestinians, have not ceased to want to destroy the Jewish state. This is more or less the version we grew up with. Another mythology was that a major invasion took place in '48, a very strong Arab contingent went into Palestine and a very small Jewish army fought against it. It was a kind of David and Goliath mythology, the Jews being the David, the Arab armies being the Goliath, and again it must be a miracle if David wins against the Goliath. So this is the picture. What we found challenged most of this mythology. First of all, we found out that the Zionist leadership, the Israeli leadership, regardless of the peace plans of the United Nations, contemplated long before 1948 the dispossession of the Palestinians, the expulsion of the Palestinians. So it was not that as a result of the war that the Palestinians lost their homes. It was as a result of a Jewish, Zionist, Israeli -- call it what you want -- plan that Palestine was ethnically cleansed in 1948 of its original indigenous population. I must say that not all those who are included in the group of new historians agree with this description. Some would say only half of the Palestinians were expelled, and half ran away. Some would say that it was a result of the war. I have a clear picture in my mind. Of course I don't oblige anyone to accept it, but I am quite confident, as I wrote in my latest book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, that actually already in the 1930s the Israeli -- then it was not Israeli, it was a pre-state leadership -- had contemplated and systematically planned the expulsion of the Palestinians in 1948. To summarize this point, the old historical Israeli position was: Israel has no responsibility for the Palestinians becoming refugees, the Palestinians are responsible for this because they did not accept the peace plan, and they accepted the Arab call to leave the country. That was the old position. My position, and with this a lot of the New Historians agree, was that Israel is exclusively responsible for the refugee problem, because it planned the expulsion of the Palestinians from their homeland. There- fore it definitely bears the responsibility. Another point that we discovered is that we checked the military balance on the ground, and we found that this description of an Arab Goliath and a Jewish David also does not stand with the facts. The Arab world talked a lot, still does today, but doesn't do much when it comes to the Palestine question. And therefore they sent a very limited number of soldiers into Israel, and basically for most of the time, the Jewish army had the upper hand in terms of the numbers of soldiers, the level of equipment, and the training experience. Finally, one of the common Israeli mythologies about 1948 -- and not only about 1948 -- is, that Israel all the time stretches its hand for peace, always offers peace to the Arab world in general, and the Palestinians in particular, and it is the Arab world and the Palestinians who are inflexible and refuse any peace proposal. I think we showed in our work that, at least in 1948, that there was a genuine offer for peace from the world -- or an idea of peace -- after the war ended, and actually the Palestinians and the Arab neighbouring states were willing at least to give a chance for peace, and it was the Israeli government that rejected it. Later, one of the New Historians, Avi Shlaim from Oxford, would write a book that is called the Iron Wall. In this book, he shows that not only in 1948, but since 1948 until today, there were quite a lot of junctures in history where there was a chance for peace, and it failed not because the Arab world refused to exploit the chance, but rather because the Israelis rejected the peace offer. So revisiting history, for me, starts with 1948. And I will come back again in the end of my talk to 1948 to talk more about my latest book. But I want to explain that in the path from looking back at 1948 and questioning the common historical version and narrative, a group of Israeli scholars, academics, journalists, and so on, were not only content with looking at 1948 but also looked at other periods. We had a very strange time in Israeli academia, which is over now, in the 1990s. In the 1990s, Israeli academics went back to Israeli history, as I said not only to 1948, and looked at very important chapters in Israel's history, critically, and wrote an alternative history to the one that they were taught in schools, or even in universities. I say that it is a very interesting time because it ended in 2000 with the second Palestinian uprising. You won't find many traces of this critical energy today in Israel. Today in Israel these academics either neglect Israel, or left the views and came back to the national narrative. Israel is a very consensual society nowadays. But in the 1990s it was a very interesting time, I'm very happy that I was part of it. I don't regret it, I'm only sorry that it does not continue, and time will tell whether it is the beginning of something new or whether it was an extra- ordinary chapter and is not going to be repeated. Now what did these scholars do? They went from the begin- ning of the Zionist experience to the present time and looked at all kinds of stations. They began with the early Zionist years. The Zionist movement appeared in Europe in he late 19th century. The first Jewish settler in Palestine arrived in 1882. Now the common view in Israel is that these people came to more or less an empty land, and were only part of a national project, that they created a national homeland for the Jews, and for some unexplained reasons, the Arabs didn't like it, and kept attacking the small Jewish community, and this seems to be the fate of Israel, to live in an area of people who cannot accept them. They don't accept them because the attackers of Israel are either Muslims, or Arabs, which should explain a certain political culture that cannot live at peace with neighbours, or whatever the explanations Israelis give for why Arabs and Palestinians keep attacking the Jewish state. Now the new scholarship decided to look at the movement of Jews from Europe to the Arab world as a colonialist move- ment. It was not the only place in the world where Europeans, for whatever reasons -- even for good reasons -- moved out from Europe and settled in a non-European world. And they said that Zionism in this respect