Ilan Pappé (Hebrew: אילן פפה [iˈlan paˈpe]; born 7 November 1954) is an Israeli historian, political scientist, and former politician.

[4] Pappé is one of Israel's New Historians; since the release of pertinent British and Israeli government documents in the early 1980s, he has written extensively on the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight.

Pappé's work makes the case that the expulsions were the result of a systematic ethnic cleansing, for which Plan Dalet served as a blueprint.

[13] He then moved to England to study history at the University of Oxford, completing a Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) degree in 1984 under the supervision of British historians Albert Hourani and Roger Owen.

The AUT can choose to stand by and do nothing, or to be part of a historical movement similar to the anti-apartheid campaign against the white supremacist regime in South Africa.

This cannot be done from within, as any reference in the Israeli press to expulsion, massacre or destruction in 1948 is usually denied and attributed to self hate and service to the enemy in times of war.

[32] In August 2015, Pappé was a signatory to a letter criticising The Jewish Chronicle's reporting of Jeremy Corbyn's association with alleged antisemites.

[34] During the 2023- Israel-Hamas war, Pappé reaffirmed his opposition to Zionism, writing that "this violence is not a new phenomenon," and called for a "de-zionised, liberated and democratic Palestine from the river to the sea.

[36] Pappé's comments following the 7 October Hamas-led attack on Israel in 2023 drew criticism from The Telegraph and parts of the student body at the University of Exeter, namely in stating he had admiration for Hamas militants' courage and ability to take over military bases in Israel and rejected the claim that Hamas is a terrorist organisation, although he condemned the attack.

[39] In an op-ed to Al-Jazeera on 7 October 2024, Pappé argued that terms like "Iran-backed terrorist group Hamas" or "peace process," commonly used by Western and U.S. media, are misleading.

He mentioned that "mainstream academia and media still refuse to define the Zionist project as a colonial, or as it is referred to more accurately a settler-colonial project", and further contended that the original Zionist vision "of planting a European Jewish state at the heart of the Arab world through the dispossession of the Palestinians was illogical, immoral and impractical from the onset.

"[40] Israeli scholar Emmanuel Sivan [he], reviewing Pappé's 2003 political biography of the al-Husayni family, praised the book's treatment of the development of Palestinian nationalism and that of Haj Amin's exile in Germany, but criticised the view taken on the mufti's visit to the German consul and the scant attention given to Faisal Husseini.

[41] In a review for Arab Studies Quarterly, Seif Da'Na described Pappé's 2006 book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine as a "highly documented narrative of the events" surrounding the Nakba and an example of "serious scholarship that only a virtuoso historiographer could produce".

[42] Arab Studies Quarterly also praised Pappé's 2017 book Ten Myths About Israel, describing it as "well-documented" and an "invaluable and courageous contribution" from an "insightful" historian.

[44] However, Singh did feel that the book assumes the reader has prior knowledge of the Arab-Israeli conflict and thus may be difficult to follow for "those who are not conversant with the facts".

[46] Those critical of his work include Benny Morris,[47][48] Efraim Karsh, and activist Herbert London as well as professors Daniel Gutwein [he][49][50] and Yossi Ben-Artzi[51] from Haifa University.

Morris, in particular, described some of Pappé's writing as "complete fabrication"[47] due to alleged factual errors, and called him "at best...one of the world's sloppiest historians; at worst, one of the most dishonest".