Ilan Pappé

Pappé was born in Haifa, Israel, to German-Jewish parents who fled Nazi persecution in the 1930s.

He has written that the expulsions were not decided on an ad hoc basis, as other historians have argued, but constituted the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, in accordance with Plan Dalet, drawn up in 1947 by Israel's future leaders.

His doctoral thesis was titled "British foreign policy towards the Middle East, 1948-1951: Britain and the Arab-Israeli conflict", and this became his first book, Britain and the Arab-Israeli Conflict.

Pappé publicly supported an M.A. thesis by Haifa University student Teddy Katz, which was approved with highest honors, that claimed Israel had committed a massacre in the Palestinian village of Tantura during the war in 1948, based upon interviews with Arab residents of the village and with an Israeli veteran of the operation.

Neither Israeli nor Palestinian historians had previously recorded any such incident, which Meyrav Wurmser described as a "made-up massacre".

In it, former Israeli soldiers admitted that a massacre took place in 1948 at Tantura.

One former combat soldier stated: "They silenced it. The victims of the massacre were buried under what is today the Dor Beach parking lot, in an area measuring 35×4 meters."

Adam Raz commented in Haaretz that there had been a public debate about the issue, with Yoav Gelber trying to discredit Katz's thesis, while Pappé defended the thesis.

Raz said: "With the appearance of the testimony in Schwarz's film, the debate would seem to be decided."

According to Pappé, "the story of Tantura had already been told before, as early as 1950... It appears in the memoirs of a Haifa notable, Muhammad Nimr al-Khatib, who, a few days after the battle, recorded the testimony of a Palestinian."

Ilan Pappé (אילן פפה, ; born 7 November 1954) is an Israeli historian, political scientist and former politician.

He is a professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, director of the university's European Centre for Palestine Studies, and co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies.

Pappé was born in Haifa, Israel.

At the age of 18, he was drafted into the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), serving in the Golan Heights during the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

He graduated from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1978 with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree.

Pappé is one of Israel's New Historians who, since the release of pertinent British and Israeli government documents in the early 1980s, have offered an unconventional view of Israel's creation in 1948, and the corresponding flight and expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians in the same year.

Prior to coming to the UK, he was a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Haifa (1984–2007) and chair of the Emil Touma Institute for Palestinian and Israeli Studies in Haifa (2000–2008).

He then moved to England to study history at the University of Oxford, completing a Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) degree in 1984 under the supervision of Albert Hourani and Roger Owen.

Pappé was a senior lecturer at the Middle Eastern History Department and the Political Science Department of the University of Haifa between 1984 and 2006.

He was the Academic Director of the Research Institute for Peace at Givat Haviva from 1993 to 2000, and chair of the Emil Touma Institute for Palestinian Studies.

He was also a leading member of Hadash, and was a candidate on the party list in the 1996 and 1999 Knesset elections.

In December 2000, Katz was sued for libel by veterans of the Alexandroni Brigade and after the testimony was heard, he retracted his allegations about the massacre.

Twelve hours later, he retracted his retraction.

During the trial, lawyers for the veterans pointed to what they said were discrepancies between the taped interviews Katz conducted and descriptions in Katz's thesis.

Katz revised his thesis, and, following the trial, the university appointed a committee to examine it.

After reviewing the taped interviews and finding discrepancies between them and what was written in the thesis, Katz was allowed to submit a revised thesis.

Pappé continues to defend both Katz and his thesis.

Tom Segev and others argued that there is merit or some truth in what Katz described.

According to the Israeli New Historian Benny Morris: "There is no unequivocal proof of a large-scale massacre at Tantura, but war crimes were perpetrated there."

In January 2022, Alon Schwarz's film Tantura was shown at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival World Cinema Documentary Competition.

In a 2004 interview, Pappé said "The aim has always been, and it still remains, to have as much of Palestine as possible with as few Palestinians in it as possible."

He blames the creation of Israel for the lack of peace in the Middle East, arguing that Zionism is more dangerous than Islamic militancy, and has called for an international boycott of Israeli academics.

Pappé supports the one-state solution, which envisages a unitary state for Palestinians and Israelis.

His work has been both supported and criticized by other historians.

Pappé left Israel in 2007 to take up his appointment in Exeter, after his endorsement of the boycott of Israeli universities led the president of the University of Haifa to call for his resignation.

Pappé said that he found it "increasingly difficult to live in Israel" with his "unwelcome views and convictions."

In a Qatari newspaper interview explaining his decision, he said: "I was boycotted in my university and there had been attempts to expel me from my job. I am getting threatening calls from people every day. I am not being viewed as a threat to the Israeli society but my people think that I am either insane or my views are irrelevant. Many Israelis also believe that I am working as a mercenary for the Arabs."

Before he left Israel in 2008, he had been condemned in the Knesset, Israel's parliament; a minister of education had called for him to be sacked; his photograph had appeared in a newspaper at the centre of a target; and he had received several death threats.

He joined Exeter as Professor of History, and has been director of its European Centre for Palestine Studies since 2009.

He is the author of Ten Myths About Israel (2017), The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006), The Modern Middle East (2005), A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples (2003), and Britain and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (1988).