What happened to the Palestinians when Israel declared its independence in 1948?
Was it ethnic cleansing? Chaos? Legitimate Jewish self-defense?
Prof. Ilan Pappe is perhaps the most contentious Israeli historian of this question.
Decidedly left-wing in his outlook, Pappe is both an historian, and a social activist. He's perhaps most famous for his book "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine," in which he lays out a case that the war for the creation of Israel in 1948 is best understood as an ethnic cleansing of the native Palestinian population by primarily European Jews.
Unsurprisingly, Pappe's scholarship is widely derided in Israel. Yet his work is often celebrated by many pro-Palestinian activists in the Middle East and abroad.
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