Renowned Israeli historian Ilan Pappé joins etos.media for an unflinching conversation about the genocide in Gaza, the apartheid nature of the Israeli state, and the growing international isolation of Zionism. In this in-depth interview, Pappé discusses the systematic erasure of Palestinians, the moral collapse of Western governments, and why he believes we are witnessing the beginning of the end of the Zionist project.
The following is the full transcript of the video interview with Professor Ilan Pappé, published by etos.media on June 12, 2025. You can find the original video on the etos.media YouTube channel or right here:
etos.media: Hello everyone! And thanks for tuning in again to etos.media. Today, we are glad to be joined by Professor Ilan Pappé. Welcome, Professor.
Ilan Pappé: Thank you. Very nice to be here.
etos.media: Ilan Pappé is a renowned Israeli historian and one of the most prominent voices among the so-called New Historians in Israel. He currently serves as Professor of history at the University of Exeter in the UK, where he also directs the European Center for Palestine Studies. Professor Pappé is widely known for his 2006 book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, which challenged dominant narratives about the 1947-49 Palestinian exodus.
His 2011 book The Forgotten Palestinians was recently published in German as well by Westend (Die vergessenen Palästinenser, Westend, 2025). Before we dive into recent developments in Gaza and the broader question of Zionism, we’d like to begin by discussing aspects of this book. In The Forgotten Palestinians, you write about the so-called ’48 Palestinians – those people who remained in what is now Israel, after the Nakba. And for a long time this population of roughly 2 million people was largely ignored. In your work, however, you assign them a special role, particularly in relation to the vision of a binational state. As a start, could you please describe the everyday lives and social position of these Palestinians within Israeli society?
Ilan Pappé: Yes. Today we have, as you said, about 2 million Palestinians who are actual citizens of Israel. So they can vote in the elections, they can be elected to the Parliament and on paper they are full citizens. In practice they’re not. They are suffering from discrimination on certain levels. First of all, today they are limited by certain laws that were passed by the Knesset, the Israeli parliament that particularly denies them the right to be identified as a national Palestinian collective. They’re also not allowed to properly commemorate 1948, which they call the Nakba, which is Arabic for ‚catastrophe‘. There are certain places in Israel where they cannot live because these places are designated as purely Jewish. And there is some sort of trick in the Israeli legal system. Certain rights are not given to you if you didn’t serve in the Israeli army. Now, they don’t serve in Israeli army by an agreement. Israel doesn’t want them to serve in the Israeli army. It then uses the fact that they’re not serving to argue that they’re not fulfilling all their obligations – and therefore not entitled to enjoy all the rights.
On the less legal, more practical side they suffer from discrimination in budgets, they can hardly buy new land, therefore we have hardly any new expansions of Palestinian villages and towns and they are all the time under the threat of being mistreated, both by the police and the criminal system. I suppose, in that respect, they’re not different from non-white people in Germany in the way they’re treated by police and the criminal system. But these people – not that immigrants should be treated that way – but these people are not even immigrants. I mean, they’re the indigenous people.
So both, practically and legally, this is a community that the best way is to define is as second rate citizenship. And of course one should also mention: So much of the Israeli official businesses, government businesses and so on is connected to the Army so that part of the industry and the services are not open to the Palestinians. That’s why when you land in Tel Aviv airport, you will never see a Palestinian Israeli citizen in the immigration encounter. Because that’s considered to be a national issue, so they will never be allowed to serve as people who decide who can or cannot enter.
etos.media: Would you, like some scholars and experts do, extend the concept of apartheid also to Israel proper, that is to the ’48 territory? Summing up what you just described, or are you opposing this claim?
