Ilan Pappé’s Bias “in a Class of its Own.”
The scholarship of Israeli academic Ilan Pappé has been widely exposed as warped by ideology; Pappé himself has admitted as much. (See, for example, this overview from CAMERA’s On Campus magazine, or these comments by Benny Morris.)
The winter 2006 Middle East Quarterly includes a review by historian Efraim Karsh of Pappé’s recent book, “A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples” which casts further doubt on Pappé’s credibility:
Publication of A History of Modern Palestine by a prestigious academic press is a sad testament to the pervasive politicization of Middle Eastern studies where the dividing line between academic scholarship and unadulterated propaganda has been blurred, if not erased.
Even by the skewed standards of this field of studies, Pappé’s latest book ranks in a class of its own. Not only does it add no new facts or ideas to the anti-Israel literature, but the sloppiness of its research astounds. It contains countless factual errors and inaccuracies. …
More serious is the book’s consistent resort to factual misrepresentation, distortion, and outright falsehood. Readers are told of events that never happened …. They learn of political decisions that were never made …..
Read the details in the full review.
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