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Radhika Roy's Reviews > The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
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An eye-opening and heart-wrenching read which I would recommend to anyone who wishes to be slightly enlightened about the Israel-Palestine “conflict�. Spoiler alert: It’s not a conflict; it is a systematic and cruel expulsion of people in a bid to further establish racial supremacy.
“Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine� by Israeli historian Ilan Pappé is a painstaking account of how the all-too often forgotten Nakba of 1948, wherein Zionists carried out the mass evacuation of Arabs and attempted to expand their own territory so as to construct a country which was solely devoted to Jews, was perpetuated.
Pappé, therefore, attempts to explore both the mechanism of this ethnic cleansing as well as the cognitive system that allowed the world to move on from the Nakba like it never happened. What follows is a shocking revelation of world history that not only exhibits the utmost cruelty that human nature is capable of performing but also how the US, Britain, and the UN are instrumental in allowing the massacre of innocents to take place.
I am adding a warning that this book is not for the faint-hearted.
The book starts off with Pappé describing what Ethnic Cleansing actually means. He refers to the definition of the same in international law and then tries to portray to his readers that what took place in Palestine in 1948 falls squarely within the definition of ethnic cleansing. In a horrifying twist of events, the Nakba is celebrated as the War of Independence by Israelis and the fact that a section of society was almost wiped out at the hands of a superior military power is buried. In fact, surfing through the Jewish National Fund website after reading this book caused major cognitive dissonance for me because the website completely erases even the existence of a civilization prior to 1948.
Pappé then describes how the drive for an exclusively Jewish State unfolded by not only delving into what the Zionism as a religious ideology entails by referring to the philosophy of Theodor Herzl, but also by getting into the practicalities that were concocted by people such as David Ben-Gurion, who was the architect of the Nakba (and undoubtedly as vicious as Hitler, which is ironic because here the victims of the Holocaust have become the perpetrators).
A moral question that I encountered was, how could the same people who faced the most unimaginable atrocities on account of their race a mere few years back allow and perpetrate the same crimes? This is also a question that Pappé wanted to explore but came up empty-handed.
Anyway, this is not simply a book that explains the happening of the Nakba; it is a pure documentation of how each and every village with Arabs was “cleansed�. And cleansing is not confined to merely expulsion of people in villages; it includes the destruction of the hard work, the history, and the culture of every village. It was almost painful to read this; so much just lost to greed and barbarity.
He further deals with what allowed the Zionist ideology to bloom and how Ben-Gurion was able to execute his plan with the aid of international support/non-support, including alliances with the King of Transjordan, Western guilt stemming from the Holocaust as well as major missteps taken by the UN. It’s enough to invoke a river of fury in you, and also explains the origins of the PLO, Hamas and the Intifada.
Despite dealing with such a heavy topic, the book is extremely accessible and is replete with the smallest of details about the Nakba. A fact that I admired about Pappe was that even after writing about how costive the Jews have been toward repatriation of the Arabs, he still holds out hope for the Right to Return of the refugees and possible peace in the region. Is there a chance of that happening? Only time will tell.
PS: While reading this, it was hard to not draw parallels between Zionism and Hindutva. Much of the rhetoric pertaining to establishing a pure religious entity without the presence of Muslims is quite indistinguishable. Even the beginnings of the Nakba are eerily similar, with the disengagement of the British and then the Partition. A personal opinion, but things would have been horribly different had we had any other leader other than Nehru (despite all his failings) during our nascent years.
“Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine� by Israeli historian Ilan Pappé is a painstaking account of how the all-too often forgotten Nakba of 1948, wherein Zionists carried out the mass evacuation of Arabs and attempted to expand their own territory so as to construct a country which was solely devoted to Jews, was perpetuated.
Pappé, therefore, attempts to explore both the mechanism of this ethnic cleansing as well as the cognitive system that allowed the world to move on from the Nakba like it never happened. What follows is a shocking revelation of world history that not only exhibits the utmost cruelty that human nature is capable of performing but also how the US, Britain, and the UN are instrumental in allowing the massacre of innocents to take place.
I am adding a warning that this book is not for the faint-hearted.
The book starts off with Pappé describing what Ethnic Cleansing actually means. He refers to the definition of the same in international law and then tries to portray to his readers that what took place in Palestine in 1948 falls squarely within the definition of ethnic cleansing. In a horrifying twist of events, the Nakba is celebrated as the War of Independence by Israelis and the fact that a section of society was almost wiped out at the hands of a superior military power is buried. In fact, surfing through the Jewish National Fund website after reading this book caused major cognitive dissonance for me because the website completely erases even the existence of a civilization prior to 1948.
Pappé then describes how the drive for an exclusively Jewish State unfolded by not only delving into what the Zionism as a religious ideology entails by referring to the philosophy of Theodor Herzl, but also by getting into the practicalities that were concocted by people such as David Ben-Gurion, who was the architect of the Nakba (and undoubtedly as vicious as Hitler, which is ironic because here the victims of the Holocaust have become the perpetrators).
A moral question that I encountered was, how could the same people who faced the most unimaginable atrocities on account of their race a mere few years back allow and perpetrate the same crimes? This is also a question that Pappé wanted to explore but came up empty-handed.
Anyway, this is not simply a book that explains the happening of the Nakba; it is a pure documentation of how each and every village with Arabs was “cleansed�. And cleansing is not confined to merely expulsion of people in villages; it includes the destruction of the hard work, the history, and the culture of every village. It was almost painful to read this; so much just lost to greed and barbarity.
He further deals with what allowed the Zionist ideology to bloom and how Ben-Gurion was able to execute his plan with the aid of international support/non-support, including alliances with the King of Transjordan, Western guilt stemming from the Holocaust as well as major missteps taken by the UN. It’s enough to invoke a river of fury in you, and also explains the origins of the PLO, Hamas and the Intifada.
Despite dealing with such a heavy topic, the book is extremely accessible and is replete with the smallest of details about the Nakba. A fact that I admired about Pappe was that even after writing about how costive the Jews have been toward repatriation of the Arabs, he still holds out hope for the Right to Return of the refugees and possible peace in the region. Is there a chance of that happening? Only time will tell.
PS: While reading this, it was hard to not draw parallels between Zionism and Hindutva. Much of the rhetoric pertaining to establishing a pure religious entity without the presence of Muslims is quite indistinguishable. Even the beginnings of the Nakba are eerily similar, with the disengagement of the British and then the Partition. A personal opinion, but things would have been horribly different had we had any other leader other than Nehru (despite all his failings) during our nascent years.
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Reading Progress
May 16, 2021
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Started Reading
May 16, 2021
– Shelved
June 12, 2021
–
Finished Reading
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Jun 12, 2021 03:36AM
Excellent review. It's a pity that the moral question goes unanswered, would have loved to understand that better.
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Vinayak wrote: "Excellent review. It's a pity that the moral question goes unanswered, would have loved to understand that better."Thank you, Vinayak! Same, I feel understanding that aspect would have put me at ease.
