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The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine | 
 enlarge | Author: Ilan Pappe
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
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Rating:  74 reviews
Sales Rank: 12010
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5 x 0.9
ISBN: 1851685553
Dewey Decimal Number: 956.9405
EAN: 9781851685554
ASIN: 1851685553
Publication Date: September 25, 2007
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Shipping: International shipping available
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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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 69 more reviews...
 A prerequisite for understanding the Palestinian experience November 21, 2006
Rami (San Francisco. CA)
289 out of 337 found this review helpful
In order to achieve peaceful coexistence in Palestine/Israel, it is imperative that both Palestinians and Israelis hear the true stories of the other and acknowledge their own wrongdoings.
This book documents, using historical sources, the wrongdoings that were done to the Palestinians during the 1948 war (the Israeli war of independence and the war the Palestinians call the catastrophe). This book analyses historical evidence from Israeli sources, indepdently proving true the 1948 experiences the Palestinian refugees, men and women, rich and poor, muslim and christian recount about their cleansing from their land and property.
These events of 1948 accounted here were censored by the perpetrators from even the Israeli population. These events were never added to school books and intentionally pushed out of the Israeli society's consciousness.
However, these events and experiences are vivid in the Palestinian consciousness. Palestinians continue to live the consequences of their diaspora and forced migration in 1948 today.
In order to achieve peace, it is crucial to understand the Palestinian experience and acknowledge it. These experiences are just as true and unquestionable to Palestinians as true and unquestionable the holocaust is to the Israelis.
Now it is totally expected that the book would face resistence and bad reviews here by some Israelis who have never heard these stories and are unwanting to hear them (thanks to censorship). Similarly, zionist enthusiasts are likely to resist this book as they've always resisted any effort that would make heard the Palestinian history.
But a mutual aknowledgement of history in its good and bad, accepting responsibility for crimes and correcting any wrongdoings are a must for both sides to achieve true peace with the other.
This book is a must read for anyone (Israeli, Palestinian, Western or Eastern) that is truely interested in peace in the middle east and in a well-founded and well-informed understanding of the Palestinian situation.
Superb account of the Zionists' expulsion of the Palestinians January 25, 2007
William Podmore (London United Kingdom)
229 out of 270 found this review helpful
Pappe, an Israeli historian and a senior lecturer at Haifa University, has written a superb account of the Israeli expulsion of the Palestinians from their land in 1948. He quotes David Ben Gurion, leader of the Zionist movement from the mid-1920 until the 1960s, who wrote in his diary in 1938, "I am for compulsory transfer; I do not see anything immoral in it." This contradicts the Zionists' public claim that they were seizing a land without a people.
Pappe writes of the Israelis' March 1948 plan for evicting the Palestinians, "The orders came with a detailed description of the methods to be employed to forcibly evict the people: large-scale intimidation; laying siege to and bombarding villages and population centres; setting fire to homes, properties and goods; expulsion; demolition; and, finally, planting mines among the rubble to prevent any of the expelled inhabitants from returning."
Between 30 March and 15 May 1948, i.e. before any Arab government intervened, Israeli forces seized 200 villages and expelled 250,000 Palestinians. The Israeli leadership stated, "The principal objective of the operation is the destruction of Arab villages ... the eviction of the villagers." On 9 April, Israeli forces massacred 93 people, including 30 babies, at Deir Yassin. In Haifa, the Israeli commander ordered, "Kill any Arab you encounter."
This all happened under British rule in Palestine, where Britain had 75,000 troops: Britain's Mandate did not end until 14 May. The Labour government connived at the Israeli onslaught, although the British state was legally obliged as the occupier (and also by UN resolution 181) to uphold law and order. Yet the Labour government announced that it would no longer be responsible for law and order and it withdrew all the British policemen. It also forbade the presence of any UN bodies, again breaching the terms of the UN resolution. The government ordered British forces to disarm the few Palestinians who had weapons, promising to protect them from Israeli attacks, then immediately reneged on this promise.
On 24 May 1948, Ben Gurion wrote, "We will establish a Christian state in Lebanon, the southern border of which will be the Litani River. We will break Transjordan, bomb Amman and destroy its army, and then Syria falls, and if Egypt will still continue to fight - we will bombard Port Said, Alexandria and Cairo. This will be in revenge for what they (the Egyptians, the Aramis and Assyrians) did to our forefathers during Biblical times." These ravings of an insane warmonger hardly betrayed any genuine fear of a `second holocaust'. The Palestinians were suffering massive expulsion, not trying to destroy the Jewish community.
Pappe summarises, "When it created its nation-state, the Zionist movement did not wage a war that `tragically but inevitably' led to the expulsion of `parts of' the indigenous population, but the other way round: the main goal was the ethnic cleansing of all of Palestine, which the movement coveted for its new state. A few weeks after the ethnic cleansing operations began, the neighbouring Arab states sent a small army - small in comparison to their overall military might - to try, in vain, to prevent the ethnic cleansing. The war with the regular Arab armies did not bring the ethnic cleansing operations to a halt until their successful completion in the autumn of 1948."
Overall, the Zionist forces uprooted more than half Palestine's population, 800,000 people, destroyed 531 villages and emptied eleven urban neighbourhoods of their inhabitants. Pappe concludes that this was "a clear-cut case of an ethnic cleansing operation, regarded under international law today as a crime against humanity."
