Ilan Pappe - Professor of History, University of Exeter, UK HARDtalk

on his appointment as the new head of the European Commission. It's

understood that Mr Juncker told the Prime Minister that he was committed

to "working for a fair deal with Britain". Those are the latest

headlines. Now on BBC News, it's time for HARDtalk.

Welcome to HARDtalk, I'm Stephen Sackur. The Israeli`Palestinian

conflict is, at its heart, a story of two peoples and one land. Both

the history as their justification which means an historian who appears

to change sides inevitably becomes a figure of enormous controversy. So

we gaze with my guest today, Israeli historian Ilan Pappe who says that

state is racist, born of a state is racist, born of a

deliberate programme of ethnic cleansing. Not surprisingly, he is

widely reviled in his home country. Have you had anti` Zionism

undermines his academic integrity `` has his? `` undermined.

Ilan Pappe, welcome to HARDtalk. You are an Israeli but for the best part

of a decade, have lived in a self`imposed exile in the UK and yet

you still seem intellectually drawn to Israel and still write about it.

Try and correct arise for me your feelings for your home country

today. I think the best way of explaining it is to differentiate

tween the state and the country and the state and the regime. I was born

in Israel and Palestine and I'm very attached to the people there. I'm

very worried about its future but I am very opposed to the ideological

regime that governs the life of everyone who lives there tween the

River Jordan and the Mediterranean. You a machine which implies there is

something about the particular colour of the government of the day

that surely it is not the machine you are opposed to but the founding

ideology of the country coming that is Zionism. You are anti` Zionist.

You reject Zionism. That is true. When I'm in the regime, I mean that

the successive governments were all loyal to the same foundation and

indeed, I find the idea that, in a country where half of the people are

not Jewish, a state cannot be founded on the ideas of ethnic

exclusivity or supremacy. There needs to be a more democratic and

more egalitarian and more fair political outfit that would respect

the rights and aspirations of everyone who lives there. We will

get more into that argument and particularly your claim that half

the people are not Jewish because obviously you're talking about

Israel and occupied territories. Between the Mediterranean and the

River Jordan. A sovereign nation. But we will get to a discussion of

that later. Here's what I found most paradoxical about you. You are clear

in your anti` Zionism and yet, your own life story and your families

life story is the best advertisement for the importance of Zionism that

there could ever be. I disagree with this. I think my life story,

especially the fact that my family came from Germany originally and

escaped. And found haven in what was to become the Jewish state of Israel

thanks to the development in the 1930s of the Zionist idea. But it

was also a family that was a big Dem of racism, of ethnic cleansing and

extermination and as such... Jews who faced extermination and needed a

haven. They cannot become themselves victimizers who will apply the same

methods to someone else. Your father was a passionate Zionist. I don't

know if he was. He probably would've preferred to go to the United States

or England but were closed and so he found a way to Palestine but I don't

think that he would have condoned the ethnic cleansing of 1948. I

don't think he would accept that, in order to survive, you are entitled

to either ethnically cleanse or exterminate someone else. Having a

safe haven for people who are victimized does not give them the

license to victimize someone else. You have already dropped ethnic

cleansing into conversation and it has become very much associated with

your historical work and is even the title of one of your most important

books but it is a phrase which stakes in the throat of so many

Israelis and indeed, so many Israeli historians who look at the record of

what happened in those founding days that led to the creation of the

state of Israel and they do not identify the programme of three

meditated ethnic cleansing that you sits the record. You've got it wrong

`` premeditated. It is not about meditation. It is an alteration, in

the end of which, one ethnic group is displaced by another and no one

can argue that half of Palestine's people were expelled, that of their

cities and villages were destroyed, . They lost Palestine because

Zionism created its own state. Even by the most conservative

definitions, it is an act of ethnic cleansing. But the idea of

premeditation is central to your idea of what Israel is and how it's

going to be. Even revisionist Zionists don't dispute anything you

have said about the fact, at 700,000 Arabs were forced to flee their

homes as the Jewish agency established what was to become the

Jewish state, that is not in dispute. But you say that there were

meetings in which they planned this operation and they say, no.

