Ilan Pappe with MECA Director Barbara Lubin and supporter Hassan Fouda

The Middle East Children’s Alliance recently hosted an event with Israeli anti-Zionist scholar and activist Ilan Pappe. He spoke about “Why Palestine is Still the Issue,” Here are excerpts from his talk. 

Ilan Pappe with MECA Director Barbara Lubin and supporter Hassan Fouda

The Middle East Children’s Alliance recently hosted an event with Israeli anti-Zionist scholar and activist Ilan Pappe. He spoke about “Why Palestine is Still the Issue,” Here are excerpts from his talk. 

Palestine is still the issue because the settler colonialist logic of elimination and dehumanization is still at work daily against the Palestinian people.   And everyone who has experienced settler colonialism in the past, or who thinks about it, can see in Palestine a place where this logic it can be tackled, rejected and replaced by humanization.

Palestine is still the issue because it is connected to Islamophobia. The fear and the hatred of Muslims simply because they are Muslims is the major tool by which Israel associates terrorism with Palestinians to stifle any proper discussion about Israel, Zionism, and Palestine in the U.S. We are witnessing again and again the attempt to associate violence that is carried out by desperate people in Europe with justification for the state violence that Israel exercises against the Palestinians. 

Palestine is still the issue because it is also an issue of social justice.  Struggles for social justice are struggles against doubletalk, against hypocrisy against exceptionalism, against deception. The whole discourse that pretends to improve people’s lives but actually destroys them is exemplified in Palestine on a daily basis. That is why people all over world see their own struggles so strongly connected to the struggle for peace and justice in Palestine.