There is no question that the Zionists destroyed many Arab villages and drove out large numbers of Arabs starting in the "civil war" in 1947-48 and continuing in the 1948 war against Arab military forces from Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Jordan. But that's hardly the complete story. Pappe misrepresents the Arab population of Palestine as largely peaceful and also misrepresents the relative military strength of the Zionists vis-a-vis their several regular and irregular Arab opponents. Moreover, he fails to note that the Arabs repeatedly both promised and attempted to ethnically cleanse Palestine's Jews. The author fails to present an accurate or complete account of the events of this tragic period.

There's no way to understand the situation there without reading these one. Never thought could be so painfull. Basically he made accounts direct from Israel's files about the plan and systematic expulsion, confiscation of property and land, and mass killings in the way to established the Zionist project: Israel. That is an ONGOING situation.

This is an eye-opening account of the strategic ethnic cleansing perpetrated by the Zionists before and after their 1948 independence. While some limited accounts about massacres and the systematic expulsion of the Palestinians have been talked about, very few non-Palestinian authors have gone to such lengths to document the attempt to create an all-Jewish nation. I am not an expert in the field to judge the academic merits and truth of all of Pappe's claims about the scope of the Zionist culpability in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine (on an intuitive level, it makes sense of the mass exile of Palestinians in 1947-49 that occurred), but the overall intent of the book and message is fair. That message is that the Palestinian plight and crisis has been overlooked, submerged, and largely whitewashed in the history of the development of the Israeli state. In order for a fair and just resolution to be realized, Pappe suggests that a fair and democratic state that is inclusive of the Palestinians must emerge. How that might happen, to the satisfaction of all interested parties, is yet by no means and easy thing to resolve. But Pappe's book is very helpful for those interested in getting a greater grasp of the injustices suffered by Palestinians.

To begin with a piece of information the hagiographic cover of the English edition of this work fails to disclose: Ilan is a senior member of the Israeli communist party. Is this relevant? It may, at any rate, explain the way he writes his history books.

Contrary to Pappe's claim to be presenting us with original research, new conclusions, and shocking disclosures, over the last 20 years a whole industry of books, including but not confined to the works of the revisionist New Historians, have documented the extent to which the unfortunate exodus of much of the Arab population of Palestine was a complex story, something composite, diverse and multi-layered. No contemporary historian would claim that all the 700,000 Palestinians, who left their towns and villages during the war, did so voluntarily. This is uncontroversial. There were indeed some premeditated expulsions, as in the Lod-Ramla battles, and even some massacres, which caused many Arab civilians to run. There were richer Arab families, especially in the cities, who had the means to leave temporarily, hoping to return after victory (they left their homes furnished and took their keys with them). And there were even Arab villagers who collaborated with Zionists and preferred to seek accommodation with them rather than fight them. An example of such a community, still flourishing today, is the Circassian town of Abu Ghosh, which stayed neutral during the War of Independence, and was repayed in kind by future Israeli governments. But the majority of Arab villages were simply caught in the cross fire of war (a war involving two sides, and instigated by Arab leadership inside and outside the Mandate), and sought refuge for their families in exile. The reality was particularly complex and subtle; to attempt to reduce it to a single narrative, in this case "ethnic cleansing", is the act of an instrumentalist simpleton (the accusation of instrumentalising history for political ends is one that Prof Ilan admits to his introduction; an introduction in which he also subjects us to some laughably naive theories of historical epistemology).

A balanced analysis of the situation in the 1947-1949 period would have to also include the following counter-points (they require emphasis because - as E.H. Carr preached if not practiced - the bias of the historian reveals itself not in the distortion of facts, but in the incomplete selection of them):

1. The Zionist leadership, not through disinterested benevolence but existential necessity, highly conscious of its extreme demographic weakness, was motivated to seek compromise and partition of land on its inception. The Peel Commission and later the Partition Plan were accepted by the Zionist Leadership and rejected by the Arab leadership who, under their Mufti, Husseini, insisted on a whole and undivided Palestine.

2. Opportunities for peaceful accommodation were available, if the Palestinian Arab leadership had refrained from war with the nascent Israeli state. In a vicious dialectic, the Zionist perception of the Arab leadership's genocidal claims broadcast over the media (whether or not these were propagandistic rhetoric, or actually serious), and the many (here neglected) local massacres within the mandate, by necessity hardened their own views. In neglecting the dialectical context, even if its inclusion hadn't directly undermined his narrative (after all most cases of real ethnic cleansing also involve such vicious spirals) Pappe loses all pretense to academic good faith.

3. An important fact, which is required to balance any Arab-Israeli narrative, is that, while the Palestinians were leaving their country, whether under expulsion or voluntary exile, the same number of Mizrahi Jews, fleeing from Arab countries, found refuge in Israel, where they were absorbed into the nation. This exchange of populations, which resolved one problem though it did nothing to settle the other, remains a living reminder that population transfers, though they may be painful and inhuman at the time, may also bring a problem to an end after a few generations, as was the case with the Jewish immigrants to Israel, something which the Arab governments continuously refuse to accept as a solution for Palestinian refugee communities within their own country. Kuwait expelled 400,000 Palestinians as late as 1990, a fact that barely seems to be known outside the Middle East. Palestinian refugees are still banned from owning property in most Arab countries, and in September 1970, King Hussein of Jordan killed up to 25,000 Palestinian refugees in an act of violence that surpasses in scale anything in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

4. Coming back to the extant text. Examples of Pappe's bizarre interpretations are endless, and it is too tedious to list them all. In his second chapter (10-28) for example, he castigates Israel for its "drive for an exclusively Jewish state." Firstly, this is not true: the Declaration of Independence calls upon the Arabs to remain within the state and contribute peacefully to its construction. Secondly, 60 years later, over 20% of the population is Arab, and the net Arab Israeli population within the Green-Line is higher than it was in 1947.

5. In incomprehensible fashion Pappe, interprets military operations such as Nachshon (86-90) or Palm Tree (154-5) as premeditated moves within a grand plan for "ethnic cleansing," when those exact military operations were explicitly conducted for the sake of lifting the military siege of the opposing national armies. These are military operations in which we can be certain about motivations, given that they directly concerned the opening of supply lines and closing down opposing military positions. The exodus of Arab villagers that resulted from such operations was an outcome of the fighting. But to turn a result of the fighting into its cause is the same as claiming that America planned the Pacific War to test its nuclear bombs. Ilan Pappe is a walking case against the specialisation of labour within the academy - this man is a professor, yet he would fail an introductionary undergraduate class in formal logic.

