Books by Ilan Pappé

The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel

by Ilan Pappé

For more than 60 years, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have lived as Israeli citizens within the borders of the nation formed at the end of the 1948 conflict. Occupying a precarious middle ground between the Jewish citizens of Israel and the dispossessed Palestinians of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Israeli Palestinians have developed an exceedingly complex relationship with the land they call home; however, in the innumerable discussions of the Israel-Palestine problem, their experiences are often overlooked and forgotten.
In this book, historian Ilan Pappé examines how Israeli Palestinians have fared under Jewish rule and what their lives tell us about both Israel's attitude toward minorities and Palestinians' attitudes toward the Jewish state. Drawing upon significant archival and interview material, Pappé analyzes the Israeli state's policy towards its Palestinian citizens, finding discrimination in matters of housing, education, and civil rights. Rigorously researched yet highly readable, The Forgotten Palestinians brings a new and much-needed perspective to the Israel-Palestine debate.

The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel

by Ilan Pappé

A vivid and incisive analysis of the complex relationship between Israel and its Palestinian citizens written by an acclaimed Israeli historian

For decades, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have lived as Israeli citizens within the borders of the nation formed at the end of the 1948 conflict. Occupying a precarious middle ground between the Jewish citizens of Israel and the dispossessed Palestinians of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Israeli Palestinians have developed an exceedingly complex relationship with the land they call home; however, in the innumerable discussions of the Israel-Palestine problem, their experiences are often overlooked and forgotten.

In this book, historian Ilan Pappé examines how Israeli Palestinians have fared under Jewish rule and what their lives tell us about both Israel’s attitude toward minorities and Palestinians’ attitudes toward the Jewish state. Drawing upon significant archival and interview material, Pappé analyzes the Israeli state’s policy toward its Palestinian citizens, finding discrimination in matters of housing, education, and civil rights. Rigorously researched yet highly readable, The Forgotten Palestinians brings a new and much-needed perspective to the Israel-Palestine debate.

A Very Short History of the Israel–Palestine Conflict

by Ilan Pappé

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On Palestine

by Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappé

Operation Protective Edge, Israel's most recent assault on Gaza, left thousands of Palestinians dead and cleared the way for another Israeli land grab. The need to stand in solidarity with Palestinians has never been greater. Ilan Pappé and Noam Chomsky, two leading voices in the struggle to liberate Palestine, discuss the road ahead for Palestinians and how the international community can pressure Israel to end its human rights abuses against the people of Palestine. On Palestine is the sequel to their acclaimed book Gaza in Crisis.

Noam Chomsky is widely regarded to be one of the foremost critics of US foreign policy in the world. He has published numerous groundbreaking books, articles, and essays on global politics, history, and linguistics. Since 2003 he has written a monthly column for the New York Times syndicate. His recent books include Masters of Mankind and Hopes and Prospects. Haymarket Books recently released updated editions of twelve of his classic books.

Ilan Pappé is the bestselling author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine: A History of Modern Palestine and The Israel/Palestine Question.

Frank Barat is a human rights activist and author. He was the coordinator of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine and is now the president of the Palestine Legal Action Network. His books include Freedom is a Constant Struggle, Gaza in Crisis, Corporate Complicity in Israel's Occupation, and On Palestine.

Palestine in a World on Fire

by Ilan Pappé, Katherine Natanel

A collection of interviews with some of the world’s leading progressive thinkers on the movement for Palestinian liberation and its connections to struggles for justice across the globe.

As more and more people align themselves with the Palestinian people, Palestine in a World on Fire provides the global perspective and analysis needed to inform how we forge ahead on this path of newfound solidarity. Editors Ilan Pappé and Katherine Natanel have gathered a collection of interviews that are intimate, challenging, and rigorous―many of them conducted before October 7th but still startlingly prescient. The interviewees connect the struggle for Palestinian liberation to various liberatory movements around the world, simultaneously interrogating and recontextualizing their own positions given the ongoing aggression in Palestine. This incredible group includes Angela Y. Davis, Noam Chomsky, Judith Butler, Nadine El-Enany, Gabor Mate, Mustafa Barghouti, Yanis Varoufakis, Paul Gilroy, Elias Khoury, Gayatri Spivak, and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian.

Palestine in a World on Fire highlights the centrality of Palestine in struggles shared across the world: capitalism, imperialism, misogyny, neo-colonialism, racism, and more. Each conversation tackles urgent events and unfolding dynamics, and the scholar-activists interviewed here provide invaluable perspectives and insights, illuminating the richness and relevance of recent scholarship on Palestine.

Ten Myths About Israel

by Ilan Pappé

The myths and reality behind the state of Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—from “the most eloquent writer on Palestinian history” (New Statesman)

The outspoken and radical Israeli historian Ilan Pappe examines the most contested ideas concerning the origins and identity of the contemporary state of Israel.