Ilan Pappé: No, I’m not opposing. I think we have to distinguish between one model of apartheid that everybody knows about, which is the South African apartheid. There are similarities, but there are many dissimilarities. The apartheid in South Africa was much more, as a friend of mine used to call it, petty apartheid. Namely different benches, different toilets, different buses. This is happening more in the West Bank, rather than inside Israel. But it’s a different kind of apartheid. And apartheid was not only in South Africa. There was apartheid in the south of the United States for many years. So it is one type of apartheid. And most of the scholars who know a lot about that and examined what is the accepted legal and theoretical and academic definition of apartheid, believe that the current situation of the Palestinians in Israel can definitely be interpreted as apartheid.
etos.media: Also Amnesty, in their last report, included Israel proper in their concept.
Ilan Pappé: Exactly. And also Human Rights Watch and also B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organization.
etos.media: Okay, given those challenges you just described, faced by Israeli Palestinians, what strategies or forms of resistance have emerged from within this community, and how do these efforts contribute to the broader Palestinian struggle for rights and recognition?
Ilan Pappé: From very early on, I think, the political and intellectual leaders of this community took a strategic decision that they would not be able to participate in the liberation struggle for Palestine in the same way, for instance, that people decided to use liberation struggle in the refugee camps or in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. I think they took a decision, that in the beginning was not easily accepted by the other Palestinians, that they will play according to the rule of the game. So their strategy was always using democracy, using the legal system, the democratic system, of course demonstrations, petitions, and so on, in order to change the reality. To their credit they convinced, I would say around the early 1970s, the PLO that their kind of struggle is as important as the armed struggle that the Fatah and the other factions adopted early on in the early 1960s. Or the kind of struggle that is very particular to the Gaza Strip or the West Bank.
So, that was the main strategy. That doesn’t mean that it’s a unified political community. Very much like the other political Palestinian communities, they have three major streams in them. The left is very strong, especially the Communist Party. Then you have something that you can call the national ideological stream, people who would like to stress the Palestinian national identity rather than the socialist or communist universal identity. And recently, and that is quite for a while now, as in other Palestinian political situations, political Islam became a very formidable and important part of the Palestinian political scene in Israel.
etos.media: Yes, and that, in turn, is readily taken as an excuse for Israeli proponents: See, there Arabs in the government, or at least in the parliament, they can be judges, so how can there be apartheid? That’s always taken as a kind of token.
Ilan Pappé: Yes, right.
etos.media: On a little personal note, in your book you describe your social connections and your ideological associations with those ’48 Palestinians. I want to quote you: “I’m one of the very few Israeli Jews who feel such a close affinity with the Palestinian minority in Israel.” In your history, what shaped that sense of affinity – and why is it so rare?
Ilan Pappé: First of all, in my case, it was my own journey out of Zionism. And a realization that, because I was born in the country, is to make a distinction between the country and the state. As the years went by, I could hardly identify with the state, but I still love the country. Because I was born there, it was my homeland. And I felt that the way, the reason I don’t like the state and the reason I still feel very strongly attached to the homeland is very much similar to the one that the Palestinian community feels. So we had a very common basis for treating the reality in which we lived. And we never did it on a personal level. I mean, it was not generalizing about all the Jewish citizens in Israel, it was more about the regime than the people itself. So for me it fitted very much my own journey into history and so on.
I also have to say that once I began to publish very clearly my historical narrative and ideas, I was quite isolated within the Jewish society and I was lucky to be accepted by the Palestinian society. So they became my reference group in that respect. That also explaines my very strong affinity.
The second question: Why is it so rare? Well, that’s the DNA of the whole Zionist project. It’s a settler colonial project that, like many other settler colonial projects, believes that the native indigenous population are a problem that has to be resolved. Usually by removing them or eliminating them. And that is something that informs the educational system, the political system, the cultural system. So Israelis from very early on in their life are being indoctrinated to see the Arabs as lesser human beings. And more importantly as a demographic problem, as an obstacle for a good life. And therefore that doesn’t leave much chance for genuine relationships with Palestinians.
It’s quite remarkable that Zionism has been in Palestine for 120 years now and 99 % of the Israeli Jews don’t know Arabic. After living in an Arab world, an Arab country for 120 years. That gives you an indication how detached they are from the Palestinian society, community and heritage.
etos.media: Just as a quick reminder for all viewers, can you briefly explain what exactly do you mean with Zionism? Just to clarify the concept.
