Inauguration, Israel-Palestine and Ilan Pappe (part one)
An interview with an Israeli historian covering the essentials of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Zionism, anti-Semitism and Apartheid.
I don’t regret a lot. Particularly not things that I write. But I wrote something this week that I regret. Or, rather, I regret not writing something. This week I wrote for the Premier Christianity blog about how Joe Biden is like Lady Gaga and I left something out. In calling Biden a pale reflection of what America needs right now (albeit better than his predecessor), I failed to call him Shallow. Gaga fans will understand. And hate me more than the Biden stans.
If you want to read the piece, there’s a link after the Ilan Pappe interview below.
Who is Ilan Pappe?
Professor Ilan Pappe is Chair of History at Exeter University. He’s a Jewish, Israeli-born historian whose parents fled Germany in the 1930s. He has published many books on what he calls Israeli Apartheid and the history of the Holy Land that too often gets misrepresented in the media.
The issue of Palestine and the Palestinians is a crucial one in world politics and one that the Church cannot afford to ignore. The part the Church has played in particular means we cannot simply shrug and ignore it. I could give you my opinion (and I’m sure I will at some point), but it’s better to hear from an expert.
This is Part One of an interview with Ilan Pappe that I did for the Beer Christianity podcast. I’ve edited it for length and clarity (and to make my questions sound less ramblingly stupid), but you can listen to the whole interview in Episode 44 of the Beer Christianity podcast. I’ve split it into two because it’s long. But it’s also important. And Prof Pappe touches on some crucial basics in Part One, with some frankly prophetic messages to the Church in Part Two (coming soon).
I hope this interview leaves you more confident and informed in your understanding of Israel, Palestine and the Occupied Territories. (The audio version has way more detail – but I got a lot out of reading it as well!)
Interview with Ilan Pappe (part one)
Beer Christianity:
There is a narrative that says: ‘they've always been killing each other over there – Jews, Muslims, Christians – they've always been at war in that part of the world’. And another narrative that claims this conflict is about religion. How would you assess them from historical perspective?
Ilan Pappe:
I think it's utterly wrong to think that the conflict in Palestine historically (and even currently) is a conflict between two religions, or three religions. It's not. The conflict was between a settler colonial movement and the indigenous people of Palestine. It was not and is not a very long conflict compared to many others. Because it started very late in the day in terms of historical perspective. And therefore, to say that people there were killing each other for so many years, because of religion is utterly wrong.
Religion was used, first of all by the Zionist movement, in a very absurd way. Because on the one hand, Zionism was a secular movement, trying to transform Judaism from religion into a national movement. But nonetheless, they use the Bible as a justification for the colonisation of Palestine. As I always like to say: Zionism was a movement of people who do not believe in God, but they believe that God promised them Palestine.
The Palestinians, at a much later stage, in the 1980s when the secular movement for liberation failed to deliver full freedom, turned to religion as an alternative option, with the hope that maybe this could enhance the chances of liberation. So, people were using religion, but the essence of the conflict is between settlers and natives. It has been from the very beginning and it still is the essence of the conflict today.
What is the definition of Zionism?
I think the best definition is the one that relates to political Zionism as a Jewish movement in the late 19th century. It's a movement that was trying to answer two impulses. One was the wish of certain groups of Jews to become a nation. And, probably more importantly, it was an answer to the growing anti-Semitism in Europe. One solution was to turn the Jews into a nation then looking for a homeland in which this nation could exist. Unfortunately, they chose the place where already someone else had lived. Today, Zionism is an ideology that justifies the discrimination against the Palestinians inside Israel, the continued occupation of the West Bank, the continued siege on the Gaza Strip, and the total rejection of the rights of the Palestinian refugees to return.
So today, unfortunately, it's a racist ideology that justifies an ethnic state , in some parts, an Apartheid state (and one that, surprisingly, enjoys support from the West as the only democracy in the Middle East). It is today an ideology which I think is not only negative in terms of what it does to the Palestinians. I also think it's quite poisonous for the Jews in Israel. As you know from South Africa, it is much better to live in a democratic state, not based on any discrimination and Apartheid. And Zionism upholds this state of affairs. Therefore, I think the de-zionisation of the whole of historical Palestine is a precondition for any peace or reconciliation in that country.
