Ten myths about Israel
By Ilan Pappe
Verso, 2017
192pp
Despite Israel almost completely destroying Gaza and killing record numbers of Palestinians in the West Bank, it has faced little condemnation from Western leaders. In some part, this because Western political elites and mainstream media uncritically accept Zionist myths as the justification for Israel’s ongoing colonisation and genocide.
In his 2017 book, 10 Myths about Israel, Israeli historian Ilan Pappe draws on historical works to counter common myths about Israel’s foundation and actions since the late 19th century.
While many readers may already be familiar with the topics Pappe explores, the book is nevertheless a crucial resource.
“As long as these distortions and inherited assumptions are not questioned, they will continue to provide an immunity shield for the present inhuman regime in the land of Palestine,” writes Pappe.
1. Palestine was an empty land
Zionist mythology posits that prior to colonisation, Palestine was a sparsely populated wasteland. This is summed up in the slogan, “A land without people, for a people without land.”
This is debunked by Pappe, who recounts that early delegations sent to Palestine from Europe by Zionist organisations in the late 19th century reported back that “the bride is beautiful, but she is married to another man”.
Pappe notes that the Zionist narrative still taught in schools and propagated in the media claims that the population was “mainly Jewish, [and that] the commercial lifeblood of the region was concentrated in the Jewish communities”.
However, under Ottoman rule, Palestine was inhabited mostly by Sunni Muslims (about 87%), with Jewish people making up 2–5%. Even by the end of the 19th century, only a small percentage of the population was Jewish.
2. The Jews were a people without land
The first Zionists were Christians who adopted the view that Jewish people must “return” to the “holy land” of Palestine to fulfil biblical prophecies. It wasn’t until the British elite — motivated by longstanding antisemitism and by their own imperial interests — began actively supporting Jewish settlement in Palestine that the idea gained traction.
British interests coincided with the emergence of Jewish Zionism in Europe that began advocating for the settling of Palestine. The merging of the two interests was manifested in the 1917 Balfour Declaration.
At the time, however, “Jews and the world at large did not seem to be convinced that the Jews were a people without land,” writes Pappe.
3. Zionism is Judaism
Zionism was born out of two impulses, writes Pappe. One was the desire for “safety within a society that refused to integrate Jews as equals”. The other was a “wish to emulate other new national movements mushrooming in Europe at the time”.
Eighteenth-century Zionists sought to redefine Judaism as a national and political movement, and stressed the need to colonise Palestine. This was widely rejected by Orthodox Jewish communities, Reformists and secular Jews alike at the time.
But a powerful group of rabbis were instrumental in developing the idea that colonising Palestine was a religious duty. Ever since, Israeli leaders have used the biblical references to Israel as justification for the ongoing dispossession of Palestinians.
Since its inception in the mid-19th century, Zionism has been but one expression of diverse Jewish cultural life, writes Pappe. However, Zionists have sought to restrict the expression of Judaism to a single, narrow identity.
4. Zionism is not colonialism
Western settler-colonialism was motivated by a desire for more territory, justified as a religious right and carried out by destroying the Indigenous populations. The foundation of Israel was no different: Zionist leaders asserted their religious duty to colonise Palestine, while officially downplaying the existence of an Indigenous population.
According to the Israeli narrative, Palestinian resistance is not an anti-colonial struggle, but violence that has always been motivated by hatred for Jews. But Pappe draws on the diaries of early Jewish settlers that describe being well-received, offered shelter and even taught how to cultivate the land. Widespread resistance didn’t begin until the nature of the Zionist settler-colonial project became clear.
5. Palestinians voluntarily left in 1948
David Ben-Gurion, Zionist leader and later Israeli prime minister, was unequivocal when he said in 1937: “With compulsory transfer we would have a vast area for settlement … I don’t see anything immoral in it.”
After the British announced their decision in 1947 to leave Palestine, Zionists developed Plan Dalet for the widespread expulsion of Palestinians.
