Judaising the Negev

Here's Donald McIntyre in the Independent:

The 3,000 or so residents of Bir al Mshash are distinctly unmoved by the prospect of Israeli elections next March. The villagers, who like all their fellow Bedouin in the Negev desert are Israeli citizens, many of whom serve in the Israeli army, normally vote Labour. "I don't want to vote for any party now," says Ibrahim Abu Speyt, 48. "I want to boycott the elections."

The reason isn't hard to find. Two weeks ago, a 50-year-old problem came to a head for Bir al Mshash. Israeli police and ministry of interior officials arrived to put formal notices on 12 houses slated for demolition in what the villagers believe is the first of a multi-stage operation in which they will be moved off the land they regard as having been theirs since Ottoman times.

So why are they being moved?

much of the Negev has long been earmarked for development for and by Jewish immigrants; more than 40 years ago the Israeli military leader and politician Moshe Dayan summed up with clarity the "sharp transition" he envisaged: "We must turn the Bedouin into urban labourers ... It means that the Bedouin will no longer live on his land with his flocks but will become an urbanite who comes home in the afternoon and puts his slippers on. His children will get used to a father who wears pants, without a dagger, and who does not pick out their nits in public. They will go to school, their hair combed and parted. This will be a revolution, but it can be achieved in two generations. Not by coercion but with direction from the state. This reality that is known as the Bedouin will disappear."

Ah, but Moshe Dayan is dead now. The zionists are crowing that Israel has moved to the left. This ethnic cleansing of Israelis. shows how far Israel has moved to the left.

Arab MKs less equal than others

Here's an article in Ha'aretz from a couple of days ago demonstrating that the presence of Arab members in the Israeli parliament (Knesset) does not make Israel the democracy that zionists make it out to be.

According to the logic that has been guiding attorneys general (Elyakim Rubinstein and Menachem Mazuz) for several years now, Arab MKs are not allowed to do what journalists, arms dealers and exporters are allowed to do - namely, maintain contact with "an enemy country." At present, MK Azmi Bishara is being tried for visiting Syria and Lebanon, and making declarations considered to be incitement there, according to the prosecution. Moreover, Mazuz is considering filing an indictment for "entry to an enemy country" against MK Ahmed Tibi, and inviting MK Taleb al-Sana, who recently visited Damascus, to a police investigation.

So much for democracy but what about peace?

A country that claims that it is pursuing peace not only should not punish such activity, but should welcome it and encourage any contact among the nations. The attorney general and the Shin Bet should stop the campaign against the Arab MKs, cancel the lawsuit against Azmi Bishara, and refrain in the future from indicting any MK who travels in similar circumstances, in the context of fulfilling his public mission.

It's lucky that Israel now has a centrist Prime Minister.

Hilary and the littler town of Bethlehem

Just Peace is a quirky list. It tolerates zionism and anti-semitism and bans people for swearing. Even Engage's Linda Grant has been posting there recently and Gilad Atzmon has support there. But some decent people hang in there and there are some posts that make it worth being in the loop. This is an excerpt from a letter from a Bethlehemite to US presidential hopeful, Hilary Clinton, following her recent photo opportunity at the apartheid wall:

I was surprised last week when I saw your picture in Ha'aretz (November 15, 2005), which was taken near the Wall, just outside of our town. I know that many Palestinians would have loved to welcome you in their homes in Bethlehem, but you did not come to visit us. Perhaps you simply did not have time to stop by and greet us, the people who would be the other half of any agreement which would allow Israel to live in security and peace. Or perhaps while you had Bethlehem in the background of the publicity photos, you had certain of your constituents in New York in the forefront of your mind. In one month s time you will be singing O Little Town of Bethlehem. I wonder how you will sing it this year, having declared your support for transforming our little town into a big, open-air prison, leaving no green space for our children to play or our olive trees to grow?

Of course by the time Hilary sings her carols the little town will have got a bit littler.

Back! says Forward

The one time Bundist, now fairly zionist Jewish newspaper Forward has an article by Martin van Creveld not simply arguing for, but arguing for the inevitability of, a hasty US retreat from Iraq whilst, at the same time arguing that a complete withdrawal from the region is impossible. Van Creveld is quite an expert on military matters and, as Forward notes, he is the only non-American to feature on the American army's reading lists for its officers. I know that comparisons of Iraq with Vietnam are obvious and rather cliché now but van Creveld puts it well and doesn't have much quarrel with US imperialism as such. That doesn't make his argument more valid but anti-imperialists would compare the Iraq war to Vietnam because they would want a) America not to invade in the first place, and b) if America did invade they would want them to lose. so the guy's got no axe to grind here.