Even lacking the inclusion of the above points, Ilan could at least have produced a useful work of polemical history. In this he also fails. The agenda driven bricolage of stories and facts, which have been removed from all context, and then pasted to together to fit Ilan's predetermined narrative, is closer to communist agitprop than even the most biased works of polemical history. How can a historian, even a polemical one, claim to present the narrative of a conflict by exclusively compiling out of context reports of what one party allegedly did to the other? To take a simple image, which accurately describes Pappe's method, it is like collating newspaper reports on a boxing match, cutting out only the parts of the article which describe the punches delivered by one boxer, neglecting the punches of the other boxer, and sticking them all together into a single new article. The methodology is not only misrepresentative, but nonsensical.

The last chapters address Israel's unilateral disengagement from Gaza, which has brought Hamas to power. Here we would expect a historian to analyse the conflict, presenting the motives behind both Israel's and the Palestinian leadership's current military strategies. Instead Ilan bizarrely elects to switch focus, writing tangentially about Israel's "zenophobic" demographic fears, presenting us with a seemingly irrelevant critique of contemporary Israeli "racism". This is not academic history, but the literature of a political campaign.

After reading the first 200 pages of Pappe's book, I was convinced that it actually provides the true picture about events in Palestine since 1900. All the actions of the Zionist movement, as well as the unorganized reaction of the Palestinians (they were under Ottoman rule and British rule when Zionism started to become really violent), and the half hearted military support by neighbouring arab countries. It all makes sense.
Considering that Palestine's neighbours are big recipients of US foreign aid (Egypt and Jordania), and considering that Fatah is also an Israeli puppet, on cannot help to feel awful about the fate of Palestinians, at the mercy of unbelievably cruel Zionist aggression.
Before reading any comments by convinced zionist, I advise you to read at least the first pages of this book. If you are not a Zionist, you will feel the despair of palestinians and anger against all Zionists, be they Israeli, US or European. This crime should never be forgotten.
BTW, Pappe is an Israeli professor, who is now "persona non grata" in Israel for speaking the truth.
Any normal country would analyse such grave accusations of crimes committed by their institutions, but not Israel. It continues to accuse anyone daring to criticize its criminal policies as "anti-semitic". A very handy argument, since it obviously kills off any possible discussion on the topic.

If anyone has watched the recent History Channel episode on David vs Goliath, one would see the parrallel with David Ben Gurion and his invastion of Palestine.

Its obvious that the Palestinians used to live there until 1948, and its obvious that the ethnic cleansing started before the neighboring arab countries tried to intervene.

If your still confused about the parrallel, you haven't seen the show. Goliath was the name of the champion sent to defend his territory against the invaders in single combat with David, who was an invader from Egypt. David was a brutal, conniving politician who usurped power from his tribes leaders, slept with his best general's wife and had him killed for it and tried to create an Israel empire. There murderous invading empire extended north into what is now Syria, and east inside of Jordan. Many young chidren in Israel are taught to dream of once again occupying these areas as part of their 'promised land'. It is not promised land, it is stolen land, and they are preying not to a real god, but a false god.

Christians have been taught the David vs Goliath story too, and I'm glad the chutzpah story has been exposed. America needs to once again stand for truth, justice, and to keep their american way to themselves.

Pappe's book essentially details the consequences of actions that precede the heavy conflicts between Jews and so-called Palestinians. Without an understanding of this history it is easy, albeit grossly unfair, to draw the conclusions that Pappe did.

Arabs were unhappy about being ruled by foreigners, and they believed that the British favored Jews from outside Palestine - the Zionists - at their expense. They disliked Britain's Balfour Declaration and its reference to them as "existing non-Jewish communities. And they disliked being referred to in the League of Nation's Mandate Agreement as "the other sections."
Arab frustrations produced attacks on Jews - easier targets than the British army. In Jerusalem in 1920 five Jews were killed and eleven wounded. In response, Jews in Jerusalem organized a self-defense league. The British forbade the carrying of arms and imprisoned the group's leader. Jews set up a clandestine organization for defense, called the Haganah, which had only minor successes in 1921, when Arab attacks became more intense. There were more Arab attacks against Jews in Jerusalem. In Jaffa, Arabs killed forty Jews and wounded around two hundred, and the attacks on Jews spread to other towns. Perhaps the Zionist response was heavy handed but one could argue that if the resistance, and the offensive tactics weren't as well-planned and executed then the Jews would have suffered the same humiliating defeat that marked their entire history after King Soloman. One could also argue that the Jews were reclaiming their historical homeland that was taken from them by the Arabs around 600 AD. However, there has always been a Jewish presence in the Holy Land and, in point of fact, in the late 1800's and for a few decades the Jewish National Fund bought up huge tracts of land from the Turks and Arabs for the purpose of resettling Jews -- hardly stolen land!

In 1922, at the start of the British Mandate there were some 589,000 Muslim Arabs and 71,000 Christian Arabs in Palestine, a number that is probably an overestimate. By 1945, there were well over 1.2 million Arabs in Palestine and perhaps over 1.3 million by 1948. The Arab population of Palestine had about doubled during the years of the mandate. If the Zionists were plotting and planning to evict the Arabs of Palestine, the supposed Zionist policy would have to be judged a miserable failure.

This is a must read book for everyone, especially new generation Palestinians, Arabs and Israelis. The level of documentation outlined in this book is unparalleled. Anyone with an objective mind a free soul looking to understand and realize the nature of this conflict will come to realize the ugly truth that Zionist spin-masters have been trying to hide for the past 60 years.
Little they know that truth ultimately prevails even after hundreds of years. Israelis will continue to live in guilt and shame as long as injustice and ethnic cleansing against Palestinians persist in Palestine.

That's one fact that anti-Israel propagandists ignore. Another is that there were 200,000 Arabs in Palestine in 1900; the rest immigrated to live with the Zionists because of the economic development the Zionists and the British brought. They were Iraqis and Egyptians and Syrians. The Arabs immigrated to Palestine to live with the Jews long before the Holocaust. Fake books like this one designed to malign the Jews are not new -- they have gone on forever. It is popular among some; it is fun; but it is fundamentally immoral. When Jordan invaded "Palestine" and held its people for 20 years, not one of these false moralists said word one. The Palestinians are Arabs, they should have been resettled just as the Jews resettled an equal number of Jews in Israel in an even population exchange, and their national existence was formed for one purpose -- to oppose a Jewish state in the Middle East not larger than New Jersey. A fair settlement of the current dispute will not be aided by a book that creates yet another invented Jewish conspiracy.

Sincere and true summary of events based on facts. Some of the stories are very close to what heard from my own Grandfather while growing up in Ein El-Helwee refugee camp for Palestinians in South of Lebanon. It is a different way into looking into the History of what happened in Palestine (pre-1948) from an Israeli and Jewish.

