UPDATE Scroll down for Pappe's explanation

The National Zeitung is a neo-Nazi paper in Germany. It has published this interview with Ilan Pappe. Ilan Pappe is a pro-boycott and anti-Zionist Israeli Jew. He is often held up by the boycott movement and the anti-Zionist movement as a model for Israelis and Jews to follow.

If Pappe knew that he was giving an interview to a neo-Nazi paper then this fact tells us something important about Ilan Pappe.

If he didn't know he was giving an interview to a neo-Nazi paper then it still raises important questions:

1. Why would a neo-Nazi paper be so interested in Pappe's work? What had Pappe failed to do to make his work useless to Jew-haters? (see Tony Judt on the Weberian question of political responsibility)

2. Why did the nature of the questions not warn him that this was not a standard Israel-hating interview of the type that Pappe consciously encourages? (use google translate to get some idea of the weirdness of the questions)

3. Why was Pappe not more careful after having followed British antisemites David Irving and Nick Griffin as the after-dinner cabaret at the Oxford Union?

Pappe's one-sided and false picture of the Israel/Palestine conflict creates a commonsense notion of Jews (those who don't define themselves as anti-Zionist) as blood-thirsty, violent, imperialist, ethnic cleansing, genocidal, child-killing oppressors. Pappe offers a gift to neo-Nazi antisemites. They are happy to receive it. He should stop helping antisemites and he should stop legitimizing antisemitic ways of thinking.

This story was broken by the fantastic, and beautifully re-launched Harry's Place.

UPDATE Whoops, it was a mistake! Oh well that's OK then, could happen to anyone. Except it doesn't happen to anyone, does it? It happens to anti-Zionists rather alot. Which is a strange coincidence, because antizionism has no connection whatever to antisemitism, does it?

It was coincidence when it happened to the AAUP as they were preparing to sit down with the boycott campaign in an Italian villa.

It was coincidence when Mearsheimer and Walt, as well as Tony Judt were feted by former leader of the KKK, David Duke.

It was a coincidence when George Galloway ended up in the same Syrian TV studio as David Duke, arguing the same thing; and it was coincidence when Joseph Massad uses the same term "Jewish Supremacism" to describe Zionism.

It was coincidence when Mick Napier of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign relied on neo-Nazi websites to construct an apologia for the murder of Yeshiva boys in Jerusalem.

It was coincidence when his colleague John Wight linked to a Nazi website from Engage.

All these links between Nazis and antizionists were coincidence because there is no connection between Jew-hatred and Israel hatred.

Pappe writes on his website:

Dear Friends,

As a point of clarification, it came to my notice that among the
many interviews I gave while being in Germany one of them was
copied to the National Zeitung. Had I known that I would appear
in this newspaper, I would have not agreed to do that. I do not
blame that paper, but myself from not inquiring to whom I am
giving press conferences and interviews. I would like to stress
that my ideology and moral stance are in total contradiction to
what this newspaper represent and the unfortunate appearance in
it has nothing to associate myself or the cause of Palestine with
the paper and the political party behind it.

Yours faithfully,

Professor Ilan Pappe
Chair
Department of History
University of Exeter
UK

If anybody can catch me linking to Nazi websites by mistake, or being feted by antisemites, or other racists, I'll give them £100. It doesn't happen to me because what I write doesn't have any connection to what antisemites write. - DH