Ilan Pappé: For me, Zionism began as a noble idea. It was a reaction to the rise of antisemitism, on the one hand, and the wish of particularly modernized secular Jews to redefine Judaism as a national identity.
Zionism became colonialism when Europeans, non-European Jews and a minority, one should say, of Jews in Europe decided that the Jews don’t have a future in Europe, but they still have to remain European. So Zionism was to build a European state in the heart of the Arab world, because Europe could not accept its Jewish population. And the Holocaust proved that unwillingness to accept the Jews more than anything else, of course, in the most brutal and awful way. So Zionism became this idea that the future of the Jews is better served by a Jewish state in the heart of the Arab world and at the expense of the Palestinians. Something you can only achieve by force and sustain by force. And it became a state ideology. Which as we discussed before, I think is an apartheid ideology. Because if you’re not Jewish, according to Zionist ideology, you don’t, at least, deserve the full rights that the Jews have. And unfortunately, at worst, you are not entitled to remain in what is becoming the Jewish state.
etos.media: The focus of your book lies on those ’48 Palestinians. And you mentioned their relationship, or their role in the vision of a binational state. Could you elaborate on that? What is their role to achieve that?
Ilan Pappé: Well, they are great believers in democracy. And the only antithesis to a racist ethnic apartheid state is a democratic state. And they fully support this idea. They don’t want to do to the Jewish population what the Jewish population is doing to them. They don’t dream of expelling the Jews or eliminating them. They dream of living in equality with the Jews all over historical Palestine. And that makes them probably one of the most democratic communities in the Arab world. And therefore although they are very pragmatic and they don’t want to challenge the Palestinian leadership’s positions. So as long as the PLO supports the two state solution, they will not go against the PLO.
But I think most of them would’ve liked all the Palestinians to live in Palestine in equality with the Jews. And I think they are probably the only Palestinian community that know the Israeli Jews not only as settlers and as soldiers. And therefore, if there is any hope of some sort of genuine coexistence, it comes from the fact that they still believe that not all the Israeli Jews are as brutal as the army or the settlers. Of course, even for them, the events of the last 16, 17 months make it harder to believe that this is possible.
etos.media: Okay, you talk about coexistence. And that brings us to more recent developments, where coexistence is „challenged“, to put it mildly.
Ilan Pappé: Absolutely.
etos.media: For 19 months we are witnessing what people call a livestream genocide. I share this notion.
Ilan Pappé: I agree.
etos.media: Famine is weaponized, rape as weaponized. We all know those horrible videos that are 24/7 on social media. But in recent weeks, mainstream western media and some governments even have begun to shift their tone on the war on Gaza [Note: that interview was recorded before the attacks on Iran], with growing references to a humanitarian crisis. Even some using the word genocide. And some western governments, traditionally strong allies of Israel, such as UK, Canada, and France, have even begun to signal possible policy shifts and even sanctions. How do you interpret this narrative shift on the Gaza genocide just in this very particular moment?
Ilan Pappé: Well, it’s a bit late in the day. The fact that we needed 19 months of genocide to begin to hear some more assertive positions by members of the EU and other European states like Britain, I think it’s not enough, of course. And the test is not what people say, but what people do. And so far we haven’t seen any action. It’s also to the credit of the solidarity movement in Europe that pressured the governments to do something. So I think it’s both, what’s happening on the ground, but also the pressure from below. I hope it’s the beginning of more fundamental change in the position. But I think what is more important here is that it indicates how isolated Israel today is in the world. And many of them maybe in the past were supporters of Israel. Israel is now losing any moral validity in the eyes of the vast majority, I think, of the people in the world.