Ilan Pappe in this book tell us the truth about what happened in Palestine in the Nakba. The first informative point is the name, for the first time it is called with the right name, because what the Israelis did is nothing but ethnic cleansing, what can one call the destruction of 530 villages, and the expulsion of the Palestinians away from their home.
Ilan pappe talks about this in his books, and in a documentary film I recently watched, it is called "The Sons of Eilaboun" ( http://www.sonsofeilaboun.com )
The book brings the light to very important information that is very important to understand the Palestinian Israeli conflict, and how it started.

If you did not read this book, just get it and read it.
This book is a must read!

For all those who believed for decades in the Zionist propaganda, Ilan Pappe's outstanding publication is certainly food for thought. The book "The ethnic cleansing of Palestine" compels us to rethink the history of the Zionist enterprise in Palestine. Professor Ilan Pappe gives countless examples of Zionist crimes and after reading the book we know the shocking truth about Zionism: this evil doctrine could only be realized through the murder of thousands of innocent Palestinian children, women and men and the mass expulsion and disposession of the indigenous Palestinian population on an unbelievable scale. True, the book is depressing but it is an eye-opener.

I was cognizant of the historical incidents described in this book, but I did not see the relationship between these incidents and Zionism, till now.
It is refreshing that this book is written by an Israeli, who we can assume intends no harm to Judaism as a religion, but he abhors any horrific act as much as he abhors the Holocaust.

Ilan Pappe displays an exceptional courage in his examination of Israel's faults before dissecting the faults of the other side. As a starting point toward reconciliation, both Israelis and Arabs should engage in significant introspection of their own actions, as did Mr. Pappe in this book.

I disagree with Pappe's analysis that the existence of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine is justified, because both parties display actions for which he is critical of Israel. The dream of peace can't be served by actions of the Muslim extremists of Hamas and Hezbollah, nor by the actions of Jewish extremist.

The facts are simple enough. The Jews pleaded with the Arabs to stay in Palestine, but they fled anyway. The Jews asked the 70,000 Arabs in Haifa to remain, yet 67,000 left of their own accord.

Only in a few towns did the Jews forcibly expel the Arabs -- in Lod, for instance, which was the site of the British-built airport (now Ben-Gurion International Airport).

Of course, there were excesses on both sides. But if the Israelis really participated in "ethnic cleansing," how does one account for the large number of Arab citizens of Israel?

And does anyone think that, given the choice, that Israeli Arabs would move to a Palestinian state? Of course not. The rhetoric of the Jewish leaders was no more extreme than that of the Arabs, who wanted to drive Israel into the sea.

Had the Arabs defeated Israel in 1947-1949, the Jews would have been exterminated. Of that there is no doubt. This book is a whitewash.

The ethnic cleansing of Palestine is the best and HONEST book about the tragedy of the Palestinians .It is a MUST read if you believe in Peace in the middle east..It is not an Israeli propganda book.Israel does not want you to read how they uprooted a whole population and took over their land to creat Israel..It was Palestine..The world will continue to suffer until they are ready to FORCE Israel to withdraw from half the occupied Palestinian land and let the Palestinians have AT LEAST 1/2 of their original country back to establish their own State...This book is so great with the details to prove to the world HOW Zionism destroyed a country and created a genocide...of the original people who inhabited Palestine ..

A very important book.It is amazing of how little do we know about the facts on the ground.
Worst of all, we Americans are inadvertently subsidizing the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine.
Hopefully, books like this will energize the public to force their representatives to do what is in the best interest of America.

This is a thoughtful, straight forward explanation, of the Israeli holocaust against the Palestinian people.
And author is an Israeli.
It's an incredibly brave book, in the light of the despicable backlash by the powerful Israeli lobby, to silence the horrors, and war crimes carried out by the Israeli war machine, and the callous, and murderous settlers, during their storm trooper like occupation of Palestinian lands.
Shame on Israel, after their history of being oppressed and battered as a people, to commit these crimes against humanity, is literally dumbfounding, and unthinkable.
The only thing that makes it worse, is their virulent constant push to silence all critic's of their acts of TERROR and WAR CRIMES.
THANK YOU Ilan Pappe, you are a bright light in the literary world.

This book is the prototypical anti-Israeli literature abundant in radical leftist circles. Of course he is a dissaffected Israeli Professor, who has gained his fame and fortune from taking shots at his own country. Much of the statistical information found within its pages is at best inadequate and at worst completely erronious. This book should only be read, in order for one to realize the pseudo intellectual positions taken by those who cast Israel as the aggressor in the Arab-Jewish conflict that is now raging over a century long.

Books like these have conclusion and provide a contrived argument no matter how absurd the notions are within it, and his narrations are convenient in its message and artificial in what he ignores to put within the discussion... one clearly realizes that this author is bonafide hack, and his book is an academic fraud.

This is an excelent book to understand the Israel x Palestine conflict. Illan Pappe show us "the other side of the History" of that conflict.

Ethnic cleansing? The Arab population of Israel and the territories has increased exponentially over the past few decades. In fact, one of the main propaganda points used against Israel is that it can't survive as a Jewish state b/c of the burgeoning Arab population. You can't have it both ways, folks.

There is NO ethnic cleansing going on in Israel. Quite the opposite, the Arab population is growing at a fast rate.

This book is leftist drivel.

Pappe, an Israeli academic, provides a detailed documentation of why the Mid-East became embroiled in decades of non-stop strife. His material is drawn from personal accounts, Israeli military records, and other written sources. His accounting also documents that Israel's "ethnic cleansing" of Palestine was not the result of voluntary departures nor an act of war.

The end of the 1948 Palestine-Israel War led to around a million people being expelled from their homes at gunpoint, civilians being massacred in at least 42 instances, and 531 Palestinian villages being destroyed.

Forcible eviction of the 75-90% Palestinian population from villages was accomplished through bombardment, homes being set on fire at night while occupied, homes and businesses being bulldozed, and mines planted among the rubble to prevent Palestinians from returning. The mission took six months to complete, and has been systematically denied and erased almost totally from global memory. Leaders of this military pogrom include former Prime Ministers Ben Gurion and Yitzak Rabin, and the effort was witnessed by Golda Meir (another Prime Minister).

Atrocities also included poisoning the water supply for Acre with typhoid, numerous cases of rape, looting food stores and other Palestinian assets.

Jews had purchased only 6% of Palestine by 1947 when a U.N. special committee gave the Jews over half the territory. The newly founded Israeli army, with the help of the country's Communist party, received a large shipment of heavy arms from Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union in May, 1946, and the regular Arab armies bought some of their own. The Jewish forces were about double the Arab armies combined, even more at the start of the conflict. Preceding the war they also set up a network of spies and collaborators, and created detailed files for each village - indicating those Arabs who had opposed them.

