Three Important Contributions to the Truthful History of Palestine by Israeli Scholar Ilan Pappe

News about Palestine

Getting factual news about Israel’s war on Gaza and Palestinians does not happen easily.  Israel has banned foreign journalists from the concentration camp called Gaza so our news is almost totally limited to what the government of Israel is willing to release. Experience shows that information is not reliable, confirming the maxim the the first casualty of war is TRUTH.   Getting truthful information about the current war on Palestine doesn't seem to be a high priority for Western media.

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That doesn’t mean that there are no journalists reporting from Gaza itself.  Israel has done its best to prevent such journalists from reporting the genocide in Gaza by killing at least 200 of them. But some courageous reporters persist in witnessing to truth.   If you want to read a current set of reports from five remaining, courageous Palestinian reporters, visit:  https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/five-journalists-in-gaza-reflect.   Al Jazeera news seem better equipped to present a more balanced new report.

The active suppression of truth is not limited to Israels’ currently widening war theatres.  If you want to read a carefully researched report on how the political Zionist Lobby has dominated and intimidated international and national media, western governments and legislators, and other potential critics in a mission to suppress truth, then buy or borrow the 575-page tome “Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic” by Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, currently based at the University of Exeter in the UK.  (London, One World Publications, 2024.  ISBN 978 0 86154 402 8. CAD$50.)

For me, it has been quite an eye-opener to learn how well the Lobby has ensured that its narrative becomes the “received news”, especially in the Western world. I always considered myself to be fairly well informed about current events.  One of my majors in the UBC Arts faculty was world history, especially European and American.  But I had no idea of the extent to which facts and truth about the rise of political Zionism and the emergence of the State of Israel were suppressed and distorted. 

Oppression of Jews

I certainly did learn that in Western Christianity the oppression of Jews was an ongoing reality.  Racist prejudice in which almost all Europeans were immersed was a fact of life.  This evil culminated in Hitler’s highly organized Nazi Holocaust. Anyone denying these colossal crimes is either insane or totally ignorant.  Acknowledging these truths through confession and repentance has set many free.

Confession and repentance are also called for from the Allied victors of World War II.   The United Kingdom, the USA, Canada and others received  urgent pleas to find safe space and place in their nations for refugee Jews, especially from eastern Europe.   They declined and it cost the lives of many Jews.  Eventually Palestine became the convenient "solution to the Jewish problem" for these complicit Western nations.

So as a repentant and reformed Christian Canadian, I innocently (or ignorantly) accepted the "solution" and sought ways of building bridges with neighbouring Jews and Jewish communities in conflict, as a means of moving closer to much needed reconciliation.   You might say that I became a soft or mild Christian Zionist content with the "solution" which many Jews welcomed but Palestinians rightly abhored.

The Larger Narrative

As I’ve indicated in a previous Pilgrim Praxis post, my eyes had, however, been blinkered and failed to perceive that there was more to the narrative.  In particular, I failed to recognize the evolution of the overall political Zionist vision which aimed for a Jews-only homeland/nation in Palestine.  I didn't think through what this really meant for the indigenous Palestinians forced to give up land, home, and freedom.  I was even more ignorant of  the geo-political agendas of Western nations, especially the USA, vis a vis Arabs and their nations in general and the role that Israel could play in taming the Middle East. 

I had failed to recognize that the State of Israel, was no “little nation” threatened by an Arab colossus.

It was backed up by virtually limitless USA arms and money, along with United Kingdom and French support,  Research shows that early Israeli leadership was confident about their ability to eradicate the opposing Arab-nations' forces, ill-equipped and badly trained as they were.   Palestinian residents, who carried the unrecognized and costly burden of these convenient policies, presented little threat given their long experience of being politically dominated and kept in check within the Ottoman Empire and during  British mandatory rule after World War I .   

For decades, the Zionist narrative and the "demonization" of Palestinians and their leaders grew. In the various Western centres of power, especially Washington and London Islamophobia waxed. In part this might have been compensation for unacknowledged gentile shame and guilt over past prejudice against Jews, the marginalization of Jews in the “Christian” European culture, and then the  Holocaust. 

Allowing Palestine - which politicians like the UK's Prime Minister Lloyd George conveniently regarded as vacant land (terra nullius) - to be taken over for the Jewish homeland/state was deemed a peaceable solution.   In fact,  less than 10% of the Palestinian population in those early days were Jews and hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees fled for their lives seeking safety when in 1948  the great powers through the United Nations birthed Israel as a nation state.

The majority population – Palestinians – were never fully consulted and had little influence in the decision-making.  As is the case in most “settler colonial” conquest processes, the people who had the most to lose and who suffered the most through colonization, were not taken seriously by presumptuous international politicians.  A costly error causing much blood to flow.

Canada Too!

