Halfway through and Iβm already eating my words about Israeli historians:
- PappΓ© does acknowledge more Palestinian agency than Khalidi; he admits that the Palestinians were mistaken to boycott every offer for a state, though he does partly attribute this to the Arab league.
- He writes with the moral certainty of an American high schooler. βThese issues are fundamentally relevant to societies beyond Israel and Palestine and which affect the fate of the East-West relationship in the Middle East as a whole.β Okay. But are they? This isnβt a universalist struggle; itβs an incredibly localized one. I actually think it does a disservice to Palestinians and other marginalized groups to try and universalize their experiences.
- PappΓ© thinks very highly of himself and is prone to boasting; I find him incredibly annoying.
- βI [attended an event] in which I was the only Jewish speaker tolerated, after fierce opposition from the Islamic movementβ¦ [but] I do not feel I was unjustly treatedβ¦. When you are part of the privileged majority, you do what you do not in anticipation of a standing ovation, nor indeed in any expectation of gratitude, but rather for your own peace of mind and moral satisfaction.β Okay, letβs get you off of your soap box for a moment and ask if the fierce Islamic opposition to allowing Jews to speak might play a significant role in this situation? Thereβs solidarity with oppressed people, and then thereβs self-righteous groveling for the sins of your society. One of my greatest problems with antizionists is that they donβt have serious plans for materially improving the lives of Palestinians; their logic is that everything will magically resolve itself when Israel is destroyed. Thatβs not an actionable plan; itβs a lie. (Also, PappΓ© is absolutely writing this with the anticipation of a standing ovation.
- He describes a friend of his as βone of the few Iraqi Jews who remained loyal to their Arab heritage and culture.β Fuck ALL the way off. Ilan PappΓ© I know youβve heard of the Farhud. Why would Iraqi Jews remain loyal to a culture that embraced the Nazis, terrorized its ancient Jewish community, and ultimately expelled all of them? What loyalty does any Jew owe to Iraq, which made it very clear that there was no room for Jews in its Arab culture in 1941? This is only page 21 but Iβm already disgusted by his dishonesty.
- I find it immensely difficult to take anyone who uses scare quotes in academic writing seriously.
- There is often bad-faith, emotionally charged writing in Palestinian history, which is a specific pet peeve of mine. Your job, as a historian, is to present a narrative of events; your moral pretensions are not wanted nor welcome. If you present the narrative well, I can decide for myself what is moral and immoral; you donβt need to manipulate me.
- - βOne could only be an Arab Christian or Muslim in the new Jewish state, not an Arab Jew.β I actually think the problem has more to do with the Arabs ruling the Jews as second class citizens for a thousand years and collectively deciding that Jewishness was incompatible with Arabness. The blind spot of Jewish expulsion from Arab lands β and the effect it had on Mizrahi Israeli Jews β is the Achillesβ heel of antizionist writing. PappΓ©, do you hear me, I am shaking you like a rag doll. Your arguments would be better if you could acknowledge the full history.
- I do think the sense of being manipulated is what puts me off most of these books. There are genuine atrocities in Israeli history, and itβs important and necessary to learn them, but if theyβre presented with the authorβs smug gleefulness and moral posturing, Iβm going to find it hard to approach them with the seriousness that they require. Thereβs an obsessive intoxication when it comes to Palestinian suffering β the more they suffer, the more excited their advocates become. I donβt consider that to be true advocacy. If youβre not going to take this seriously, Iβm not going to take you seriously.
- Thereβs a sense of moral distance to all events before 1948. The bloody history of the Crusades? Thatβs pretty cool, actually. Jewish settlements on that same land? Thatβs evil incarnate.
- Having grown up in the American South, Iβm not at all impressed with the way he uses the word βsegregation.β Walls that were specifically built to prevent suicide bombings and DID prevent suicide bombings are not βsegregationβ walls. If he wants a closer Middle Eastern equivalent to the segregation that created separate drinking fountains, maybe he could look at the 1910s dhimmi laws that banned Jews from going outside while it was raining so they wouldnβt βcontaminate the water.β
- He has a habit of translating Hebrew terms into Arabic, as though the Arabic word is the authentic original. Funniest one so far is the Negev, which is apparently based on the Arabic word βal-Naqb,β (which is based on the Hebrew word βNegevβ).