The 1st and only ethnic cleansing of "Palestine" occurred in Hebron, against native Jews in August of 1929 and resulted in the deaths of scores of Jews, including the expulsion of hundreds from their homes and neighborhoods. Ilan Pappe will not even admit that Arab leaders started the war in 1948, called for the destruction of Israel, and even sent out warnings over the radio for all Arabs to leave. Does any scholar ever ask the question of why 160,000 Arabs were allowed to "stay" in Israel after the war of 1948? Today they have become over 1,000,000 Arab-Israelis.

First, let's document the crime exposed by Mr. Pappe. In 1947, when Britain wanted out of its League of Nations Mandate over Palestine, the United Nations partitioned the remaining portion of Palestine into two more states, a second Arab state (The first Arab state, Jordan, was carved out of Palestine earlier by the British.)and a Jewish state, i. e. the three-state solution. Most of the land that Jews had the temerity to occupy for more than 3,000 years went into the creation of the two Arab states. All of the West Bank inclusive of the old city of Jerusalem and all of the Gaza Strip plus additional territory were incorporated into the second Arab state, whose Arab population acquired the name "The Palestinians". The "two-state solution" widely referenced today was handed to the The "Palestinian People" unconditionally 60 years ago.

The Zionists accepted the solution of 1947, and the Arab world, which argued angrily against it at the United Nations, went to war to eliminate it. That war created the Palestinian refugees. Had there been acceptance of "the solution" by the Arabs in 1947, there would have been no Palestinian refugees and Mr. Pappe would need something else to discredit the Jews' claim to a fraction of the land they occupied continuously for more than 3,000 years.

In the course of the 1947-1948 Arab war against the U. N. "solution", many resident Arabs fled their homes for essentially three reasons.

(1.)Their leaders told them the Jews were massacring them in an effort to incite them to join the war against their Jewish neighbors.

(2.)Their leaders told them to vacate so that invading Arab armies could more effectively kill the Jews.

(3.)Jewish combatants towards the end of the war forced them out in reprisal for the murdering of resident Jews by Arab combatants earlier in the war.

The first two causes displaced many more Arabs than the third, which is all that people like Pappe will acknowledge. In addition, Pappe and people like him will not acknowledge the comparable number (hundreds of thousands) of Jews who were thrown out of Arab countries in collective punishment for Israel prevailing in the Arab war of rejection of 1947-1948.

If you want more tunnel-visioned distortions of the history of the Arab-Israel conflict, Pappe's egregiously dishonest book (and many more like it) will server you well.

Most historians at least try, or claim to try, to be as objective as possible in reporting on the facts of historical events. Pappe is not one of them. In one interview he boldly says that he is not interested in the truth. He says:

" I am not as interested in what happened as in how people see what's happened. ("An Interview of Ilan Pappé," Baudouin Loos, Le Soir [Bruxelles],Nov. 29, 1999)

I admit that my ideology influences my historical writings...(Ibid)

Indeed the struggle is about ideology, not about facts. Who knows what facts are? We try to convince as many people as we can that our interpretation of the facts is the correct one, and we do it because of ideological reasons, not because we are truthseekers. (Ibid) "

See also the introduction to one of his books, A History of Modern Palestine, where he he unabashedly acknowledges his personal bias and open political partisanship , and more significantly how this impacts on his writing:
"My bias is apparent despite the desire of my peers that I stick to facts and the 'truth' when reconstructing past realities. I view any such construction as vain and presumptuous. This book is written by one who admits compassion for the colonized not the colonizer; who sympathizes with the occupied not the occupiers."

We all like to read books that confirm what we already believe or what we want to believe. But believing a historian who doesn't even claim to be interested in seeking truth is foolish. As is to be expected from an author who is "not as interested in what happened as in how people see what's happened" the book is full of illogical conclusions and omissions that mislead. For a review of how this book distorts the facts see the review by Seth Frantzman appearing in the Middle East Quarterly which is available on line. It is too long to repeat here. In short this book admirably carries out its authors stated goal of trying to "convince as many people as we can that our interpretation of the facts is the correct one, and we do it because of ideological reasons, not because we are truthseekers." If you are what Pappe derisively calls a truthseeker, you had best look elsewhere.

When I started reading this book, I was planning to highlight only the most outstanding passages... the ones that really made the situation clear and/or that described particularly outrageous acts of ethnic cleansing. Well, I ended up highlighting half the book!

'The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine' is a devastatingly clear picture of what the Zionist leadership had in mind for -- and did to -- the Palestinians living in what was to become the 'Jewish state of Israel.' I cannot imagine that anyone, after reading this book, would fail to agree that the Zionists engaged in nothing short of systematic ethnic cleansing. Pappe documents the atrocities village by village... and shows, by the way, that the attacks by neighboring Arab countries did not commence until the ethnic cleansing campaign was well underway.

As part of the ethnic cleansing, the Zionists/Israelis not only drove the Palestinians out of their villages by force and demolished their homes and belongings. In many cases, atrocities such as rapes and massacres were carried out. Pappe documents each case; he leaves no doubt that these events occurred. In many cases, his documentation comes from Israeli historical archives.

Pappe documents how the ethnic cleansing campaign was organized and carried out as part of the Zionist leadership's Plan D (Dalet)... a blueprint for ridding the entire area of its native Palestinian population and replacing it with Jewish villages and (eventually) towns and cities. The goal was to take over all of historic Palestine, not just the areas offered to the Zionists in the U.N. Partition Plan. Many of the ethnic cleansing raids carried out as part of Plan D took place in the areas that were to be kept by the Palestinians for their own future state (which of course never materialized). By the way, the book contains some excellent maps that help readers understand where everything happened and the ultimate geographical results.

If you want to really understand -- on a visceral level -- how the Palestinians feel and (more importantly) why they feel that way, please read this book. It will blow your mind... and you will never again look at Israel and Palestine the same way.

An elegantly written, exhaustively researched account of the Nakba that will stand as the definitive work on the subject for any lay historian. Pappe' writes with a reserved, almost detached historical precision yet cannot help allowing his grief and rage to break through.

While the book is stylistically elegant, it's a difficult book to read emotionally, if you have any human feelings. Whatever your understanding of Palestinian history, it will be enriched by Pappe's account. If you aren't moved to compassion for this persecuted people you have a heart of stone, and if it doesn't change your thinking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict then you have a head of stone. Should be required reading for anyone with even a mild interest in the history of this region.

