The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

A real eye opener.

This book may be a little difficult for some to come to terms with and for others even more difficult to accept. It is something that has been placed in the psyche of us in Europe after the horrors of the holocaust that any criticism of the state of Israel or Zionism is equal to anti semitism. That the state of Israel was created out of the ashes of the second world war in order to provide a safe and free land for Jews the world over and a place of return for the Jews to their historical homeland.

This book dispels the myth. Pappe rather presents the establishment of the state of Israel as being not only created by men whose ideology was every equal of the extreme nationalism that European Jews had suffered under but also created out of the ethnic cleansing of the native population of that land, the Palestinians.

Pappe begins his book by providing us with with definitions of ethnic cleansing quoting from the United Nations amongst others. unfortunately his use of wikipedia, an 'encyclopedia' by his own admissions is edited by anyone in order to further his argument greatly diminishes his own introduction. While he may choose to use this in his own words to gauge public opinion on how genocide and ethnic cleansing is defined the fact that wikipedia is more of a soap box for anyone with a grudge makes the website frankly worthless.

According to Pappe, ethnic cleansing is something that requires planning and pre-thought before execution and in the first few chapters Pappe documents how Zionist leaders wrote up maps of Palestinian areas, their populations and numbers. Pappe is also quick to point out however, how some Palestinian leaders were only too happy to sell off land to Zionist settlers believing that the greater threat to their land was the colonialism of the British. For some, the Zionists were the poor of Europe and offered little threat, little were they to know that these people would be one and the same who orchestrated their own extinction from their own lands.

Pappe goes on to examine the execution of the Zionist plans of forced expulsion of Palestinians under threats of murder, how the response of Arab militias resulted in further excuses for Zionist outrages on civilian populations. Pappe gives examples of Palestinian villages of both Christian and Muslim who were wiped from the map. Further examples of man (Defined as aged between 10 and 50) being separated from their women folk and executed. Examples of mass rape, destruction of Churches, Mosques, orchards are also given.

Another interesting point is the Arab-Israeli war which Pappe defines as a 'phony war' Pointing out that Jordan had no intention of defending Palestinians rather in protecting its agreed annexation of the West Bank. How the poorly armed and trained Arab armies were no match for the Zionist forces due to the Egyptians while large in numbers (Swelled by the Muslim brotherhood whose lack of any military training made them more a liability than help) The Syrians lack of modern arms, the Lebanese whose numbers were so small they were more concerned with holding onto their own land and Iraqis. Most of these forces were tied down by their own political leaders who had no intentions of seeing them defend the Palestinian people.

I believe it was Robert Fisk in his book 'Pity the nation' who once pointed out the irony of the victims of genocide often being the most enthusiastic perpetrators of it. It is interesting that most of the criticism of this book is that it is 'anti semitic' (Strange considering the author is Jewish!) and reminds me of how Serbs would point out the massacres that were committed against their people in World War 2 by Croatian militias as though that somehow justifies the slaughter of thousands in Bosnia and Kosovo. Similarly Zionists use the holocaust to deflect war crimes in Lebanon and the ethnic cleansing of an entire people in Palestine.

Thankfully Pappe has brought this to the worlds attention in a book that while filled with information that will be shocking and disturbing is also clear and easy to read.

Brilliant book (12/13 people found this helpful)

It took courage to write this book and puts Ilan Pappe in the same category as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Solzhenitsyn lived in a different time and place; however his exposure of an unjust system with a manipulated history had significant impact on changing it.

During the past century a number of milestones have been put in place including the formation of the League of Nations, the United Nations and the Geneva Conventions. These define the standards to which we are expected to adhere (or be judged by) in both peace and war. We cannot compare what was acceptable behaviour in biblical times, ancient empires or the middle ages with a 20th Century ethnic cleansing.

If Pappe's book contributes towards peace in the Middle East through truth and reconciliation, then may history remember him well. He will have achieved what the United Nations and the world's leading superpower failed to do.

How A Racist State Was Formed. (16/18 people found this helpful)

In The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Pappé explains and documents that the true goal of the founders of Zionism had always been to create a majority Jewish state, emptied as much as possible of the native Palestinian population. He meticulously (and painfully) reconstructs the story of how Zionist leaders, over many decades, carefully laid the groundwork for this expulsion and how they intiated their plan in 1948 when the British finally decided to leave.

Israel's official version of the story of 1948 claims that Jewish settlers in Palestine never intended to expel their Palestinian Arab neighbours; that Zionist leaders were willing to accept UN resolution 181 of November 1947, which called for the partition of Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state, but that it was the Palestinians who rejected that plan; and that the Palestinians became refugees when they "voluntarily" fled their homes to make room for the Arab armies that invaded Palestine in May 1948 to carry out what they called a "second Holocaust" against Jews.

