Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Ilan Pappe, one of the few Israeli academics I hold in great esteem.

Posted by Maysaloon at 12:19 pm

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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

ok this guy is a must, damn, so much to read!!

3:15 pm
infinit reality said...

wassim thanks for sharing this web site, it is amazing....

6:59 pm
Maysaloon said...

I remember the first time I saw him at a talk he gave in SOAS. 7:30 in the morning on a Saturday waiting to get in because I couldn't be bothered to pre-book the tickets so I was hoping to get in on a cancellation. He sat next to me with a friend of his on the bench outside and started speaking Hebrew.

I have to admit I had never heard anybody speak Hebrew full on in person before and remembered being a bit uncomfortable, I had no idea who he was at the time! His speeches were fantastic and he's quite a cool guy with a good sense of humour. Excellent mind!

8:51 pm
Yazan said...

Waseem
I had Ilan Pappe in a discussion forum for a couple of times last month, and I gotta say I wasnt really impressed. Nor by his understanding of the middle east, and definitley not by the many generalizations he made about a bunch of people... I definitley admire the courage of jewish scholar admitting to ethnic cleansing in palestine but that doesnt mean that he hasnt made so many academic disaster/errors in the span of 4 hours... my friend who is Druze/march 14 fanatic had to stop him on his toes when he started talking about the shia in lebanon with such a disgustingly racist way.

we probably had different experiences with the guy, but i tell u, mine was not that impressive.

7:14 am
Maysaloon said...

Hi Yazan,
I think we've had very different experiences based on that description. I have read his book on the History of Modern Palestine: One Land two peoples and he does bring a refreshing insight into the problems and their causes. Having said that, he is primarily a historian, not an analyst.

1:37 pm

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