Argument about the foundation of state of Israel 'unfounded' 

Victoria White’s inflammatory column ‘We are washing our hands of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians (July 31), uses the revisionist interpretation of Ilan Pappe to depict the founding of Israel in 1948 as an imposed Nakba (catastrophe) on the indigenous Palestinian Arabs of the era.

She dismisses the work of empirical historians who treat the foundation of the state in an objective manner, by subtly accusing them of supporting the “founding lies” of Israel.

No further reference is made to exactly what lies these are, so one must presume she is referring to the tragedy of the Holocaust. Yet if this is so, what is wrong with that? Our State was founded in large part on the memory of a Famine which was depicted by Irish politicians and academics as a deliberate withering of the population by the British. This continues to the present day, with works like Tim Pat Coogan’s The Famine Plot.

However, since the 1960s, Irish revisionists like Cormac Brady, Christine Kineally, and Gerard MacAtasney have challenged this once-accepted orthodoxy to impart a far more nuanced interpretation of the prevailing political and social forces. Yet none of these eminent professional historians dismissed the possibility that the nascent Irish State’s use of the Famine was a founding lie, instead, and unlike Pappe, they accept it as a valid foundational tool of nascent state building. Why therefore, does White not afford Israel the same leeway?

As a historian, I find her over-reliance on one specific work, Pappe’s The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, simplistic, there is no attempt to cross-reference his sources thus, her argument is inherently a weak one. Marginalising Israel does not help the work of the expert conflict resolutionists who are diligently working behind the scenes. Their job is difficult enough without having to deflect the highly emotive rhetoric of individuals like White, success will come only if a reasoned and objective approach is initiated, one which is mature enough to admit the wrongs committed by both sides.

Dr Kevin McCarthy

Seán Hales Terrace

Kinsale

Co Cork