Israeli historian Ilan Pappé and journalist John Pilger joined CN Live! in July 2021 to discuss the Palestinian conflict and Pilger’s film Palestine Is Still the Issue, shown here in its entirety.
Acclaimed journalist and filmmaker John Pilger discussed the changes that have come over Palestine since the making of his film Palestine Is Still the Issue, released in 1974 and updated in 2002.
A screening of the full documentary is shown before the discussion. Pilger gave Consortium News permission to show the entire film, which is on johnpilger.com, and he then appeared on the show for an hour in July 2021 to talk about it.
The Show
The episode is about the past two decades that have seen an extreme turn to the right in Israeli politics with grave consequences for Palestine and its quest for independence, including four major Israeli attacks against Gaza before the 2023 conflict.
Pilger and Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, who appeared in the 2002 film, discussed the worsening situation over the decades for Palestinians and where the future of Palestine and Israel is headed, presaging today’s events.
Pappé is the author of many books, including The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, in which he documents that ethnic cleansing was a long-standing Zionist goal that was planned in detail by Ben-Gurion in the Red House headquarters outside Tel Aviv and included a much greater number of atrocities against Palestinians in the establishment of Israel in the late 1940s than Western establishments acknowledge.
Pappé says it was the start of a process of ethnic cleansing that continues until today.
About the book, Publisher’s Weekly wrote:
“Denied for almost six decades, had it happened today it could only have been called ‘ethnic cleansing.’ Decisively debunking the myth that the Palestinian population left of their own accord in the course of this war, Ilan Pappé offers impressive archival evidence to demonstrate that, from its very inception, a central plank in Israel’s founding ideology was the forcible removal of the indigenous population. Indispensable for anyone interested in the current crisis in the Middle East.”
Produced by Cathy Vogan, with hosts Elizabeth Vos and Joe Lauria.
YouTube Blocks It
In July 2021, YouTube stopped the film after 16 minutes claiming that it was “Spam or deceptive practices.”
YouTube then claimed a copyright violation.
It was the second time YouTube has taken down an episode of CN Live! The first time was in February 2021, when, again without explanation, it removed an interview with journalist Greg Palast about voter suppression in the Georgia Senate run-off race.
John Pilger in his film, Palestine Is Still the Issue (johnpilger,.com)
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Amazing documentary, powerful and hard to watch.
I’m so angry now it’s hard to concentrate on my day job.
One thing I didn’t understand was the answer J. Pilger gave when asked why he no longer believes in a two-state solution.
Can somebody please summarize that? Thank you!
If you believe that Allah will reward you for the unspeakable atrocities you have done to the women you’ve captured, think about Umm al-Mu’minin, the ‘Mother of the Believers’. You’ve betrayed your faith. The same judgment applies to the arrogant oppressors who incite such an insurrection and are praying to Jehovah for forgiveness. They too will carry the burden of guilt to their graves.
Excellent documentary! I saw this a number of years ago – I recall John Pilger being interviewed by Dennis Bernstein on KPFA’s Flashpoints show and I was able to watch it online.
The Techno-Totalitarian monopolies like YT/Google should be held accountable for their authoritarian censorship attempts, and attacks on journalism and free speech. Since we know from Assange and Snowden that BigTech work with “the intelligence community”, that’s not likely. It is interesting that the CIA openly boasts on its own website that they have people in journalism, academia, tech etc. The merger of state and corporate power into one – sickening and frightening at the same time. Rock On CN!
A heart wrenching documentary. Thankyou CN for screening this again. As for the discussion afterwards, it was interesting to hear Mr. Pilger say this in response to Mr. Pappé’s observation/analogy to Western power as a ship: “Those plates are shifting and that ship called Western power could be sailing into rough seas, uh, not in our lifetimes, but certainly coming up”.
Well here we are, still our lifetimes and look what is happening. It’s like the climate chaos. Things which were predicted far into the future, are manifesting themselves now.
Today, the situation worsens. Yet, in a year nobody in the rest of the world, except Palestinians and a minority of Israeli, will remember this skirmish. Everybody will by then be focused in the final days of the American election and, possibly, the severe social and economic unrest that the United States will be undergoing.