was not different. The fact that the Jews of course were persecuted in Europe explains why they were looking for a safe haven, this is known and accepted. But the fact that they decided that the only safe haven is a place where already someone else lived turned them into a colonialist project as well. So they introduced the colonialist perspective to the study of early Zionism. They also looked differently at a very touchy subject, and this is the relationship between the Holocaust and the state of Israel. Very brave scholars showed what we know now is a fact how the Jewish leadership in Palestine was not doing all it could to save Jews in the Holocaust because it was more interested in the fate of the Jews in Palestine itself. And how the Holocaust memory was manipulated in Israel to justify certain attitudes and policies toward the Palestinians. They also note the treatment of Jews who came from Arab countries in the 1950s, they found this Israeli urge to be a part of Europe very damaging in the way they treated Jewish communities who came from Arab countries. And of course it would have helped Israel to integrate in the Middle-East, because they were Arabs as well, but they de- Arabized them, they told them: "You are not Arabs, you are something else." And they accepted it because it was the only ticket to be integrated into Israeli society. All this revisiting, if you want, of Israeli history goes from 1882 to at least the 1950s. Around 100 to 120 scholars were involved in this in the 1990s. The Israeli public, at first, of course, did not accept these new findings, and was very angry with these scholars, but I think it was the beginning of a good chance of starting to influence Israeli public opinion to the point of even changing some of the textbooks in the educational system. Then came the second Intifada, and a lot of people felt that Israel is again at war, and when you are at war, you cannot criticize your own side. This is where we are now, and so many of these critical scholars lowered down their criticism, and in fact people like myself -- I can only testify from my own experience -- in one night, changed from heroes to enemies. It is not an easy experience. In the 1990s, my university was very proud that I was a part of it. So the Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent a lot of people to show how pluralistic is this university, they have this guy who is a New Historian, and he can show you how critical he is and that Israel is an open society, the only democracy in the Middle East. After 2000, I became the enemy of the university. Not only did the foreign office stop sending people to see me, the university was looking for ways of sending me abroad, not bringing people to visit me, and almost succeeded in 2002. There was about to be a big trial -- the trial didn't take place, thank God -- where I was to be accused of all kinds of things that you would think that a democracy doesn't have, accusing lecturers of treason and being not loyal to their country, and so on. I was saying the same things in the 1990s as I was in 2002 -- I didn't change my views, what changed was the political atmosphere in Israel. I want to go, now, in the last part of my talk, to my new book. After working on this new scholarship I wrote quite a lot of articles and edited a lot of books that summarized this new scholarship that I was talking about, trying to assess its impact. I was also very impressed -- in one of my books I wrote extensively about this -- how it influenced Palestinian scholarship to be more open and critical. It really created something which I call the "Bridging Narrative," a concept that I developed, and I am still developing. It is a historical concept that in fact to create peace you need a bridging narrative. You need both national sides, each has their own historical narrative, but if they want to contribute to peace they have to build a bridge narrative. I founded, together with a Palestinian friend, a group in Ramallah, called the Bridging Narrative Historians. We started to work in 1997, still work now, and it's a very good project of building a joint narrative. We looked jointly at history because we believe the future is there if you agree on the past. After doing that, I felt still very haunted by '48, I felt that the story was not complete. I wrote two books on 1948, and I felt it was not enough. And then came the new archives. In 1998, the Israelis opened the military archives. As I said, they opened political archives after 30 years, but military archives after 1990. And then I felt I had even a more complete picture, not only of '48, but unfortunately, of how '48 lives inside Israel today. And the new documents, I think, show very clearly -- although I knew it before, but the new documents show even more clearly, if you needed more evidence -- that the Zionist movement, from the very beginning, it realized that in the land of Palestine someone else lives. That the only solution would be to get rid of these people. I'm not saying that they knew exactly how to do it, I'm not sure that they always knew how to do it, but they definitely were convinced that the main objective of the Zionist project -- which was to find a safe place for the Jews on the one hand, and to redefine Judaism as a national movement, not just as a religion -- can not be implemented as long as the land of Palestine was not Jewish. Now some of them thought that a small number of Palestinians can stay, but definitely they cannot be a majority, they cannot even be a very considerable minority. I think this is why '48 provides such a good opportunity for the Zionist leadership to try to change the demographic reality on the ground. And as I tried to show in my book, ever since 1937, under the leadership of the founding father of Zionism, David Ben-Gurion, the plan for ethnic cleansing of Palestine was carefully prepared. This has a lot of moral implications, not just political ones. Because if I am right ? and I may be wrong, but if I am right in applying the term ethnic cleansing to what Israel did in 1948, I am accusing the state of Israel of a crime. In fact in the international legal parlance, ethnic cleansing is a crime against humanity. And if you look at the website of the American State Department, you will see that the American State Department Legal Section says that any group in history, or in the future, that