This is a hands-down absolute must read for anyone wishing to understand the Israel/Palestine conflict. Don't even bother to have an opinion until you have read this book.

10 Stars!!!

The militant Zionists, in Israel and elswhere, held meetings to discuss
the Palestinian Question:

Amazing in what we consider modern times to see stark, savage brutality as a continuing policy of the militant Zionists.

Amazing still to know that a race of people, the Jews, who have suffered so much find it an ideal, a national program and a continuing process to inflict upon the elderly, the babies and infants, the mothers and fathers and other human beings that same vicious hatred and beastial treatment inflicted by the Nazis of Germany to now being inflicted by the Nazis of Israel.

Either the Zionists are liars, to themselves or others, that there really is a God and that they are His Chosen People, or they must tremble when they go to sleep nightly knowing the Devine Wrath that will be visited upon them.

Further, those Jews who remain silent, who do not actively and openly fight against these horrible crimes must, in devine judgement, similarly suffer the Devine Wrath and retribution.

When it comes to Palestine, and it's Question, as an American I am embarrassed. Long Live Palestine, Long Live the Palestinians.

10 Stars!!!

The militant Zionists, in Israel and elswhere, held meetings to discuss
the Palestinian Question:

Amazing in what we consider modern times to see stark, savage brutality as a continuing policy of the militant Zionists.

Amazing still to know that a race of people, the Jews, who have suffered so much find it an ideal, a national program and a continuing process to inflict upon the elderly, the babies and infants, the mothers and fathers and other human beings that same vicious hatred and beastial treatment inflicted by the Nazis of Germany to now being inflicted by the Nazis of Israel.

Either the Zionists are liars, to themselves or others, that there really is a God and that they are His Chosen People, or they must tremble when they go to sleep nightly knowing the Devine Wrath that will be visited upon them.

Further, those Jews who remain silent, who do not actively and openly fight against these horrible crimes must, in devine judgement, similarly suffer the Devine Wrath and retribution.

When it comes to Palestine, and it's Question, as an American I am embarrassed. Long Live Palestine, Long Live the Palestinians.

Ilan Pappe is one of these people that won't cover up the truth just to appease the Israeli government. He was threatened several times and several of his student caused trouble for him during lectures protesting his controversial books. During one of my visits to Jerusalem, one peace activist told me how Ilan Pappe was attacked by some Orthodox Jews in one of his talks at a conference. It was the security or police there that protected him and threatened to not interfere again, until he stops "his attack on the principles & rights of the Jewish people".
This book is a very powerful narration of what really happened during the "Nakba" or the catastrophe of the creation of the State of Israel, when the Zionists started to spread lies about the land without people for the people without land. At a time when the world was busy rebuilding Europe after WWII, the Zionists were cleansing the Palestinian lands under the protection and supervision of the British. One of the things that were overlooked in this great book was the dirty role of Hitler in this disaster, even though Pappe briefly mentioned the Holocaust. The expulsion of Jews from Germany and the other planned massacres in Europe fueled the massive migration of Jews (especially from Russia & Eastern Europe) to Palestine, in addition to the flow of donations from the wealthy Jews in US & Western Europe sympathizing with jews in general.
This book is a very good source of truth at a time when the truth is deliberately hidden and falsified.

Ilan Pappe is one of these people that won't cover up the truth just to appease the Israeli government. He was threatened several times and several of his student caused trouble for him during lectures protesting his controversial books. During one of my visits to Jerusalem, one peace activist told me how Ilan Pappe was attacked by some Orthodox Jews in one of his talks at a conference. It was the security or police there that protected him and threatened to not interfere again, until he stops "his attack on the principles & rights of the Jewish people".
This book is a very powerful narration of what really happened during the "Nakba" or the catastrophe of the creation of the State of Israel, when the Zionists started to spread lies about the land without people for the people without land. At a time when the world was busy rebuilding Europe after WWII, the Zionists were cleansing the Palestinian lands under the protection and supervision of the British. One of the things that were overlooked in this great book was the dirty role of Hitler in this disaster, even though Pappe briefly mentioned the Holocaust. The expulsion of Jews from Germany and the other planned massacres in Europe fueled the massive migration of Jews (especially from Russia & Eastern Europe) to Palestine, in addition to the flow of donations from the wealthy Jews in US & Western Europe sympathizing with jews in general.
This book is a very good source of truth at a time when the truth is deliberately hidden and falsified.

The last Palestinian died over 2200 years ago. The only ethnic cleansing that is taking place is that which is committed by Muslims in the name of Allah: "Convert or die by the sword."

Ilan Pappe used Israeli records and interviews with victims of Zionist ethnic cleansing to document how terror, murder, and rape were used by Jews, in Palesting, from the end of World War II through 1949 to expell Palestinians from Palestine and create a larger and larger Isreal. The book is a good corrective, for the mis-representations of the event sequences and non-reporting of events, by US print and electronic press coompanies, of what happened.

Ilan Pappe used Israeli records and interviews with victims of Zionist ethnic cleansing to document how terror, murder, and rape were used by Jews, in Palesting, from the end of World War II through 1949 to expell Palestinians from Palestine and create a larger and larger Isreal. The book is a good corrective, for the mis-representations of the event sequences and non-reporting of events, by US print and electronic press coompanies, of what happened.

This book is a must read for those who seek to understand the current situtation between the modern state of Israel and the Palestian people in light of objective historical facts.

Drawing on public doucments of the State of Israel and the diaries, memoirs and published works of Israeli leaders such as David Ben-Gurion and Menachim Begin, and other crediable and throughly documented sources, Israeli historian Ilan Pappe makes a powerful case that the State of Israel's treatment of the Palestinian civilian population in 1948 was a carefully planned and systematically executed deliberate act of ethnic cleansing.

Ilan Pappe is one of the few Israelis to have the courage to look at Israel's original sin, and he has paid for that courage. This book details the planning and execution of the theft of the Palestinians' land by the Zionists. Well written and documented, by an author who can hardly be called "anti-semitic".

It is laughable to read such a good book, and then come here and see how the ignorance fills the review-o-sphere with the diatribe. Israel is committing the same atrocities against the Palestinians as the Germans committed against them. The only difference is that they have a powerful lobby and sympathy of the United States. If it wasn't for the U.S. Israel would have been wiped out already, begging for scraps of another land. This isn't the bible, the land is not the divine right of Jews in Israel, and they should stop being so hypocritical. I am not an anti-Semite, as my mother is Jewish and my sister-in-law is an Israeli born Jew, and they both agree that the modern day Zionist movement is the antithesis of real Jewry. This is a 5 star book, but I chose to list it as 1 star, so people can read the truth on these reviews.