Confronted by a demoralized army on the battlefield and by growing opposition at home, in 1969 the Nixon administration started withdrawing most of its troops in order to facilitate what it called the "Vietnamization" of the country. The rest of America's forces were pulled out after Secretary of State Henry Kissinger negotiated a "peace settlement" with Hanoi. As the troops withdrew, they left most of their equipment to the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam — which just two years later, after the fall of Saigon, lost all of it to the communists.

Clearly this is not a pleasant model to follow, but no other alternative appears in sight.

It's a remarkable article and it goes into a lot of detail about how difficult the essential withdrawal will be, right down to the fact that if the retreat is too hasty much costly, too costly, equipment will fall into the hands of the resistance.

simply abandoning equipment or handing it over to the Iraqis, as was done in Vietnam, is simply not an option. And even if it were, the new Iraqi army is by all accounts much weaker, less skilled, less cohesive and less loyal to its government than even the South Vietnamese army was. For all intents and purposes, Washington might just as well hand over its weapons directly to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Ok, that's enough cuts on the war itself. Let's skip to the end:

For misleading the American people, and launching the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 B.C sent his legions into Germany and lost them, Bush deserves to be impeached and, once he has been removed from office, put on trial along with the rest of the president's men. If convicted, they'll have plenty of time to mull over their sins.

Ahh, I love a happy ending.

Tip: JS Narins

The cycle of non-violence

The DVD for the Cycle of Peace, a bike ride from Europe to Jerusalem, has been available since 1/10/2004 but it is now to receive a public screening.

UK PREMIERE SCREENING OF "CYCLE OF PEACE"

Monday 5th December 2005 7.00pm
The Old Cinema, 309 Regent Street, London W1
(Nearest tube: Oxford Circus)
Tickets: £5

Narrated by acclaimed actress Julie Christie, this feature length film follows the amazing story of the "Peace Cycle".

In the summer of 2004, twenty five cyclists of various nationalities and faiths embarked on an epic 2,700 mile bike ride from London to Jerusalem in the name of justice and peace.

The film captures the emotional six week journey through 44 major cities in Europe and the West Bank – from the torrential thunderstorms in France and over the daunting Alps, across the length of Italy and the scorched hills of Greece, through the blistering heat of the Jordan valley and finally ....to an astonishing reception by the Palestinian people!

For more information contact laura@thepeacecycle.org

BBC's balancing act

Here's a letter to the Guardian denouncing the disciplining of Barbara Plett by the BBC.

The decision to maintain the disciplinary proceedures against Barbara Plett and even to go as far as to establish a commission of inquiry into the way the BBC covers the Palestine question (BBC bias complaint upheld, November 26) is one of many manifestations of the grotesque phase we have all reached in this troublsome part of the world.

Had it not been for Ms Plett's balanced and informative reports, it would have been difficult to distinguish between the BBC coverage of the occupied territories and that of the Israeli Broadcasting Authority. Ms Platt admirably tried for many months to "balance" a simple imbalanced reality: of Israeli occupation and Palestinian victimisation. The atrocities on the ground - the killing of children and women and the blowing up of houses - warranted an emotional response as it is, and it was only natural that once, and only once, this would show in her reports (as many BBC reporters allowed themselves a show of emotion when reporting the deaths of George Best or Princess Diana). Only outside pressure could have produced such an ill-thought procedure and action.

As for the inquiry commission, one can save taxpayers' money. The cable companies in Israel come now and then under official pressure for allowing free access to international TV news stations. They would like to remove CNN and al-Jazeera. There are no complaints in Israel about Fox news (representing the US neoconservative point of view) and the BBC. The BBC is indeed a pro-Israeli news agency and is going to remain so if its directors silence the professional reporting of Barbara Plett.
Ilan Pappe
Tivon, Israel

There's another letter "balancing" out the first but I don't want to reproduce it here. You'll have to go here. If you want to know what all the fuss about Plett was for then go here or if you want to see more about the BBC's grovelling to the racist war criminals of Israel then go here.

See more of Lenin on Hitchens

My mate Lenin (he of the Tomb) has just had a withering denunciation of the late Christopher Hitchens published in the Monthly Review. Here's how it starts:

Picture a necrotic, sinister, burned-out wasteland -- a vast, dull mound of rubble punctuated by moments of bleak emptiness and, occasionally, smoking. Those of you whose imaginations alighted instantly on the Late Christopher Hitchens have only yourselves to blame, for I was referring to Fallujah.

