The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. By Ilan Pappe

This is a unique opportunity to hear the renowned historian and author, Ilan Pappe speak about his book "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" where he lays out the past, present, and offers suggestions for the future.
Vancouver Marsh 29, 08.

*****

Ilan Pappe:
The present dismal reality unfolding in the Middle East has clear historical roots and a journey into the past may help to illuminate what lies behind the destructive policies of Israel in both Palestine and Lebanon.

Zionism arrived in Palestine in the late 19th as a colonialist movement motivated by national impulses.

The colonisation of Palestine fitted well the interests and policies of the British Empire on the eve of the First World War.

With the backing of Britain, the colonisation project expanded, and became a solid presence on the land after the war and with the establishment of the British mandate in Palestine (which lasted between 1918 and 1948).

While this consolidation took place, the indigenous society underwent, like other societies in the rest of the Arab world, a steady process of establishing a national identity.

But with one difference. While the rest of the Arab world was shaping its political identity through the struggle against European colonialism, in Palestine nationalism meant asserting your collective identity against both an exploitative British colonialism and expansionist Zionism.

Thus, the conflict with Zionism was an additional burden. The pro-Zionist policy of the British mandate there naturally strained the relationship between Britain and the local Palestinian society.

This climaxed in a revolt in 1936 against both London and the expanding Zionist colonisation project.

At the end of November 1947, the UN offered to divide Palestine into two states almost equal in their territorial space. The Jews were only one third of the population by 1947 and most of them had arrived in Palestine only a few years earlier.

The categorical Palestinian refusal to go along with this deal, backed by the Arab League, allowed the Zionist leadership to plan carefully the next step. Between February 1947 and March 1948, a final plan for ethnic cleansing was prepared.

The Zionist leadership defined 80 percent of Palestine (Israel today without the West Bank) as the space for the future state.

This was an area in which one million Palestinians lived next to 600,000 Jews.

The idea was to uproot as many Palestinians as possible. From March 1948 until the end of that year the plan was implemented despite the attempt by some Arab states to oppose it, which failed. Some 750,000 Palestinians were expelled, 531 villages were destroyed and 11 urban neighbourhoods demolished.

Half of Palestine's population was uprooted and half of its villages destroyed. The state of Israel was established in over 80 percent of Palestine, turning Palestinian villages into Jewish settlements and recreation parks, but allowing a small number of Palestinian to remain citizens in it.

The June 1967 war allowed Israel to take the remaining 20 percent of Palestine.

This seizure defeated in a way the ethnic ideology of the Zionist movement. Israel encompassed 100 percent of Palestine, but the state incorporated a large number of Palestinians, the people who Zionists made such an effort to expel in 1948.

The fact that Israel was let off easily in 1948, and not condemned for the ethnic cleansing it committed, encouraged it to ethnically cleanse a further 300,000 Palestinians from the West Bank and the Gaza strip.
Read the full article here: http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art....

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[jeremy thomas]

1)The movement of jewish people to Palestine CANNOT be described as colonialist as Pappe tries to call it. This is because a colony is an area under political control by a distant or neighbouring state. For example between 1858 and 1947 parts of India were controlled by Britain and currently the Falkland Islands are.

[Palestine Diary]

The racist Ze'ev Jabotinsky wrote in his article "The Iron Wall": "Zionist colonization, even the most restricted, must either be terminated or carried out in defiance of the will of the native population. This colonization can, therefore, continue and develop only under the protection of a force independent of the local population – an iron wall which the native population cannot break through. This is, in to, our policy towards the Arabs. To formulate it any other way would only be hypocrisy"

[Palestine Diary]

Continuation: "Not only must this be so, it is so whether we admit it or not. What does the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate mean for us? It is the fact that a disinterested power committed itself to create such security conditions that the local population would be deterred from interfering with our efforts."

This part debunks your second point.

BTW, the documented confessions of the Zionist criminal leadership expose the lies of the new brainwashed Zionists.

[keydara]

Excellent , very factual , I really enjoyed listening to IIan Pappe

[FoolishOrc]

The story told and the truth which was known in most Palestinian and Arab homes become more and more known. Thanks to Pappe and other brave people!

[Meero1993]

Love you man

from a descendant of Palestinian refugees

[emotionalinvalid]

Sooner or later the truth comes out. Thank you llan. But where were world observers when the Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestinians occured right from the beginning? Alan Hart and Yuri Avery(also Jewish like Pappe) are also truth tellers. I heard Shimon Perez say that in the long history of Europe vs Islam, That even before the 20th century, Europe(except Poland till 1939) perpetrated vastly more persecution and genocide on Jews than in the Islamic empire (ending after ww1).

[jeremy thomas]

2) The development of modern Israel has never been connected or ruled by a foreign power. Jewish people have always lived in the region and these numbers simply increased. Thus Pappe starts his talk with a mistaken description aiming to show Israel in a negative way.

[Tommy Swan]

ISRAELIS ARE THE REAL TERRORISTS OF THE WORLD , AND ANY NATION THAT SUPPORTS THE ILLEGAL TERROR STATE OF ISRAEL IS EVEN MORE OF A TERRORIST ..!!!!!!!!! >:o

[blowersho]

Such an honest and dignified human being, respect to him and thank you abumiz for putting this on YouTube.

[wendewellspring]

Is this an ironic comment? It's not entirely clear to me.

[gur ruh]

I just saw Ilan Pappe giving a talk on Israeli apartheid in Sydney's Festival of Dangerous Ideas......what a wonderful man who was at question time hounded by the Hasbara Brigade ,who bombarded him with their false narrative, and he handle them like a pro.

I recommend to anyone if you have a chance, see him. you will not reject it.