13 December 2024
Ilan Pappe is an Israeli-born historian, the director of Exeter University’s European Centre for Palestine Studies and co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies. He is the author of more than a dozen books and an internationally recognised authority on Israeli history and the Israel/Palestine conflict. The BBC invited him to contribute to a podcast titled The Conflict which promised to “take a look at what history can teach us about the conflict in the Middle East”. But at the last minute the BBC disinvited him, “due”, it said, “to some unforeseen circumstances.” The podcast was broadcast the next day. Pappe’s place was taken by a BBC correspondent. Despite the aim of examining history, the podcast included not a single professional historian.
Since the BBC has not explained the “unforeseen circumstances” that led it to cancel Pappe’s participation, we can’t be sure what happened. At least not precisely. But this much we do know: First, the BBC since 7 October 2023 has rigidly adhered to the Israeli narrative whereby Hamas attacked Israel out of the blue on 7 October and since then Israel has merely been defending itself against this terrorist group. Contrary to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, there was no background to the Hamas attack: the 8 or 9 military assaults that Israel carried out on Gaza before 2023 in which thousands of Palestinians were killed never happened; nor has Israel systematically imprisoned thousands of Palestinian men, women and children, often without trial; nor has the International Court of Justice issued judgments against Israel since 2004. Second, BBC staff have become so frustrated by the organisation’s one-sided coverage of the conflict that just this month 100 of them wrote to the director-general to warn that its reputation for impartiality was being destroyed. Third, Professor Pappe’s research has exposed many of Israel’s best-kept secrets including its deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population of Palestine in 1947-8 and concurrent war crimes. His publication of documentary proof of these events made him the target of attack in Israel and led him to move to England. Here his work has led British friends of Israel to execrate him.
Did the BBC cave in to pressure from this direction? Or did the pressure come from within the BBC itself? Either way, the BBC has discredited itself and the nation in whose name it broadcasts.
Here is BRICUP’s letter of complaint to the BBC director-general.
To: Director General of the BBC
12 December 2024
Dear Tim Davie
We write to express our dismay at the BBC’s abrupt withdrawal of its invitation to our respected academic colleague Professor Ilan Pappe to contribute to the BBC podcast The Conflict.
This podcast aims to ‘take a look at what history can teach us about the conflict in the Middle East’. We write to you as historians and other academics whose areas of expertise include historical and current developments in Israel, Palestine and the Middle East. Professor Pappe is an esteemed colleague, the author of more than a dozen books on the area, and a highly-regarded historian of the period which saw both the creation of the state of Israel, and also the Nakba in which half of the Palestinian population either fled or were expelled from their homes. This period, along with the Balfour Declaration and the nearly 30-year British mandate over Palestine, was to be the topic of the podcast to which he had been invited to contribute. It is a period whose complexities he is especially well-qualified to explain. However on the day recording had been planned to take place he received the message
that he was disinvited. No reason was offered, just that it was ‘due to some unforeseen circumstances’. That podcast was broadcast the next day, November 30th, without a professional historian – Pappe’s place was taken by ‘a senior BBC correspondent’.
The decision to disinvite Professor Pappe was clearly imposed on the podcast makers and it can be inferred with your approval – indeed quite possibly at your insistence. Professor Pappe is well-known for his critical posture towards the current Israeli government and its assault on Gaza where, plausibly according to the International Court of Justice, it is carrying out genocide. The perception of pro-Israel bias in the BBC’s coverage of the Israel/Palestine nightmare is widespread, not least among the
BBC’s own staff. Earlier this month 100 of your own staff were the latest BBC employees to warn you that the erosion of the BBC’s own editorial standards in reporting on the conflict “has put its impartiality and independence at serious risk”.
We write to say that the BBC owes both Professor Pappe and its own licence-fee payers an apology for the disrespect shown both to him and them, and for the continuing bias in its output.
Yours sincerely
Terry Brotherstone, Research Fellow in History Emeritus, University of Aberdeen
John Chalcraft, Professor of Middle East History and Politics, London School of Economics
James Dickins, Emeritus Professor of Arabic, University of Leeds
Harriet Evans, Visiting Professor in Anthropology, London School of Economics
Sari Hanafi, Professor of Sociology, American University of Beirut
Professor Adam Hanieh, Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter
Robin D. G. Kelley, Professor of History, UCLA
Rashid Khalidi, Professor Emeritus of Modern Arab Studies, Columbia University
Professor Nur Masalha, historian
David Mond, Emeritus Professor of Mathematics, University of Warwick
Professor Karma Nabulsi, Senior Research Fellow, St Edmond Hall, University of Oxford
Professor Jonathan Rosenhead, Chair British Committee for the Universities of Palestine
Raja Shehadeh, lawyer and writer
Professor Avi Shlaim, University of Oxford
Professor Stephen Smith, Emeritus Fellow, All Souls College, University of Oxford
Professor Robert Wintemute, Professor of Human Rights Law, King’s College London