Now, what is even more important, and I think this is a real challenge for the European governments, that they know it is a challenge, but I don’t think they have any idea of how to deal with it. I think they’re becoming more and more alerted about the realization that there’s not likely to be a change in Israeli policy in the future. Namely, even if Netanyahu disappears, loses the election, jail, doesn’t matter. There’s very unlikely to see a dramatic change in the Israeli policy towards the Palestine issue. They may not continue the genocide because there’s not much left in Gaza anyway. But they, whoever replaces Netanyahu would continue the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, would continue the apartheid against the Palestinians in Israel. The Palestinian resistance would not disappear and would give a pretext to whoever is in the government of Israel to repeat what Israel has done in the last 19 months. And we have an Israeli military elite that is not going to change, that believes that Israel has the military power to take parts of Lebanon and parts of Syria. And to go to war against Iran and defeat Iran.
All this is not going to change with the change of government. This is now how Israel is and will be for many, many years. So, I think it’s important, of course, first of all to stop the genocide as it is, and we may achieve that with a change. But that is only temporary and we need to prevent the other terrible chapters that can happen if the European governments don’t take a firm and tough position against Israel. Not just for what it’s doing in Gaza, but its overall policy and attitude towards the Palestinians and the Arab neighbours.
etos.media: You mentioned that there may be at one point the end of Netayahus reign. Look in your crystal ball. What do you predict? When will that be? How could this end be brought?
Ilan Pappé: I don’t know when it will be. He might lose the 2026 elections. That’s the only scenario I can see him losing. He can win the elections as well. But let’s say that he loses the election. The coalition that can replace him would be led by someone called Naftali Bennett. Hawkish racist, right wing, Israeli Jewish leader. So, how much would the policy change? I mean, going back to my book, of course, if the Israeli Zionist left was willing to have a proper alliance with the Palestinians in Israel, who are 20% of the electorate, then they could have been a different Israeli government. But the Zionists left would never have a proper alliance with the Palestinians in Israel. So there will never be an important player in Israeli politics. So what you have is either very extreme right wing or center Right wing. That doesn’t mean anything for the Palestinians. It’s the same policies
etos.media: So except from the very far left, like the communists, there’s no substantial difference among Israeli parties towards Palestinians?
Ilan Pappé: No, I mean, there is. The new Democratic party probably can get 10 members in parliament, out of 120. 10 members who still believe in a two state solution. I think they believe in it. But the state they’re willing to offer to the Palestinians is the ban to stand that we have today. And we should know now, 50 years later, that it’s not working anyway.
etos.media: Okay, then we talk about Netanyahu now. He is on trial like for three corruption related cases, that are more or less on hold now during the war. But I think some weeks ago, like the hearings continued, wasn’t he…?
Ilan Pappé: Yeah, it continues… It continues and then he doesn’t appear… I think one shouldn’t rely too much on this process.
There are two scenarios. Either he would be totally acquitted, which is still possible. We have to remember he’s on trial, but he was not convicted. So either he will be acquitted or the president that he appointed for that purpose, Jitzchak Herzog, will give him amnesty after whatever the verdict would be. So either way I don’t see Netanyahu in jail. I don’t see his political career ending through the legal process. I can see a lot of political change that might bring him down. But not the legal, I wouldn’t, I at least, I don’t put my trust in the legal procedure in Israel anymore.
etos.media: I want to come back a bit to this changing narrative that we just talked about earlier. You wrote much about it in your work, in your books over decades. You wrote much about the erasure of Palestinians and Palestinian history and the outstanding complicity of the West in sustaining this. Israel as a settler colonial state. So again, how do you view the recent shift in some of the political discourse? Like is it a real break with decades of support or is it just like a way to manage perception, while basically continuing the core policies?
Ilan Pappé: Well, it depends who we are talking about. But I think there is a dramatic shift. There are certain pockets in European and western academia, definitely in the global south, where people don’t use the old language and are teaching and researching universities Israel is an apartheid states, Zionism is colonialism, 1948 is an ethnic cleansing. And this is growing. This is growing. I’m not saying it’s everywhere and the mainstream academia still resists this change of perceptions and concepts, but it’s happening. Definitely the civil societies in many countries, not everywhere, trade unions, for instance, are now totally in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle, which was not the case 30 years ago.
