Video Infoblog: Ilan Pappe: Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic
without further Ado my dear friends I think we're here all of us for um for one main reason and that is to listen to uh Professor Elan papy whom I'm sure many of you know but nonetheless allow me to introduce he's the author of lobbying for Zionism he's an Israeli historian and socialist activist he is a professor of History the College of social sciences and international studies at EXA University he's the director of University of the University's European Center for Palestine Palestinian studies and co-director of the exitus center for ethnopolitical studies Professor Pape is the author of several books including the bestselling the ethnic cleansing of Palestine which is an incredible one of my favorites and something I would definitely recommend for those who haven't already read it I would like to invite Professor Elan Pap to speak for approximately 30 to 35 minutes so please Professor thank you thank you thank [Applause] you thank you anas uh thank you the Cordova Foundation uh Middle East Monitor Halal Center special thanks to my dear friends R and for sharing the podium and Dr D abdalah and one world for enabling me to publish this book I'm particularly moved by having the friends here with me on the panel I think I met R in 1981 for the first time you can calculate the years we don't want to calculate the years we met at the house of parliament of all places by an event I don't know if you remember rather organized by The Spectator uh with the pl representative at the time uh I rather was aware of something I wasn't aware when we met when I told her because she liked much of what I said already in 1981 and I said to her you see not all the zionists are bad and rather said to me you might not be a Zionist but you don't know it and it took some time before I realized myself that actually the views I express could not have been defined as Zionist ideas but it took time for me to liberate myself from that ideology and uh as already mentioned I rather appeared again in the book and at the time in the UK when it was very difficult to speak for Palestine to stand for Palestine uh and it took a lot of courage and a lot of effort and commitment to insist that Palestine should be represented in the public domain in the media in politics and uh we are standing on wide shoulders today due to the immense and incredible work by activists like Dr Rak Cary we also great pleasure to see my dear friend N I was trying to remember when I met you first but it's also in the very distant uh past although n and I were born not far away from each other geographically I think we only met outside of Palestine uh and uh what I do remember is that n and I participated in a very naive effort by our dear friend Edward the late Edward S he was sometimes naive he brought Israeli and Palestinian historians to Paris in 1999 we won't mention the names of the Israeli historians 97 97 in '97 in Paris and he uh thought that there was a common ground to to agree about the version of History if you remember nor and he was deeply deeply disappointed that there was no common ground and this is important for him it was important because at that time together with Daniel burbar may he live long uh they thought that they found a recipe for coexistence that was not very relevant to the reality on the ground and Dr dud I think you you invited me many years ago for a conference in London and it was for me the first experience of being introduced to the world of the Muslim Community in Britain and its very special commitment uh and Devotion to the Palestine question it opened for me a new world of uh alliances friendships uh and winning the confidence of the community is something I really cherish and appreciate and uh without the help of this community it would have been very difficult for me to withstand the kind of pressures that all of us uh are witnessing when we speak freely and truthfully for Palestine so thank you all for being here and I really appreciate it I uh wanted to write this book because of a conundrum that really interested me and intrigued me over the years how come a state that is declared to be a high-tech state with the strongest army in the Middle East with the full support of the United States and the West still tries to advocate for its legitimacy so many years after why is this lack of certainty by the state itself and whoever represents it that maybe its legitimacy is questioned on the one hand on the other hand why the Palestinian case and cause which is very simple in many ways and very easy to understand as a basic moral issue still does not succeed to become a legitimate cause in so many places where decision are made where policies are pursued and uh I thought that this kind of conundrum needs uh not a soundbite answer which usually we we need to give under the pressure of media and so on but maybe I need to go back in history and very uh slowly reconstruct the history of lobbying for Zionism to try and understand why today we are where we are and this is why I apologize for the length of the book I know that many people don't like to read books at all and many people don't like to read long books uh there's sometimes people who prefer just to look at the screen of the smartphone uh it's not an SMS book um but I do hope that uh the the patient will pay because you need to really go step by step from the beginning to understand the longivity of the lobby its Effectiveness but maybe hopefully also realize its deficiencies and weaknesses so that we have a hopeful vision for the future and not just lament all the time what true is true the total imbalance of power on the ground in the