Gaza in Crisis (2010)

Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War against the Palestinians is a 2010 collection of interviews and essays from Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappé that examine Israel's Operation Cast Lead and attempts to place it into the context of Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The book was edited by Frank Barat, who had conducted his first e-mail interview on the subject with Chomsky in 2005, as a result of his joint dialogue with Chomsky and Pappé, previously published in French as Le Champ du possible (Éditions Aden (Belgium), November 2008), which forms the heart of the work.

Contents

Introduction

In his introduction, written in London in July 2010, Barat explains his decision to include a mix of interviews, dialogues and essays to answer to the question, "Why has this conflict lasted so long, who can stop it, and how?"

The Fate of Palestine: An Interview with Noam Chomsky

In this interview, conducted by Frank Barat in 2007, Chomsky highlights possible outcomes of the Palestine situation, the use of boycott and divestment and the important role that the U.S. plays in supporting Israel. He begins by outlining the punishing measures taken by Israel, with the support of the U.S., against the Palestinians following the democratic election of Hamas in January 2006, which he states might result in the death of the nation. The author contends that the most feasible alternative to this scenario is the two-state solution supported by the international community (except for Israel and the U.S.A.), despite his personal preference for a binational state as proposed by Edward Said. The author concludes that the vast majority of US citizens also support a two-state solution and the end of the unprecedented levels of US aid given to Israel, and could, with the necessary education and organisation, become a powerful force for peace.

Clusters of History: US Involvement in the Palestine Question

In this 2007 essay, originally published in Race & Class, Pappé focuses on five distinct clusters of history and how they have influenced US policy on Palestine. Evangelical preachers William Eugene Blackstone and Cyrus Scofield popularised Christian Zionism, which influences Republican Party policy in favour of Israel. The King–Crane Commission led by academics Henry Churchill King and Charles R. Crane propagated a briefly influential Arabist movement within the U.S. State Department. Any political opposition to Israel within the U.S. was however undermined by American politician Fiorello H. LaGuardia, pioneer of identity politics, and Canadian journalist Isaiah L. Kenen, founder of lobby group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The discovery of oil in the Middle East by five American oil companies, nicknamed the Five Sisters, resulted in a military–industrial nexus influential within the Republican Party with a pro-Arab stance, which has been largely sidelined by the Christian Zionists. American peace negotiations, inspired by the realist school of academics Hans Morgenthau and Kenneth Waltz, have condemned all efforts to failure by not taking Palestinian views into consideration. Pappé concludes that the result of the interaction of these clusters is not inevitable U.S. support for Israel and this could be changed in the future.

State of Denial: The Nakbah in Israeli History and Today

In this original essay Pappé seeks to examine Israel's erasure of the crimes of 1948, the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight (known in Arabic as the Nakba), from the collective memory and the importance of this denial. It was, according to the author, a policy of ethnic cleansing, rather than military engagement, which was in operation from 1947 until 1954, under Plan D issued by the Haganah, and that this had been an integral part of Zionism since its formulation in the late 19th century. While this policy has long been denied by Israeli authorities in their efforts to build a 'heroic' narrative for their fledgling nation state, he concludes, it has recently begun to be exposed to, and even accepted and supported by, the general population of the now established country.