Vast section of the civil society are in a very different place today, where they were 30 years ago. So Palestine has a global alliance that supports it, of vast sections of civil society. What we don’t see as yet, but it might happen, is the political media, intellectual and cultural elites of the Western societies in particular reacting properly to what a lot of people in their own society think should be the attitude towards Palestine and Israel. Is the last thing that we are hearing the right direction? Yes. Are they an indication that there is a fundamental shift? We have to wait and see. It’s too early to tell. But I must tell you, that working – ‚cause I’ve been in this solidarity movement for 40 years – I can tell you that the challenges we faced 30 years ago were far more serious than the ones we’re facing today. So, if I would’ve known 30 years ago how expanded is the solidarity movement, how successful in many ways it is, I would not have believed you because we felt like the word Palestine itself was considered to be terrorism.
So, there are dramatic changes. We know they’re not enough because they have not affected the reality on the ground. But definitely there is a change in the perception of Palestine, the perception of Israel. As activists, we are looking for ways of making it count. Which hasn’t happened yet.
etos.media: Okay, so when you take the broader view, like decades, you see like a shift for the better in the Palestine solidarity movement, in Israel?
Ilan Pappé: Yeah.
etos.media: But when we narrow the view again, because half a year ago we interviewed a person from new profile, from this anti-war NGO in Israel, and they said in the last one, two years, after the war started, it became like hell for lefty, far left activists, pro peace activists in Israel, the repression is going through the roof. Can you talk about this a bit?
Ilan Pappé: Yeah. But to be honest, they’re not as important as the bigger picture. Because we have to accept there will be no change from within Israel. We have to accept it. Israel will not change. What will change and is changing is Israel’s position in the region, is Israel’s position in the world. Israel’s ability to maintain itself economically, socially, and all this is changing. So rather than – I mean, I’m sorry, because I’m one of these anti Zionist Israelis, but I don’t think we have the power to change. We should continue to work. It’s important. It’s not only, by the way, important because we have the power to change. It’s important for the post liberation period. The Palestinians would remember the not all Israeli Jews were part of the genocidal apartheid regime. That’s very important for decolonization. For proper decolonization. And therefore this is not the issue. The issue is really focusing on the Palestinians now. Not only the few anti-Zionist Israeli. The focus is on the Palestinians because they are now facing the worst chapter in their life. But the worst chapter is because it’s the end of that chapter. Not because it’s the beginning of a new chapter.
And this chapter will be over. I don’t have a crystal ball. I’m not being irresponsible and tell the people in Gaza I know exactly when the Israeli actions would stop. I wish I could. But there is a long term process here of the disintegration of Israel. It’s weakening. Is it a total collapse as I think it will be in the end? I don’t know. It’s too long in the future, but I definitely think it’s leading there. I can imagine how a collapse would look like and so on, but for me, what is more important, is the Palestinian national movement ready to take over? Because they were used for so many years, that they’re not being heard, that their position doesn’t matter. And now the world has to accept that they should tell us how they see the future. Not Ilan Pappé should tell you what is the future. They should tell you how they imagine the future. Not in terms of stopping the genocide. I’m talking about the future of a post Israel and Palestine. What would be the place of the 8 million Jews who live there today. They would decide about the relationship between secularism and a very great respect for religion and tradition, the connection to the world. How do we deal with implementing transitional justice, whether it’s a right of return? What do we do with the settlements? How do we compensate? Do we punish people? I mean, all these are very important questions. So, most Palestinians will tell you now, come on, this is not the time to talk about it. And if you are in Gaza, you are absolutely right. This is not the time. But if you’re not in Gaza, if you are a German Palestinian, it is the time to talk about it. And it needs to be talked. Because we know from history collapse is a very slow movement and then suddenly it accelerates.