lives in a mixed ethnic group, and plans to get rid of one of the ethnic groups, is committing a crime against humanity. And it doesn't matter -- very interesting -- it doesn't matter whether it does it by peaceful means, or military means. The very idea that you can get rid of people just because they are ethnically different from you, today, definitely, in international law, is considered to be a crime. It's also interesting that the State Department says that the only solution for victims of an ethnic cleansing crime, who are usually refugees because you expel them, is the return of everyone their homes. Of course, in the State Department list of cases of ethnic crime, Israel does not appear. Everyone else appears, from Biblical times until today, but the one case that does not appear as an ethnic cleansing case is the case of Palestine because this would have committed the State Department to believe in the Palestinian right of return, which they don't want. There is another implication. I am not a judge, and I don't want to bring people to justice, although in this book, for the first time in my life, I decided not to write a book that says "Israel ethnically cleansed Palestine." I name names, I give names of people. I give the names of the people that decided that 1.3 million Palestinians do not have the right to continue to live where they lived for more than one thousand years. I decided to give the names. I also found the place where the decision was taken. I think far more important for me is not what happened in 1948. Far more important for me is the fact that the world knew what happened and decided not to do anything, and sent a very wrong message to the state of Israel, that it's okay to get rid of the Palestinians. And I think this is why the ethnic cleansing of Palestine continues today as we speak. Because the message from the international community was that if you want to create a Jewish state by expelling so many Palestinians and destroying so many Palestinian villages and towns, that's okay. This is aright. It's a different lecture, why -- and I'm not going to give it -- why did the world allow Israel in 1948 to do something it would not have allowed anyone else to do. But, as I say, it's a different lecture, I don't want to go into it. The fact is that the world knew, and absolved Israel. As a result, the Israeli state, the new state of Israel that was founded in 1948, accepted as an ideological infrastructure the idea that to think about an ethnic purity of a state is a just objective. I will explain this. The educational system in Israel, the media in Israel, the political system in Israel, sends us Jews in Israel a very clear message from our very early days until we die. The message is very clear, and you can see that message in the platforms of all the political parties in Israel. Everybody agrees with it, whether they are on the left, or on the right. The message is the following. And to my mind -- I will say the message in a minute -- but I will say that, to my mind, this is a very dangerous message, a very racist message, against which I fight (unsuccessfully). The message is that personal life -- not collective life, not even political life -- personal life of the Jew in Israel would have been much better had there not been Arabs around. Now that doesn't mean that everybody believes that because of that you go out and start shooting Arabs or even expelling them. You will see the paradox. Today I gave an interview to a journalist here in Japan, and he told me of someone -- I won't mention the name -- but a very well-known Israeli politician of the left, who said to him: "My dream is to wake up one morning and to see that there are no Arabs in Israel." And he is one of the leading liberal Zionists, he is on the left, very much in the peace camp. This is the result of 1948, the idea that this is legitimate, to educate people that the solution for their problems is the disappearing of some- one just because he is an Arab, or a Muslim, and of course the disappearing of someone who is an indigenous population, who is the native of that land, not an immigrant. I mean, you can understand -- maybe not accept but you can understand -- how a society treats immigrants. Sometimes they find that these immigrants come to take my job, you know these politics of racism that are the result of immigration. But we are not even talking about immigrants, we are talking about a country that someone else immigrated into, and turned the local people into immigrants, and said that they have no rights there. If someone who is from the Israeli peace camp, and very much on the left, has a dream that all the Arabs would disappear from the land of Israel, you can understand what happens if you are not from the left. You don't dream, you start working on this. And you don't have to be on the extreme right for that, you can be in the mainstream. We have to remember that the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 was committed by the Labor Party, not by the Likud, by the mainstream ideology. In other words, what we have here is a society that was convinced that its need to have ethnic exclusivity, or at least total majority, in whatever part of Palestine it would consider to be the future Jewish state, that this value, this objective is above everything else in Israel. It's more important than democracy. It's more important than human rights. It's more important than civil rights. Because, for most Jews in Israel, if you don't have a demographic majority, you are going to lose, it's a suicide. And if this is the position, then no wonder people would say that if the Palestinians in Israel would be more than 20%, we will have suicide. You will hear people that will tell you that they are intellectuals, liberals, democrats, humanists, say this. And if Israel wants to annex -- and it wants to annex -- half of the West Bank, as you know, and half of the West Bank has a lot of Palestinians in it, there is not one person in Israel that thinks that it's wrong to move by force the people that live in one half of the West Bank to the second half of the West Bank. Because otherwise the demographic balance in Israel will change. And it's no wonder that Israelis feel no problem with what they did to the Gaza Strip. Take one million and a half people and lock them in an impossible prison with two gates and one key, that the