And here's how it finishes: .

The sort of degraded, hallucinatory nonsense that this poetaster of genocide exudes these days ought not to be exposed to daylight, never mind offered up as intellectual sustenance for a class of powerful men. Hitchens can't change, of course, and he will just have to live with the thought of what a hideous figure he has become. Or, more probably, die with it, perhaps suffocating on the impacted faecal matter that is perpetually welling up inside him. Let's just say that when that tumescent cadaver finally explodes, the left should be grateful to think of what new friends he will surprise.

And the intervening 5,221 words are worth a read too.

Kadima?

I just nicked this post to the Just Peace list.

Interesting that Sharon's new party Kadima means "forward" in Hebrew.
In Arabic Kadima means "old" and in colloquial Palestinian the word "Kadima" is commonly used to describe an old joke. Coming back from Jordan last week, the general feeling, also reflected in the Arabic press, is that Sharon's new party and political games will result in no change or, if anything, a change to the worse. A summary of such feelings is in a recent cartoon by the leading Arab cartoonist Hajjaj.

This of course represents a counter-argument against what appears to be a concerted drive in the UK media to portray Sharon as a born-again peacemaker.

Al-Jazeera: don't bomb us blog

Thanks to Mohamed for pointing me in the direction of the Don't bomb us blog, run by al-Jazeera staffers.

Al Jazeera staff have organised a symbolic gathering outside their offices both in Doha and around the world on Thursday 24^th of November 2005 at 2pm Doha time (GMT+3).

We will be demanding that the truth aboutDaily Mirror report to be revealed and that the Britsh and American governments set the record straight about the revelation made in the paper. If you haven't heard yet, President Bush discussed bombing Al Jazeera's Headquarters in Doha.

Check back for pictures and updates.

Yes do that. Check back for pictures and updates.

Plan to bomb al-Jazeera officially denied

So Bush really was going to bomb al-Jazeera. A comment below said how al-Jazeera had reported the bomb plan in quite neutral terms. I think this response from John G (Game, I think) deserves more prominence:

I don't think it's surprising that Al-Jazeera carried the story in a neutral way. It's true that if, for example, CNN, were to be targetted in this way, they would get pretty frenzied. Thats because everyone would know that if something like this was exposed, it wouldn't happen again. That's not the case for Arab journalists. The US has been killing reporting staff from Al Jazeera for years now (as well as getting its allies to trump up charges against them and have them locked up) and the extent of global concern has been restricted to a few peripheral documentries late at night.

Of course if US public opinion moves (which it is in the process of doing of course) there might be a change. For the moment however Al Jazeera know that they are targets and they don't want more of their staff murdered. Hence the neutral careful reporting.

Thats the world we live in. Thats what the President of the United States and his vice President of torture represent in the world today. If you're an Arab journalist and you disagree they kill you. If you're a western journalist they just go through your tax returns. The North-South divide.

The Guardian seems to be pursuing this story more than other UK papers, on its front page and in its editorial column.

Bush planned to bomb al-Jazeera

According to the Guardian, George Bush planned to bomb the offices of al-Jazeera in Doha, Qatar. The issue is shrouded in mystery now because a memo purporting to contain details of the plan has now been declared an official secret and two people who are said to have handled and passed on the document have been charged under the official secrets act and the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, has threatened editors with prosecution if they publish the document.

Under the front-page headline "Bush plot to bomb his ally", the Daily Mirror reported that the US president last year planned to attack the Arabic television station al-Jazeera, which has its headquarters in Doha, the capital of Qatar, where US and British bombers were based.

The most detail I could find on this is in the South African Dispatch online.

In April 2003, an al-Jazeera journalist died when its Baghdad office was struck during a US bombing campaign. Nabil Khoury, a US State Department spokesperson said the strike was a mistake.

In November 2002, al-Jazeera's office in Kabul, Afghanistan, was destroyed by a US missile. None of the crew was at the office at the time. US officials said they believed the target was a terrorist site and did not know it was Al-Jazeera's office.

Peter Kilfoyle, former defence minister in Blair's government, called for the document to be made public. "I think they ought to clarify what exactly happened on this occasion," he said.

"If it was the case that President Bush wanted to bomb al-Jazeera in what is after all a friendly country, it speaks volumes and it raises questions about subsequent attacks that took place on the press that wasn't embedded with coalition forces."

Enduring freedom indeed.