Look at South Vietnam, look at the fall of Yugoslavia. I mean, these are all different historical cases and I’m not saying that it will be the same. But one thing they have in common, including apartheid South Africa and dictatorial regimes in East Europe and dictatorial regimes in Latin America, the fall is very slow but the end of the fall is very quick. And if you don’t have an idea how to fill it, it becomes chaos. Look at Syria, it becomes chaos. So I think it’s good to both, to be optimistic from a Palestinian perspective. And I think for most Israelis, even anti-Zionist, maybe the prospect of not having an Israel and instead of it of having a democratic state from the river to the sea is maybe frightening scenario. For me, it’s a positive scenario. I’m sure it’s not an easy one and I don’t know whether it will work or not, but I do think it’s a better vision than the continued reality that we have. And I don’t think a two state solution is a substitute for it, but only one democratic state. But it’s, I can understand for Israeli Jews, this is frightening. Like it was for the whites in apartheid South Africa.
etos.media: I just want to briefly go back to one sentence you just said earlier, that is, I think, very disillusioning for European lefties. Because among Europeans there’s often his notion like we have to support the anti-Zionist forces in Israel and then, you know, in some years we will have utopia. That’s often the notion. And I myself, I lived in Israel, so I know the country at least a bit, like from my own experience. So, can you state it clearly? What is the situation of the Israeli left today?
Ilan Pappé: There is very little left of the Israeli left. The Zionist left is hardly functioning. But it was always an anathema. You cannot be a leftist colonizer. It doesn’t work. The anti-Zionist left is very important, very brave. These are the only people who demonstrate against the war because it’s a genocide. The numbers are growing, one should say, but it’s still a drop in the sea. As I said, they are important for the future. I don’t think they have the power to change. But they need, and I think what is important, they work together with the solidarity movement in the world and in the region. Because the Palestinians don’t have the military, political, or economic ability to stop the Israeli intention to eliminate them. They can slow it down. They will not give in. We know it. And they will not disappear. But in order to stop it. The Palestinians need an alliance. And every member of the alliance is important. And anti Zionist Jews in Israel and anti Zionist Jews in Germany, Christians who are religious and secular people, the global south, you need a very vast and strong alliance to change such a project. And even more so if you want it to be replaced by something which is positive, which gives hope, not by something – you know, so much of decolonization ended with post-colonial regimes that we are not very happy with. We can all read Frantz Fanon about this – and therefore, I think they are very important, the anti-Zionist Jews, and they are growing, which is a good sign, but I wouldn’t say that they are the factor that would change reality.
I would say to people, continue to support them, of course. Continue to support them. And it helps them to know that when they come to Germany, they’re not a minority. It’s important for people who are totally isolated and regarded as traitors by their own society. You come and people say, ‘no, no, you are on the right side of history’, ‘We admire you’, ‘We, I don’t know, we respect you’, and so on. That is very important. And that gives them a lifeline to continue a work. And as I say, they would contribute their own role. But it’s important to have a perspective on the role. And where does it lie in the overall attempt to change the reality.
etos.media: Changing reality. That’s a good word. Yesterday I just reread your essay, The Collapse of Zionism, published in June 2024 in New Left Review. In it you write, quote: “We are witnessing a historical process that is likely to culminate in the downfall of Zionism, or at one other part, more starkly, even in the destruction of the Zionist project in Palestine.” You base your prediction on six indicators in this essay. Since I believe this is a very important essay, well worth reading, I’d like to explore it a bit.
So first let’s go briefly through those six indicators and how do these relate to your thesis of a collapse of Zionism. I guess you don’t have them in mind, so I have written…
Ilan Pappé: That’s right.
etos.media: I just name you the six indicators and you just briefly say what you had in mind in your essay. So, the first one is “fracturing of Israeli Jewish Society.”
Ilan Pappé: Yeah, first of all I’m talking about the beginning of the end. It’s important that the end hasn’t arrived yet. But it’s a beginning. It can be a long historical process. The Israeli Jewish Society is imploding from within. There’s a kind of a civil war, the secular liberal Jews do not have anything in common with the more traditional religious and messianic Jews, which I call in this article the State of Judea. The kind of Israeli Jewish society that emerged in the occupied West Bank and has a support of a lot of the more deprived social socioeconomic sections of the Israeli society. And that means that, because the other side is the affluent side, it’s the side that has the money, it is the side that mostly has also dual nationality, they are already leaving. So it’s not just a matter that there is a lack of social cohesion. The lack of social cohesion leads to the escape of the elite from Israel that already started. A state without economic, cultural elite will find it very difficult to function properly. So that’s the one indication.
etos.media: Okay. Second indicator: “Israel’s economic crisis.”
