Senate Israel/Palestine

The problem is that you want to essentially cast a general doubt and skepticism about anything Pappe says, based on a technical dispute he had with another historian, and the merit of the dispute is something you clearly struggle to explain yourself with your own words.
"Well-regarded" and "controversial" are terms that can subjectively be applied to both of them.
Also, this is a highly politicized topic so I don't trust anyone to be above ideology.

 

I'm not sure how this is a response to Philosopher's post, because the argument wasn't that support for a cause discredits work, but that caring more about a cause than about factual accuracy to historical events does. Which is where all those examples of allegations of fabrications or basic inaccuracies would come in. Even saying that someone is using the wrong sources is a different thing to arguing that someone is, in essence, not using sources and is just making up things they claim as historical facts.

None of this would preclude someone from being rigorous in their academic handling of history and also clearly supporting the Palestinian cause, incidentally. So this doesn't seem like it's asking too much based on the arguments and examples provided.

 

@Chyntuck

I’m not saying that Pappe’s support for Palestine discredits his work at all. I’m saying, and he has admitted this, that he purposefully writes his history to support a certain political narrative. In fact I said that someone like Shliam is a far better historian if you want a pro-Palestine perspective, so the idea that someone can’t be pro-Palestine and a good source just isn’t what I’m saying at all. Morris has failings of objectivity, but I believe these are a result of personal biases that he at least tries to overcome, and that he at least makes an effort to be as objective as possible. They have completely different ways of approaching history. Pappe a polemicist primarily, which is why it think his work is highly suspect. I provided a left-wing Israeli historian who is very critical of the reliability of Pappe’s work: Adam Raz.

The criticisms of Morris and Pappe are quite different in kind and in character. Morris has been criticised for his public statements in recent decades (some of which are quite abhorrent) and for his selective use of sources (he can’t read Arabic, so he can’t use those sources as well as Hebrew sources), but from what I’ve read on the topic his work is highly regarded as history trying to be objective (despite the obvious impossibility of that). In contrast Pappe is explicitly using history to push his narrative, and he justifies this by believing that everyone else does it to the same extent. I just don’t think that is the case, and I think the reception of Morris’ work shows that there’s a difference in the quality of their work.

No, reread what I said. I said that he’s a good political activist, and that I respect him for that, but that his work should be read in that light. That’s not to say that everything he says is wrong, but that he’s not a historian as we normally think of one.

It’s not based upon a technical dispute with just one historian. It’s about him misrepresenting the historical record to push a narrative, which has been supported by other historians as well. If you don’t think I’ve articulated it well, then I can only apologise. I posted the reddit post because I thought it adequately summarised the disagreement, and there was no use me putting it into my own works. I think my comments show that I understand the disagreement.

You’ve been pretty antagonistic and defensive when I’ve shared my disagreements here. I could have gone for the jugular many times here, but I’m hoping you’ll come back to not being aggressive about this.

 

This is fair, I have to say. For what is worth, I did regret calling you lazy immediately after posting. It was unnecessarily hostile indeed.

As far as the discussion about historians goes, inevitably, we cannot dig into the actual documents ourselves on every topic. There will always be the need to choose experts we trust and, to some degree, believe in their representation of the events. Now, when it comes to Pappe, for example, it would be a dealbreaker if it turned out that some big-picture claim on his part is debunked. But for what I have seen, even the detractors condemn "sloppiness", that is, details that I'm going to forget anyway. I can live with that. Right now I'm reading 10 Myths about Israel. When I will finish it, I'll look for some articles of historians who didn't like it and make my own opinion. But ultimately, my time is limited and I'm not really writing a thesis on this, so there will be the need of some trust toward the experts on my part -this is true for everyone, not just me- and the choice of the experts we trust will always be subjective, and partially spoiled by our views. To this date, I haven't seen evidence compelling enough about Pappe's supposed bad faith or misconduct to stop reading the book, and frankly I find it well written.

 

I understand. My point wasn’t so much to say that Pappe should be avoided, but rather that his work should be approached with caution (and that there are alternatives of similar perspectives which are more rigorous and reliable). To use an analogy it would be like reading a Hitchens book about religion; you’re getting a general argument which can be supported, but you’re probably getting some intentional manipulation in there well. Take his work as a polemic, not as academic history.

 

@DarthPhilosopher (and @Lowbacca_1977) I'm afraid I wrote my reply to your post before you pasted in the Reddit transcript, so here goes again.

First of all, the Redditor says:

This is a gross misinterpretation and/or misrepresentation of what Pappé said. The complete Pappé quote from the 2004 piece is:

Pappé doesn't say that historians should make up their own narrative, but that their reconstruction of the past is de facto influenced by the limitations of being a person with the unavoidable subjectivity it entails, and that claiming to be a purely objective historian is an illusion. This is a debate between historians as old as the science of history itself, and it's simply disingenuous to interpret it otherwise.