The “ten myths”—repeated endlessly in the media, enforced by the military, and accepted without question by the world’s governments—reinforce the regional status quo and include:

• Palestine was an empty land at the time of the Balfour Declaration.
• The Jews were a people without a land.
• There is no difference between Zionism and Judaism.
• Zionism is not a colonial project of occupation.
• The Palestinians left their Homeland voluntarily in 1948.
• The June 1967 War was a war of ‘No Choice’.
• Israel is the only Democracy in the Middle East.
• The Oslo Mythologies
• The Gaza Mythologies
• The Two-State Solution

For students, activists, and anyone interested in better understanding the news, Ten Myths About Israel is another groundbreaking study of the Israel-Palestine conflict from the author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.

Ten Myths About Israel

by Ilan Pappé

The myths and reality behind the state of Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—from “the most eloquent writer on Palestinian history” (New Statesman)

The outspoken and radical Israeli historian Ilan Pappe examines the most contested ideas concerning the origins and identity of the contemporary state of Israel.

The “ten myths”—repeated endlessly in the media, enforced by the military, and accepted without question by the world’s governments—reinforce the regional status quo and include:

• Palestine was an empty land at the time of the Balfour Declaration.
• The Jews were a people without a land.
• There is no difference between Zionism and Judaism.
• Zionism is not a colonial project of occupation.
• The Palestinians left their Homeland voluntarily in 1948.
• The June 1967 War was a war of ‘No Choice’.
• Israel is the only Democracy in the Middle East.
• The Oslo Mythologies
• The Gaza Mythologies
• The Two-State Solution

For students, activists, and anyone interested in better understanding the news, Ten Myths About Israel is another groundbreaking study of the Israel-Palestine conflict from the author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.

Israel and South Africa: The Many Faces of Apartheid

by Ilan Pappé, Ronnie Kasrils, Doctor Oren Ben-Dor, Jonathan Cook, Leila Farsakh

Within the already heavily polarised debate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, parallels between Israel and apartheid South Africa remain highly contentious. A number of prominent academic and political commentators, including former US president Jimmy Carter and UN Special Rapporteur John Dugard, have argued that Israel's treatment of its Arab-Israeli citizens and the people of the occupied territories amounts to a system of oppression no less brutal or inhumane than that of South Africa's white supremacists. Similarly, boycott and disinvestment campaigns comparable to those employed by anti-apartheid activists have attracted growing support. Yet while the 'apartheid question' has become increasingly visible in this debate, there has been little in the way of genuine scholarly analysis of the similarities (or otherwise) between the Zionist and apartheid regimes.

In Israel and South Africa, Ilan Pappé, one of Israel's preeminent academics and a noted critic of the current government, brings together lawyers, journalists, policy makers and historians of both countries to assess the implications of the apartheid analogy for international law, activism and policy making. With contributors including the distinguished anti-apartheid activist Ronnie Kasrils, Israel and South Africa offers a bold and incisive perspective on one of the defining moral questions of our age.

The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories

by Ilan Pappé

Shortlisted for the Palestine Book Awards 2017

A powerful, groundbreaking history of the Occupied Territories from one of Israel's most influential historians

From the author of the bestselling study of the 1948 War of Independence comes an incisive look at the Occupied Territories, picking up the story where The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine left off.

In this comprehensive exploration of one of the world’s most prolonged and tragic conflicts, Pappe uses recently declassified archival material to analyse the motivations and strategies of the generals and politicians – and the decision-making process itself – that laid the foundation of the occupation. From a survey of the legal and bureaucratic infrastructures that were put in place to control the population of over one million Palestinians, to the security mechanisms that vigorously enforced that control, Pappe paints a picture of what is to all intents and purposes the world’s largest ‘open prison’.

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

by Ilan Pappé

The book that is providing a storm of controversy, from ‘Israel’s bravest historian’ (John Pilger)

Renowned Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe's groundbreaking work on the formation of the State of Israel.

'Along with the late Edward Said, Ilan Pappe is the most eloquent writer of Palestinian history.' NEW STATESMAN

Between 1947 and 1949, over 400 Palestinian villages were deliberately destroyed, civilians were massacred and around a million men, women, and children were expelled from their homes at gunpoint.

Denied for almost six decades, had it happened today it could only have been called 'ethnic cleansing'. Decisively debunking the myth that the Palestinian population left of their own accord in the course of this war, Ilan Pappe offers impressive archival evidence to demonstrate that, from its very inception, a central plank in Israel’s founding ideology was the forcible removal of the indigenous population. Indispensable for anyone interested in the current crisis in the Middle East.