Ilan Pappé: Yeah. Which is even worse than I thought when I wrote the article. Israel is now in a deficit of 20 billion Dollars, just because of the expenses on Gaza and. As you know a state has more expenses…
etos.media: So yearly deficit, you mean, of 20 billion?
Ilan Pappé: Yeah, and America under Trump is not going to give more than 20 billion. Even the 20 billion is too much for Trump. He doesn’t know how to. And he’s not the one who gave the 20 billion. It was Biden.
So America is not likely to pay the bill. Europe is not likely to pay the bill. So what Israeli economists are doing now? They are taking the money of the national security. All the pension money of most Israelis is now taken by the government. Of course, they said, ‘we will give it back.’ But they won’t give it back, to my mind. And this is financing settlements in the West Bank, Jewish traditional ideas as they call it and a war, a very long war. All of this leads, in the microeconomic terms, to a huge impact on the citizen itself.
So we should not just look at GDP. And numbers are there also not very important. And the numbers of the macroeconomics are important because that affects how much Israel can get in loans and interest. You know, this whole idea of your level of credit. But more important to my mind is the fact that is most of the fun: social and economic services don’t function properly already in Israel. And this will get worse, because that’s what an economic, a chronic economic crisis creates. It expands the gap between the rich and the poor and it doesn’t allow the state to provide the elementary services.
We saw it in the last big fire in Jerusalem. Suddenly people realize that there is a connection between not having a budget for a fire brigade and the fact that you cannot control a fire. And that’s just one example of many. So I think that crisis would continue and be worse. And remember I said in the article, not one of these factors by itself is leading to disintegration. All of them together contribute to it.
etos.media: The third indicator is “Israel’s growing international isolation.”
Ilan Pappé: Which I think is quite obvious. We can see it. We talked about it. The isolation by millions of people who do not accept Israel and are willing to be active against it.
Yes. The isolation has not led to many states imposing sanctions, but, we talked about it. There are indicators that this will change. And I believe it will change eventually.
etos.media: I, just as a statement, I just read earlier in the day, it was like breaking news on times of Israel that the Indonesian president, he said that he’s willing to recognize Israel when they in turn recognize Palestine. And you know, Indonesia is the biggest Muslim country in the world.
Ilan Pappé: But Indonesia is the same problem as Germany. The political elite does not represent what most people in Indonesia would’ve liked. So these governments are not forever. And the people are forever.
etos.media: So, a fourth indicator: “a sea-change among young Jews worldwide.”
Ilan Pappé: Yeah. And especially in the United States. Generations of young Jews now do not associate their Jewish identity with Zionism and many of them think that one way of showing it is to be part of the solidarity movement with the Palestinians. Israel without proper Jewish support, would be left with the support of Christian Zionists and military industries. It’s not enough, I think, alliance to sustain it for the long run.
Etos.media: Then indicator five is rather surprising, I guess. “Weakness of the Israeli army.” What do you mean with it?
Ilan Pappé: Oh, an army that needs two years to defeat a gorilla movement that doesn’t have an air force, doesn’t have tanks, doesn’t have artillery cannot be a very convincing army. And if Israel needs 1000 soldiers and 100 armoured vehicles to capture 12 gorilla fighters in Janine, it tells you what? That this army cannot fight a proper war. Now, I don’t think that there will be a proper war with Jordan or Egypt and so on. But it’s possible that these countries would change their attitude. And then Israelis would have to ask themselves. Can you have a conventional war?
It’s something else. It’s one thing to bomb Iran from the air. It’s a different thing to fight proper armies on your borders. And the way Israel fought Hezbollah and Hamas does not bode very well for the Israeli ability to do what they successfully did, for instance, in 1967.
etos.media: And the sixth and last indicator is “renewal of energy among the younger generation of Palestinians.”
