Book Review The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
Ilan Pappe and the Nakba Deniers
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
By JOHN WHITBECK
For
anyone who possesses a strong stomach and an equally strong desire to know the
truth, I strongly recommend Israeli historian Ilan Pappe's new book "The
Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine", which makes painstakingly and painfully
clear the extent to which the expulsion of the great majority of Palestinians
from their homes and homeland between 1947 and 1949 (an expulsion absolutely
essential to create a "Jewish state" in a country where, in 1947, the population
was still 70% Muslim and Christian and these non-Jews still owned 94% of the
land) was meticulously planned, programmed and documented, ruthlessly carried
out and, thereafter, efficiently covered up, sanitized, erased from minds and
memories and, to the extent necessary, denied. Pappe also makes clear that the
cleansing spirit and cleansing practices have continued ever since, with public
discussion in Israel of the "demographic threat" posed by those Palestinians
still remaining in Palestinian never more openly conducted and with a recent
poll showing 68% of Israeli Jews in favor of expelling all Palestinian
citizens of Israel.
Unfortunately, this book, published in England (and available from amazon.com),
is highly likely to go unreviewed and largely unnoticed in the United States, a
country where objective historical truth is much less popular than "revealed
truth" and pure fantasy and where the Israel-First Lobby starts with a distinct
home-field advantage in pursuing its successful efforts to convince American
public opinion that American interests and values are identical to Israeli
interests and values and to make American foreign policy and America's wars
indistinguishable from Israeli foreign policy and Israel's wars.
While most of mankind, being comprised of peoples who have themselves been the
victims of colonialism and racism, views racial-supremicist settler-colonial
states founded upon the genocide or ethnic cleansing of an indigenous population
as an abomination, Americans, exceptionally, are favorably inclined toward such
states. The reason is simple. Until very recently, America was itself such a
state, and the official Israeli narrative replicates the widely accepted
American narrative of brave pioneers bringing civilization and economic
advancement to a backward and savage land.
Furthermore, notwithstanding its history, America, as a nation, appears to have
no regrets and to be troubled by no sense of national guilt. While, for reasons
having less to do with bearing universal witness against man's inhumanity toward
his fellow man than with justifying one particular instance of such inhumanity,
there is a Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, there are no museums there
devoted to the genocide of the Native Americans, to slavery or to the century of
legalized segregation which followed abolition.
In addition, a significant proportion of the American population embraces a
perverted interpretation of Christianity which ignores the humane message of
Jesus Christ and the Golden Rule and focuses the devotions of its adherents not
on God but, rather, on "God's Chosen People", through whose success in
ethnically cleansing Palestine and provoking cataclysmic warfare these so-called
"Christians" hope to achieve their personal, selfish "rapture" and "salvation".
Still, even in America, where Nakba denial is as obligatory as Holocaust denial
is condemned, objective historical truth is available in Professor Pappe's book
for anyone who cares.
John V. Whitbeck,
an international lawyer, is author of "The
World According to Whitbeck". He can be reached at:
jvwhitbeck@awalnet.net.sa
From: http://www.counterpunch.org/whitbeck01272007.html