- The charged language undermines so many of his points. Like Khalidi, he reads cherry-picked quotes in the worst possible faith, and applies political positions to people who never actually held them in their careers. Ben-Gurion, who lived through the 1920 Nebi Musa riots, the 1921 Jaffa pogrom, the 1929 Hebron massacre, and the 1936 Arab Revolt, is quoted saying that Palestinians βcould bring potential catastrophes on Israel.β From this one sentence, PappΓ© deduces that βany Palestinian presence in the land was anathema to him.β That just isnβt a reasonable conclusion to draw from that quote, especially from Ben Gurion, who said repeatedly throughout his lifetime that the land was big enough for both people to share.
- He treats the act of swearing allegiance to the Israeli state upon becoming a citizen as βdiscriminatory.β Thatβs just how citizenship works? I say this as an immigrant myself; I swore allegiance to my country to receive citizenship. I know that PappΓ©, as an immigrant to the UK, would have also had to swear allegiance to the British government and even their monarchy, but I donβt see him complaining about British discrimination against Israelis over this, because that would be ridiculous.
- The sad effect of PappΓ©βs manipulative writing style is that when he does write about genuine atrocities, I feel more distanced from them, because I donβt trust the person relating them to me.
- There are some creative translations from Hebrew; PappΓ©, of course, uses the most loaded words possible β Iβm particularly annoyed by the repeated translation of ΧΧΧ©ΧΧ (government) as βregime.β Someone on here said that with the way people use words like apartheid and genocide, you could argue that a traffic light counted as detainment; this book is a masterclass in that kind of wordplay.
- βEven today one is not sure who in the Arab education system owes their job to the Israeli Secret Service β quite a few, one suspects.β This is appallingly sloppy writing. If youβre going to accuse the (((shadow government))) of influencing the Arab education system β to what end? For what purpose? β just come out and say it. βOne suspects.β You cannot expect me to take you seriously.
- Why are we bringing dialectics into honor killings? Hegel isnβt going to make it any better. Yes, he argues, Arab women broadly have more rights in Israel under Zionism, but that doesnβt stop it from being a Western capitalist and colonialist project. βA complex impact of feminist ideas, national and economic oppression, and supremacist ideologies have left researchers still bewildered about how to assess its effect.β Thatβs a lot of word salad to defend the culture of honor killings. Iβve never felt so disrespected by a writer.
- Fascinating quote from an Israeli Arab: βIn Belgrade I did not know who I was, a national Arab loyal to his people or a suspect Israeli citizen.β I hadnβt considered dual loyalty applying to Israeli Arabs in the opposite manner that it applies to diaspora Jews; thatβs actually really interesting. Undercut by PappΓ© claiming that Israeliness and Arabness are inherent opposites (seriously, does he want Arabs to be equal citizens or not?) but this quote is the most compelling part of the book so far.
- His justification for calling Israel a βmini-empireβ is that after the Six Day War, it was βa force to be reckoned with.β I donβt think this man knows what an Empire is.
- More than anything, this book reminds me of Dara Hornβs thesis that Jews are only acceptable in societies where they have no power. Thatβs it. Antizionist Jews miss the days when Jews had no power because then they didnβt have to hold serious and difficult conversations about how to use power responsibly. In their minds, Palestinians have no power, no agency, and therefore no responsibility, and Antizionist Jews want that for themselves. PappΓ© happily debases himself as the greatest evil in the world, and itβs impossible to respect him.
- The Israeli flag and currency are discriminatory because they have Jewish designs and are not representative of all Israeli citizens. This is the stupidest argument heβs made so far. I canβt wait to tell Sweden and Turkey that they need to change their flags to make them less βhostileβ to their religious minorities.
- I donβt see, in this writing, an argument to create a more equitable Israeli society for its Arab citizens. I donβt even see an argument for a one state solution with equal rights for all. PappΓ© seems to be genuinely arguing for a return to Dhimmi law; he wants to go back to the moral simplicity of being the oppressed, degraded, and powerless Jew without responsibility. This should really have been channeled into kink instead of what is genuinely the sloppiest history I have ever read.
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