At a moment of unprecedented peril, much of the free world is suffering from an unprecedented collective failure of political leadership. America, Britain and Israel all have not only lame-duck leaders but no clear alternative in the offing. (Interestingly, both Australia and Canada have currently bucked the trend). All three are gripped, to a greater or lesser extent, by movements of thought which seek to undermine the basis of their societies and have brought about a weakening of national spine and cultural nerve. All three are undermined by an intelligentsia which has bent the national mind through a relentless agenda of lies and distortions which have been used to recast the nation’s history in such a way as to rob it of legitimacy. In America, this process takes the form of a culture war which rages on. In Britain, it has been not a culture war but a rout, with the institutions of British society waving the white flag at every opportunity. In Israel, it takes the form of a deadly pathology, a kind of cultural version of multiple sclerosis in which the country’s central nervous system catastrophically mistakes foe for friend and, by thus neutering its defence mechanism through such radical confusion, causes the entire organism to turn upon and potentially destroy itself.
The deadly pathogens in this case are those Israeli academics who, over the past two decades or more, have systematically rewritten Israel’s history so that citizens are taught that this nation, lawfully and justly restored (at least in part) to a people that narrowly survived genocide, was actually born in original sin. One such academic is Ilan Pappe, whose new book, ‘The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine’ is shredded here by David Pryce-Jones:
As history, the book is worthless. In interviews Pappe regularly explains: ‘We do [historiography] because of ideological reasons, not because we are truth seekers.’ For him, as a Marxist and anti-nationalist, ‘there is no such thing as truth, only a collection of narratives’. To substantiate his particular ideological narrative, Pappe puts the worst possible interpretation on any Jewish deed or word, while validating anything said or done by Palestinians. For evidence of Israeli monstrosity, he relies on quotations from his own previous works or from Palestinian polemicists, and above all on the oral testimonies of Palestinian refugees. Over half a century of military and ideological conflict has passed since their exodus, but Pappe declares his faith that whatever they now say is true. This might all seem too pathological to matter much, but Arab and Muslim extremists are making huge efforts to contest the legitimacy of Israel, and many of their allies on the international Left will lean on Pappe for purposes of ‘pilgering’ and ‘fisking’.
and here in the Economist:
Ben-Gurion was a prodigious diarist, but selective in what he recorded. Mr Pappe admits that he does not in fact know what Ben-Gurion said at the supposedly fateful ‘red house’ meeting on March 10th. As for Plan Dalet, this is no new discovery by Mr Pappe. The plan has been public for decades and does not read unambiguously like a master plan for wholesale ethnic cleansing. The aim was to crush the Palestinian militias before the Haganah had to face the invading Arab armies. It gave commanders discretion to occupy or destroy and expel hostile villages or potentially hostile villages; some destroyed swathes of villages and a few did not. And Mr Pappe’s detractors will ask why he ignores the orders sent out by the chief of staff of the Haganah, Israel Galili, on March 24th, reminding commanders of the policy to protect the ‘full rights, needs, and freedom of the Arabs in the Hebrew state without discrimination’.
But the damage by such historical revisionism has long been done within Israel, as this letter to Professor Rivka Carmi, President of Ben Gurion University, makes all too clear:
Dear President Carmi,
Ben Gurion University’s Department of Politics and Government offers a course entitled ‘Critical Aspects of the Occupation,’ taught by Neve Gordon. Just FYI, and for your convenience, the syllabus can be viewed on the departmental web site.
Based upon its reading list alone, the course seems very one-sided, consisting mostly of in-classroom anti-Israel political indoctrination. The reading list consists almost entirely of anti-Israel or pro-Marxist diatribes, including Arab writers who do not think Israel has the right to protect itself, or even exist. There are also known Israel-haters like Sara Roy or Azmi Bishara (the Arab Knesset Member who has been running to Syria to call for Israel’s annihilation). The closest thing the reading list can offer, as at least a symbol of balance, is a 25-year old piece by Menachem Milstein, and some chapters from a book by Labor Party historian Shabtai Shevet….token pro-Israel essays overwhelmed in a sea of anti-Israel screed.
But what is more appalling is that there is not a single article there about Palestinian terrorism or about Israel’s rights to defend itself. You will never learn that Israel’s ‘occupation’ of ‘Palestinian lands’ was caused by Arab aggression and violence and not the other way around. You will never learn that Israel offered to return conquered land in exchange for peace, many times, and the Arabs instead chose war. You will never hear that the main cause of escalated Palestinian terrorism in the past 13 years was not occupation at all, but rather the end of occupation. You do not learn that Israel, the UN, the UK, the USA, and/or some combination of these have offered Palestinian leadership its own state, next to Israel, fifteen times since 1937; only to have the offer rebuffed with terrorism and war. You do not learn that Arafat vowed to continue his terror war against Israel, on television in Jordan, even before the ink was dry on the Oslo Accords.
…If what Prof. Gordon teaches is sound history, and rational analysis based upon bona fide facts and validated data, then Israel, as a free country where democratic process and rule of law prevail, must accomodate Prof. Gordon’s right to teach the truth even if it raises difficult political questions. However, if Professor Gordon is exploiting academic license to preach Israel-hatred under the faux mantle of scholarship, substituting transparently anti-Israel mendacious propaganda and decontextulized narratives for honest scholarship, then he is aiding and abetting Israel’s enemies in time of war. In doing so, he is making it easier for Israel’s enemies to gain political advantage. And in doing that, he is strengthening them and aiding them in their terrorist murder of Israelis. In time of war, that is treason.
And in Israel’s case, 58 years into the war of annihilation being waged against it from without, such an erosion from within is a recipe for national suicide.