Israelis have, and think that people can live like this without reaction. In order to delegitimize the right of someone to be in their own homeland, you have to dehumanize them. If they're human beings you won't think about them like this. I think that as long as this is the ideology of the state of Israel, and it is the ideology of the state of Israel, a lot of the good things in Israel -- and there are many many good things in Israel, it's an impressive project that the Zionist movement did, the way it saved Jews, the way it created a modern society almost out of nothing -- all these amazing achievements will be lost. First of all the Palestinians would lose, that's true. This is true. First of all the Palestinians are going to lose because the Israelis are not going to change -- it doesn't look like they're going to change their policy, and it doesn't look like anyone in the world is going to force them to change their policy. But in the long run, Israel is not alone, and it is a small country in the Arab world and in the Muslim world, and America will not always be there to save it. In the end of the day if the Israelis -- like South Africa, you cannot be in a neighbourhood and be alien to the neighbours, and say "I don't like you," or "I don't want you to be here" -- eventually they would react. It could take one hundred years, two hundred years, I don't know. But the Israelis are miscalculating, I think, history. Only historians understand that sixty years is nothing in history. Look at the Soviet Union. The fact that you are successful for sixty years with the wrong policy does not mean that the next sixty years are going to be the same. They're making a terrible mistake, as the Jewish communities around the world are making a terrible mistake in supporting this policy. The new book is trying to convince that the most important story about the ethnic cleansing is not only what happened in 1948 but the way that the world reacted to what happened in 1948, sending the wrong message to Israel, that this is fine, you can be part, not only of the world, but you can be part of the Western world. You can be a part of what is called "the group of civilized nations." So don't be surprised, if you go to the occupied territories and you see first-hand how people are being treated there, that the vast majority of the Israelis, firstly don't know what goes on there, secondly when they know what goes on there, don't seem to bother much. Because the same message they got from the world in 1948 is the message they get from the world in 2007. You can take a whole city -- imagine Tokyo -- surround it by an electric gate, and one person would have the key for the only gate to the city. Any other place in the world, if you would hear of a city that is at the mercy of a warden, like a prison, you would be shocked. You would not allow it to continue for one day without protests. In Israel the world accepts it. And this is despite the fact that there are more international journalists per square mile in Israel and Palestine than there are anywhere else in the world. That's a fact. And despite this international media presence, the Israelis have not changed one aspect of their policy of occupation in Palestine. As I say, unfortunately I don't have time for this, but I think it's a very interesting question: why does the world allow Israel to do what it does? But it's really a different question, so I think I will stop here and open up for questions and remarks. Thank you. ----------------------------------------------------------- Professor Ilan Pappe is an Israeli historian and senior lecturer of Political Science at Haifa University. He is the author of numerous books, including A History of Modern Palestine, The Modern Middle East, The Israel/Palestine Question and, most recently, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, published in 2006. ----------------------------------------------------------- +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ |
Re: The History Of Israel Reconsidered, By Illan Pappe by chidichris(m): 7:57am On Oct 31, 2007 |
Afam, for the first time, i tried reading down the lines but i could not finish it as for the few paragraphs i was able to cover, i have these to say; the second and third paragrapphs were mainly designed to show how important it is to travel as that changed the writer's sense of reasoning and if you will agree with me, i have in more than 10 different occassions asked you to make a move. going to cotonou or ghana will surely have something positive to do in your life and now that the people u believe in have mentioned it to u, i want to believe you will have a reason to make a move as you have been down with what you are been fed with. a further reading along was discouraging as the writer expressed a confussed state between him and other new historians. from his suggestions, he is assuming superiority without the consent of the other new historians who have their own seperate beliefs so i will wait till your inbox makes available ther other new hsitorians points of view to enable me compare and contrast as the only way to arrieve at a genuine conclussion will be after a critical analysis of all points on ground. finally brother, feeding us with fish will not help matters rather teaching us how to fish with the matterials so that we can go out there on our own. what am saying in effect is that you go ahead and tell us what to subscribe so that the same anti-isreali topics will be coming to our inboxes directly and save u the stress of copying and pasting on daily basis. above all, make a move and change ur reasoning levels. meet different people and experiences as u afam, have been existing in the world of fantasy and immaginations. again, i will once more suggest that you go and read the history of liberia, trace it to James Monroe the then american president on whose name monrovia (capital of liberia) was derieved. a better understanding of liberia will help u the more on the need of peaceful co-existance of people no matter what it takes as the world is a transit point for all. |
Re: The History Of Israel Reconsidered, By Illan Pappe by Afam(m): 9:00am On Oct 31, 2007 |