Ilan Pappé: I think Israel benefited for a long time from the fragmentation disunity in the Palestinian political system. Fatah and Hamas, and I don’t have to to explain how difficult the present political situation is. However, I think the younger Palestine generation are far more united in the vision, are far clearer in their position about Israel and Zionism. A very good look, very well based in the world, wherever they are. They still need an organization, I think. But apart from that, I think the world would find a very different Palestinian position in the future. That would not be based on the two-state solution and would not reflect this unity but rather unity. And that would, again, would be a very important factor in changing the reality.
etos.media: Okay. So, I think with your six indicators you make a very strong argument for your thesis of a start of collapse of Zionism. I want to give you a counter argument and want to see if you find it a legit argument.
Ilan Pappé: Okay.
etos.media: Because when we look at the hard fix on the ground, Zionism appears like historically strong and assertive these days. The main part of Gaza is occupied, Syria occupied far beyond the Golan Heights.
Ilan Pappé: Yeah.
etos.media: Like never before, maybe, probably, settlement expansion in the West Bank is simply on steroids these days. Which are all strong points that Zionism is pretty strong. So, how do you reconcile your thesis with these current realities on the ground?
Ilan Pappé: On the contrary they prove my point. It proves that Zionism is now deteriorating into be a proper fascist, a nationalist messianic regime. Without international support it cannot survive. It’s a big question for the world. Is this the kind of state that would receive support or it would not get support? And I think, if this kind of behaviour would continue, it would be much more difficult to support it and the moment it would lose international support from above all these actions would not count. A state is not an air force and nuclear weapons. A state is an organic society. And that organic society is not functioning. So what matters is not only the lethal and destructive power right now of Israel. Of course they’re facing a very weak opponent. An unarmed, civilian population, so it’s not surprising that they’re doing so well. As I said, they wouldn’t do that well if the Arab world went to war against them. So that’s not a sign of strengths, that is a sign of madness. Madness never lasts for too long. It’s very dangerous. A lot of people suffering from this, but eventually it will lead to the collapse.
etos.media: Okay, last question. Because we’re in Germany. You’re in Berlin for two, three days I guess, for some events.
Ilan Pappé: Yeah.
etos.media: I thought about this when I reread another opit of yours from October 2023, three days after the war started, so after the attack on Israel. In your opit published in the Palestine Chronicle, titled “My Israeli Friends, this is Why I Support Palestinians”, You outlined your vision for the region as follows, quote: “A dezionized, liberated and Democratic Palestine from the river to the sea.”
And yeah, to the deutsche Verfassungsschutz: it was a quote of an Israeli historian, that was not me.
In Germany, media and politicians across the spectrum would accuse you of advocating for the total annihilation of your fellow Jews with those kind of sentences, and for a second Holocaust even. How would you respond to those?
Ilan Pappé: Well, it’s very shameful and disappointing that this is the level of analysis of either German politicians and whoever advises them on these things. Whether these are academics or journalists or experts. To say that the democratic state, where Jews and non-Jews would live together as equals to be a Nazi idea is abuse of the Nazi, of the Holocaust memory. This is really Germany showing a lack of historical understanding, Germany being in the danger of being twice on the wrong side of history and this is something that if I don’t anticipate politicians to understand it because they’re only interested in being reelected in this country. But I would’ve expected the academics and the intellectuals to not to speak in such an imbecilic way and to do what they do very well. When they analyze the situation in the Ukraine or when they look at the history of colonialism even in Namibia they’re doing a very good job. Why don’t they use the same tools for the colonialist reality in Palestine? And instead of engaging in the proper discussion they shut us up with accusation of antisemitism and holocaust denial. This is superficial. This is not serious. And history would look at them back as very dangerously being twice, as I said, on the wrong side of history.
etos.media: I think this is a very good closing remarks. Thank you very much. It was a great interview.
Ilan Pappé: Thank you.
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