Palestine: The Pendulum Is Shifting
For decades in political discourse and popular culture, Palestinians were often typecast as bloodthirsty killers. As the great Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said once ruefully observed, “Palestine is a thankless cause, one in which if you truly serve, you get nothing back but opprobrium, abuse, and ostracism. How many friends avoid the subject? How many colleagues want none of Palestine’s controversy? How many bien pensant liberals have time for Bosnia and Somalia, Rwanda and South Africa and Nicaragua and human and civil rights everywhere on earth, but not for Palestine and Palestinians?” There are signs that may be changing. A new generation of activists has breathed fresh energy into the question of Palestine. The BDS, Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, has attracted more and more adherents. The pendulum is shifting.
Interviewed by David Barsamian.
Recorded at KSFR.
Speaker
Ilan Pappé
Ilan Pappé has been called “the most original, radical and hard-hitting of Israel’s ‘new historians.’” He is the director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter and a senior fellow at the University of Exeter’s Institute for Arab and Islamic Studies. He was born in Haifa, Israel. From 1984 to 2006, he taught at the University of Haifa. He moved to the UK in 2007. Among his many books are The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, The Biggest Prison on Earth, A Very Short History of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, Lobbying for Zionism, Ten Myths About Israel and Israel on the Brink.
Fred Nagel –
Very thought provoking interview. Pappe’s early academic career reveals the complete lack of intellectual freedom when it comes to the origin of Israel. He relates this to the death of the “liberal” parties in Israeli elections. They can’t advocate for a truthful interpretation of Israel’s history, and can’t deviate from the official position of Israel being a Jewish state. What can they run on? His comparison of Obama and Trump is surprising. Well worth listening to!