John Pilger is being honored this month by the British Film Institute for his more than 60 extraordinary documentaries. We present here one on Palestine followed by CN’s 2021 discussion with Pilger and historian Ilan Pappé.
We continue our coverage of the British Film Institute’s tribute this month to the late John Pilger, who was among the most important journalistic voices in the West on the Palestinian question. Consortium News screened his essential documentary Palestine Is Still the Issue in July 2021 followed by a discussion with John and the great Israeli historian Ilan Pappé.
John Pilger died on Dec. 30, 2023 in the midst of Israel’s genocide against Gaza, his profound warnings having been ignored about where the crisis was headed. Today we replay the entire film Palestine Is Still the Issue and the discussion that followed between Pilger and Pappé, in 2021.
Acclaimed journalist and filmmaker John Pilger discussed the changes that had 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 here on Vimeo. 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 genocide begun in 2023.
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 terrible 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.
John Pilger in his film, Palestine Is Still the Issue (johnpilger,.com)
While Pilger is invariably reliable on the Middle East he has not been reliable on Australia and Aboriginal issues. His film Utopia was propaganda which offended the people who participated in it. No-one gets it all right and we can only hope that Pilger is feted for his reliable work and not the confections and misinformation he promoted in regard to his birthplace, a country where he did not live for most of his life and of which, clearly, he was in great ignorance. Whatever was at work when Pilger turned his eyes to Australia, where he had not even lived for more than half a century, it was not professional journalism.
Pilger lived half the year in London and half in Sydney, so that is incorrect that he did not live in Australia for half a century. Anyone who reads A Secret Country would never conclude that John Pilger was in “great ignorance” about Australia and that he “promoted” “misinformation” and “confections” about his birthplace. And where is the evidence that he offended the people who participated in Utopia?