New New Historian: Moving on from Ilan Pappe

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7 responses

  1. I am pleased you do this, Sheri. No one else seems to.

  2. What a major undertaking to decipher this nonsense. Thank you.

  3. David Hersch says:

    How does one make a name as an historian? You come up with a preposterous theory/account of a particular event that goes completely contrary to the accepted conventional wisdom.

    Ilan Pappe is an example and in the process made his name mudd. Pappe has been described as one of the world’s sloppiest historians; at worst, one of the most dishonest. To add to his disrepute as an historian, Ilan Pappé, a history lecturer at the University of Haifa, freely admits that, in his view, facts are irrelevant when it comes to the history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. “Indeed the struggle is about ideology, not about facts, Who knows what facts are? We try to convince as many people as we can that our interpretation of the facts is the correct one, and we do it because of ideological reasons, not because we are truth seekers,” Pappe said in an interview with the French newspaper Le Soir, Nov. 29, 1999. Pappe’s version of history is driven by something other than linguistic and historiographical accuracy. He is driven entirely by his political bent and desire for recognition and in my opinion recognition from the wrong source.

    Bennie Morris is probably the most successful of the “new” historians who started off co9ntrovesially and whose book became the set work for Palestinian bashing of Israel. However, in his book, 1948, Morris did a 180 degree turn.

    The last of the “New” bunch is Avi Shlaim who I have not read too much of, but seen many times on TV talk shows. I always got the impression from Shlaim that he desperately needed to ingratiate himself to his fellow Oxford dons. Shlaim served as an outside examiner on the doctoral thesis of Ilan Pappé. Shlaim’s approach to the study of history is informed by his belief that, “the job of the historian is to judge”. Shlaim is a member of the UK Labour Party. In August 2015, he was a signatory to a letter criticizing The Jewish Chronicle’s reporting of Jeremy Corbyn’s association with alleged anti-Semites. Shlaim is a fine example of how historians can be lead by their personal politics and affiliations.

  4. ann says:

    This is post-modern drivel. But Pappe has proven that “pro”-Palestinians thrill to this stuff – since they can’t win on logic, facts, or morality.

    And all they really care is that it’s a “scholarly” Israeli (Jewish!) stamp of approval.

    I also fault Zionists for not raising holy hell when Pappe first came out with his “Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” over ten years ago. The book is “Protocols”-level fabrication (see video), but with few exceptions, the only pushback it got was a little grumbling.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1_dc2wuteg

    • Sheri Oz says:

      You are right – more of a fuss should have been made from the start. I hope it is not too late to turn the tide.

  1. July 13, 2021

    […] leaders and intellectuals to the influx of Jews to the region was regarded positively. In fact, as reported to me by Emeritus History Professor Amatzia Baram, they welcomed the Jews to Palestine and regarded the Jews as coming […]

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