region in in the global system that explains why we are where we are uh uh today another reasons for the ra rather length uh length of the book is the fact that I wanted to bring long citations uh from British and American politicians in particular both those who supported Zionism but also those who oppose Zionism it's amazing to read statements by both sides of the uh argument from 1900 or 1905 which are really prophetic are really prophetic in the sense of understanding what the uh support for a Jewish state in Palestine would do to the Palestinians and to the area as a whole understanding what kind of complication it would create for the Jewish communities wherever they are so you have these people with you know ability which is incredible at a given moment in history to see beyond the moment to see into the future and it gives you a sense and I think anas that connects well to what you was saying that we are still in that historical p uh chapter it's not we don't have a closure for that uh chapter and I could call this chapter the Western idea that the problem of the Jews in the West can only be solved by colonizing Palestine at the expense of the Palestinians and how would we continue to defend this horrible idea and uh uh give uh immunity to its practices and policies against the Palestinians wherever they are and although I was familiar myself with with many chapters uh in the history both of Palestine and of Zionism uh I was still uh uh surprised to be reminded of certain uh stages in the progress of the lobbying for Zionism which really ring true today and relevant uh today for instance the fact that Zionism began as an Evangelical Christian project before it became a Jewish one that the whole idea that the return of the Jews to Palestine is part of a Divine scheme that will precipitate the second coming of the Messiah the resurrection of the dead and maybe the beginning of 1,000 years of Jesus's rule on on earth now it was not every Evangelical stream in thinking that thought that way way but it was an an important part of Evangelical Christianity beginning in Britain and transformed into the United States by people at who at first you could call them theologians rather than politicians but very soon some of them became politicians of importance and they P especially in Britain they provided a certain theological justification for a new Imperial thinking not just about Palestine but of the whole Eastern Mediterranean the mashrek because the British uh uh basic view on the Eastern Mediterranean throughout the 19th century was that although the Ottoman Empire that ruled that area was in Decline it was better to keep it intact because a disintegration of the Empire would create a a struggle for spoils among the European powers and could lead to something which would be called later on a World War which in fact is what what happened but the pressure of those Evangelical Christians who together with British imperialists who thought that it's time to seed from the Ottoman Empire the Eastern Mediterranean brought together first of all a non-jewish support for the idea of what they would call The Return of the Jews to Palestine and the replacement of the Palestinian with a Jewish Kingdom or state or Republic depends of who we are talking about now it means that already throughout the 19th century people were discussing the fate of Palestine and the Palestinians without the Palestinians being aware that are becoming a regional project or even a global project of colonization and I was surprised to see how much this kind of thinking influenced the early Jewish uh supporters of Zionism because I always thought that this was with kind of two discreet projects that had nothing to do with it but then I I read a diary by one of the most important early Zionist elazar Ben Yuda who reinvented the Hebrew language he was very much influenced by Evangelical Christianity and change his mind about Zionism in the sense that he said yes we might we should redefine Judaism not as a religion but as a nationalism but I think they're right it should happen in Palestine and not anywhere else so there was an impact of that kind of thinking the Imperial thinking the theological thinking coming from Christianity on the very inent very small number of Jewish intellectuals who thought that the best solution for anti-semitism in Central and Eastern Europe was to uh create or establish a Jewish State uh in in Palestine so that's the beginning which as you can probably understand today is not just an intellectual uh or an interesting forgotten chapter of the past it's still a very relevant Alliance that is still working today by the way not only in the United States where we are all familiar with the term Christian Zionist as a Lobby that supports Israel you go to Sweden you go to Denmark you go to Norway Christian Zionism is a life in Europe and in the United Kingdom as well as as an idea that uh uh supports Israel unconditionally in the name of the same theology that began the whole Zionist project to my surprise when I was in Malaysia I met leaders of the Christian Community in Malaysia and they also are very much under the influence of Christian zionists uh uh in in that respect so this is an alins of the past which is still steadfast uh uh uh today the second uh uh again note in the book that reminded me of things that I forgotten and I thought are very relevant for today is the insistence of every leading finger F figure sorry in the anglo-jewish community and also in some of the western uh Jewish communities people with uh status with position some of them ministers in in cabinet some of them important business figures in their society I was surprised to re reminded that they