Palestinians pay the price for Europe's guilt December 8, 2006
Mike Beri
211 out of 249 found this review helpful
Ilan Pappe has written a scholarly work on the dark side of the formation of the state of Israel. While this is the first book I've ever read on the subject and can't ascertain whether the book is 100% factually accurate, you can't just dismiss all of it simply out of hand just because you don't agree with the contents.
While atrocities were committed by both sides one can't but help feel sympathy and sadness for the Palestinians. Not only were they the majority in Palestine but the world's memory of 1948 is that the land was empty and those few Arabs living there left voluntarily. They were up against a determined, highly organized and motivated Zionist movement that saw Palestine as their future homeland that necessitated a majority Jewish population. The Arabs were to pay for the blood on the hands of Europeans with their own blood and the land they lived on for centuries.
Well before 1947 there were extremely extensive surveys started of every Arab village down even into the minutest detail. These surveys were they used by the Nagana and the Stern gangs terrorize those villages to "motivate" the Arabs to leave. Dynamiting houses with the occupants inside was quite effective as was shooting through windows.
There are those who think that any ad motion of guilt will lead to the destruction of Israel miss the point. The Truth and Reconciliation committee in SA has led to peace. Could not the Israelis admit some guilt and start on the road to peace? Admitting guilt will take away some of the fire that the Jihadist's use to fan the flames of their hatred.
Honest dialogue by both sides is what is sorely needed if we are to see peace in our lifetimes.
Read this if you can bear the tragic painful truth November 19, 2006
P. G. Taylor (Sutton Courtenay, England)
99 out of 118 found this review helpful
Ilan Pappe has written a book about what actually happened. A proper historical record. From the historical records - for instance he quotes from Ben-Gurion's diary quite frequently.
It is a painful read. The whole thing is an absolutely tragic and grim farce, because the State of Israel has done to the Palestinians quite a number of the truly nasty things that were done to them. And by not recognising what they have done, and are doing, they continue to traumatize the Palestinians, and the rest of the world.
Race and religion are remarkable in the hold that they have over human minds and lives. It is incredible that after nearly 1900 years anybody should think they had the right to kick another people out of their homes, or want to do so.
If it is right (I strongly believe it is) under modern ways of thinking about human rights that Jewish people should have paintings, money, etc stolen in the 1933-45 period, returned to them, or their relatives, today, then it can only be right that the Palestinian people get their property back. As far as I can gather about 90% of Israel was taken by force, or left by a people frightened away by deliberate terror, and not allowed to return, their land illegally confiscated.
That is a big story. It is the sad tragic truth. It needed to be written down in detail. A very important work.
Israel needs a truth commission, in the South Africa, Mandela style.
It needs to be honest about what happened, and start taking the (very difficult) measures required. Otherwise this terrible tragedy will grind on to a possibly truly horrible end. And Jewish people the world over will suffer - however unfairly. As will we all.
By the way, I live in England. I am an Anglican Christian Atheist - like George Orwell, who is buried in my churchyard. The UK and the US have had a great deal to do with the creation of Israel, and we should own up to our part in this tragedy, and pay up - the Palestinians need to be properly recompensed. I would not object to paying $200 extra in my taxes - or whatever it takes to make good the wrong.
If we are going to get the people of the planet working properly together, to solve the climate problem, and to make poverty a thing of the past, and to give nature its fair share of the planet - sorting this problem would be a very good start. The injustice the Palestinians have suffered MUST be PROPERLY dealt with. That means FAIRLY. Really.
Jerusalem could be made an International Heritage City, as the UN originally intended, for the benefit of everybody on this planet, including religious atheists like myself (an ancestor of mine was William Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury at an interesting time !) and not just for the benefit of a small selfish religious or racially minded group of people.
Buy the book. Read it. Pass it on. A really important work.
Absolutely Dumbfounded December 5, 2006
LD Lewis (Los Angeles, CA)
98 out of 117 found this review helpful
Dr. Pappe is amazing. This book is quickly becoming the most useful book in my archive for articles, speeches and testimony. As someone who's been reporting on this issue since 2000, I didn't think I could be shocked further. But I was. Pappe meticulously documents Ben Gurion and his henchmen orchestrating what can only total as thousands of crimes against humanity that must be addressed, rectified and finally delt with through justice. This is not an easy book to read; but I do know from all the study I've done on this subject, it is accurate. No, the Zionists will not like this and they'll use every method they can to discredit it from denouncing it to calling it false. Of course they'll never challenge the facts. They cannot. The facts stand on their own. Truth has a habit of doing that.
This book exposes Zionists, both Christian and Jewish Zionist, for exactly what they are: racists, monsters, hate-monger's, liars, propagandists and murderers. Pappe is incredibly brave and this book is a testimony to truth. Not the fairy tale, but the real truth. The truth CIA, MI-6, Russian and other government's intelligence groups document. The cold blooded murder and destruction of a people over elitism and entitlement that continues this day. Reading this book you will understand exactly why Israel, and now the United States for its blind support of this genocide are both hated. Reading this you will understand why justice must occur if both America and Israel are to survive. These types of crimes cannot go unacknowledged or unpunished. More importantly, Pappe's book also demonstrates that not all of those whom have grown up in Zionism are seduced by the evil it represents and good people do exist in Israel. Pappe is one of those good people. These are the Israelis the world should listen to and support.
When you see the documentation of the pure evil Zionism represents and how murderous and disgusting it is, its purpose and cold, calculated execution, there is no doubt. The truth will set people free and this book tells it, the whole ugly truth. Read this, and don't ever fall for the lies again. There have been enough holocausts. Let's end it with this one. Thank you Dr. Pappe.
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