This book and many others like it can be classified as hate fiction. It is not based on historical accuracy or merit any real consideration as an academic source. The book is trash. It is a book of hatred and lies.
Buying this book is contributing to more hatred and violence. I am not pro-Israel but find this book insulting. I had hoped to learn something but realize it is only a propaganda too for Islamic extremist.

Pappe is an anachronistic stalinist who has made a career out of his sensationalist anti-Zionist viewpoint. His opinion is so one-sided and obvious in its bias, it serves no purpose at all for serious study of the issues - just warms the hearts of Israel's sworn enemies...as if peace can be achieved by rooting for the destruction of one side...pure rubbish ...

Ilan Pappe has produced an amazing and concise summary of the events of 1947-1949, and has shown how badly we've all been taken in by the Israeli propaganda machine. What had once seemed heroic is now despicable.

The ethnic cleansing actions described are horrendous. I understand now the basis for what the Palestinian leadership has been saying for years. I have no sympathy for terrorists, but that now includes the Founders of Israel.

The inner circle of founders (Ben-Gurion, Dayan, Rabin, among others) are plainly portrayed by Pappe as central figures in the systematic uprooting of the Palestinian people, and the destruction of their homeland. Others not mentioned, such as Menachem Begin, are implicated in the atrocities by their known membership in the Haganah, Irgun, or Stern Gang. Non-military activists such as Golda Meir were aware of the cleansing and did nothing to stop it.

Pappe has meticulously documented his sources, searching the national archives to put together an impressive array of incriminating documentation. Perhaps the most surprising source for much of the material on the inner circle is Ben-Gurion's personal diary. Is it, and the other documents - still available for scholarly study?

Based on reading this one book, I've come to believe we need a world-wide re-thinking of how to deal with the Middle East.

This is an excellent description, though not a blow-by-blow account, of the 1948 ethnic cleansing or Nakba. The author uses Zionist materials to show how the plan to expel the Palestinians was developed and carried out. I would have liked a more detailed description of the line from Plan Aleph to Plan Daleth, the final solution used by the Haganah.

At its birth, the official narrative goes, the State of Israel was confronted with unfriendly neighbors, and a hostile indigenous people (the Palestinians) who sought to destroy it. Faced with such overwhelming odds, we are told, the 'little state that could' fought on to independence and established the first "liberal democracy" in the Middle East.

There is no doubt this story is compelling: a scrappy underdog cast in our own image, a feckless foreign foe, and an 'against all odds victory' . Yet for the serious student of history this version of events falls woefully short and conspicuously fails to answer why a war of independence resulted in the displacement of almost 700,000 Palestinian civilians?

This critical question is the focus of Illan Pappe's "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine", a remarkably well researched book that draws mainly on Israeli military and government archives to put the old historical canards to rest. Pappe focuses on the Israeli war plan for 1948, Plan Dalet, and uncovers a chilling trail of memorandums and letters full of the official language used to plan and carry out the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

One sees first hand the meticulous care that Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, and his closest advisers used to ensure that the nascent state had the minimum number of Palestinians possible. Military operations named "Broom" and "Scissors" often carried instructions to "purify" captured territories, which commanders on the ground dutifully did by forcibly expelling hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and destroying their villages.

Yet despite the litany of atrocities and expulsions that the book chronicles, one can't help but come away from reading it hopeful that by uncovering the past we come one step closer to reconciling the seemingly intractable Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Great Israeli historian speaks the truth with much detail! Tis' about the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinian population during the creation of the modern Israeli state. Check it!

To gain an idea of the dilemma in Palestine/Israel and the behavior of the both parties over the past 60 years, this is a great starting point.
It give a clear and precise detail of the Nakbar, (the catastrophe).
References are made in many volumes of the Nakbar but here in this book is a is a detailed history of events that happened in 1948 and they go a long way in explaining current day attitudes and behavior of both parties.
I would suggest that it is a must read for any one wishing to gain a reasonable understanding of the situation in Palestine/Israel today and how it came to be so.

A real eye opener.

This book may be a little difficult for some to come to terms with and for others even more difficult to accept. It is something that has been placed in the psyche of us in Europe after the horrors of the holocaust that any criticism of the state of Israel or Zionism is equal to anti semitism. That the state of Israel was created out of the ashes of the second world war in order to provide a safe and free land for Jews the world over and a place of return for the Jews to their historical homeland.

This book dispels the myth. Pappe rather presents the establishment of the state of Israel as being not only created by men whose ideology was every equal of the extreme nationalism that European Jews had suffered under but also created out of the ethnic cleansing of the native population of that land, the Palestinians.

Pappe begins his book by providing us with with definitions of ethnic cleansing quoting from the United Nations amongst others. unfortunately his use of wikipedia, an 'encyclopedia' by his own admissions is edited by anyone in order to further his argument greatly diminishes his own introduction. While he may choose to use this in his own words to gauge public opinion on how genocide and ethnic cleansing is defined the fact that wikipedia is more of a soap box for anyone with a grudge makes the website frankly worthless.

According to Pappe, ethnic cleansing is something that requires planning and pre-thought before execution and in the first few chapters Pappe documents how Zionist leaders wrote up maps of Palestinian areas, their populations and numbers. Pappe is also quick to point out however, how some Palestinian leaders were only too happy to sell off land to Zionist settlers believing that the greater threat to their land was the colonialism of the British. For some, the Zionists were the poor of Europe and offered little threat, little were they to know that these people would be one and the same who orchestrated their own extinction from their own lands.

Pappe goes on to examine the execution of the Zionist plans of forced expulsion of Palestinians under threats of murder, how the response of Arab militias resulted in further excuses for Zionist outrages on civilian populations. Pappe gives examples of Palestinian villages of both Christian and Muslim who were wiped from the map. Further examples of man (Defined as aged between 10 and 50) being separated from their women folk and executed. Examples of mass rape, destruction of Churches, Mosques, orchards are also given.

Another interesting point is the Arab-Israeli war which Pappe defines as a 'phony war' Pointing out that Jordan had no intention of defending Palestinians rather in protecting its agreed annexation of the West Bank. How the poorly armed and trained Arab armies were no match for the Zionist forces due to the Egyptians while large in numbers (Swelled by the Muslim brotherhood whose lack of any military training made them more a liability than help) The Syrians lack of modern arms, the Lebanese whose numbers were so small they were more concerned with holding onto their own land and Iraqis. Most of these forces were tied down by their own political leaders who had no intentions of seeing them defend the Palestinian people.