 Canada knows well about the dynamics of "settler colonialism".   )n the way to Confederation in 1867,  Indigenous peoples – First Nations, Metis, Inuit – had no voice in the negotiations, and by 1876 we had the apartheid Indian Act.  In the early 1980s again, when Pierre E Trudeau strove to return the Constitution “home” to Canada, Indigenous leaders resisted by raising their voices to guard their legal and treaty rights, but Trudeau threatened to remove them totally from the Constitution, thereby guaranteeing none of their rights.  Happily Trudeau failed and Section 35 was the result - a key to the Indigenous rights door.* 

Settler colonialism assumes that settlers have a transcendent (theological, ideological, political) right to be dominant. Indigenous peoples, on the other hand, are regarded as subordinate, primitive, negligeable, racially inferior.  When they resist, they are demonized as “communists”, “terrorists”, “savages”, "inhuman", "monsters" by the colonizers.

Ironically, it is, in reality, the dominating settlers who are the “demons.”   They arrive assuming superiority and the right to terrorize and control by military, economic and social dominance, to impose laws and culture on indigenous peoples which aim to gain control of their lands, wealth, and livelihoods.   South Africa, Australia, Russia, USA (historically with Turtle Island "Indians," etc.) - all are examples of settler colonialism by which indigenous peoples, like the Palestinians, are deprived of liberty and land and far too frequently of life itself, as in genocidal warfare.

(The Tenth Commandment dealing with coveting a neighbour’s property applies to all these histories of “Christian” colonial nations (see Exodus 20:17; Deuteronomy 5:21 as do the Commandments about lying, killing, and worshipping false gods, e.g. of nationalism.  No room here for Micah 6:8 either)

Resistance and Reaction

In the 77 years since the Partition / Nakba, Palestinians have not only raised their voices, they have resisted the occupation and control, the ethnic cleansing and the apartheid actions of the State of Israel. Regrettably when resistance – whether peaceful or violent – took place, the response of the Israeli government was consistent - brutally violent, disproportionate to the resistance action, and costly to the Palestinian people in countless deaths and injuries, in loss of land, and increase in oppression.   Reading the history leading up to Partition / Nakba and beyond, leads me to conclude that political Zionism has been waging a "Hundred Years' War" to conquer Palestine and its indigenous Palestinians peoples.  For the larger part of my life I didn't take that in.

Because of USA and UK support in the United Nations, Israel gained virtual impunity as the USA in particular exercises its veto power in the Security Council. At the same time, Israel had little but disdain for the same UNO which had allowed it to be born as a nation. It now acts as a rogue or pariah state without any concern for UN resolutions,  ready to destroy organizations like UNWRA, and to reject judgements of the International Court of Justice, or the International Criminal Court .  Issuing war crimes warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, (and two Hamas Palestinian leaders assassinated by Israel) may at some point allow laws to be enforced.

The history of the militarization of the Israeli state is outlined in Haim Bresheeth Zabner’s “An Army Like No Other – How the Israel Defense Forces Made a Nation”.+  The cost to the Palestinian Peoples is recounted in Pappe’s “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine”.  It is Pappe’s Lobbying book which reveals the extent to which the Zionist lobby – supported by the State of Israel – burdened not just Palestinians, but also other individuals and organizations who dared to resist,  question, or critique the actions of the Zionist State.   Israeli Lobbying is a key part of the war against Palestinians.

Abundantly resourced Israel's propaganda budget has recently been increased by $150M.  Deeply embedded, the international Lobby works long and hard to ensure that the State of Israel  narrative stays in the spotlight, while the actual injustice, carnage, and dispossession of Palestinian lands remain out of the spotlight.  Any media or other organizations or individual leaders straying from the Lobby's approved  narrative path,  are vigorously addressed, too often with smears, innuendo, threat of legal action, withdrawal of funds (e.g. to Universities or Public Institutions), and the weaponizing of “antisemitism”.  The Lobby has many organizations but in Canada, the  Centre for Israel and Jewish Affaires (CIJA) takes the lead.  In the USA it is  AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), in the UK it is, among other organizations, Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI).

My own denomination – The United Church of Canada – bowed to these kinds of threats, potential legal action,  and pressures by signing an agreement with the B’nai Brith (later CIJA) in 1973 agreeing to consult with the Canadian Zionist lobby before critiquing Israeli actions.  This stifled accurate descriptions at the time in the careful work of the Rev. Al Forrest, author of "The UnHoly Land."  And it hobbled the denomination for half a century from fulfilling its call to prophetic witness in Palestine.  For a fuller account of this sorry story visit:   (https://mondoweiss.net/2020/07/the-united-church-of-canadas-accord-with-bnai-brith-prevents-it-from-supporting-justice-in-palestine/)

In 2024, the UCC General Council finally broke free and issued Principles of Justice by which to determine what prophetic witness the Church might engage in.  Based on these Principles, the Moderator of the denomination communicated to the Church that there were grounds to seek justice for Palestine prophetically.  The statement affirmed participating in BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel), anti-apartheid movements and other actions in the quest for truth, justice, and peace in Palestine.

