By Jim Holstun

On Wednesday, March 24th, at 7:00 p.m., the Palestine-Israel Committee of the Western New York Peace Center will host a public lecture by Professor Ilan Pappé in the Woldman Theater (Norton Hall, Room 112) on UB’s North Campus. Professor Pappé will speak on “The Past and Present Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.” 

Ilan Pappé is one of the leading Israeli “Revisionist Historians” who, since the 1980s, have transformed our historical understanding of modern Palestine and Israel. Among his many books are The Modern Middle East, a superb and wide-ranging textbook that pays special attention to the lives of women, the poor, and country people. His A History of Modern Palestine charts the history of ethnic and national struggle and oppression, but also moments of cross-ethnic solidarity and peace.

And his The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, a book that charts for the first time the systematic and carefully-planned Israeli policies embodied in “Plan Dalet,” which led to the deaths and violent expulsion of more than 700,000 Muslim and Christian Palestinians from their homes, and the internal displacement of many thousands more. Pappé has also written with great insight about Israeli and Palestinian culture: drama, film, and fiction. He brings to all of his work an enormous erudition and academic rigor, but with a wide-ranging imagination and human sympathy that are all too rare in historical writing.

Professor Pappé was born in Haifa, Israel, in 1954 and taught for many years at the University of Haifa. There, because of his teaching, his scholarship, and his support for the human rights of Palestinians living in Israel and under Israeli occupation, he suffered under a systematic campaign of official and un-official harassment, including attempts to have him fired and regular death threats. In 2007, he took up a teaching position in England, in the Department of History at the University of Exeter.

But the harassment has not stopped. Last November, Professor Pappé was invited to speak in Munich, and then, after an attack on him, the Munich municipality disinvited him. In an open letter to the mayor, he wrote, “in the 1930s my father, a German Jew, was silenced in a similar manner, and I am saddened to discover the same censorship in 2009.” Later, he commented, “It’s very strange that a lecture should be prevented due to fear of criticism against Israel. This is the reason, it’s obvious to everyone, but why cancel? Words don’t kill, but rather open the mind.”

Anyone who has talked with Palestinians whose memories go back beyond the Nakba or “Catastrophe” of 1947-9 will have heard them tell a personal version of a classic Palestinian story. These stories are about Muslims, Christians, and Jews living together peacefully in Palestine, as friends and neighbors, before the Nakba. It contradicts anyone committed to maintaining the current regime of occupation, suffering, and hatred. Many supporters of the occupation rely on the false belief that Christians, Muslims, and Jews have never been able to peacefully coexist in the region.

Anyone who has read the work of Ilan Pappé or heard him speak will have heard, alongside the grimmer stories of ethnic cleansing and historical denial, similar stories of possibility and love. The Western New York Peace Center is delighted to bring Professor Pappé to Buffalo.

The lecture will be free, but we will gladly accept donations, which will be shared between the WNYPC Palestine-Israel Committee for its ongoing work and the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund. If you have any questions, please contact Professor Jim Holstun at jamesholstun@hotmail.com.