Understand that that war is tough, news happened but it was ad hoc and

it was not premeditated and in some cases, local commanders could be

blamed and certainly not all of it was down to a plan. If this is so,

one has to answer a simple question. Why were half of the

people who became Palestinian refugees already expelled before the

war even started? By the 15th of May 1948, the whole urban space of

Palestine was free of Arabs. By the 15th of May, before one Arab soldier

entered the land of Palestine, hundreds of thousands of

Palestinians were either acted by force from the countryside. The

evidence, I think, is quite clear and in the documentation, especially

that which came out in 1998, Israel releases military documentation 50

years after the fact and it shows very clearly a planned and

structured idea of how to turn Palestine, which was basically an

Arab country, into a Jewish country, a Jewish state through the

means of ethnic cleansing. I think the documentation is now much more

clear and it carries out the evidence. We don't want to get hung

up on every single detail of what happened in those early days but

just one key piece of evidence which would plant a seed of doubt about

your version of events, on the 24th of March, the Chief of Staff of what

would become the Israeli defensive force, he said, to all his field

commanders, a must protect the Fulbright, needs and freedoms of

Arabs living in the Hebrews base. He wrote that. He may have written it

but I have seen the group of commands that was sent to each of

the commanders of the brigade and each commander of a battalion and

they were very clear. They had to occupy the villages, expel the

people, detonate the houses. These commands came on the 1st of April so

I do not know what he wrote seven days before but what is important

now is that we are also exploring the old history of 1948 from the

Jewish side and maybe because they are old and very close to their

death bed, commanders are now admitting that their mission was to

cleanse Palestine from the Palestinians. I don't know why

people find it so difficult to believe. This was the major point of

Zionism. This was also an existential war. It was clear in

1948 that, unless the Jews fought and held this space, they could be

exterminated and in the end, as Benny Morris who was your historical

collaborator that now, has to be said, is your nemesis, he says that

in this sort of war, stuff happens, really bad stuff but in the end, it

can be justified. The Jews did what they had to do. It is amazing. We're

talking about but the Palestinians could have done to the Jews and this

is really flimsy history. To write a book of what could have happened is

really bad. I am writing a book of what has happened and what happened

is a crime against humanity. Ethnic cleansing is a crime against

humanity. The Zionist movement was founded for very good reasons but

what he did in 1948 is unforgivable. Unacceptable. Let's keep a sense of

context is everything we are discussing right now, it all

connects to the present day, let's have some perspective. Benny Morris

says that 800 or 1000 Palestinian civilians ended up dying, they were

either extrajudicially killed or executed by a Jewish agency military

operatives but compare that with what we see happening in the world

today in some of the conflicts not very far from Israel, in Syria and

Iraq and other places. The numbers of casualties compared with some of

the conflicts we see around the world, he has used the phrase small

potatoes. For him it is small potatoes. Imagine that half of

Britain's population has been exterminated. Imagine that half of

their cities were demolished to the earth. Imagine that the villages

were destroyed and then I would like you to come to an Israeli television

programme and tell them that that is small potatoes. This is about

ideology though, isn't it? It is about human suffering created by

people who ought to now have been immune from international

condemnation for the crimes that they have committed and are

committing. Here is what you said in 1999 to a Belgian newspaper, I admit

my ideology influences my historical writings that so what? That is the

case for everybody? Is that a good justification for this story? No, I

said it are two years ago. It was a time when you were a younger man

doing research that you have built on fans. What I meant is that we are

committed to historians and it is ridiculous to say that we do not

have an agenda. That doesn't mean that we don't have to be

professional. It doesn't mean that we don't correct mistakes if we make

them but it would be ridiculous to say that we don't have a moral

agenda. It plans a seed of doubt in the minds of people particularly

Israeli mind about the fairness with which you approach not just

historical events but also more contemporary ones. I'm going to

bring it up to date now because you are a commentator and a finger on

the way Israel operates today. In the summer of 2006 when is really

military forces were pounding Gaza after renewed rocket attacks, there

have been various assaults and this one was in 2006, you said that in

the name of Holocaust memory, let us hope the world will not allow the

continued genocide in Gaza to continue. As an historian, how could

you link Holocaust memory, alleged Israeli genocide or action in Gaza.

How could you do that? By observing very closely what is being done by

Israel. Genocide? Not allowing people to get basic

commodities. Checking every shipment going into Gaza. People have

different interpretations, but they do know that thousands and millions

of Palestinians are not being killed I the Israelis. Genocide is the

elimination of an ethnic grouping of people. You are an historian, you

have to use words carefully. You must respect words, don't you? I do

respect words. That is why I succeeded in convincing that what

happened in 1948 is ethnic cleansing. It is the ethnic

cleansing of Palestine. I used the term incremental genocide. I think

that if you get wise people and starve them, and you check how many

calories they can have in order to survive, in the long`term, this

could turn into a genocidal operation. The fact that Gaza is

condoned is closed from all sides. The fact that Israel does not know

what to do with the Gaza Strip, where is it knows what to do with

the West Bank, is that potential for incremental genocide. I am not

taking back my words, I only want to explain to people that people in

Gaza are under existential danger by the policies of the state of Israel.

I understand that you thought carefully about the words you use.

But I am just challenging some of them. It goes back to my opening

question. Your feelings about your home country today. You have

described Zionism, and this is another quote from you, as are

racist and quite evil philosophy of morale at the AMP life. I put it to

you that you have not lived in Israel for the last ten years,

you're still preoccupied with what Israelis, but anyone who visits

Israel, due really think they come away feeling that they are living in

a country that is driven by a quite evil philosophy? If they art...

First of all, I have been in Israel in the last ten years, every year.

