This highly respected scholar was subjected to hostile questioning by US intelligence officers – including “do you support Hamas?” and “do you think what’s happening in Gaza is genocide?” Also find here Pappe’s comments on the West’s “sinister” denial of the unfolding events in Palestine…
Reposted from Middle East Eye
Israeli anti-Zionist academic Ilan Pappe interrogated by FBI in Detroit
Prominent Israeli academic Ilan Pappe said he was interrogated by the FBI after arriving in the US on Monday.
Arriving at Detroit airport, the academic – known for his stridently anti-Zionist views and research – said he was subjected to two hours of questioning.
Amongst the questions, he was asked whether he was a Hamas supporter and whether he regarded the Israeli assault on Gaza as a “genocide”.
“The two man team were not abusive or rude, I should say, but their questions were really out of the world!” Pappe wrote on Facebook.
“They had long phone conversation with someone, (the Israelis?) and after copying everything on my phone allowed me to enter.”
A number of pro-Palestinian campaigners have warned of increasing pressure being applied by state authorities in the US and Europe against prominent opponents of Israel’s war in Gaza.
Pappe also cited the treatment of British-Palestinian doctor and rector of Glasgow University Ghassan Abu Sittah, who on 12 April was detained at an airport in Germany and refused entry into the country.
He was traveling to attend a conference on Palestine that he had received an invitation for, but was slapped with a Schengen-wide travel ban for one year, which barred him from traveling to 29 countries across Europe.
The ban was overturned earlier this week.
“I know many of you have fared far worse experience, but after France and Germany denied entry to the Rector of Glasgow university for being a Palestinian… God know what will happen next,” wrote Pappe.
“Actions like this by the USA or European countries taken under pressure from the pro-Israeli lobby or Israel itself smell of sheer panic and desperation in reaction to Israel’s becoming very soon a pariah state with all the implications of such a status.”
Western denial today ‘far more sinister, outraging’ than during Nakba: Ilan Pappe
reposted from Al Jazeera
Ilan Pappe, the author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, says the enabling role of Western countries when it comes to Israel’s war on Gaza is “even worse” than their stance during the Nakba.
“At the time in 1948, there was no television. People did not have smartphones, and it was relatively easy to cover up the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing, and to claim that it didn’t exist,” the Israeli historian told Al Jazeera.
“It is impossible to say now that people cannot know what is going on when it appears on our screens,” Pappe said.
“So I think the level of denial today is far more sinister, far more outraging and really I think is one of the main reasons why the civil societies, even in the West, find it impossible to be silent anymore and are led now by brave students all around the United States and elsewhere who feel that they know exactly what goes on and they do all they can to stop it,” he added.
Pappe also expressed skepticism that politicians in Europe would change their “basic indifference and the international immunity they have provided to Israel” before the European Parliament elections at the beginning of June.
“But I am confident that in the near future, beyond the 2024 elections, this kind of attitude that has been displayed by European politicians will come back to bite them because they are not representing faithfully their electorates when it comes to Palestine,” he said.
“They never did before, but particularly in the last seven months, their positions have been very different from the moral position displayed by most of the people who have a modicum of consciousness and decency in them when they understand what goes in Gaza and when they show their support for the people of Gaza.”
‘Ethnic cleansing a terrible crime, but genocide even worse
The Israeli historian and author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine says that what happened during the Nakba in 1948 and what’s occurring in Palestine now is comparable in some ways but added that “in many other respects” today’s events are “even worse”.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Ilan Pappe pointed out to the higher number of Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks over the past seven months. He also said that in 1948, “massacres were then used in order to persuade people to leave”.
“What we see now are massacres which are part of the genocidal impulse, namely to kill people in order to downsize the number of people living in Gaza,” Pappe, who is a professor of history at the University of Exeter, added.
“Ethnic cleansing is a terrible crime against humanity but genocide is even worse,” he continued. “So I think we are seeing a transition from using ethnic cleansing as the main method of taking as much of Palestine as possible, with as few Palestinians in it as possible – we are moving into a far more lethal method, that of genocide.”
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