The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe (2007, Paperback, Reprint)

This book was the first selection for our new book club in the Arab Jewish Partnership for Peace and Justice in the Middle East. Ilan Pappe is an Israeli Jew and one of the so-called "new historians" who has knocked down the walls of Israeli propoganda about what occurred in 1948. As far as I know, Pappe is the first one to assert that the destruction of Arab villages and murder of Palestinian civilians was a deliberate and carefully orchestrated plan to "fix" the demographic problem that the new Jewish State would be majority Palestinian.

This very carefully researched book is extremely disturbing on so many levels -it is not a "light" read! But it is a "must read" for anyone interested in studying and understanding the historical roots of this conflict. My only hope is that our next president and secretary of state read this book, because I believe that a fair and just, and therefore lasting peace cannot occur until Israel acknowledges these shameful acts and offers an official apology and reparations. This book provides clear a explanation about why Oslo and Geneva did not work: in large part, because Israel refused to acknowledge its past and refused to even consider the Palestinians' understandable demand for a right of return for the '48 refugees.

I rated it good instead of excellent because it is a bit dry and also because, as carefully as Mr. Pappe documented his sources (primary, for the most part, such as Ben-Gurion's recently released diaries), he did not clearly delineate when he deviated from recitation of facts to editorializing. This can be confusing for someone who does not already have a strong basic knowledge of this history.

That being said: this is ESSENTIAL reading for the reasons already stated!

A must read for anyone who wishes to understand the conflict in the middle east. Pappe is Israel's most courageous and intelligent historian.

This is a clear insight into the dynamics of the Israel-Palestine conflict. It shows that the Israeli government has caused as much, if not more terror as Hamas. In the 1940's, Einstein stated the values of the Jewish faith would be compromised by the establishment of a Jewish state. This book documents very specifically how that has happened. We see that fundamentalism in the name of God allows the rationalization of vile actions against non-believers.