So I am still there, as a much as I am here. Secondly, if you look at

Zionism from the perspective of those who are not Jewish, and

especially from a Palestinian perspective, then you understand

what I am talking about. Let's talk about the Palestinians or the

Israeli Arabs who are citizens of the state of Israel. They were

polled recently, in the Jerusalem Post, more than 60% of them

described Israel as a good place to live. Well over 50% said that they

believed in the legitimacy of Israel as being the Jewish state. And fewer

than a quarter said that they would want to go and live in a Palestinian

state, alongside Israel. My question is, if there is one topic I am

really and expert on, it is Palestinians in Israel. This is my

political, cultural, and social home. I don't know what is the basis

for these answers, but this is definitely not a reflection of how

Palestinians feel in Israel. Nor is it... But it may be a reflection of

something that you may dispute, which is Israel is a democracy,

Israeli Arabs do have a vote in Israeli elections. They have a court

system which is capable of standing up to those in power, we have seen

is rarely prime ministers convicted of serious crimes. There is a basic

commitment to civil society, democracy, in Israel, which is not

seen in the Palestinian territories right now, not seen in any Arab

nation that neighbours Israel, and surely the Israeli Arabs are capable

of seeing that as well. No, they can't see that. 93% of the land is

exclusively Jewish in Israel. Palestinians are not allowed to

build new settlements, new villages, they are not allowed to expand the

cities. They are not allowed, they are not getting the same national

security, the same welfare benefits, as the average Jewish is receiving

Israel. Their educational system is segregated from the Jewish a

professional system `` educational system. On every aspect of life,

legal, and financial, they are is committed against. But more than

anything else, the fact that the state is not really know them as

part of the nation. And because the state is not recognise them as part

of the nation, there has been a last ten years, a wave of legislation

that question is there belonging to the State, and hangs as an axe over

their heads. They live a very precarious life, as we have seen in

the south of Israel, where Palestinians, 70,000 Palestinians,

have been driven out from their villages as we speak. Ethnic

cleansing, let me just come if you allow me just one sentence, and I

promise. I think it is important to understand, Israel, Zionism, has a

vision of having as much of Palestine as possible. With as few

Palestinians in it is possible. No, I just want to explain. You

constantly say that the ethnic cleansing continues, the racism as

prevalent as ever. What you never do, what I want to ask you, is

something somewhat different. Why, in all of your history, and all of

your commentary, do you persist in focusing on Israel's evils,

Israel's crimes, and the Palestinians and the Arabs are

always the Thames. You never focused on the Palestinians as act doors, as

committed as of violent acts. `` actors. Sometimes as architect of

terrorist activity. You have never in your writings, your history,

focused on what the Palestinians have done as actors, rather than

victims. This is a ridiculous summary of my work, if I may say so.

I have written a lot on the movement as an anticolonial movement which

used violence, terror. I explained why they used violence. I was

looking for the source of the violence. And because I regard the

situation in Palestine as a colonialist situation, as a

settlement. You see the violent as justified? The attacks on civilians,

you see those... No, don't put words in my mouth. What word would you

use? I would use the word violence in the struggle for liberation.

Which can be replaced by non`violent struggle as most Palestinians would

like to do. Because the armed struggle, the Palestinian armed

struggle, has not benefited the Palestinian national movement. At to

argue that the struggle of liberation movements around the

world in the 50s in the 60s is different from the Palestinian

struggle, is really taking the Palestinian issue out of historical

context. In other words, we understand that people who fought

against colonialism, people who fought against occupation, are using

violence. I am not fall violence, of any kind. But I think there is a

difference. I will tell you, I think there is a difference between the

violence of the occupier, the violence of the oppressor, the

violence of the coloniser, and the violence of those who try not to be

colonised. Do you see Israel's actions is more morally

reprehensible than those of Hamas? Yes, in many ways I do. Because I

think there is a difference between the State and the power of the

people who are oppressed by the state. I can question the wisdom of

using violence. Before we end, we don't have much time. I want to get

to the present in the future. It is not only are you an historian, you

are somebody who thinks hard about where Israel and the Palestinians go

from here. And you have said there is only one way. It has to be a

Unitarian state. From the Mediterranean, to the Jordan River.

Do you not accept that if that were to be the case, it would not be the

binational, secular state that you have painted. It would be a state

dominated by the Arab population, because they would be the clear

majority, particularly if you get your way and all of the descendants

of the 48 refugees returned. And it would be a Muslim state. No, I don't

accept that. People who don't know the Palestinians have this kind of

nightmarish scenarios. I think that when you change... That is why I am

talking about a change of regime at the start of the conversation. When

you gradually changed regime which is not democratic, which is really

like an apartheid state, and you make it more democratic in an

evolutionary way. You get a state that represents much more faithfully

the aspirations of all the ethnic groups. All the religious groups.

I'm inclined to ask whether you have spent one second considering the

import of what is happening in Syria and Iraq today, and it did in Gaza

in recent years. Does that mean nothing to you? It means to me, that

all the political outfits, including the State of Israel, that were

created by the force of colonialism, not by the wish of the people, are

collapsing in front of allies. If we're lucky, this would be replaced

by a more authentic and more reasonable political outfit that

would represent more faithfully what people want. If we are not lucky, we

will have the bloodshed that we have in Iraq and Syria. And we have to

end there. Ilan Pappe, thank you for being on HARDtalk. Thank you very

much. Hello. The weekend showers are

fading away and temperatures are falling away. It's going to be a

fresh start to the working week. A little bit cool first thing Monday

morning. But then, for most places, a fine day. And there is more

sunshine to come throughout the