Ceasefire 2025

On Sunday, January 19th, a conditional and fragile first phase six-week Ceasefire started in Gaza.  Bombs stopped falling, exchange  of detainees and hostages started, delivery of  humanitarian resources increased to stave off famine.  Just before the pause took effect,  the Israeli military took another opportunity to bomb, kill and maim hundreds more Palestinians. 

Peter Beinart, a Jewish critic of Israel's war against Palestine, has helpfully reminded me and other people of faith that this ceasefire is a moment to delight in and to rejoice that there is a pause in the deadly hatred and an opening for three Israeli hostages (so far) and some Palestinian prisoners to be restored alive and apparently well to their families.  For Beinart this is humans living the way God is.  God's wrath at human sin is fiery and profound, but this anger does pause because undergirding that anger is the fact that "God's steadfast love is forever" for all people - even those whose lives demonstrate complete rejection of God's presence.  Visit:  https://peterbeinart.substack.com/p/for-a-moment-joy?publication_id=105260&utm_campaign=email-play-on-substack&r=46g3nn&utm_medium=email

I rejoice that Romy, Doron, and Emily have been freed into the embrace and joy of their beloved Israeli families, and I rejoice that unnamed Palestinians have been returned to those who hold them dear.   May this moment of love extend into weeks and months and years where all see that love and hope is so much better and holy than hate and despair.   Kyrie eleison.  The past hundred years of war have not resulted in peace in Palestine.

Fervent prayers and hopes have been expressed that this ceasefire may result in long term peace and a journey towards reconciliation.  I pray it might be true.  For a Ceasefire comment by Kairos Palestine visit:  https://www.kairospalestine.ps/index.php/resources/statements/the-palestinian-christian-initiative-kairos-palestine-statement-on-gaza-ceasefire-agreement

But I believe in the miracles God makes happen, I wish I could be confident that my prayers will be realized. Radical Zionists in the Israeli cabinet are clear about their goals:  they want to retain all powers and controls over what their State occupies and whom it subjugates.  They will relinquish nothing.  If Palestinians resist, the Israeli military will continue the genocidal nightmare to impose "peace" and fulfill their dream of Greater Israel. 

This “peace deal” has little basis for a just peace, especially when the new USA President has not a clue nor convictions about justice, let alone compassion for a less powerful, oppressed People.  But we have also learned over the past century that Palestinians have deep roots in their beloved land,  great courage to claim justice, and an identity that will not be extinguished.  They will need to continue exercising all these gifts for their future or else survival may be taken from them. 

I believe that when Truth overwhelms lies and false narratives and biased reports, when Truth is told and honoured, the incipient global movement for justice in Palestine may well become a tsunami that finally brings justice to this tortured land .   It happened in South Africa and many other colonized countries, it happened when France and Germany once mortal enemies but now allies in European well being.  May it come to pass in Palestine, with Palestinians and Israelis living, side by side - together - in just relationships and peace, gifts of the steadfast love of God.

 For faith-based people this will always be our prayer addressed to the Holy One and to all people of goodwill seeking justice as both Torah and Jesus command.

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Footnotes:

*see Murray Sinclair, Who We Are, McLelland & Stewart, 2024; pp. 134f.

+London & New York, Verso, 2020

Recommendation: 

Not everyone will be able to read the books I’ve referred to, but I do commend reading the following 150-page paperback:   Ilan Pappe, Ten Myths about Israel, (Verso, updated 2024. ISBN 978 1 80429-704-9).  It responds to ten key false assertions with all the wisdom, knowledge, and insights Pappe brings to and gains from his research into this particular catastrophe.  The ten fallacies he demythologizes are:

1.     Palestine was an empty land

2.     The Jews were a people without a land

3.     Zionism is Judaism

4.     Zionism is not colonialism

5.     The Palestinians Voluntarily Left their Homeland in 1948

6.     The June 1967 War was a War of “No Choice”

7.     Israel is the Only Democracy in the Middle East

8.     The Oslo Mythologies

9.     The Gaza Mythologies

10.  The Two-State Solution is the Only Way Forward.

Beyond October 7th

One fallacy this little book was  not able to address because it happened after publication, is the persistent effort by the Zionist Lobby and the compromised biased media (like CNN, BBC, etc.) to suppress  the crucially relevant historical context within which  October 7, 2023 took place. This partial reporting is so well entrenched into the public mind that too many now assume that before October 7^th things were “normal”, as if acceptable.  "Normal" in Palestine since 1948 and before has been resistance by Palestinians as per the right of occupied and oppressed peoples.   That resulted in hugely disproportionate and collective punishment by Israel's military, countless massacres and imprisonment – ongoing ethnic cleansing, apartheid, genocide, dispossession, and military subjugation..  October 7th, 2023 was the inevitable volcano of the 100 years of settler colonialism under which Palestinians have suffered and reacted.