Ilan Pappé

Overview

Ilan Pappé is an international leader within the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. He regularly tours North American campuses — such as Yale University, New York University, and Columbia University — often at events organized by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).

In August of 2016, Pappé admitted that — contrary to what he and other BDS leaders had long purported — BDS was not initiated by a "call" from so-called “Palestinian civil society;” rather, it was started by a small number of radical anti-Israel extremists, like Pappe.

In 2011 Pappé was discredited as “one of the world’s sloppiest historians; at worst, one of the most dishonest” by fellow Israeli historian Benny Morris.

Pappé is an Israeli professor of History at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom.

Lying to Defend Academic Dishonesty

Pappé has publicly supported the disgraced master’s thesis of University of Haifa (Haifa U) graduate student Teddy Katz.

Katz claimed that a brigade of Israeli forces had committed an alleged massacre of Palestinians in 1948 at Tantura, near Haifa. A university committee disqualified Katz’s thesis after concluding that quotes in Katz's written text did not match taped interviews he had conducted and that the text was "grossly distorted."

Although Katz recanted his claims, Pappé continues to defend both Katz and Katz’s thesis.

Historian Benny Morris’s review of Pappé’s 2006 book, bearing the fraud-propagating title "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine," revealed a pattern of mistranslations, reliance on unreliable sources, lack of critical research, crucial omissions, basic factual errors and outright falsification of evidence — suggesting that Pappé perverted history “for one purpose only: to blacken the image of Israel and its leaders in 1948.”

Morris also noted that Pappé has become the "chief proponent" of the Tantura massacre libel and the loudest defender of Katz. In a May 2002 article, Pappé lied that Haifa U expelled Katz, who — in reality — still managed to receive his master’s degree from the university.

Spreading Hatred of Israel and Zionism

For decades, Pappé has exploited his academic pulpit to propagate the historically and currently false claim that Israelis are committing an "ethnic cleansing" of Palestinians, as well as the lie that Israel is an “apartheid” state.

In his 2010 book titled "Out of the Frame," Pappé defined Zionism — the belief that Jews have the right to self-determination in their ancestral national home — as “a racist and quite evil philosophy of morality and life.” According to the Washington Post, Pappé has stated that “Zionism is far more dangerous to the safety of the Middle East than Islam.”

Pappé advocates for a one-state solution with its oft-disguised goal of dissolving Israel and eradicating Jewish national self-determination.

Pappé has published many articles on the anti-Israel hate-site Electronic Intifada (EI). He is also frequently relied on as a reference for other sites that spread Israel-hating propaganda, such as Mondoweiss

BDS

The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement was founded by Omar Barghouti in 2005 to challenge “international support for Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism.” BDS is an allegedly “Palestinian-led movement,” although leading BDS activists have admitted [00:01:01] this is not true.

One of the demands of BDS includes [point 3] what is generally known as the “right of return,” a demand discredited as a way to eliminate Israel. Barghouti said the “right of return” is a means to “end Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.”

Barghouti has said that BDS “aims to turn Israel into a pariah state, as South Africa once was.”

In his activism, Barghouti has also said [00:05:55] regarding Israel: “Definitely, most definitely, we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. No…rational Palestinian, not a sellout Palestinian, will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.”

The movement has been linked to numerous terrorist organizations and received a public endorsement from Hamas in 2017.

BDS initiatives include calling on institutions and individuals to divest from Israeli-affiliated companies, promoting academic and cultural boycotts of Israel, and organizing anti-Israel rallies, protests and campaigns.

The movement’s most notable achievement has been the infiltration of university campuses through lobbying for “BDS resolutions.” In these cases, student governments and student groups, backed by their own anti-Israel members and affiliates, have proposed resolutions on some form of boycott of, or divestment from, Israel and Israeli-affiliated entities.

Boycott resolutions, although non-binding, have been passed by student governments on numerous North American campuses.

BDS activity is often aggressive and disruptive. It has been noted that universities that pass BDS resolutions see a marked increase in anti-Semitic incidents on campus. On one campus, when the student government debated a BDS resolution, reports emerged of violent threats against those opposing it.