made sure that everybody would understand that they themselves would never go to par altine that they felt safe in Britain that they saw no reason whatsoever to create a Jewish State because they had a problem as an anglo-jewish community and farers and more cynically and more sinisterly they said if there won't be a Jewish state in Palestine the poor Jews that are subjected to anti-Semitism in Central and Eastern Europe would come to Britain God forbid and they would poor we would have to take care of them after 1905 the sense was that these poor Jews are also belic so they would steal problems for Britain as a whole and the Jewish community at it uh and uh and therefore it's quite incredible to go back to the material itself and to see it word by word written in explaining to British policy makers German policy makers so on this is good for Europe because we don't want the poor East European Jews to come to the west or to the United States when I started talking looking for the origins of uh uh the pro Zionist Lobby in in the United States so uh this is important because again it sounds like a distant chapter in the past but it's very much irrelevant issue today isn't it I mean the whole uh uh connection between uh the Anglo Jewish community and uh Israel and this whole uh walking on eggshell when we start we we begin to talk earnestly and honestly and actually on Against Racism not because we are racist that you cannot be an ambassador and Ambassador for Israel and at the same time claim that all you care is for the interest of the Anglo Jewish community and anybody who W who points out to to this kind of connection is immediately branded as an anti-site or in my case as a self-hating Jew this is something that we should not be afraid to talk about because this is very very important I won't mention name but if you are familiar what goes on in the labor party now a full lobbyist for Israel is going to be one of the most powerful member of the labor party uh I don't want to get into names it's not important the name is not important what is important that for 100 years people who were part of the organization of the lobbying for Zionism later for Israel also played a very important role in British politics and so no contradiction in representing the interests of a foreign country and a and a foreign State and a state that commits crimes against humanity and war crimes and the same time serving civil servants or politicians of of Britain everybody says well well you're going into this you are going into the territory of conspiracies and that leads us to the old accusations of anti-Semitism against the Jews no this is why we write books like this this is why we insist that this is a scholarly work pedantic work that is not falling into any conspiracy theories it's just examining the evidence in history to show that this is a connection that is problematic not just for the Palestinians but also for the Jews in Britain and they I think we have now a younger generation at least of American Jews who fully comprehend and understand this problem and fully uh uh acknowledge that this has not served well the American Jewish Community to be uh uh the ambassadors and Ambassador for Israel and they J jettisoned their connection to Zionism and many of them feel that in order to show where they are today they also want to take full part in the solidarity movement with the Palestinians so not just saying Judaism is not Zionism our Judaism put us in a Forefront in the struggle for Liberation and freedom uh in in Palestine a third point that I wanted and I I follow your your clock very carefully here so keep it alive it helps me um I used to think that Socialism or social democracy and labor movement in Britain would go together with universal values that I cherish human rights civil rights workers rights and it's only when I went into the history history of the labor party before the creation of the state of Israel and especially in the early years of statehood when the labor friends of Israel were established in the early 1950s that I realized how important was this today I think we'll call it gaslighting you know this Social Democratic gaslighting what do I mean by this you have really the pillars of British socialism really the pillars of British socialism who for instance would definitely condemn aparte in South Africa fully supporting Israel to the extent that any attempt to show as rather and her friends would uh uh any sympathy empathy a wish to repres with the Palestinians a wish to represent the Palestinian cause would immediately be destroyed by these particular leaders of socialism in Britain it's it gives you some kind of a more profound and deeper understanding for the Jeremy Corbin uh or the attack on Jeremy Corbin it's not a new phenomenon there are Roots there of of social Democrats by the way not only in Britain in Europe as a whole providing a shield of immunity to Zionism in the name of Social Democratic principles this is far worse than the new than the right-wing support for Israel the right the fascist right-wing support that Israel enjoys today and maybe enjoyed a bit in the past is easy to challenge is easy to deal with because you immediately say you see who the Allies are of this state who the allies of this ideology but when the ideology that uh is being mentioned and quoted to explain why Israel is supported is one that you can identify with as a human being H then it becomes a bit more complicated and it was very difficult I think for anybody challenging the the support for Zionism and support for Israel when it came from either liberal or Social Democrat uh circles and and I wasn't aware of this how deep it went into the labor party even before