Pappé decided to debunk the Israeli myths by relying almost exclusively on declassified Israeli military archives and the memoirs of Israel's "founding fathers." These sources leave no doubt that, in the decades before 1948, the leaders of Zionism concocted a premeditated plan to expel the native Palestinian population. Pappé details how these Israeli "heroes" executed the plan in the period from December 1947 to March 1949 through the use of massacres, rapes, demolition of villages, and forced expulsion of the native population. In doing so, he manages to vindicate and corroborate the story that the Palestinians have been trying to get out to the Western world for the past sixty years.

Zionist leaders drew up Plan D, or dalet in Hebrew. These leaders ordered their militias and gangs to start implementing Plan D only hours after the UN issued resolution 181 in November 1947. The long nightmare for the Palestinians would only get worse. Zionist militias began to attack and expel villagers with or without provocation inside lands allocated to either the Jewish or Arab state.

Declassified Israeli military archives confirm that the Zionist militias carried out at least thirty-seven large-scale massacres in that period. Some of the worst massacres and rape cases took place in villages such as Deir Yassin.

By the spring of 1949, Israel had conquered up to 80 percent of historic Palestine. It expelled 800,000 Palestinians, or 75 percent of the native Arab population, from their homeland, turning them into refugees and preventing them from coming back at the end of the war. The founding fathers had finally succeeded in securing a Jewish state with a Jewish majority.

Excellent and essential reading.

The begining of a disaster. (14/16 people found this helpful)

Anyone wishing to understand the roots of the Arab Israeli conflict from an historical perspective must read this book. Pappe presents an alternate course of events that lead up to the creation of the state of Israel and to me at least he seems to have hit on a vein of truth and one that, if a fraction is true, makes for depressing reading. What is really upsetting is that there is little hope of any improvement for the Palestinian people whilst the other versions on the story are presented as the sole historic truth.

The REAL history of the Israeli state (47/53 people found this helpful)

An excellent and meticulously researched historical text.
The level of cold, calculated brutality and unprovoked savagery used against a largely peaceful peasant population usually offering little or no resistance, a population quite unprepared for a war, who were usually just 'going about their business', is absolutely shocking. As is the clinical pre-planning and ruthless, cold efficiency with which the plan was then carried out. It is no exaggeration to compare what happened with the Nazi push into the Baltic states and Russia in the early 1940's.
The reality of what actually happened during the years 1948-49, compared with the 'official' Israeli version, is astonishing. This is a subject I have had an interest in for some considerable time now, but despite my interest and knowledge of the subject, I was not prepared for the detail. The unnecessary nastiness and inhumanity of the jewish forces, is really hard to come to terms with.
It is also interesting to compare the present day horror and outrage that is expressed at the actions of a 'suicide bomber' with events in early 1948 [when there was no war]. The Stern Gang and Hagana routinely threw bombs into CIVILIAN Palestinian gatherings and blew up houses with all the occupants asleep inside, often killing scores of people, simply to terrorise the population into fleeing Palestine.
I am also deeply ashamed of the role [or non-role] played by the British forces, with one or two notable exceptions, [and the Bevin Government] who, until May 1948, were still officially charged with upholding law and order in Palestine.
Anyone who still buys the notion that the events at Quana, the murder of the UN workers [despite hours of telephone conversations], the very high civilian casualty rates during the 2006 push into Lebanon, the deaths on the beach in Gaza and so on, were all REALLY accidental, should read this book. This particular brand of terror is long established practice by the Israelis.
In fact, it is hard to understand how most of our media and politicians, people who have chosen to make a career informing the rest of us about what goes on, in and around the world, seem remarkably oblivious to this information. Well, there are no excuses now are there ?
I am not sure how anyone could [intelligently] argue that this is 'a piece of anti-zionist fiction' as one of your reviewers suggests, it is far too factually based and closely referenced. It IS a testament to the power of the Israeli lobby and their campaign of distortion and misinformation that we are still presented by most of the media for most of the time the image of Israel as the victim in the Middle East. Now THAT is a piece of PRO-zionist fiction. Excellent, though disturbing book.

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

Ilan Pappe

Reader Reviews:

A real eye opener (5/6 people found this helpful)

Brilliant book (12/13 people found this helpful)

How A Racist State Was Formed. (16/18 people found this helpful)

The begining of a disaster. (14/16 people found this helpful)

The REAL history of the Israeli state (47/53 people found this helpful)

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