There is two sides to every story, and sometimes one side is bull shit. Facts are:
Ilan Pappé
Claim:
He was “hounded out of Israel” because no one could refute his research.
Reality:
Pappé wasn’t "hounded" - he left amid backlash because his academic methods were heavily criticised, including cherry-picking sources, misquoting, and inserting ideology into scholarship. Notably, he defended Teddy Katz’s fraudulent thesis claiming a massacre in Tantura - a case which Katz himself admitted in court was based on fabricated quotes. Many Israeli historians (including left-leaning ones) like Benny Morris do refute Pappé, accusing him of distorting evidence to push an anti-Zionist narrative. He wasn’t exiled — he chose to leave and continues to peddle a narrative that casts Zionism as evil and Palestinians as faultless victims, ignoring Arab rejectionism and terrorism entirely. And I think he makes a nice living covering for antisemites.
Norman Finkelstein
Claim:
A fair-minded Jewish academic who simply “realised how awfully Israel treats Palestinians.”
Reality:
Finkelstein is not some neutral observer - he’s a professional provocateur who routinely downplays Hamas terrorism. He’s been accused of antisemitism, not just by the right, but by liberal Jewish groups, for mocking Holocaust remembrance. He’s also been caught making deeply racist comments, including a grotesque letter describing Black neighbours as “apes” - a fact based on court-record evidence. In the particular article I was sorry enough to come across he was making some pseudo intellectual argument about how Black stereotypes were compliments!
Noam Chomsky
Claim:
Tried to reconcile with Israel but found Zionism incompatible.
Reality:
I don't have much of a problem with the guy, beyond the fact that as I said, he's spent decades blaming the US and Israel for virtually every geopolitical problem, while giving authoritarian regimes and terrorist groups a free pass. He sees the world through the typical "west bad" eye glasses that I think i really immature, but it is how most college students see the world. Then they grow up and realise actually America is not the devil.
Avi Shlaim
Claim:
Discovered that the bombs in Iraq that caused the Jewish exodus were planted by Mossad, and names them in Three Worlds.
Reality:
His claim is based on a single claim from an ex-Mossad agent, with no corroboration. I don't believe it is true. He has no evidence. But if it were true, let's think about this...do you think Iraqi Jews left Iraq because..
a) A series of bombs went off that killed 3 - 4 people in 1950 and 1951
or
b) Because they were subjected to one of the worst antisemitic campaigns in modern history over more than a decade including:
- Being stripped of jobs
- Being arrested en masse
- Being tried under martial law for “Zionist ties.”
- Being tortured
- Being fined and imprisoned on flimsy charges .
- that the Bagdad radio literally played Mein Kampf in Arabic every night!
- that an Iraqi Hitler youth had formed where they threw stones at Jews and shouted hatred at them in the street
- Jews were executed in public on bogus charges
- That they were subjected (with no state redress) to one of the worst pogrums in history where over 180 were murdered in their houses, more than 500 Jewish businesses were attacked and some of the most brutal acts in history occurred, including cutting off of women's breasts and parading them through the street
So what do you think? they left because of some bombs that we don't know who set them off? Or they left because of an ongoing state-sponsored, systematic ethnic cleansing under nationalist and extremist influence?
Every serious historian agrees that Jews were fleeing Iraq due to state-sponsored antisemitism, arrests, property seizures, and existential fear. Just this one idiot has come up with an alternative way to blame the Jews for their own ethnic cleansing.
To say Zionists caused the Jewish exodus from Iraq is not only historically false, it’s morally obscene - it absolves Arab regimes of ethnic cleansing and blames Jews for their own dispossession. There is no conclusive evidence that Mossad planted bombs to scare Iraqi Jews into fleeing and even if there were then that would not be why they left.
These authors all present one beautiful prize: A way to say "here's some Jews that are willing to provide stories or ideas which confirm our own antisemitic prejudices". So people love it. They will take any old Quack!
If a series of Black people were to write books on how Black people brought slavery on themselves, or other such ridiculous nonsense, I am sure a bunch of neo Nazis would think they were the wisest and most learned Black people who ever lived!
Their ideas simply do not hold up to scrutiny.