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Introduction

When Noam Chomsky first answered my email in December 2005, I would never have imagined that five years later I would be working on a book with him. Since then, Chomsky has continued to reply to my emails and questions and we have slowly developed a steady “written” relationship.

A few years after that first email, thinking about how to raise awareness and reach a wider audience on the Palestine question, I asked him if he would agree to an interview. He did, and a few months later sent me his answers, which as usual were more detailed and researched than I could have expected.

The interview was well received and published on various Web sites and in periodicals, prompting me to consider the format an excellent way to inform and educate a public that too often has to rely on information from a corporate and profit-driven media system.

The idea of another interview slowly made its way into my head, but this time I wanted something different, something more interactive.

I decided to ask the renowned Israeli historian Ilan Pappé if he would participate in a joint interview/dialogue with Professor Chomsky. Pappé agreed and during the next few months I worked with both of them on various questions and key topics of what is usually referred to as the “Israel-Palestine conflict.”

When that interview came out, probably because it was the first Chomsky-Pappé interview ever conducted, it appeared in even more publications and Web sites than the first one and came to the attention of a Belgian publisher, Gilles Martin, who consequently published the interview as a booklet entitled Le Champ du Possible (Aden Editions, November 2008).

Then came an offer to create an English version of that booklet. But it needed more work. I started to think about what type of book I wanted, what its goal and its substance would be. The last thing I wanted was to publish a book merely for the sake of it. Hundreds of books on the “Israel-Palestine conflict” already exist, some exceptional, so how would this one be different?

To answer this, I asked myself: “Why has this ‘conflict’ lasted for so long, who can stop it, and how?” Ignorance, the people, and by popular resistance and a refusal to remain silent were the first answers that came to mind. I sincerely believe that what is happening in Palestine would never have lasted this long if the public were properly informed about what has really taking place in this part of the Middle East.

Noam, Ilan, and I worked again on the dialogue, now titled “The Ghettoization of Palestine,” gave it more insight, edited some questions, and added new ones. Ilan additionally contributed several articles addressing various crucial aspects of the Israel-Palestine question and Noam reworked his astonishing piece “‘Exterminate All the Brutes’: Gaza 2009.”

Combining interviews and essays was important. On one hand, the interactive joint interview/dialogue form is a means to express and explore researched analysis and opinions in an accessible way. It also offers a more flexible and lively vehicle to share expert knowledge. The joint interview with two of the most respected people in this field of study, one an American professor and one an Israeli historian, could fill in gaps of understanding and reach a wider audience. Both interviews address multiple topics related to the Israel-Palestine question as well as the recent Israeli Army attack on the “Freedom Flotilla” and, I hope, allow readers to draw their own conclusions from two compatible yet different views. On the other hand, the solely authored essays give the book a more in-depth analysis, scrutinizing specific periods and events in history in a new light, challenging even well-versed readers in the process. Selected articles by Ilan Pappé give the necessary historical background that is key to understanding Palestine today.

In this second edition, we have added a very important piece by Ilan called “The Ten Mythologies of Israel.” Ilan wrote this exclusive piece for the New York session of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine, in which he testified as a witness. He addresses key points in this piece and starts to reframe the Palestine question from a Palestinian point of view, dismantling Israeli early propaganda attempts such as the myth of “a land without people for a people without a land.” This piece sets the tone perfectly for the rest of the book.

In chapters two and three, Ilan Pappé traces the historical development of U.S. involvement in the question of Palestine and the importance of Nakbah (“catastrophe” in Arabic) denial for Israel. Understanding the Nakbah is crucial to understanding Palestinian- Israeli history. Chapter four is the updated and superb essay “‘Exterminate All the Brutes’: Gaza 2009” by Chomsky. This groundbreaking piece focuses primarily on the December 2008–January 2009 Israeli assault on Gaza, but also gives a thorough analysis of Israel’s relations with the United States and Europe and the role of social and military resistance in Arab countries.

We return to Pappé in chapters six through nine, where he charts the progress of the movement for one state; puts the idea of a “Jewish and democratic state” into context and perspective in a new piece called “Reframing the Israel-Palestine Conflict”; and focuses on the Israeli Defense Forces’ massacres in Gaza. These articles offer an alternative narrative to that presented by the Israeli government and that I am sure will help people to reframe the “conflict.” The book closes with Chomsky giving us his latest reflections on the “peace” process in an interview I conducted with him in London. I gave a few personalities, including Ken Loach, Alice Walker, Chris Hedges, and John Berger, the opportunity to ask Noam one question each. It is a fitting end to the book that puts Palestine into a much broader context, focusing on our “democracies” in the Western world.

My hope is that this book can be used as a guide in excavating the past for the benefit of a clearer-sighted present and a justice-centered future in which human rights are universal and justice restored. I also hope that, by dismantling some myths about the Palestine question and putting this issue into a much broader and wider context that includes all of us, the book will help to foment the idea of a global struggle, in which Palestine is only one piece of a much bigger issue.

Frank Barat

Brussels, July 2013