I believe it was Robert Fisk in his book 'Pity the nation' who once pointed out the irony of the victims of genocide often being the most enthusiastic perpetrators of it. It is interesting that most of the criticism of this book is that it is 'anti semitic' (Strange considering the author is Jewish!) and reminds me of how Serbs would point out the massacres that were committed against their people in World War 2 by Croatian militias as though that somehow justifies the slaughter of thousands in Bosnia and Kosovo. Similarly Zionists use the holocaust to deflect war crimes in Lebanon and the ethnic cleansing of an entire people in Palestine.

Thankfully Pappe has brought this to the worlds attention in a book that while filled with information that will be shocking and disturbing is also clear and easy to read.

Ilan Pappe's ground-breaking investigation into the origins of the Middle East conflict details the full horror of the crimes committed against the Palestinian people in 1948/9, victims of `ethnic cleansing' by any meaningful definition of the term. In the 1990s both the US State Department and the United Nations, faced with the situation in former Yugoslavia, acknowledged that expulsion of communities by force and the eradication of a nation's history so as to impose ethnic rule on a subject population was unacceptable behaviour in international law. The relevance of this to the foundation of the State of Israel is made clear at the outset, and Pappe's masterly demolition of the official myths deals appropriately with the architect of the cleansing, David Ben-Gurion, hitherto exonerated by selective and incomplete history, the propaganda saturation whereby thug metamorphoses into national hero. Israeli author Amos Oz, for example, has described him as `a modern day King David' and `a mercurial man, almost violently vivacious'.

Almost? Under his stewardship a group of confreres known as the `Consultancy' came together in 1947 to plot the dispossession of the Palestinians. This was against the background of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 which so disproportionately partitioned Palestine in favour of the Jewish minority that it was bound to court Arab rejection. This same group went on to plan all aspects of the ethnic cleansing, Plan Dalet being the clearest outlining of the procedure to be followed once the British had left at the end of the Mandate period. Ben-Gurion's 1947 utterance to the effect that it would be better to expel the Arab population because `only a state with at least 80% Jews is a viable and stable state' showed a gravely impaired sensitivity which would be more chillingly highlighted once the terror got under way.

Deir Yassin was not the period's only atrocity, and the main body of Pappe's investigation describes how the terrorist Stern Gang, Haganah and Irgun forces had their work cut out. Early attempts at eviction of the native population include that inflicted on the village of Khisas which left 15 dead, `a successful operation' according to Ben-Gurion, while prior to an attack on Balad al-Shayk one local Israeli commander was ordered to kill as many of the male inhabitants as possible but spare the women and children. At subsequent meetings of the Consultancy it was decided that this scrupulous distinction be abandoned lest it compromise the effectiveness of future operations, and Ben-Gurion approved a series of planned attacks on Arab villages absolving his forces of any need `to distinguish between the innocent and the guilty'. Besides Deir Yassin other towns and villages subject to invasion and massacre are dwelt upon in suitably harrowing detail but there are many which, presumably for reasons of space, are mentioned in name only. They are less likely to stick in the memory, but we may reflect on what further human tragedies these mere passing mentions encapsulate and wonder how Israel's obscene `purity of arms' oxymoron ever gained credibility.

For intruder to masquerade as victim obviously the true victim had to be demonised. Far from being the deadly menace of Zionist propaganda which had to be nipped in the bud to avert a `Second Holocaust', the native Palestinian population in the villages was easy prey to the marauding Israeli forces. Indeed, Ben-Gurion admitted privately that `the decisive majority of them (the Palestinians) do not want to fight us'. At no time did the Arab volunteers from outside Palestine or the ill-equipped and inexperienced paramilitary outfits within seriously threaten the Jewish community, and the ineffective and uncoordinated policies of the Arab countries gave the lie to Zionist claims of encirclement by a hostile league poised to launch a concerted attack. In an early chapter Pappe discusses Jordan's agreement not to take any military action against the Jewish state in return for being granted control over what is now the West Bank.

All of the above is circumscribed by chapters which place the Catastrophe in the context of the region's history over the past century. The Palestinians' sense of betrayal following the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the establishment of the British Mandate in 1923 led to uprisings of which the known participants would be singled out in 1948 for bloody reprisal, and more recently the false hopes raised by the Oslo Accords and the Camp David summit again pointed up Israel's refusal to acknowledge the scale of the 1948 tragedy. As part of the state-sanctioned cover-up - the `memoricide' - of that year's key events the Jewish National Fund's cosmetic `greening' of the sites of devastated Palestinian villages is described in some detail. Pappe also emphasises the Palestinians' right of return, specified by UN Resolution 194 of the same year, as the sine qua non of any lasting solution.

Given the author's recourse to certain highly revealing sources `The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine' will surely rank as a cornerstone in the field of Palestinian studies. In his endnotes Pappe includes references to Ben-Gurion's diary and the more inclusive Ben-Gurion Archives which house correspondence relating to the meetings of the Consultancy. Various other Israeli archives are consulted including those of the Haganah and Israeli Defence Forces. The evidence so amassed is damning but, of course, unlikely to impact on the stunted flat-earther mentality that would rather take comfort in sanitised historical rewrites than face uncomfortable facts. Though not quoted by Pappe the following words of the affectionately titled (by his Consultancy minions) `Old Man' may be cited here as they at least show honest insight into the true nature and consequences of the Zionist endeavour;

`If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country, It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?'

The Ethnic Cleansing was incredibly well written and researched. Often, books of this kind are hastily thrown together; this is the exception. Ilan Pappe is a master at gluing together half-truths and non-truths. This is a work that will give anti-Semites worldwide cause to foam at the mouth. A casual review of historical facts shows this screed for what it is. For example, the only ethnic cleansing in the past century occurred in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Gaza, and Syria. Not only in most cases were Jews forcibly expelled, their land confiscated, but laws were enacted making it a crime - sometimes death - to sell property to a jew. If only Mr. Pappe had done more research in Gaza or tried to buy a house in Jordan. He wouldn't have written anything different; but he might not have survived to write it.

The Ethnic Cleansing was incredibly well written and researched. Often, books of this kind are hastily thrown together; this is the exception. Ilan Pappe is a master at gluing together half-truths and non-truths. This is a work that will give anti-Semites worldwide cause to foam at the mouth. A casual review of historical facts shows this screed for what it is. For example, the only ethnic cleansing in the past century occurred in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Gaza, and Syria. Not only in most cases were Jews forcibly expelled, their land confiscated, but laws were enacted making it a crime - sometimes death - to sell property to a jew. If only Mr. Pappe had done more research in Gaza or tried to buy a house in Jordan. He wouldn't have written anything different; but he might not have survived to write it.

