Path of the Bison

Ilan Pappe Lecture 2018 ILAN PAPPÉ | HISTORY IS RELEVANT: THE ISRAELI NEW HISTORY AND ITS LEGACY An extraordinary lecture on the history Israel tried to bury. There are historians who document the past, and there are historians who have the courage to confront the lies upon which an entire national narrative has been constructed. Professor Ilan Pappé belongs firmly among the latter. I have enormous admiration and respect for this remarkable man, not simply for his scholarship, but for his unwavering determination to challenge the historical foundations of Zionism, despite the personal and professional consequences of doing so. In this fascinating 2018 lecture at Case Western Reserve University, Pappé examines the emergence of Israel's so-called New Historians, a generation of scholars who, beginning in the 1980s, challenged the official Israeli account of the events surrounding the establishment of the state in 1948. For decades, the dominant Zionist narrative portrayed Israel's creation as a heroic struggle for national survival, while the catastrophe inflicted upon the indigenous Palestinian population was minimised, distorted or conveniently erased. As previously classified Israeli documents became accessible, historians began uncovering evidence that challenged this carefully cultivated account. The archives exposed expulsions, massacres, destroyed villages and the realities behind the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during the Nakba. But there is something especially important that must never be overlooked. The Palestinians had been telling this history all along. They had preserved it through eyewitness testimony, oral histories, family archives, photographs and the memories of generations living in exile. Palestinian historians had documented their people's dispossession long before Israeli academics began examining the evidence in their own state's archives. The tragedy is that Palestinian testimony was so often dismissed until Israeli documents began corroborating what Palestinians themselves had been saying for decades. And herein lies one of the most revealing aspects of colonial history: the testimony of the dispossessed is questioned, while the records of those responsible for their dispossession are treated as authoritative. Pappé's contribution goes beyond exposing contradictions in Israel's founding narrative. His scholarship challenges us to examine Zionism itself, not merely as a movement for Jewish national self-determination, but through the experiences of the Palestinian people whose land, homes and communities were sacrificed to its political ambitions. His interpretation of 1948 as a deliberate campaign of ethnic cleansing remains one of his most consequential and contested arguments. Unlike historians who acknowledge the expulsions while disputing their overall planning, Pappé insists that Palestinian dispossession must be understood as central to the establishment of the Israeli state. What I particularly appreciate about his work is his refusal to separate historical scholarship from moral responsibility. For Pappé, history is not an academic exercise safely confined to the past. It is inseparable from the present. The Nakba was not simply an event that ended in 1948, but the beginning of a continuing process of dispossession whose consequences Palestinians endure to this day. His examination of the New Historians also raises a deeply uncomfortable question: what happens when a society is confronted with documentary evidence that challenges its most cherished national myths? Does it acknowledge the injustice, or does it retreat further into denial? The subsequent marginalisation of critical historical scholarship within Israel makes that question particularly pertinent. Listening to this lecture in the shadow of Gaza's devastation, the destruction of Palestinian communities and the continuing displacement of Palestinians gives Pappé's words an even greater significance. What was once presented to many Western audiences as an alternative interpretation of history now offers an essential framework for understanding the relationship between the Nakba and the Palestinian present. I admire Ilan Pappé immensely. He has devoted decades to challenging the narratives he inherited, making difficult historical arguments accessible to ordinary people, and insisting that Palestinians must never be written out of their own history. Yet perhaps the greatest lesson of this lecture is that historical truth does not suddenly come into existence when the archives of the powerful acknowledge it. The Palestinian people knew what happened to them. Their parents and grandparents knew. Their destroyed villages, confiscated lands and generations of refugees bore witness. They did not need Israel's permission to remember. They needed the world to listen. This is a lecture I cannot recommend highly enough, particularly to anyone seeking to understand the historical foundations of the Palestinian struggle, the politics of historical memory, and why confronting the events of 1948 remains indispensable to any meaningful discussion of justice. Because history is not merely about what happened. It is also about who was permitted to tell the story, whose testimony was silenced, and who continues to pay the price for that silence.