Did you miss the second sentence in my post? In case you missed it I am reproducing it for you Issues please, no cursing, no diversion, no name calling. If you cannot discuss the issues then keep your confused understanding to yourself. Or, better still ask the person that tried to explain the post to you to do a better job because on your life trying to understand a long post like that will remain an effort in futility. |
Re: The History Of Israel Reconsidered, By Illan Pappe by texazzpete(m): 5:05pm On Oct 31, 2007 |
@Afam This has to be the most un-scholarly work from any 'scholar' in the world. As soon as he mentioned (and started avidly promoting) his book, as soon as i realised that this academic had taken his work to the the streets to gain book sales, i knew he was not to be taken seriously. After all, if he's just an Israeli that desires peace, why did he say he supported Hamas and their struggle against the israelis? Professor Ilan Pappe is no longer in the University of Haifa. Correct that in your article. |
Re: The History Of Israel Reconsidered, By Illan Pappe by Afam(m): 5:57pm On Oct 31, 2007 |
texazzpete: The content in bold refers, I did not write the article and I am sure it is crystal clear, after all you summarized the whole article by the Prof as an attempt to sell his books. And am I supposed to take the statement as a fact simply because you stated that he is no longer in the University of Haifa? Generally speaking, it seems that the only thing that makes sense to you is what you expressly approve of. Not a good style and certainly a dangerous path in life as these days we pay back in full as regards our actions whether by omission or commission. |
Re: The History Of Israel Reconsidered, By Illan Pappe by Mariory(m): 6:59pm On Oct 31, 2007 |
Next week from Afam's inbox. Why Israel is the Reason the African Continent is under-developed. May Israel perish under the feet of Afam's Crusaders. Allah Akbar! Allah Akbar! Allah Akbar! |
Re: The History Of Israel Reconsidered, By Illan Pappe by Afam(m): 7:20pm On Oct 31, 2007 |
Why should Israel perish? I do not support the killing of anyone by anyone regardless of who is involved. That has been my stand from day one but shameless women like you cannot use your brain to think. Why don't you worry about your husband (if any) or boy friend (if any) and stop imagining what will get into my inbox next week, disgusting woman. |
Re: The History Of Israel Reconsidered, By Illan Pappe by Nobody: 8:32pm On Oct 31, 2007 |
Afam: Afam: You just cant make this up! |
Re: The History Of Israel Reconsidered, By Illan Pappe by Mariory(m): 9:26pm On Oct 31, 2007 |
Afam: I understand you are sexually fraustrated but, why so much hostility. It's not my fault your homosexual friends have fallen out of lust with your black anus. |
Re: The History Of Israel Reconsidered, By Illan Pappe by Afam(m): 9:28pm On Oct 31, 2007 |
And in your wisdom a call for issues would mean that someone can indeed leave the issue and focus on personalities and at the same time such a person must not be responded to in kind. Your level of stupidity is alarming. Your tactics don't work here, just get that into your brain. |
Re: The History Of Israel Reconsidered, By Illan Pappe by Mariory(m): 9:31pm On Oct 31, 2007 |
Comon Afam that's not the way as you have stated in your own thread. Sit on a Love Machine to calm your nerves. |
Re: The History Of Israel Reconsidered, By Illan Pappe by RichyBlacK(m): 11:21pm On Oct 31, 2007 |
@Afam, I will like to use this opportunity to express my gratitude to you for yet another educative and enlightening article. This article's credibility is assured on the following facts: 1. The author is an Israeli and a Jew 2. The author is a true scholar (a professor at the University of Exeter, UK) 3. The author showed balance in the article 4. The author has first hand experience of the social system he describes 5. The author demonstrated that his research was detailed, patient, deep and wide-ranging It is articles of this caliber that gives Nairaland its growing reputation as a place of authentic erudition and rigorous debates on the most important issues of our time. Thank you! |
Re: The History Of Israel Reconsidered, By Illan Pappe by Nobody: 11:35pm On Oct 31, 2007 |
Afam: Real adults dont just "respond in kind", that is for primary school kids who keep scores on the playground. Besides Mariory didnt say anything to your person directly. To call her a disgusting woman is just embarrasing. Grow up. |
Re: The History Of Israel Reconsidered, By Illan Pappe by RichyBlacK(m): 11:36pm On Oct 31, 2007 |
An interesting excerpt: "First of all, we found out that the Zionist leadership, the Israeli leadership, regardless of the peace plans of the United Nations, contemplated long before 1948 the dispossession of the Palestinians, the expulsion of the Palestinians. So it was not that as a result of the war that the Palestinians lost their homes. It was as a result of a Jewish, Zionist, Israeli -- call it what you want -- plan that Palestine was ethnically cleansed in 1948 of its original indigenous population. " - Ilan Pappé We know that there is precedent for that. In the Torah ("the most important document in Judaism", it is recorded that after the sojourn of the Israelites as slaves in Egypt, and Moses leading them out of bondage, they dispossessed the Canaanites of their land, on the grounds that Jehovah gave it to them as The Promised Land . So, this attitude of taking away other people's land is not new to the Israelites/Jews/Israelis. |
Re: The History Of Israel Reconsidered, By Illan Pappe by Nobody: 11:51pm On Oct 31, 2007 |
RichyBlacK: This is a falacy and is the same piece of propaganda the arabs have been using to perfection. Circulate articles from several dissidents of Isreali descent and then use that as "evidence" of the "credibility" of their bogus claims! James Watson is a nobel laureate in science and is credited with discovering the structure of the human genetic material - does it make his claim that blacks are genetically stupid then "credible"? So if an American writes a piece against the US government that suddenly makes his claim credible? This tactic is the refuge of those who specialise in strawman arguments. RichyBlacK: So every one at the University of Exeter is a "true scholar"? RichyBlacK: Balance? pls show us! unless of course "balance" means he merely pandered to your myopic point of view. RichyBlacK: and that makes his article credible? Maybe if he lived in Sderot (where the qassam rockets have become a daily staple) rather Exeter i would be better able to take him seriously. RichyBlacK: Simply because he said all you wanted him to say? RichyBlacK: lol i had absolutely no response to this piece of tripe. |