As the British withdrew in 1948, Jewish military forces followed in their wake, implementing Plan Dalet to expel Palestinian communities. Tactics included the “destruction of villages” and “mounting search and control operations”, with further instructions in the event of resistance.
The official Israeli line is that Arab and Palestinian leaders told Palestinians to leave before the Arab armies invaded and expelled the Jewish people, after which they could return. Pappe cites the various works undertaken by Israeli journalists and historians disprove these claims.
“The war was initiated by Israel in order to secure the historical opportunity to expel the Palestinians,” writes Pappe.
6. June 1967 was a war of ‘no choice’
Israel claims that in June 1967, it acted in self-defence in response to Egypt’s military build-up in the Sinai Peninsula by invading the peninsula and “temporarily” occupying Gaza and the West Bank.
But even former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin admitted in 1982 that “In June 1967, we again had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that [Egyptian President Gamal Abdel] Nasser was really about to attack us … We decided to attack him.”
June 1967 fulfilled the Zionist goals of annexing the West Bank and seizing control of Gaza, writes Pappe, under the guise of a “temporary” military occupation that has remained since.
7. Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East
Israeli leaders often liken the Zionist state as the “forward post of Europe, and the fence separating [the West] from the barbarians”, to quote former Israeli MP Avraham Burg.
Pappe points to the numerous massacres and widespread imprisonment of Palestinians without trial, and the daily humiliation and harassment of Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli military, as examples of the myth of Israeli “democracy”.
He cites United Nations and Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem reports detailing Israeli torture methods, including beatings, chaining prisoners to doors for hours on end, pulling fingers apart and twisting testicles.
Pappe provides examples of the lack of democracy such as the law that grants Israeli citizenship to any Jew, which is “accompanied by a total rejection of the Palestinian right of return”.
8. Oslo process
Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) signed the Oslo Accords in September 1993, which, on paper, saw the PLO recognise the state of Israel. In turn, Israel recognised the PLO as the representative of Palestinians, but not Palestine as a state.
Two Israeli-propagated myths debunked by Pappe are that the accords were a genuine peace process, and that PLO leader Yasser Arafat intentionally destroyed it by later instigating the Second Intifada against Israel.
Pappe summarises the context leading up the accords, the process and contents of the agreement that made it “irrelevant as a peace process”, namely the exclusion of the Palestinian right of return and the reduction of land considered as Palestine to just the West Bank and Gaza.
9. Gaza
Pappe analyses three myths about Gaza: Hamas is a terrorist organisation; Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 was a gesture of peace and reconciliation, which was met with hostility and violence; and Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza since 2006 is defensive.
The Hamas movement reflects “a complex local reaction to the harsh realities of occupation”, writes Pappe. While ideologically Hamas does not necessarily represent a progressive force, its armed resistance is a legitimate struggle to free Palestinians from colonial domination.
While the official Israeli narrative is that their withdrawal from Gaza was part of a peace plan, Pappe details how “the decision was part of a strategy intended to strengthen Israel’s hold over the West Bank and to turn the Gaza Strip into a mega-prison that could be guarded and monitored from the outside”.
Israel’s blockade to “keep the Gazan economy on the brink of collapse”, according to Israeli officials, the constant assaults on Gaza and massively disproportionate response to Palestinian resistance represent a policy of “incremental genocide”, writes Pappe. The targeted destruction of hospitals, schools and mosques since October 7 last year could never be considered a policy of self-defence.
10. Two-state solution
Pappe calls the two-state solution an “Israeli invention” and “partition under a different wording”.
“It is unthinkable that a national struggle for liberation … might end with conditional autonomous rule over just 20 percent of the homeland.”
Israel’s latest attempts to destroy Gaza — killing more than 42,000 people, mostly women and children, and displacing about 1.9 million — demonstrate its leaders’ lack of interest in a two-state solution. The Israeli government even released plans in May for the “redevelopment” of Gaza into a trading hub.