Chris Arnot interviews the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe who has defended the Palestinians. For an academic to describe himself as "feeling for a while like public enemy No 1" suggests either an inflated ego or an incurable case of paranoia.
Professor Ilan Pappe gives every appearance of suffering from neither. He is an amiable character with an engaging grin. By his own admission, he "likes to be liked". Not a natural rebel then? "Certainly not," he says. Yet in 2005 and 2006, this Israeli son of German-Jewish emigrants found himself in the eye of a storm that would lead him to leave the country of his birth and seek sanctuary in the English west country. The death threats had already been arriving by post, email and phone since Pappe, 54, had been asked on national radio whether he was going to take his complaints about the treatment of Palestinians to the UN security council. "It was," he concedes.
Anglophile The conflict seems a million miles from where we're sitting, overlooking a peaceful river valley in an idyllic part of Devon. "Yes, I can," Pappe replies. Age 54. Opposing Apartheid: Palestine and the Experience of South Africa - with Ilan Pappe and Ronnie Kasrils. Open letter to Egypt's 'Committee of Fifty' Dear members of the Committee of Fifty ("Lagna Al-Khamseen"), in the beginning, you told us that your constitution is one that is filled with unprecedented freedoms that could not be mirrore...
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At one time, Ehud Barak was Benjamin Netanyahu's commanding officer in the Israeli equivalent of the SAS. More precisely, they served in a similar unit to the one sent to assault the Turkish ship last week. Their perception of the reality in the Gaza Strip is shared by other leading members of the Israeli political and military elite, and is widely supported by the Jewish electorate at home. And it is a simple take on reality. Hamas, although the only government in the Arab world elected democratically by the people, has to be eliminated as a political as well as a military force. The official thinking in Israel, therefore, is that Hamas is a formidable obstacle for the imposition of such a peace.