Re: The History Of Israel Reconsidered, By Illan Pappe by RichyBlacK(m): 12:03am On Nov 01, 2007 |
Another interesting excerpt: "Another point that we discovered is that we checked the military balance on the ground, and we found that this description of an Arab Goliath and a Jewish David also does not stand with the facts. The Arab world talked a lot, still does today, but doesn't do much when it comes to the Palestine question. And therefore they sent a very limited number of soldiers into Israel, and basically for most of the time, the Jewish army had the upper hand in terms of the numbers of soldiers, the level of equipment, and the training experience. " - Ilan Pappé Very interesting! They continually want to make the world think they are some sort of super humans. Laughable. The war in 2006 against a well-organized Hezbollah fighting unit smashed any myth of Israeli military prowess. Every neutral observer of that war concluded that Israel lost to Hezbollah: 1. http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=51552 2. http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=243&issue=112 3. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/03/AR2006080301258.html To give further validity that Israel was defeated in that war, many Israelis staged protests demanding the resignation of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and other top military brass, like Defence Minister Amir Peretz: 1. http://www.huliq.com/20755/protest-in-israel-demanding-ehud-olmerts-resignation 2. http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/01/africa/israel.php 3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehud_Olmert#Prime_Minister |
Re: The History Of Israel Reconsidered, By Illan Pappe by Nobody: 12:08am On Nov 01, 2007 |
RichyBlacK: This is rubbish for the following reasons: 1. 20% of Isreal's 7.2 million citizens are arab palestinians. So how come the Jews havent purged their nation of that small number now that they are in the power to do so? How come an arab is part of Ehud Olmert's cabinet and there are arabs in the Knesset? 2. The use of the term "indigenous" to refer to the arabs in palestine is disingenous. Where were these "indigenous" arabs when Mark Twain and co went down to palestine in the 17th century? 3. Jordan is 80% of the historic British mandate of palestine YET it does not grant citizenship to arab palestinians (whom Pappe calls "indigenes". Remember black september? Of course such facts never make their way to certain mail boxes. |
Re: The History Of Israel Reconsidered, By Illan Pappe by Nobody: 12:17am On Nov 01, 2007 |
RichyBlacK: Another daft point. Isreal defeated 6 well armed arab states in 1948 and humiliated a Russian-backed Egyptian army that was many times larger than its Isreali counterpart and you buy Pappe's tripe that Isreal actually had the "upper hand" militarily? Isreal's population is 1/10th that of Egypt . . . cmon RichyBlack, use that grey matter u've got! How many soldiers did Isreal have in 1948? How many soldiers? A nation of less than 6million as at 1948 facing 22 arab states and Illan Pappe says they had the upper hand in terms of weapons and number of soldiers? lol the level of intelligence on this boards is amazing! What training experience did soldiers from a nation less than 1 yr old have against very much older nations? Again i keep coming across nonsensical points like Hezbollah "defeated" the Isreali army. Nothing could be further from the truth. Even the US with all its weapons is still borged down in the mire that Iraq has become. Russia fought in Afghanistan for years before it was finally sent out in disgrace . . . See any common denominators? Yes all nations were fighting an elusive enemy. . . enemies who dress like women, hide rocket launchers in female hostels and mosques, use children to retrieve weapons and hide among "innocent civilians". They know that the Isrealis would be a lot more cautious knowing that people like you are ever ready to cry "innocent civilians", "disproportionate response" at every child who dies helping the elusive enemy. Hezbollah uses Lebanon's infrastructure to hide its weapons, they know anytime Isreal strikes hypocrites and allah's murderous band of cultists are every ready to shout "o they are destroying innocent Lebanon's infrastructure". Yeah sure Hezbollah defeated Isreal! Try fighting an enemy you can't see. |
Re: The History Of Israel Reconsidered, By Illan Pappe by RichyBlacK(m): 12:23am On Nov 01, 2007 |
Yet another interesting excerpt: "Finally, one of the common Israeli mythologies about 1948 -- and not only about 1948 -- is, that Israel all the time stretches its hand for peace, always offers peace to the Arab world in general, and the Palestinians in particular, and it is the Arab world and the Palestinians who are inflexible and refuse any peace proposal. I think we showed in our work that, at least in 1948, that there was a genuine offer for peace from the world -- or an idea of peace -- after the war ended, and actually the Palestinians and the Arab neighbouring states were willing at least to give a chance for peace, and it was the Israeli government that rejected it." - Ilan Pappé Anybody who has read the Torah ("the most important document in Judaism", or other sections of the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible), or the Old Testament will appreciate the following of the Israelites described there in: 1. Their highly pugnacious nature 2. Their severely recalcitrant attitude - even to their own God! 3. Their glaring arrogance - especially to so-called Gentiles. This does not mean that every Israeli is badly-natured, however, the leadership of the state of Israel and a sizable portion of the Israelis have shown these characteristics. Ilan Pappé has simply pointed to the obvious. |
Re: The History Of Israel Reconsidered, By Illan Pappe by RichyBlacK(m): 12:27am On Nov 01, 2007 |
davidylan: Hallelujah! Our first ever agreement! |
Re: The History Of Israel Reconsidered, By Illan Pappe by RichyBlacK(m): 12:36am On Nov 01, 2007 |