the creation of the conservative friends of Israel who are now the most import important Lobby for Israel in Britain but how important the labor friends of Israel not to mention the specific outfits that joined the TU the trade Union Council the trade unions in Britain were uh giving affiliation to pre-state Zionist organization whose role was before 1948 to advocate for Zionism but the is Israel did not dismantle them because it turned it into part of the lobbying for Zionism in for Israel in Britain so you had pure Zionist organization having full affiliation and membership in the TU while any attempt to even create a at the beginning a solidarity circle with the Palestinians in the trade unions was rejected as political and unacceptable un unbelievable if you go back to it and this is a Time time when people already visited Palestine and Israel it was at the time when people began to understand what was going on of course it became a bit more difficult when it was easier to visit and easier to get information what was going on but even then it was not yet over for the labor party to show unconditional support for oppression apartheid colonization ethnic lensing and now day to not to speak openly and bravely about the genocide in Palestine shame on them and shame on this leadership that doesn't even have one word to say but it has an historical roote uh uh for this and I think it's very important finally I think that uh I want also to be optimistic because it's very clear that what I was talking about up up to now is a huge powerful Alliance first included Britain then the United States then multinational corporation the Palestinians really I mean were facing an alliance so powerful economically politically strategically and it's all focus on the idea of this project of displacement and replacement displacing the Palestinian and replacing them it's it's it's almost incredible that they are still there fighting showing resilience and resistance this this is also what my book taught me once and more once more that how how unbelievable is the fact that Palestine and the Palestinians are still there it's not taken for granted but what brings me hope and for me hope I want to explain that nobody misunderstand what I mean for me hope for me is the end of Israel and the creation of a free Palestine from the river to the what brings me hope is the fact that uh the powerful Lobby and the alliance were very effective when it comes to politics from above they from the very early on they understand that all they have to do is follow politicians at the early stages of their career making sure that they are allies in the latest stage in their career using money influence uh uh intimidation if needed in order to get whether the American or the British political system to abide by their demands however they find it very difficult and always found it very difficult to deal with the Civil Society they know don't know how to deal with alternative media today they have no idea how to deal with it they don't know how to deal with civil society with communal action with boycott initiatives with the investment initiatives all their methodology all the Weaponry that the all the Armory that they have is useless it seems against people that should gives us hope and the hope is that probably this is not the only issue uh in which the politicians of this particular era are not representing us well I don't remember as an historian at an age like this when politics and I'm just generalizing of course that politicians were of such a low caliber intellectually morally corrupt shallow reductionist people who have very little to offer their society apart from their own careers it doesn't matter which party it's really uh a a a the age of of the the the the the the lack of any status for the politicians so their ideas of how to deal with global warming how to deal with poverty how to deal with issues that really trouble people are not very interesting and are not very successful and are not very effective because they don't care about these issues they care about their own careers it's not surprising that also their ideas about Palestine are irrelevant and are harmful and negative so we should hope that when people struggle against this Lobby they're also struggling against Lobby other lobbies that make their life miserable and un and disable them to solve problems of poverty ecological danger injustices in society beyond the question of Palestine I think this explains why so many people are galvanized behind the Palestine question as symbolizing struggle against injustices anywhere else in the world as well and Palestine is an indication that there is a different kind of politics that we would wish for ourselves for our next Generations and that's why so many hopes are pinned on the Palestinian Liberation movement sometimes probably un unreasonably actually that Palestine would be the you know the Paragon state that all the other failed decolonized world uh was unable to to fulfill but it explains because this isn't a demand for a different kind of politicians and a different kind of the idea what is universal justice this is the Big Challenge the icj and the ICC are having it's not it's not a coincidence that for the first time they at least provided a stage for what people think about Palestine and not governments if you think about it and they did it intentionally I talked with them some of them they did it intentionally they wanted to show that Tri International tribunals are also listening to people not just to the politics of power hopefully this is just the beginning of a process that would lead for a better world first of all for the Palestinians and then for all of us thank you