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'Ilan Pappe is Israel's bravest, most principled, most incisive historian.' JOHN PILGER

'Pappe has opened up an important new line of inquiry into the vast and fateful subject of the Palestinian refugees. His book is rewarding in other ways. It has at times an elegiac, even sentimental, character, recalling the lost, obliterated life of the Palestinian Arabs and imagining or regretting what Pappe believes could have been a better land of Palestine.'TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

'A major intervention in an argument that will, and must, continue. There's no hope of lasting Middle East peace while the ghosts of 1948 still walk.' INDEPENDENT

Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians

by Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappé

"Chomsky is a global phenomenon . . . he may be the most widely read American voice on foreign policy on the planet."—The New York Times Book Review
"Ilan Pappé is Israel's bravest, most principled, most incisive historian."—John Pilger
Described by a UN fact-finding mission as "a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate, and terrorize a civilian population," Israel's Operation Cast Lead thrust the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip into the center of the debate about the Israel/Palestine conflict.
In Gaza in Crisis, Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappé, two of the issue's most insightful and prominent critical voices, survey the fallout from Israel's conduct in Gaza and place it into the context of Israel's longstanding occupation of Palestine.
Noam Chomsky is one of the world's foremost social critics, and one of its most prolific. He is author of Failed States and Hegemony or Survival, both New York Times bestsellers. He lives in Lexington, Massachusetts, and is institute professor emeritus in the MIT Department of Linguistics and Philosophy.
Ilan Pappé is professor of history at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, where he is also co-director of the Exeter Center for Ethno-Political Studies, director of the Palestine Studies Centre, and a longtime political activist. He is the author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.

The Israel/Palestine Question

by Ilan Pappé

The Israel/Palestine Question assimilates diverse interpretations of the origins of the Middle East conflict with emphasis on the fight for Palestine and its religious and political roots. Drawing largely on scholarly debates in Israel during the last two decades, which have become known as 'historical revisionism', the collection presents the most recent development in the historiography of the Arab-Israeli conflict and a critical reassessment of Israel's past.

The Idea of Israel: A History of Power and Knowledge

by Ilan Pappé

A major history of Zionism and the state of Israel—for anyone interested in deepening their knowledge of the Israel-Palestine conflict and Middle Eastern politics

“[Ilan Pappé] is . . . one of the few Israeli students of the conflict who write about the Palestinian side with real knowledge and empathy.” —Guardian

Since its foundation in 1948, Israel has drawn on Zionism, the movement behind its creation, to provide a sense of self and political direction. In this groundbreaking new work, Ilan Pappe looks at the continued role of Zionist ideology. The Idea of Israel considers the way Zionism operates outside of the government and military in areas such as the country’s education system, media, and cinema, and the uses that are made of the Holocaust in supporting the state’s ideological structure.

In particular, Pappe examines the way successive generations of historians have framed the 1948 conflict as a liberation campaign, creating a foundation myth that went unquestioned in Israeli society until the 1990s. Pappe himself was part of the post-Zionist movement that arose then. He was attacked and received death threats as he exposed the truth about how Palestinians have been treated and the gruesome structure that links the production of knowledge to the exercise of power. The Idea of Israel is a powerful and urgent intervention in the war of ideas concerning the past, and the future, of the Palestinian–Israeli conflict.

The Idea of Israel A History of Power and Knowledge

by Ilan Pappé

Since its foundation in 1948, Israel has drawn on Zionism, the movement behind its creation, to provide a sense of self and political direction. In this groundbreaking new work, Ilan Pappe looks at the continued role of Zionist ideology. The Idea of Israel considers the way Zionism operates outside of the government and military in areas such as the country’s education system, media, and cinema, and the uses that are made of the Holocaust in supporting the state’s ideological structure.

In particular, Pappe examines the way successive generations of historians have framed the
1948 conflict as a liberation campaign, creating a foundation myth that went unquestioned in Israeli society until the 1990s. Pappe himself was part of the post-Zionist movement that arose then. He was attacked and received death threats as he exposed the truth about how Palestinians have been treated and the gruesome structure that links the production of knowledge to the exercise of power. The Idea of Israel is a powerful and urgent intervention in the war of ideas concerning the past, and the future, of the Palestinian–Israeli conflict.

Israel on the Brink And the Eight Revolutions that Could Lead to Decolonization and Coexistence

by Ilan Pappé

A renowned Israeli-British historian argues Israel is fracturing, and considers the issues that must be centered for a peaceful future for Palestinians and Jews alike

In this timely book, historian Ilan Pappé argues that with the 2022 election of the most right-wing government in Israel’s history, the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, and the subsequent Israeli war on Gaza, political fractures inherent in the Jewish state have expanded dangerously—and will potentially lead to Israel's collapse. With the goal of working towards a transition that is as peaceful as possible, Pappé sets out his thoughts about the risks and opportunities emerging from this historical moment.

Eight “mini-revolutions,” he argues, will be necessary for this more hopeful future to emerge, including:

• Relocating the Right of Return of the Palestinian refugees to the center of the future vision;
• Establishing a new definition for the Jewish collective in historical Palestine;
• Finalizing a plan for the future of the Jewish settlements built in the West Bank since 1967; and
• Creating a new strategy for a united Palestinian national movement.