Yet another: "It's also interesting that the State Department says that the only solution for victims of an ethnic cleansing crime, who are usually refugees because you expel them, is the return of everyone their homes. Of course, in the State Department list of cases of ethnic crime, Israel does not appear. Everyone else appears, from Biblical times until today, but the one case that does not appear as an ethnic cleansing case is the case of Palestine because this would have committed the State Department to believe in the Palestinian right of return, which they don't want." - Ilan Pappé A classic example of American hypocrisy, bias, racism, and rot! The poor treatment of Arabs must not be taken lightly by blacks the world over. We have to recognize racism (no matter its color) and reject it! |
Re: The History Of Israel Reconsidered, By Illan Pappe by chidichris(m): 12:50am On Nov 01, 2007 |
pls why are we still talking here if afam could say he is not the author because someone told him the mumu that wrote the article is no longer in the university of haifa so in all afam is not responsible for this thread. pls let us wait till someone is ready to take charge and pls mr afam, post a thread of your own as i am really hungry to know how you reason. just hold on with your copy and paste and go out there to post your own work. you are matured enough to be a man of your own as you cannot leave the rest of your life as a dependant. |
Re: The History Of Israel Reconsidered, By Illan Pappe by RichyBlacK(m): 12:50am On Nov 01, 2007 |
Again another: "And if Israel wants to annex -- and it wants to annex -- half of the West Bank, as you know, and half of the West Bank has a lot of Palestinians in it, there is not one person in Israel that thinks that it's wrong to move by force the people that live in one half of the West Bank to the second half of the West Bank. Because otherwise the demographic balance in Israel will change. And it's no wonder that Israelis feel no problem with what they did to the Gaza Strip. Take one million and a half people and lock them in an impossible prison with two gates and one key, that the Israelis have, and think that people can live like this without reaction. In order to delegitimize the right of someone to be in their own homeland, you have to dehumanize them. If they're human beings you won't think about them like this." - Ilan Pappé The Achilles' heel of Israel! With a small population and a declining birth rate, the relative population of Israelis in the Middle-East diminishes every year. In the long-run this disproportionate population algebra will factor into the political calculus. See http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0815/p10s01-wome.html |
Re: The History Of Israel Reconsidered, By Illan Pappe by RichyBlacK(m): 1:23am On Nov 01, 2007 |
Some people have tried very hard to distort facts (unsuccessfully), made bogus claims, told lies, and basked in self-delusion regarding whether Israel is occupying stolen land. Well, one question will put that to rest: Has anyone seen the map of the state of Israel? Here are some maps (no Arab source): 1. From Wikimedia/CIA World Fact Book (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Israel-CIA_WFB_Map_(2004).png). Observe that the West Bank and Gaza Strip DO NOT constitute the state of Israel 2. From the Jewish Virtual Library (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/ciaisrael.html). Also notice that the West Bank and Gaza Strip FALL OUTSIDE ISRAEL 3. From the University of Texas map collection (http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/israel.html). Clearly, the West Bank and Gaza Strip are NOT PART OF ISRAEL. [img]http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/atlas_middle_east/israel_divisions.jpg[/img] 4. From a Zionist/pro-Zionism/pro-Israeli/potentially anti-Arab website (http://www.zionism-israel.com/maps/Israel_Maps.htm). Not even true Zionists (as opposed to Zionist-wannabes) can place Gaza and the West Bank as part of Israel. Notice that they (Zionists) unambiguously state that the West-Bank is "OCCUPIED BY ISRAEL"! |
Re: The History Of Israel Reconsidered, By Illan Pappe by Nobody: 1:56am On Nov 01, 2007 |
RichyBlacK: RichyBlack has a problem with the truth. Illan Pappe has simply given him a new way to express his inherent myopia, bias and propaganda. Illan Pappe says "after the war, there was a genuine offer of peace FROM THE WORLD" . . . was it the "world" that was at war with Isreal or 22 arab nations? - Why was there a war in the first place? Was the Arab unprovoked attack on Isreal its own way of extending its hands of peace? What if they had carried out there goal of destroying the Jewish race? Would Illan Pappe be crying here about a "genuine offer of peace"? Why were the arab nations ONLY WILLING TO AT LEAST give peace a chance AFTER they had been soundly defeated in 1948? Look at the Septermber 1, 1967 resolution of Khartoum: NO peace with Israel NO recognition of Israel NO negotiations with Israel With this resolution, the Arab states slammed the door on any progress towards peace with Israel and ultimately led to the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Indeed the arabs were offering a genuine hand of peace! What a hypocrite and liar Illan Pappe is. RichyBlacK: you wouldnt know sarcasm even if it hit you in the face. |
Re: The History Of Israel Reconsidered, By Illan Pappe by Nobody: 2:06am On Nov 01, 2007 |
RichyBlacK: lol what a tool. The same blacks who are the victims of racial injustice and ethnic cleansing in Darfur at the hands of arabs? How these people reason is beyond me! Who is treating the arabs "poorly"? Isreal grants full citizenship rights to palestinians within its borders, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iran DO NOT AND HAVE CONTINUED TO MAINTAIN PALESTINIANS IN REFUGEE CAMPS FOR MORE THAN 40YRS! Iran recently deported 300,000 Afghan refugees! And someone is crying about poor treatment of arabs! There are more Darfur refugees in Isreal than all arab nations put together and you are here calling on blacks to reject racism. Start from Darfur! RichyBlacK: Reading things like this makes the realisation sink deeper within me that the middle east crisis is not really about land but about fulfilling the evil command of Mohammed to destroy the people of Isreal. Sadly none of you is taking into account the fact that the bible categorically states that once the Isrealis get their land back (they did in 1948) NOTHING can uproot them again. Stay there waiting impatiently for birth rates! |
