Thursday, November 18, 2010

Book review: An Israeli academic's struggle against McCarthyism


Raymond Deane, The Electronic Intifada, 17 November 2010

"The Israeli historian Ilan Pappé's new memoir Out of the Frame (Pluto Press, London and New York, 2010) is subtitled "The Struggle for Academic Freedom in Israel." This manages to link Pappé's personal struggle against Israeli McCarthyism with a broader struggle for human and political rights of which "academic freedom" is merely one aspect.....

Nonetheless, this book makes riveting reading. Pappé refers to his "modest sense of achievement in that many of my Palestinian friends mourned my departure [from Israel], and kindly bestowed on me gifts -- that I will bring back when I return -- and honors that I do not deserve" (166). Readers of Out of the Frame will be convinced that he fully deserves such honors, and that if he does one day return to Israel, he will have contributed much towards making it a place worth returning to."

No comments: