welcome to hard talk i'm stephen sacker the israeli-palestinian conflict is at its heart a story of two peoples and one land both see history as their justification which means an historian who appears to change sides inevitably becomes a figure of enormous controversy so it is with my guests today israeli historian ilan pape who says the record shows that the jewish state is racist born of a deliberate program of ethnic cleansing now not surprisingly he's widely reviled in his home country has his anti-zionism undermined his academic integrity welcome to hard talk thank you you are an israeli but for the best part of a decade you've lived in a a sort of self-imposed exile in the uk and yet you still seem intellectually drawn to israel you still write about israel so try and characterize for me your feelings for your home country today i think the best way of uh explaining what i feel is to differentiate between a state and a country in a state and a regime i was born in the country which is israel israel and palestine i'm very attached to the people there i'm very worried about its future but i am very uh opposed to the ideological regime that governs the life of everyone who lives there between the river jordan and the mediterranean you say opposed to the regime implying in a way that there's something about the particular color of the government of the day but it's surely it's not the regime you're opposed to it is the founding ideology of the country that is zionism you are an anti-zionist you reject zionism that is true when i say the regime i mean uh that successive governments were all loyal to the same ideological uh foundation and indeed i find the idea that in a country where half of the people are not jewish a state cannot be founded on the basis of ethnic exclusivity or supremacy there needs to be a more democratic a more egalitarian a more fair political outfit that would respect the rights and aspirations of everyone who lives there well we'll get more into that argument uh and particularly you'll claim that half the people are not jewish in a moment because obviously you're talking about israel and the occupied territories if we are talking about the mediterranean between the mediterranean israel as a nation state yeah a sovereign nation then that your figures and your claim would not be true but we'll get to a discussion of that later here's what i find most paradoxical about you you are clear in your anti-zionism and yet it would seem to me that your own life story and your family's life story is the the best advertisement for the importance of zionism that there could ever be i disagree with this i think my life story especially the fact that my family came from germany originally and uh suffered and escaped and escaped from nazi germany and found haven in what was to become the jewish state of israel thanks to the development in the 1930s of the zionist idea but it was also a family that was a victim of racism of ethnic cleansing and extermination and as such jews who faced extermination absolutely who needed a haven and could not become themselves victimizers who would apply the same methods to someone else your father to be clear though was a passionate zionist i don't know if it was a passionate zionist he would have preferred probably to come to the united states or england but their doors were closed so he like so many german jews who were not zionists they found their way to palestine but i don't think that he would have condoned uh the ethnic cleansing of 1948 i don't think he would accept that in order to survive you're entitled to either ethnically cleanse or exterminate someone else having a safe haven for people who are victimized does not give them the license to victimize someone else now you've already dropped into conversation the phrase ethnic cleansing it's become very much associated with your historical work it's even in the title of one of your perhaps most important books but it is a phrase which sticks in the throat of so many israelis and indeed so many israeli historians who look at the record of what happened in those founding days that led to the creation of the state of israel 47 48 and they do not identify the program of premeditated ethnic cleansing that you claim sits in the record you've got it wrong ethnic cleansing is not about meditated or only planned idea ethnic lensing is an operation in the end of which one ethnic group is being displaced by another nobody can argue with the fact that half of palestine's people were expelled that half of palestine's cities and villages were destroyed that palestinians lost palestine because zionism created a jewish state this is by even the most conservative definition an act of ethnic lenses but the act the the issue of meditation or premeditation is absolutely central to your portrayal of what israel is how it came to be other historians who were with you in that group of revisionists who emerged in the late 1980s benny morris i'm thinking of they don't dispute anything you've just said about the facts that so many hundreds of thousands about 700 000 arabs were forced to flee their homes as the jewish agency established what was to become israel the jewish state that's not in dispute what you say though is that there were meetings in which ben gurion and his key advisers planned this operation and they say no understand that war is tough in the heat of battle things happen but it was ad hoc it was not premeditated and in some cases local commanders could be blamed certainly not all of it down to ben gurion's plan if this is so one has to answer a very simple question why where half of the people who became palestinian refugees were already expelled before the war even started by the 15th of may 1948 the whole urban space of palestine was de-arabized the palestinians lost the urban space by the 15th of may before one arab soldier entered the land of palestine hundreds of thousands of palestinians were evicted by force from the countryside now the evidence i think is quite clear and i think that the documentation especially the documentation that came out in 1998 israel releases military documentation only 50 years after the event show very clearly a meditated a planned a structured idea of how to turn palestine which was basically an arab country into a jewish country a jewish state through the means of ethnic cleansing i think the documentation is now much more clear and uh carries out the evidence and i think it's not in the documentation but let me just put one i mean we don't want to get too hung up on every single detail of what happened in those early days of 48 but just one key piece of evidence which would to me plant a seed of doubt about your uh version of events 24th of march the chief of staff of the hagenar which was to become of course the israeli defense forces but