Beyond Chutzpah in bullet points

Matthew Abraham has very helpfully reduce Norman Finkelstein's Beyond Chutzpah to bullet points here:

these elements in the Holocaust Industry’s juggling act are identified...:

* The Holocaust uniqueness thesis, which states that Nazi genocide and the death of six million Jews cannot be compared to other mass slaughters. This sacralization of the Holocaust, with the “never again” mantra morphing into “if ever again; not us alone” mentality, allows Israel to function as a “crazy state” (a term of art within the international relations literature suggesting how Israel can blackmail the international community with promises of cataclysmic violence if crossed or denied military or diplomatic support) as the only country in the region possessing the nuclear weapons capable of destroying the region and most of the world;

* Zionism equal Judaism. In fact, Zionism suppressed diversity of expression among Jews in the wake of the Holocaust;

* Anti-Semitism is irrational and eternal—consequently there can never be a justifiable expression of animus toward Zionist Jews, no matter how reprehensible are Israeli actions;

* Zionist Jews can not be condemned because everything Jews do, according to philo-Semitic doctrine, is beyond reproach;

* To reproach Zionist Jews in their support of Israel is to traffic in anti-Semitic stereotypes;

* Israel, as the homeland of the Jewish people (although many Jews refuse to allow Israel to speak in their name), is always justified in what it does—no matter how horrific the consequences may be for others;

* Israel is a democracy even though its right of return only applies to Jews and is governed by racist landholding laws;

* Israeli occupation of the West Bank, and until recently, Gaza, were justified by security measures and apparent biblical warrant—despite being in contravention of international law, particularly U.N. Resolution 242, which requires Israel to withdraw to the June 1967 Green Line, along with minor territorial adjustments;

* Despite the uniform judgments of human rights organizations that Israel employs torture against Palestinian detainees, uses illegal detention, and the illegal demolition of Palestinian homes in occupied territory, Israel’s apologists undermine international law because it does not conform to Israel’s or the United States’ wishes for the Middle East region;

* Israel can be described as a model democracy because it maintains respect for the rule of law which no other country facing similar threats has.

The book's still worth reading in full.

Ariel Sharon in the middle of the road

Ariel Sharon is quitting the Likud party to found new "centrist" party. According to Ha'aretz:

Likud officials said the new party would be a "true centrist party, from every perspective: political, economic and social."

Sharon the centrist? Wonderful!

Rare fair comment on the boycott "debate"

Here's a report in the Education Guardian on the boycott debate in Birmingham between David Hirsh and Ilan Pappe. I'm guessing it's more trustworthy than the Engage site on the same thing. Here Gargi Bhattacharyya sets the scene

The academic boycott has been controversial to say the least - and the debate has been deeply felt, acrimonious and, occasionally, bordering on the threatening. In Birmingham, a significant proportion of the audience appeared to have come to voice their opposition to Pappe himself, as opposed to the boycott or any other issue. Another smaller group, including myself, came with serious suspicions about the project of Engage. Although both speakers presented thoughtful if controversial accounts of their positions, I am not so sure that the audience felt that we were engaged in a debate.

And on the debate itself:

Hirsch stated clearly that he opposed the occupation of Palestine and supported the rights of Palestinians - but that he did not agree with the tactic of boycott, which he considered to be counterproductive and playing into the hands of anti-semites. Pappe spoke of the atrocities against Palestinians that he had witnessed and the reasons why he believed that only the pressure of international sanctions could change opinion in Israel.

However, although it would seem that there was some common ground politically between these two positions, the discussion from the floor was not about how best to support Palestinians. A large number of contributions attacked Ilan Pappe for suggesting that Palestinians were suffering and needing support - because, it was alleged, this was a one-sided and violent view. Pro-Palestinian speakers felt they had to answer the allegation of anti-semitism - understandably, as that was how the debate was set up. One member of the audience expressed his regret that the discussion could not be conducted in a manner more in keeping with the dialogic traditions of Judaic scholarship. I clapped him - but not many others did.

I just don't think debate with supporters of a triad of moral and political impairments, ie, Israel with its colonial settlement, ethnic cleansing and racist laws is possible. They lie, they distort and they attack individuals. That's it. The discussion needs to be on how to expose Israel for what it is and how to establish boycotts as a means of isolating Israel.

UPDATE: I have to hand it to David Hirsh for posting Brian Robinson's report on the Birmingam debate.

