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Israeli Historian Sacked for Views on 1948 Massacres
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, May 17 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, sacked by Haifa University for his views about Israeli 1948 massacres of Palestinians, protested the University’s decision Thursday, May 16.
The decision to expel Pappe came after he aided researcher Theodor Katz, a student in the department of Middle Eastern History at Haifa University who was then himself banned from the University, in writing a thesis on the Israeli massacre of Palestinians in the coastal village of Tantura in late May in 1948, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
The graduate thesis uses oral history – the taped testimonies of both Arab and Jewish witnesses – to document the Tantura massacre.
“Though Katz is himself a Zionist, the case sheds light on the extent to which mainstream Zionism is prepared to go in discouraging research that brings to the fore such aspects of the 1948 war as ‘ethnic cleansing’,” said Pappe on the Journal of Palestine Studies website.
Katz’s Master's thesis, entitled "The Exodus of the Arabs from Villages at the Foot of Southern Mount Carmel," has been awarded the highest possible grade for a Master's thesis.
“The thesis is microhistorical research on the 1948 war focusing on five Palestinian coastal villages between Hadera and Haifa, particularly on the villages of Umm Zaynat and Tantura,” said Pappe.
“The testimonies reproduced by Katz in his fourth chapter tell a chilling tale of brutal massacre, the gist of which is that on 22-23 May 1948, some 200 unarmed Tantura villagers, mostly young men, were shot dead after the village had surrendered following the onslaught of Haganah troops.”
“Katz interviewed 135 persons for his thesis,” Pappe went on to say. “The Tantura chapter is based on the testimonies of forty witnesses, by coincidence twenty Arabs and twenty Jews, all of them taped.”
“Since the thesis was written, several other pieces of evidence have come to light that reinforce Katz's findings,” he added.
“Four documents were extracted from the IDF archives. One was a report mentioning twenty Palestinians killed in the battle, followed by a report a week later from IDF headquarters complaining that the unburied corpses in the village could lead to the spread of epidemics and typhoid.
“In the third document, the Israeli general chief of staff inquired about reports that had reached him ‘about irregularities in Tantura’ and received the response that ‘overenthusiasm because of the victory’ had led to some damage inflicted ‘immediately after our people entered the place.’
Finally, a document from the Alexandroni Brigade to IDF headquarters in June notes: ‘We have tended to the mass grave, and everything is in
order."
Pappe belongs to what is known as Israel's "new historians" group, who study the origins of the Middle East conflict and break with traditional Israeli interpretations.
A professor in the department of political science at Haifa University, Pappe teaches Middle East history and is also head of Israel's Research Institute for Peace.
"I received a 10-page letter from Haifa University's administration asking me to leave because of my professed position on the events of 1948 when Israel was created," Pappe told AFP.
In the letter from the administration, he was asked to appear before a disciplinary commission at a yet unspecified date.
It is "basically a tribunal of inquisition," charged Pappe, saying academic establishments in Israel were becoming less tolerant to professors who break with conventional Zionist views of history.
"I may be the first Israeli professor to be sacked" for my opinions,
Pappe said, complaining that none of his books have yet been published in Hebrew, but are widely available in English and French.
"They are faulting me for statements I made in public, where I have consistently said that Israel should apologize for what happened in 1948 when the Palestinians were expelled during and after the creation of the state," he said.
A group of French intellectuals and professors have called on the European Union and UNESCO to come to the defense of Pappe.
In his book The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1947-51, he describes the exodus of the Palestinians and their destiny as refugees.
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