Ilan Pappe's The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine is a book that should have been written 60 years ago. How is it that history can be so Stalinized that to speak the truth about it is a radical act? In the case of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the disparity between the lie and the truth is so vast that many refuse to accept even the possibility that their opinions, values, and thoughts on the matter are founded on a complete and utter lie. In 1948 the Zionist leadership of Israel expelled and massacred the native Palestinian population. For 60 years the growing millions of refugees have been denied access to their land, homes, and of course the loved ones murdered by Zionist troops, and refused compensation for their losses.

Pappe's book is an account of the "war" of 1948 from the perspective of Israeli military archives and oral testimony. It is a history of what really happened in 1948 and 1949, and the reason the "peace process" in the Middle East has nothing to do with real peace. Pappe recounts the atrocities committed by the Zionists in their zeal to establish a Jewish-only state: the terror, intimidation, murder, and rape that accompanied such a 'high' cause. It is a disturbing account of the genesis of evil (ponerogenesis) in social movements; of corruption in high places; of ruthless and inhuman behavior and a stunning lack of collective conscience.

Where did the Zionist movement go wrong? Pappe identifies the root cause briefly in a description of the callous nature of some of the IDF leaders and soldiers. He is describing psychopaths (as defined by Robert Hare, who wrote Without Conscience). When social movements fail to identify pathological behavior as such, the moral content of the group's ideology is twisted and corrupted to achieve goals the complete opposite of original intent. And the result is given perfect expression in the legacy the Zionists have left in their wake.

Ilan Pappe wrote this book because no one else did. His voice of conscience is a testament to the voice of truth and good that refuses to be trammeled by the callous and power-hungry.

Ilan Pappe is (or rather was) a senior lecturer of political science at Haifa University. (He has now taken up a position in exile at Exeter University.) He has written what may prove to be the definitive record of the Caesarean operation by which the State of Israel was born. His book is a celebration of moral courage in that his history of the catastrophe (the "nakba") that befell the Palestinian Arabs, runs entirely counter to the officially propagated mythology most generally embraced by his compatriots.

The British Mandate in Palestine ended in May 1948. Simultaneously, the state of Israel formally declared its independence - but not its borders (a declaration, for which the Palestinians are still waiting.) In fact, Israel had been operating as a state, in all but name, from November 1947, when UN Resolution No 181 declared the intention to partition the country into two states. The UN Resolution that doomed their society, had been passed without any participation being invited from the Palestinian Arabs and in the face of their unanimous rejection.

As the British forces withdrew, the Arab League nations reluctantly decided to send units of their military to the assistance of their Palestinian neighbours. One of the central tenets of Zionist mythology is that this invasion posed a dire threat to the existence of Israel. The myth goes on to maintain that the Palestinians became refugees as a result of their treasonable welcome to these invaders and their obedience to instructions from the Arab High Command to leave their homes in order to provide a clear battlefield on which the Jews could all be slain.

In his first chapters, Pappe reviews the history of the long-proclaimed intention of the Zionist leadership to cleanse Palestine of its Arab population. The central portion of the book describes, in painstaking and painful detail, almost village by village, how, under the leadership of David Ben-Gurion, the Zionists grasped the opportunity presented by the end of WWII to plan and execute that intent.

At the time of the UN Resolution, which gave 55% of the Mandated territory to Israel, the one third of the population who were Jewish (the vast majority of whom were city-based, recent immigrants) owned less than 6% of the land. A year later, the state of Israel held 78% of the land and the vast majority of Palestinians had been uprooted from their homes and dispossessed of their lands.

Pappe documents how, from the time of the November 1947, UN resolution to partition Palestine, until the end of their Mandate in May 1948, the British had stood by while the Jewish terrorist gangs and the official Jewish army, the Hagana (later to merge to become the IDF) cleansed scores of Arab townships, including such major centers as Haifa and Jaffa. During this process, 175,000 to 250,000 Palestinians were evicted from their homes, which were razed by bulldozer and high explosive (not unusually, with their inhabitants still in them.).

The Arab League's intervention, finally decided on at the end of April 1948 and which was designed to strengthen the paltry defences of the remaining Palestinian villages against the Israeli assault, was doomed from the outset. Four months earlier, unbeknown to his Egyptian, Syrian, Iraqi, Lebanese and Saudi allies, King Abdullah of Jordan, whose army, they placed in overall command of their rag-tag, under-equipped and half-hearted rescue mission, had concluded a secret agreement with Ben-Gurion to partition the whole of the mandated territory - Jordan to have the West Bank and East Jerusalem and Israel the remainder. Aside from the hopeless inadequacy of the men, materiel and prior preparation of the Arab League forces, on this basis alone, it could never be argued that the Zionist leaders believed that the Arab League intervention posed an existential threat to their fledgling state.

Though the cleansing ("tihur," meaning "cleansing" or "purifying" was the Hebrew word used in the planning documents) had started informally and almost experimentally, by the time "Plan Dalet" was adopted by the Israeli leadership in March 1948, it had been worked up into a careful and systematised routine of terror and destruction. By the end of 1948, this plan was to result in the obliteration of more than five hundred Palestinian villages and townships, many of them centuries old, and the creation, out of a population of just over one million, of more than 750,000 Palestinian refugees. Pappe does not spare his readers the callously efficient brutality of the inducements to flight offered by the Zionist colonists.

Another central pillar of the Zionist myth is that the land was empty and a desert ("a land without people for a people without land"), which was turned by the zealous Israeli settlers into an ecological wonder of blooming desert. Pappe, in his chapter on "The Memoricide of the Nakba," relentlessly details the manner in which the gardens and orchards of the obliterated villages, created and cultivated over generations, were bulldozed and over-planted with pine trees to form the Jewish National Fund's parks and forests. Those historic Arab place names were effaced from all maps and, in cases where the land was resettled by Jewish Israelis, renamed as "historic Talmudic settlements."

In his final two chapters, Pappe, explains the hopelessness of any attempt at a peace process which ignores the events of 1948. He argues that until the Israeli leadership can face up to and openly acknowledge the crimes detailed in his book, and on which their state was founded, the problem of the refugees will never be resolved. There will be no peace for the garrison of what Pappe terms the "white" Fortress that represents "the last postcolonial enclave in the Arab world."

In the meantime, as Pappe points out in his epilogue, the expansionist ambitions and contempt for international law displayed by the State of Israel, remain unchanged and the Israeli citizens of Palestinian descent and the Palestinians under occupation on the West Bank, have reason to fear yet another overt round of ethnic cleansing from their Jewish overlords.

For those to whose cherished beliefs this review run counter, and, indeed, for any one who wishes to see the implementation of policies that will lead to a peaceful and internationally acceptable Middle Eastern home for Jewish people, Pappe's book is essential reading.