Colonial Hangover

For more than thirty years, Ilan Pappé has dedicated his work to dismantling Israel’s narrative. This upcoming October his latest book, The End of Israel, will be published in Italy. 

Pappé sees in the monstruos crimes of Israel in Gaza during the last two years the beginning of a new phase. "When a genocide happens", he says, "you don’t just go on. We’ve already seen that with Nazi Germany". 

It’s important, when considering what could happen in the future, to look at the very idea of a Jewish State. Israel was born out of Europe’s inability to deal with the Jewish matter, and establishing a Jewish State in Palestine could only happen through violence. But why Palestine?

“It’s very simple. For Evangelical Christians, if Jews go to Palestine, Jesus comes back. For Great Britain, if Jews go to Palestine, Palestine becomes British".

What is happening at the moment is in continuity with an historical process that began in 1882 and revealed its violence already in 1926, with the first ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Jewish settlers with the support of Britain. For one hundred years Palestinians have lived side by side with the danger of being expelled from their homeland. 

Today, one of the most important supporters of the Israeli project is the US. Both countries have been founded on colonialism and genocide, and if they really reckoned with this they would lose their reason of existence, continues Pappé. But this is bigger than the US. Many other countries were created by Europeans through oppression, destruction, and genocide.

The colonial history of the world is connected with what's happening today. For Pappé, the West can’t just pretend to forget what it has done and pretend that there will be no consequences. But how many Italians know about the genocide in Libya? How many Dutch know of the genocide in Indonesia? How many Belgians know of the genocide in Congo? It goes beyond amnesia, and Pappé is staunch: “I call it colonial hangover!”.