At the very end, after Pappe's really quite brilliant - and emotionally highly appropriate, no dry ivory tower detached academic he - summing up (he spoke last) I'd felt he'd been given such an unfair time of it that I stood up from my seat in the 5th row and shouted out "Bravo Ilan"!) ... I went up to the platform afterwards - cos I've corresponded with both of them on and off for some time. I told David Hirsh that I thought these were appallingly difficult human problems, reminding both him and Ilan how difficult I'd found it to make up my mind on the concept of boycotting academia, but having thought a lot more about it, I was now definitely on Pappe's side ... He laughed and said that I'd be back in his camp in 2 months. But I really don't think he's right. I don't like being harrangued, I don't like false accusations of antisemitism (they act as smokescreen apologetics, they're exaggerated opportunistically, they're counterproductive) and I don't like ad hominem slurs.

But please read the whole piece in full. Go here and scroll down.

Ann Clwyd making it up?

Lenin's Tomb has a good post on Ann Clwyd's propensity for making it up as she goes along on the occupation of Iraq. Examples are torture, napalm (or new improved napalm I should say), conditions in Abu Ghraib, etc. She also makes the most outrageously racist claim to explain human rights abuses in Iraq and how they can be stopped.

We have been trying to train the Iraqis in human rights. We’ve set up conferences for the Iraqis on human rights with all the NGOs. We’ve been trying our very best to get human rights into the Iraqi psyche. We want to help them I think.

She thinks? She's not sure. But anyway, have a look at the Tomb, especially the first comment where a guy doesn't see what's so racist about requiring British occupation forces to drum human rights into the "Iraqi psyche".

Rabbi rebukes religious right

I think that's called alliteration. According to Yahoo news, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the liberal Union for Reform Judaism, which Yahoo describes as the largest branch of American Judaism, has taken a swipe at the religious, presumably Christian, right in America. At one point in a speech to an audience of 5,000, Rabbi Yoffie compared the religious right to the nazis, particularly with regard to their anti-gay hatred.

"We cannot forget that when Hitler came to power in 1933, one of the first things that he did was ban gay organizations," Yoffie said. "Yes, we can disagree about gay marriage. But there is no excuse for hateful rhetoric that fuels the hellfires of anti-gay bigotry."

It's nice that anyone would come out against the increasing Christianisation of the American state but this is the second time, that I know of, that a Jewish American leader has come out against the conflation of religion and politics in America whilst refraining from criticising the Judaisation of Palestine. I've had a quick read about Rabbi Yoffie and he seems to be a bit anti-occupation but he happily describes Israel as a democracy in a way in which he would never describe America if America was subject to the same kind of rule that Palestine, ok Israel, now is.

David Aaronovitch, neither zionist nor Islamophobe?

Last week in the Jewish Chronicle (subscription only), David Aaronovitch denied being either a zionist or an Islamophobe. Amazing huh? How could could he deny either of those things with all that we know of his writing rubbishing anti-zionists and Muslims and broadly supporting, not simply Israsel's "right" to exist but also its right to deny the Palestinians the right to return? I'll post his article here in due course and then we'll see that he can deny being a zionist by running with two narrow dictionary definitions of the word "zionism" which he claims not to subscribe to. In the meantime here's a response to Aaronovitch's denial in this week's JC.

David Aaronovitch (JC, November 11) denies being Islamophobic and asserts that our organisation consists of “idiots” who have never read his work. Actually, we’ve been avid readers for years. For instance, back in 2003 Mr Aaronovitch cited the example of Muslim women in hijab as people who engender “my greatest feelings of discomfort” (Guardian, June 17, 2003).

There were more than undertones of Islamophobia in his opposition to the socialist-Muslim anti-war alliance. He calls anti-war campaigner and Muslim convert Yvonne Ridley “the woman who liked the burka so much she bought the religion,” sarcastically stereotyping the whole religion with practices enforced by the Taliban (Guardian, June 5, 2004).

Mr Aaronovitch’s anti-Islamic prejudice can be demonstrated by contrasting his response to the Iranian earthquake with his reaction to the New Orleans hurricane. He asserts that the American authorities are probably doing lots that the media can’t see and the disaster “only tells us how vulnerable we are” (Times, September 3, 2005) — whereas the Bam earthquake tells us how incompetent and corrupt the Iranians are (Guardian, December 30, 2003).

We agree with Mr Aaronovitch that “what I have said and written speaks for itself.” Need we go on?

Catherine Hossain,
Muslim Public Affairs Committee UK

More later, or more likely, tomorrow.