The word ‘Zionism’ is also thrown around by anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers. What are your thoughts about the anti-Semitic element in movements that criticise Israel or are pro-Palestinian?
I think that Israel and its friends have weaponised anti-Semitism in order to stifle any debate on Israel, and especially to try and prevent any discussion on Zionism or the identity of the regime and its basic policies. And the unfortunate thing for people like myself is that in order to refute the equation that ‘anti Zionism is anti-Semitism’, one cannot hide behind a soundbite. It is a complex issue. It's not easy to explain. But I think it's important for people to note a few things.
One is that Zionism is an ideology. And Judaism is a religion. There are a lot of Christian ideologies around. There are definitely a lot of Islamic ideologies around (see the case of al Qaeda in the Islamic State). But whatever one thinks about them, one understands that it doesn't reflect the religion itself. And the same is true about Judaism. There are Jews who are Zionist and a lot of Jews who are not Zionist. There are many Christians who are Zionist, and in my time of being in Israel for many years, I even found some Muslims who are Zionist. But there are a lot of Jews who are not. And that's the first point.
The second point is that anti-Semitism is the hatred of Jews, because of who they are, either for religious reasons of cultural reasons or economic reasons. It is a form of racism, a very ugly form of racism that, in the Second World War brought about the genocide of the Jews of Europe. Anti-Zionism is an objection to an ideology that those who object to it think is a racist ideology. It's an anti-racist position. And therefore, it's a legitimate position. People can debate that position (and I'm not saying that it's not open for debate), but it's a totally legitimate point of view – as people would be against Apartheid during the heyday of Apartheid in South Africa.
I think it's very important not to fall into this trap: that if you are discussing the identity of a regime or the essence of an ideology, you will be stifled and silenced by [those] claiming that you are a racist for even raising the issue or having a moral problem with that ideology (and especially the way this ideology is translated into policies on the ground).
I would have said a few years ago that the only people who would be completely immune from that weaponising of the concept of anti-Semitism would have been Jewish people themselves, but that doesn't even seem to prevent you from being from being called anti-Semitic these days....
Yeah, the term they are using is 'self-hating Jew', which is almost sounds like a disease, which you should go to the doctor to deal with. It's ridiculous. But it really it exposes a much more important problem for Israel. Not surprisingly, a lot of Jews were at the forefront of some of the most important moral battles in the 20th century in the West. They were very important in the anti-Apartheid movement, the solidarity movement with the ANC; they were very important in the Civil Rights movement, they tried to change the reality in the South of the United States. They were opposing the Vietnam War, they opposed the Pinochet regime in Chile. And now, these Jews (or the second generation of these Jews) do not exclude Israel just because it's a Jewish state from their critique. And it's embarrassing for Israel, I think. And therefore, they try to tarnish their reputation and demonise them by calling them 'self-hating Jews'.
Some of these Jews, by the way, for a long while still supported Israel. I think that with time and with the exposure of more and more facts, and more research, and so on, some of them woke up one day and understood that they were supporting something that was in many ways wrong. And this is, I think, one of the reasons that they are targeted in such a way. But I think it really is not going to work. People know themselves, whether they are anti-Semites or self-hating. And if they don't think that way, nobody could intimidate them just by saying that.
You mentioned the struggle against Apartheid. As an historian, do you feel that the analogy of Apartheid for the way Israel treats its citizens holds water?
Yes, definitely. I edited the book called The Many Faces of Apartheid: Israel in South Africa. Desmond Tutu said, when he came to historical Palestine, in some parts of Palestine (and he was referring mainly to the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip), he thought the situation was far worse than Apartheid. But he also recognised that in some parts inside Israel there are Palestinians who are citizens of Israel, and they probably live in conditions which are better than those suffered by Africans in Apartheid South Africa. But all in all, especially after Israel adopted and nationality law in the summer of 2018, the basic constitutional structure of the state, the basic ideology of the state, and its basic policies on the ground, are a form of Apartheid.