at the time was the jewish agency sort of military agency operation he said this the chief of staff to all his field commanders they must quote protect the full rights the needs and freedoms of arabs living in the hebrew space the hebrew what was to become the jewish state he wrote that yeah he may have written it but i've seen the group of commands that was sent to each commander of a brigade and each commander of a battalion and their commands were very very clear they had to occupy the villages expel the people detonate the houses and these commands came at the first of april so i don't know what he wrote seven days before but i think what really is important now is that we are also now exploring the oral history of 1948 from the jewish side and maybe because they are old and very close to their deathbed commanders of the haganah are now admitting that their mission was to cleanse palestine from the palestinians i don't know why people find it so difficult to to believe this was the major point of zionism this was also an existential war it was clear in 1948 that unless the jews fought and held this space they could be exterminated and in the end as benny morris who for a long time was your sort of historical collaborator but is now it has to be said your historical sort of nemesis benny morris says look in this sort of war stuff happens really bad stuff happens but in the end it can be justified the jews did what they had to do it's amazing we're talking of what possibly the palestinians could have done to the jews and this is really flimsy history this is not serious history to write a book of what could have happened is really bad i'm writing a book of what had happened and what have happened is the crime against humanity ethnic cleansing is a crime against humanity the zionist movement was founded for very good reasons what it did in 1948 is unforgivable is unacceptable let's keep perhaps a sense of context because everything we're discussing right now as this conversation continues we're going to bring up to the present day it all matters and it all connects i mean let's have some perspective benny morris says i don't know if you challenge this that maybe 800 or a thousand palestinian civilians ended up dying either they were extrajudicially killed they were they were executed killed by what jewish agency military operatives but he says compare that with what we see happening in the world today in some of the conflicts not so very far from israel in syria in iraq in other places too i mean the numbers of casualties compared with some of the conflicts we see around the world he's used the phrase small potatoes yes for him it's small potatoes uh imagine that half of britain's population would have been expelled imagine that half of britain's cities would be demolished to the airs imagine that half of britain's villages would be destroyed and then i would like you to come to an israeli television program and tell me that this is a small potato a lot of this is about ideology though isn't it human suffering created by people who up to now are immune immune from international condemnation for the crimes that they have committed in our commitment well here's what you said in 1999 in a moment of great honesty you said to a belgian newspaper i admit my ideology influences my historical writing but so what that's the case for everybody i i said is that a good justification for the story no it isn't and i said it 30 years ago something like that i can you said at a time when you were a younger man doing a lot of the research that you've built on since yes but what i meant maybe i didn't put it across that well but what i meant is that we are committed historians it's ridiculous to say that we don't have an agenda that doesn't mean that we don't have to be professional that doesn't mean that we don't correct mistakes if we make mistakes but definitely it would be ridiculous to say that we don't have a moral agenda that's what i meant but it plants a seed of doubt in some people's minds and let's say particularly in israeli minds about the fairness with which you approach not just historical events but also events much more contemporary i'm going to bring it up to date now because this isn't just a history conversation you're a commentator and a big thinker on the way israel operates today in the summer of 2006 when israeli military forces were pounding gaza after renewed rocket attacks into the into the states israel well i think this was actually in 2006 i mean there have been various assaults but this one was in 2006. you said this in the name of holocaust memory let us hope the world will not allow the continued genocide in gaza to continue as an historian how could you link holocaust memory alleged israeli genocidal action in gaza how could you do that by observing very very closely what is being done by israel get to isis ghetto ghettoizing people starving them not allowing them to get basic commodities checking every shipment that goes into gaza for how many colored women what is happening millions of palestinians are not being killed by the israelis genocide is the elimination of an ethnic grouping or a people you're in a story and you have to word use words carefully you have to respect words don't you it's no i i do respect words and that's why i succeeded in convincing most people that what happened in 48 is ethnic cleansing and what happens ever since 1948 is the ethnic cleansing of palestine now i use the term incremental genocide i think that if you get to ice people and you starve them and you check what kind how many calories can they have in order to survive in the long term this could turn into a genocidal operation the fact that gaza is cordoned is closed from all sides the fact that israel does not know what to do with the gaza strip whereas it has some ideas of what to do with the west bank is the potential for incremental genocidal policy i'm not taking back my words i really want to explain to people that people in gaza are under existential danger by the policies of the state of israel i understand that you you've thought carefully about the words you use but i'm just challenging some of them and it goes back to my opening question your feelings about your home country today you've described zionism and this is another quote from you as a racist and quite evil philosophy of morality and life i put it to you that you haven't lived in israel for the last 10 years you are still preoccupied with what israel is but anybody who visits israel do you think they really come away feeling that they are living in a country that is driven by a quite evil philosophy if they are first of all i've been in israel in last 10 years half of the time every year so i'm still there as much as i'm here secondly if you look at zionism from the perspective of those who are not