Re: The History Of Israel Reconsidered, By Illan Pappe by Nobody: 2:15am On Nov 01, 2007 |
@ RichyBlack, there is something inherently hypocritical with your maps. you had done nothing but reiterated the UN partition plan of 1947 that was ACCEPTED by Isreal but REJECTED by the Arabs! Rather they chose to go to war to sieze ALL the land! Who is to blame? Notice that in 1922, the initial plan was to give 80% of the land to the arabs and the remaining 15% to the Jews (including Gaza and the westbank - an illegal Jordanian creation that should actually refer to Judea/Samaria!) with East Jerusalem remaining under international control. The Jordanians took their land (transjordan), the arabs (spurred on by their evil islamist desire to destroy Isreal) chose to refuse Isreal the remaining 15%. After almost 3 frustrating decades, Isreal and the UN (Britain had by now given up!) agreed to split the land YET AGAIN between the Jews and the Arabs. The Arabs REJECTED this and surrounded Isreal after it declared independence! But wait! Gaza was annexed illegally by Egypt while the westbank was annexed by Jordan! Now my question: where were all these "palestinians", RichyBlack, Illan Pappe . . . when these lands they now cry themselves hoarse over WHERE IN ARAB HANDS? |
Re: The History Of Israel Reconsidered, By Illan Pappe by Afam(m): 6:34am On Nov 01, 2007 |
chidichris: Hmm, so the Prof that wrote the article is now a mumu simply because your brain cannot process information in the article or is it because the Prof is not attacking OBJ or PDP. Your level of olodoness no get part 2. Ask a good friend to help explain the content to you or you can try the Davidylan style - twist every single sentence, create issues that don't exist, make bogus claims and increase the number of false statements so that energy and time will be expended on irrelevancies. That strategy stopped working some couple of months ago. Anyone that supports evil or wicked acts will certainly be consumed by it sooner or later, this is a fact of life and as much as we will want to live in denial deep down we know what's up. |
Re: The History Of Israel Reconsidered, By Illan Pappe by Tornadoz(m): 12:37pm On Nov 01, 2007 |
But wait! Gaza was annexed illegally by Egypt while the westbank was annexed by Jordan! Now my question: where were all these "palestinians", RichyBlack, Illan Pappe . . . when these lands they now cry themselves hoarse over WHERE IN ARAB HANDS?What I find most prosaic while discussing with davidylan is the above quote. For months when he is cornered he comes back with the above quote. Time and time again I have answered that question. How can a (allegedly) rational mind think like this. If citizen "A" breaks the law, why shouldn't citizen "B" do the same thing is what his argument is. I can't in the life of me see any reason he would bring an example that clearly shows how irrational his arguments are. In his world, if Mr "A" steals a tuber of yam, then Mr "B"can do the same. Is david the president of anarchy international? When is he going to form his own opinion rather than dashing to rummage the racist Jewish archive to repeat age old Jewish tactics of blaming everybody but themselves. P.S Is evil Sharon still been kept alive or has he died unnoticed? If the Jews are looking for any one to switch off Ariel Sharon's breathing equipment, I and millions around the world would be willing to do it without extra cost to Israel. Shalom! |
Re: The History Of Israel Reconsidered, By Illan Pappe by texazzpete(m): 1:22pm On Nov 01, 2007 |
Tornadoz: no wonder your 'rational' mind is outraged when Israel institutes sterner measures to check the movement of potential terrorists after each attack on its cvillians and soldiers by Hamas/Hezbollah/Fatah. No wonder you fume and rage when Israel directs air strikes at areas where hundreds of rockets are launched at civillian centres. it isn't rational, eh? At times, i am convinced you people say only what your neighbouring Imam put in your head. It's people like you that forward gruesome photos of dead palestinians, while pretending that Quassam II rockets merely emit pink, frothy bubbles on impact, that suicide bombers merely go 'pop' and spray perfumes all over the place. Most of the sterner measures to enforce security by the israelis are reactive, coming into effect after an atrocity from one of your arab buddies. Did you ever try and ask yourself why Israeli planes aren't been hijacked anymore? That's because there are armed men on board every Israeli plane, with orders to shoot any hijacker, no matter the cost. Even if the plane goes down, the steer is that no Israeli plane should ever be hijacked again. No points for guessing who/what made them this wary/strict. At least Afam doesn't believe in killing anyone. With your wet dreams of killing Sharon (if indeed he is still alive), you cut a pathetic figure. PS: Do you really think you can absolve yourself from hate crimes and ethnic cleansing? You with your solution of 10 million Jews uprooting themselves from their ancestral home and wandering off to parts unknown, while envious arab armies pick them off with machine gun fire. . . |
Re: The History Of Israel Reconsidered, By Illan Pappe by Nobody: 6:01pm On Nov 01, 2007 |
Tornadoz: If this is the way you interprete my logic then i am not surprised that you are a confused mind. My logic is simple - the lands the "palestinians" are allegedly fighting for has NEVER been theres. 1. Those lands were part of Isreal in 1948. 2. Those lands were illegally annexed by Jordan and Egypt for 19 yrs. 3. If the "palestinians" now claim that Isreal is an illegal occupier then it stands to reason that they shld have accused Egypt and Jordan of being illegal occupiers prior to 1967. Their failure to do so implies that their present cries of "occupation" now is nothing but a ruse! |
Re: The History Of Israel Reconsidered, By Illan Pappe by Afam(m): 7:01pm On Nov 01, 2007 |
davidylan: I bow for this logic. In fact your sins are forgiven you. It is obvious that there is a fundamental problem with the thought process here and there is nothing anyone on a public forum can do to help this guy. RichyBlack, Tornadoz, Denex (e be like say you don give up since yesterday) over to una. Try to talk sense into Davidylan at una own risk. Na bye bye I dey so for the guy matter, I been no know say e bad reach like this. |
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