I unfortunately don't have One Land, Two Peoples (let alone multiple editions of it) to check in detail the various points the Redditor mentions and references back to Morris, but I'm quite certain that being two years off on the date of a particular fact isn't the sort of thing that makes a historian so sloppy as to be considered "one of the world’s sloppiest historians [or] one of the most dishonest" as Morris says. I'm pretty sure that, if someone took a fine comb to Morris's works, they'd find just as many tiny details to criticise. Moreover, in the instances of alleged historical inaccuracies that are given in the Reddit text, I feel that there's plenty of space for a more generous interpretation. To give what is to me the most obvious example:

I'm pretty sure in this case that the choice of the word "strongman" rather than "chairman" was deliberate on Pappé's behalf, and even if it wasn't, the quote completely invalidates Morris/the Redditor's claim of historical inaccuracy since they're very specific that Pappé described Ben-Gurion as the chairman.

Similarly, one could point out that B'tselem lists fatalities, not casualties; that "two different wings of Zionism" existed well before the Stern Gang and the Palmach were formally established, etc. Again, I'd need to see the book for context, but it's difficult not to get the sense that at least some of these criticisms are simply misleading.

As for the Redditor's criticism that "either [Pappé's sources] are inaccessible or they're simply not there" I can only say that I have on my desk right now the 2007 paperback edition of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, which features no fewer than 20 pages of endnotes (pp. 262-281 to be precise, in which Morris's works are cited several times I may add) plus a five-page bibliography (pp 296-300). If inaccessible/missing sources such a common occurrence, surely there should be a plethora of examples that aren't "he wrote 1935 instead of 1936."

Like you @DarthPhilosopher I'm not trying to present Pappé as a perfect historian here, but Morris's criticisms don't come across as being in good faith, and quite frankly I just don't see on what you base your claim that Morris's works are better received than Pappé's. Maybe they are in your circles, but it's quite a leap to say that this is a universal truth.

I also want to answer this:

I certainly didn't demand that you find a historian who is "as left-wing as Pappé". I just challenge the idea that a man who openly supports ethnic cleansing can be remotely unbiased on this topic, and I'm not going to take his arguments at face value, ever. That's not a political litmus test, it's common sense. (I've never read Adam Raz, though, so thanks for that reference.)

I'm going to strongly disagree with you here. Using available sources selectively is just as much of a falsification as is making things up. It's just a better camouflaged falsification.

 

The current president of the United States, back when he was a Senator, who is definitely "trying his hardest to stop Israel."



His comments unnerved PM Begin at the time, who I should remind you, was the leader of a militant group before the creation of the state of Israel.

 

CNN reports on Israeli soldiers gleefully blowing up mosques on social media


And there's this

 

They lie and lie and lie and can't stop lying.

 

I wonder if little Palestinian kids get a similar book. Something like "Under your sibling's corpse" or "Under the amputationer's scalpel".

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For context the book is about the rockets fired at Israel, it’s not about the rockets and bombs which are being fired into Gaza. Is it one sided? Sure. But it’s not about Israeli children watching rockets being fired upon Gaza, like that caption suggests.

 

The book also uses "AI"-generated "art" and Roman Sandler works in that field. It's a perfect product of the year of our lord 2024.

 

How many Israelis have died from Palestinian rockets in the last decade?
How many Palestinians have died from Israeli rockets/bombs/bullets in the last 10 days?

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What’s your point? I was adding context that the book isn’t about rockets being fired upon Gaza, as it seems has been suggested.

 

I don't understand why you "added context" though. Reyvl said "I wonder if little Palestinian kids get a similar book. Something like "Under your sibling's corpse."" That implies they know that the book is about rockets fired at Israel. Nobody said anything about it being rockets fired at Gaza.

 

I actually suspected it was about Palestinian rockets. It's well-suited to their narrative to start out as the victim. It's perfect indoctrination to hate "the other", after all.

According to Wikipedia, since 2001 there have been 18.928 Palestinian rocket/mortar attacks which have resulted in 33 deaths. That's about 0,17 deaths per 100 attacks. While certainly tragic they are hardly what I would call a major problem. Attacks by cattle livestock are more dangerous.
And compared to what Israel has been unleashing on Gaza these last 5 months it amounts to a rounding error.

All this to say that I find this book a despicable inversion of roles but you might disagree.

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Did you read the caption on the tweeted picture? The implication is that the rockets are the ones being fired into Gaza and that the book is about the ongoing strikes into Gaza. That’s also the narrative if you look up what is being said about this book by many online.

 

That's a possible reading of the caption yes. I accept that there is misunderstanding about this book on Twitter. That said, it's still a children's book about war and death and this is part of how children of Zionists get brainwashed.

 

That caption seems to clearly be meant to suggest it's about bombing Gaza given that it's using the "killing other children" part of this in something directed towards Israeli children. So that seems to strongly suggest that the 'other' would be Palestinian children. DarthPhilosopher's context is directly relevant for what that caption seems to be saying this is about.

 

Have you actually read the book? I haven't, so I don't know if it's something from the extreme right-wing perspective, but it's also possible it's written from the pro-peace perspective.

 

Given Mayim Bialik’s stance on this issue, the fact that she’s boosting it feels like a clear sign that it’s not written from a pro-peace perspective.

 

Okay, I didn't know anything about the author coming into this.

 

Lula openly made the comparison of Israel's war in Gaza with the Nazi treatment of the Jews. Then he recalled his ambassador to Israel.

 

...then there's this....

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The real existential threat to Israel is Netanyahu and his far-right allies.