It doesn't mean that in everything it resembles the Apartheid system in South Africa – there are differences. It's less about petty Apartheid. There are no separate benches and toilets, and so on. But there are separate roads in some places. There are a lot of places inside Israel where Palestinians are not allowed to live, there's a lot of land that they're not allowed to buy. So, segregation and separation is one of the many means Israel uses, openly and admittedly, in order to create what it calls a Jewish democratic state.
The 'democratic' part of this ambition is the most worrisome one, because they want to be a democracy, they have to make sure that they have the demography. But on the other hand, they want the whole space of historical Palestine. And in that space they will never be a majority. So this is when they start using ethnic cleansing, enclaving, siege, and so on. It leads to a lot of inhuman policies towards the Palestinians, because of this bizarre wish to be both racist and democratic. And I think it's not going to work for a long time. And for the sake of both Jews and Arabs, I think we should look for something much better for everyone concerned.
What are some of the things that make life harder for Palestinians and ways in which they are being treated in an Apartheid kind of way?
Well, you have to separate between probably four groups of Palestinians, because there's a matrix of power, which I think is partly intentional, in a kind of old colonial ‘divide and rule’ system, where you could be a good Palestinian in a better condition.
But let's start with the Gaza Strip. There, Palestinians have lived under siege since 2006. Gaza is a huge ghetto. What goes on in the Gaza Strip, this is this is worse than any anything I think people ever experienced in South Africa.
In the West Bank, I think the situation is a bit better, of course. But people are daily abused in checkpoints, are imprisoned without trial, including children. People are killed in demonstrations, their houses are demolished, their lands are confiscated, and they have a separation wall that does not allow them to go to their businesses and lands in some cases. There is an atmosphere, which is typical to military rule, where the Army at any given moment can do whatever it wants with you, your family and your property. To this, one can add the vigilantes of the settlers, who do the same with the Army turning a blind eye.
The Palestinians in Jerusalem are in a bit of a better position than the West Bank, but still in daily danger of being 'West Bankered', if I could put it this way – namely that they would be denied the few rights that they do enjoy in East Jerusalem. Israel keeps changing the definition of their neighbourhoods and villages and tries to include them in the West Bank, so it won't have to give them any basic rights.
The group that enjoys the best of the rights are the Palestinians inside Israel, who can vote and can be elected and have a kind of social and economic mobility on an individual basis. But they have no collective rights and they will be denied the collective national rights. They live in a place where important sections of the economy, important parts of the land, important parts of the settlements, towns, villages, and neighbourhoods are closed to them. And they have no space to grow in terms of spatial, geographical expansion. Definitely, in terms of budgets and infrastructure, they are second rate citizens by any definition of that term.
In part two of this interview, Ilan Pappe talks about settlements, the moral courage it takes to criticise the State of Israel and his message to Christians who uncritically support Israel and the way Palestinians are treated.
How Lady Gaga is like Joe Biden: a reflection on the Inauguration
In which I fail to call him Shallow, talk about the Bad Romance between the Democratic Party and status-quo centrism, and I maybe go too far in calling his politics (though not the man) ‘lukewarm’ in the biblical sense.
Click the pic if you want to go to there…
Thanks to Premier Christianity magazine for letting me write for their blog, and to Editor Sam Hailes, who disagrees with me on a lot of political matters and still made this piece better than it would have been.
In case you missed it
On the podcast
I’m not always mean to or about Democrats. Back in 2020, on Episode 30 of the Beer Christianity podcast, I dedicated an entire episode to the lovely Linda Seger, author of Jesus Rode a Donkey, whose mission is to convince Americans that you don’t have to be a Republican if you’re a Christian. Personally, I’d say it’s preferable not to be. Take a listen by clicking the video below or going to the Christians = Republicans? show page.
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