Product Description

In this controversial new book, a prominent Israeli historian at Haifa University revisits the formative period of the State of Israel. Decisively debunking the myth that the Palestinian population left of their own accord during the War of Independence, he offers archival evidence to demonstrate that a central plank in Israel's founding ideology was the forcible removal of the indigenous population. This book is a passionate plea to acknowledge the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 as the root cause of the ongoing Palestine-Israel conflict.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3921 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-25
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In his latest work, renowned Israeli author and academic Pappe (A History of Modern Palestine) does not mince words, doing Jimmy Carter one better (or worse, depending on one's point of view) by accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity beginning in the 1948 war for independence, and continuing through the present. Focusing primarily on Plan D (Dalet, in Hebrew), conceived on March 10, 1948, Pappe demonstrates how ethnic cleansing was not a circumstance of war, but rather a deliberate goal of combat for early Israeli military units led by David Ben-Gurion, whom Pappe labels the "architect of ethnic cleansing." The forced expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians between 1948-49, Pappe argues, was part of a long-standing Zionist plan to manufacture an ethnically pure Jewish state. Framing his argument with accepted international and UN definitions of ethnic cleansing, Pappe follows with an excruciatingly detailed account of Israeli military involvement in the demolition and depopulation of hundreds of villages, and the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Arab inhabitants. An accessible, learned resource, this volume provides important inroads into the historical antecedents of today's conflict, but its conclusions will not be easy for everyone to stomach: Pappe argues that the ethnic cleansing of Palestine continues today, and calls for the unconditional return of all Palestinian refugees and an end to the Israeli occupation. Without question, Pappe's account will provoke ire from many readers; importantly, it will spark discussion as well.
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Times Literary Supplement, 04/26/2007
Pappe has opened up an important new line of inquiry into the vast and fateful subject of the Palestinian refugees. His book is rewarding in other ways. It has at times an elegiac, even sentimental, character, recalling the lost, obliterated life of the Palestinian Arabs and imagining or regretting what Pappe believes could have been a better land of Palestine.

Ghada Karmi - Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, England, UK
"Ground breaking research into a well kept Israeli secret. A classic of historical scholarship on a taboo subject by one of Israel's foremost New Historians."

Customer Reviews

Zionist ethnic cleansing creates "racially pure" Israel
Ilan Pappe used Israeli records and interviews with victims of Zionist ethnic cleansing to document how terror, murder, and rape were used by Jews, in Palesting, from the end of World War II through 1949 to expell Palestinians from Palestine and create a larger and larger Isreal. The book is a good corrective, for the mis-representations of the event sequences and non-reporting of events, by US print and electronic press coompanies, of what happened.

Outstanding! So well-doucumented that the facts speak for themself
This book is a must read for those who seek to understand the current situtation between the modern state of Israel and the Palestian people in light of objective historical facts.

Drawing on public doucments of the State of Israel and the diaries, memoirs and published works of Israeli leaders such as David Ben-Gurion and Menachim Begin, and other crediable and throughly documented sources, Israeli historian Ilan Pappe makes a powerful case that the State of Israel's treatment of the Palestinian civilian population in 1948 was a carefully planned and systematically executed deliberate act of ethnic cleansing.

Courage to tell the Truth
Ilan Pappe is one of the few Israelis to have the courage to look at Israel's original sin, and he has paid for that courage. This book details the planning and execution of the theft of the Palestinians' land by the Zionists. Well written and documented, by an author who can hardly be called "anti-semitic".