Before I publish a review of Ilan Pappe’s The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, I wanted to discuss the language that the author uses because it is very telling. At the same time, this is exactly the kind of verbiage that anybody who tries to discuss the issue immediately slips into.
“the local Palestinian population” – since we are talking about Palestine, there is no other Palestinian population than the local kind. Do we say things like, “in Spain, the local Spanish population . . .”?
“indigenous Palestinians,” “ native Palestinians,” “native population” – repeated on an obsessively regular basis and very obviously attempting to bring a wealth of extraneous cultural and historical connotations into the mix. What is really curious is that, ultimately, this language of the indigenous versus the settlers or the colonizers undermines Pappe’s entire argument. One can’t help but think about the most powerful country in the world which came into being precisely as a result of the settlers exterminating the indigenous and nobody batting an eye-lash then or now.
The phrases that condemn “newcomers, many of whom had arrived only recently” can only sound attractive to folks who have lived their entire life in one place. Those of us, however, who are recent newcomers to wherever we currently live are not likely to welcome Pappe’s instinctive dislike of the “non-indigenous.” As Zygmunt Bauman, a thinker whose intellectual level is light years ahead of Pappe’s (or anybody else’s, of course), pointed out, it’s the mobile elites who are not tied to any specific locality who already rule the world and will continue to do so. Pappe is framing his discussion in terms that only have currency among people who are not likely to have much use for his book.
And if you find that Pappe’s argument about the importance of being “local” makes sense to you, ask yourself how indigenous you are to the land where you live right now. Can you be completely sure that your claim to this area is as respectable and long-standing as anybody else’s? The very idea that anybody can seriously discuss who was where “first” in this day and age is very disconcerting to me. What are we all, three?
the Holocaust – insistently depicted as something that influenced the actions of the British in a variety of ways but there is never any discussion of how it could have motivated the Jews to. . . well, anything, really. After reading the book, one is left with the feeling that there was a Holocaust of Brits, not of Jews.
introverted = bad = Jewish versus extroverted = good = Arab – this point is made so often and in such a clunky way that it becomes quite obnoxious. As an introvert, I have to wonder what the author has against us.
the UN procedures were “unjust and illegal” – as if there were some system of justice and legality that is supposed to govern the UN
The most fascinating aspect of the book, however, is not the vocabulary that is used but, rather, the vocabulary that isn’t. The word “Soviet” is mentioned 4 times in a completely trivial context. The word “USSR” is mentioned once. Once! “Stalin” is not mentioned even a single time. (I used Kindle search). Given that Israel only became possible because Stalin and the USSR made it possible, I find it egregious that any account of the formation of Israel would so blatantly silence such a crucial part of the country’s history. It’s the equivalent of discussing the formation of the United States and failing to mention such names as Washington, Franklin, and Jefferson.
I started reading the book with a lot of interest but the moment I noticed that the Soviet Union was not going to make any appearance, I got really disappointed. It isn’t like I expect much from any book on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I know that any account will be highly biased, manipulative and filled with very clumsy verbal equilibristics and I’m ready for that. Still, there has got to be a limit to an author’s readiness to engage in mindless propaganda. When it comes to the Spanish Civil War without fascism, World War II without any Germans and the creation of Israel without Stalin, I can’t take the discussion very seriously.
P.S. I’ll still write the review of the book because I have important things to say about it. I never had any doubt that the Jews did commit genocide against Palestinians in 1948 but Pappe’s book, while attempting to offer historical proof for this belief of mine, actually makes me doubt it.
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