Review of Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic by Ilan Pappé (Oneworld, 2024)
Last June, Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, widely known for his seminal work on the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, published an important, 600-page work on the Israel lobby, Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic. But the book has gone largely unnoticed. Pappé himself has faced significant mistreatment: he was detained last May by the Department of Homeland Security on a visit to the United States and, in December, was booted off a BBC podcast about the Middle East.
At a minimum, we owe it to the Palestinian people — who have suffered through an unconscionable genocidal assault — to engage with Pappé’s insights into the Zionist movement’s institutionalized decades-long effort to sweep what has happened to the Palestinians under the rug.
The Zionists, as Pappé sees it, face a profound moral dilemma. While they have succeeded in establishing a powerful settler-colonial state on historic Palestine, the project remains haunted by its origins and ongoing consequences. The resistance of the Palestinian people ensures that the narrative of dispossession cannot be fully erased. As Pappé puts it, “The very fierce and at times vicious lobbying is because those directing and operating it know that the whole project they are protecting stands on very questionable moral ground.” If Sigmund Freud — who himself expressed ambivalence about Zionism — had read Pappé’s book, he might have interpreted the Zionist lobby’s attacks on its detractors as the product of unconscious guilt.
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Auteur: Ted Steinberg
