Renowned Israeli historian, Professor Ilan Pappé, was detained and interrogated on Monday at Detroit airport, in the US state of Michigan.
In a Facebook post on Wednesday, Pappé said that he was “taken for a two hours investigation by the FBI” and that his “phone was taken as well.”
“Am I a Hamas supporter? do I regard the Israeli actions in Gaza a genocide? what is the solution to the ‘conflict’ (seriously this what they asked!),” the post continued.
Pappé was also asked who were his “Arab and Muslim friends in America… how long do I know them, what kind of relationship I have with them.”
“They had long phone conversation with someone, the Israelis?, and after copying everything on my phone allowed me to enter,” the post added.
According to the anti-Zionist author and professor, this is a reflection “of sheer panic and desperation in reaction to Israel’s becoming very soon a pariah state with all the implications of such a status.”
Pappé is a professor at the University of Exeter. He was formerly a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Haifa.
He is the author of many books, including The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, The Modern Middle East, A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples, and Ten Myths about Israel.
Pappé is the co-editor, with Palestinian historian, Dr. Ramzy Baroud of ‘Our Vision for Liberation’.
Modern-Day Book Burning – Ilan Pappé Speaks out against French Censorship of His Work
Pappé is also a regular contributor to the Palestine Chronicle. In one of his latest articles, entitled ‘A Wall and a Watchtower: Why is Israel Failing?’, he wrote:
“Why do so many supporters of Israel and the Israeli Jews themselves believe that this is a sustainable project in the 21st century?
“The truth is, it is not sustainable.
“The problem is that its disintegration could be a long process and a very bloody one, whose principal victims would be the Palestinians.”
For more of Pappé’s writing in the Palestine Chronicle, click here.
Our Vision for Liberation: A Cause with a Future – Book Review
(The Palestine Chronicle)
Well past time for the FBI to get a clue. Part of the dehumanization of Palestinians and the stereotyping of Muslims, Arabs and particularly Palestinians as somehow inherently terrorist – which happens to be the same type of stereotyping that killed so many European Jews during the Holocaust. (European Jews were stereotyped as socialists and communists, when they were as mixed a bag as anyone else.)