jewish and especially from the palestinian perspective then you understand what i'm talking about well let's talk about the palestinians or the israeli arabs who are citizens of the state of israel they were polled recently it was quite interesting in the jerusalem post more than 60 percent of them described israel as a good place to live well over 50 percent said that they believed in the legitimacy of israel as being the jewish state and fewer than a quarter said that they would want to go and live in a palestinian state alongside israel i question these findings i must say if there's one topic i'm really an expert on are the palestinians in israel because this was my political home this was my cultural home this was my social home i don't know what uh is the basis for these answers but this is definitely not a reflection of how palestinians feel in israel nor is it but it may be a reflection of something that i wonder if you would dispute that is israel is a democracy and of course israeli arabs do have a vote in israeli elections israel has a court system which is capable of standing up to those in power we've seen israeli prime ministers convicted of serious crimes there is a basic commitment to civil society democracy in israel which is not seen in the palestinian territories right now not seen in any arab nation that neighbors israel and surely the israeli arabs are capable of seeing that too no they can't see that 93 of the land is exclusively jewish in israel palestinians are not allowed to build new settlements new villages they're not allowed to expand the cities they're not allowed they're not they're not getting the same national security the same welfare benefits as the average jewish is receiving in israel their educational system is segregated from the jewish educational system on every aspect of life judicial legal and financial they are discriminated against but i think far more important than anything else is the fact that the state does not recognize them as part of the nation and because the state does not recognize them as part of the nation there has been in the last 10 years a way there was a wave of legislation that questions their belonging to the state and it hangs uh as an axe over their heads they live a very precarious life as we've seen in the south of israel where palestinians are being driven seventy thousand palestinians are being driven out from their villages as we speak well namely uh namely ethnic cleansing is let me just if you allow me just one sentence and i promise i i think it's important to understand israel or zionism has a a vision of having as much of palestine as possible with as few palestinians and it is possible no i just want to give you you know that no no let me just explain cleansing continues the racism is probably what does that explain what you would never do and what i want to ask you is something somewhat different why in all of your history and all of your commentary do you persist in focusing on israel's evils israel's crimes and the palestinians and the arabs are always victims you never focus on the palestinians as actors as committers of violent acts sometimes as as architects of terrorist activity you have never in your writings your history focused on what the palestinians have done as actors rather than victims this is a ridiculous summary of my work if i may say so i have written a lot on the palestinian national movement as an anti-colonialist movement that used violence that used terror i explained why they used the violence i was looking for the source of the violent and because i regard the situation in palestine as a colonialist situation in fact as you see the violence is justified not justified the mass attacks on civilians you see those no i don't don't put words in my in what word would you use i would use it as violence in a struggle for liberation which i think can be replaced by a non-violent struggle as most palestinians would like to do it because that struggle the armed struggle the palestinian armed struggle has not benefited the palestinian national movement but to argue that the struggle of liberation movements around the world in the 50s and the 60s is different from the palestinian struggle is really taking the palestinian issue out of historical context in other words we understand that people who fought against colonialism people who fought against occupation are using violence i am not for violence of any kind but i think there is a difference no i'll tell you i think there is a difference between the violence of the occupier the violence of the oppressor the violence of the colonizer and the violence of those who try to see israel's actions as more morally reprehensible than those of hamas uh yes in many ways i do because i think there is a difference between the power of a state and the power of people who were oppressed by that and i wonder i can question the wisdom of using violence i just before we end we don't have so much time i want to get to the present and the future because not only are you a historian you are somebody who thinks hard about where israel and the palestinians go from here and you've said there is only one way it has to be a unitary state from the mediterranean to the jordan river do you not accept that if that were to be the case it wouldn't be the bi-national secular state that you have painted it would be a state dominated by the arab population because they would be in a clear majority particularly if you get your way and all of the descendants of the 48 refugees return and it would be a muslim state no i don't accept it i think people who don't know the palestinians have these kind of nightmarish scenarios i think that when you change that's why i'm talking a change of regime when we started our conversation when you gradually change a regime which is not democratic contrary to the way you portrayed it which is really like an apartheid state and you make it more and more democratic in an evolutionary way you get a state that represents much more faithfully the aspirations of all the ethnic groups i'm inclined towards all the religions you have spent one second considering the import of what has happened in syria what is happening in iraq today and indeed what has happened in gaza in recent years does that mean nothing to you a lot it means to me that all the political outfits including the state of israel that were created by the force of colonialism not by the wishes of the people are collapsing in front of our eyes now if we are lucky if we are lucky this would be replaced by more authentic and more reasonable political outfits that would represent more faithfully what people want if we are not lucky we will have the bloodshed that we have in iraq and in syria and we have to end there ilan pape thanks for being on hard time thank you very much you