It's Wednesday, there must be an anti-semitism inquiry

There have been loads of reports on anti-semitism in the last few years. This is how the Guardian reports this latest inquiry in the UK parliament:

MPs yesterday launched an all-party inquiry into anti-semitism amid fears that incidents have reached record levels.

Actually the police disputed the idea of a rise to that level, saying that the figure had been fairly constant but that the Community Security Trust had not maintained the figures as accurately as the police had in the years prior to 2004. Then we have to consider the fact that anti-zionist slogans are considered anti-semitic by zionists and we might also like to consider the fact that Ken Livingstone's run in with Olver Finegold of the Evening Standard will have been recorded as an anti-semitic incident. Actually we will also have to bear in mind that both Rod Liddle and Melanie Philips have both gone on record to say that anti-capitalism is displaced anti-semitism.

So with this ever-widening definition of anti-semitism, our MPs should be quite busy for a while.

The committee requires written submissions by December 30. A report will be published next spring.

I shouldn't prejudge but I bet the report is complete nonsense.

Guardian retracts lies about Chomsky

The Guardian has withdrawn an almost complete pack of lies it ran about an interview with Noam Chomsky. I'm not Chomsky's biggest fan I have to say so when the net started buzzing about how he had been misrepresented by the Guardian I didn't take much notice. But someone sent me the Guardian's correction (or is it a clarification?) today and it's quite extraordinary. It seems to accuse Emma Brockes of deliberate falsehood.

Principal among these was a statement by Ms Brockes that in referring to atrocities committed at Srebrenica during the Bosnian war he had placed the word "massacre" in quotation marks. This suggested, particularly when taken with other comments by Ms Brockes, that Prof Chomsky considered the word inappropriate or that he had denied that there had been a massacre. Prof Chomsky has been obliged to point out that he has never said or believed any such thing. The Guardian has no evidence whatsoever to the contrary and retracts the statement with an unreserved apology to Prof Chomsky.

Now then, now then, but look it gets worse:

The headline used on the interview, about which Prof Chomsky also complained, added to the misleading impression given by the treatment of the word massacre. It read: Q: Do you regret supporting those who say the Srebrenica massacre was exaggerated? A: My only regret is that I didn't do it strongly enough.

No question in that form was put to Prof Chomsky

Wowee!

Now here's a tricky bit:

Ms Brockes's misrepresentation of Prof Chomsky's views on Srebrenica stemmed from her misunderstanding of his support for Ms Johnstone. Neither Prof Chomsky nor Ms Johnstone have ever denied the fact of the massacre.

So hang on a sec. She misunderstood Ms Johnstone and Chomsky's support for Johnstone and felt that what she believed of Chomsky and Johnstone gave her carte blanche to fake interview questions and answers.

And here's another tricky bit:

Prof Chomsky has also objected to the juxtaposition of a letter from him, published two days after the interview appeared, with a letter from a survivor of Omarska. While he has every sympathy with the writer, Prof Chomsky believes that publication was designed to undermine his position, and addressed a part of the interview which was false.

Well the Guardian has now removed the interview from the Guardian Unlimited website but not the two letters, though it no longer juxtaposes them. It also still carries an article by Norman Johnson that draws quite heavily on the Brockes "interview", that's as in, it was so not an interview.

Ilan Pappe in London

Meeting tonight at University of London (ULU)

PSC and BRICUP
Palestine Israel; Peace or Apartheid?

Wednesday 16 November 2005, 5:30pm

Room 101, University of London Union Malet Street London

Speakers:

Dr Ilan Pappe, University of Haifa (in a personal capacity)

Betty Hunter, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, UK

Chair:

Dr Nur Masalha, University of Surrey

Organised by BRICUP and PSC

Dr Pappe and Dr Masalha are two of the world’s most prolific historians of Palestine-Israel: between them they have authored and edited over 25 books (in English, Arabic, Hebrew, Spanish and Italian).

Dr Pappe’s books include: Britain and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1948-51 (1988); Jordan in the Middle East (1994); The Making of the Arab-Israel Conflict, 1947-51 (1994); The Israel/Palestine Question (Rewriting Histories) (1999); A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples (2004).

Dr Masalha’s books include: Expulsion of the Palestinians (1992); Is Israel the State of All its Citizens and Refugees? (1993); A Land Without a People (1997); Imperial Israel and the Palestinians (2000); The Politics of Denial (2003); Catastrophe Remembered: Palestine, Israel and the Internal Refugees, Essays in Memory of Edward W. Said (2005).

Please note the disclaimer by Pappe's name.