The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine Paperback – September 1, 2007

This book is an honest and detailed account of how the Zionist movement planned and carried out the heinous crime of systematically forcing the Palestinian people out of Palestine and establishing Israel as a state for Zionist settlers coming from foreign lands. This was committed under a huge campaign of misinformation and coverup utilising the vast resources of the western governments who conspired to victimize the Palestinians.Humanity owes Ilan Pappe, the author of this book, a big favor for his efforts for finally setting the record straight, and documenting the facts of Palestinian 'Nakba' or catastrophe. This book unveils the true and ugly face of Zionism as a racist movement.It is quite clear now after over a hundred years since the first Zionist conference in Basel, Switzerland, that Zionism was a bad idea turned into a nightmare when implemented. So far, Israel is embattled and living in a state of continuous war with all its surroundings. Keeping Israel alive proved to be very costly undertaking both in terms of lives wasted everyday in fighting and in terms of financial cost to sustain the economy and military machine of Israel. The hefty financial cost is mostly carried by the USA but for how long? How can the wise people in Israel fail to see this failure of the Zionist idea? How can they not see that there are alternatives that will ensure peaceful coexistence with Palestinians in a democratic Palestine?The author represents the voice of conscience and fairness as well as academic honesty and professionalism. The atrocities committed by Zionists against the Palestinian people will never be forgotten and will come back to haunt the Israelis for generations to come. Nothing short of the full recognition of the Palestinian people's right to their homeland of Palestine, as well as full reparation for the enormous suffering and damages inflicted on them by the creation of the State of Israel, would bring closure to this problem.The area will not see peace before the Palestinians restore their full rights. The unconditional return of any and all Palestinians to Palestine is an unalienable right that may not be compromised.It is ironic to note that the Palestinians (generally Muslims and Christians) have never had any issues with jews as followers of another religion. Jews have never been mistreated or persecuted by the Palestinians. Jews, on the other hand, were persecuted in Europe. Why should the Palestinians pay the price?The advent of the Zionist movement appeared to have poisoned relations in the region as a whole. The wretched camps of Palestinian refugees scattered in various Middle Eastern countries and inside Palestine still stand for almost 60 years as a harsh reminder of the problems created by the creation of Israel at the expense of the Palestinian people.Inspite of all what happened, just and equitable peace is still possible. This is not to say that the Israelis should necessarily be forced out of the land they unlawfully usurped from the Palestinians. It only means that Israel as a Zionist i.e. racist state should be peacefully dismantled, and in its place a democratic state is established where all citizens are equal regardless of their religion or race. Any Israeli who accepts to live in a democratic Palestine as an equal citizen shall be welcome to stay. Those who do not accept equality with other citizens should find another place to live (perhaps return to the countries where they originally came to Palestine from).In its long history, Palestine has seen many invaders come and go. But the Palestinian people always emerged back and maintained its identity. The Israeli barbaric atrocities to obliterate, vilify, and eradicate the Palestinian people and its culture will not succeed despite the unprecedented savagery the Israelis used gainst the Palestinians.The ethnic cleansing of Palestine did not stop after achieving the massive depopulation of Palestine in the years 1948 and 1949. In fact, ethnic cleansing continued to the present time and is still ongoing. It takes various forms such as deportation of Palestinians, demolition of Palestinian houses, and denying the Palestinians permits to build houses or rebuild old ones. Israel also resorts to the strangulation of Palestinian economy forcing people to finally leave the country to seek jobs and settle abroad. If all that does not work, outright assassination is used to get rid of Palestinians. This is taking place under the watch of the whole world who gives lip service to human rights and Palestinian right to self-determination.History will not forgive the world which stood by totally oblivious to the Israeli crimes, and ignoring the suffering of the Palestinians.This book is must reading for anyone interested in peace and justice on Earth.

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe came highly recommended by several sources. After I watched a few interviews with Pappe, I finally found the book available and immediately ordered it. It is a fascinating, must-read book for anyone who wants to better understand how Israel came into existence on land inhabited by Palestinians and known as Palestine. Pappe is an Israeli historian who used Israel's historical documents to expose the history that has been obfuscated and manipulated to manufacture a narrative more palatable to much of the world than the truth. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine explores the atrocities of the Nakba and the years leading up to the Nakba as well as the invention of Zionism. Pappe explores and explains attitudes, behaviors, and decisions made by those in charge using their own diaries and official records in a way that brings the people of the time and the moments they experienced to life. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine is well-researched, well-written and accessible to anyone wanting to better understand what brought us to the world as it currently stands because it demonstrates how the ethnic cleansing of Palestine has always reached far beyond Palestine.

This is a stunning and relentless collection of evidence. Pappe uses things such as military archives (opened in the 1990s), diary entries from Ben-Gurion, and oral histories from Hagana soldiers and Palestinians. He gives lengthy, village-by-village accounts of the destruction of homes and expulsion of residents. The expulsions were guided by files of the Jewish National Fund, which had been gathering intelligence data on the demographics of the villages for decades.It is hard to think of a book that is more opposite of a commonly accepted history than this one. According to Pappe, 1948 was not a desperate fight for survival by a surrounded Jewish enclave, it was a Zionist attack on the countryside. Most of the fighting stemmed from the Hagana's systematic destruction of 400 Palestinian villages. Most refugees were driven out BEFORE the main war started on May 15, 1948. Arab armies did intervene in a haphazard attempt to defend Palestinian sections (as set by the UN partition plan), but they were always out gunned, out numbered and out coordinated by the Hagana. Jordan, in particular, had a secret agreement with the Zionists to annex the West Bank in return for not joining an invasion of Israel. So the most effective Arab army, (and a Jordanian also commanded the pan-Arab "Arab Liberation Army") was not trying to destroy Israel, only protect its own designs on the West Bank and East Jerusalem.Among many pieces of evidence, Pappe argues that the Arab attack on Israel was so weak (despite public pronouncements of impending doom from Ben-Gurion) that the Hagana never had to be diverted from its main task of ethnic cleansing. It was able to hold off the sporadic pan-Arab attacks, and depopulate the countryside at the same time. It was assisted in this by large shipments of arms from Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, while Britain and France embargoed arms to the Arabs. The private conversations of Ben-Gurion and his associates show great confidence they could defeat the Arab attacks, which amounted to little more than face-saving gestures by Arab governments who were only recently independent themselves.There is also a very interesting chapter on the literal erasure of the existence of Palestine. Parks and newly planted forests in Israel now cover the foundations of numerous Palestinian villages. An Israeli "Naming Committee" was formed to give Hebrew names to the features of the countryside that were once Arab, with special attention to creating links to the Israel of 2,000 years ago, while ignoring last week's residents. The Byra forest tourist destination, for example, contains no reference to the six villages that were wiped from the map there.For decades, kids in Hebrew schools in the US collected coins to plant trees in Israel. Those same trees now hide stone foundations of nameless villages. Trees in Israeli forests are only 11% indigenous, the rest were planted in recent decades. So not just the people were cleansed, the memory too.This book deserves to be the center of an international discussion about Palestine, but a crushing silence is the more likely result.

This is a hair-raising history of Palestine, not for the faint hearted.