By International Workers’ Unity – Fourth International
17/05/2024. Ilan Pappé is a renowned Israeli historian, who has always denounced the implantation of Israel on Palestinian land by expelling its original population. For this reason he has been persecuted and has been living in the United Kingdom for years. Now he has been denouncing the genocide in Gaza and supports the Palestinian cause and resistance to Zionism. On May 13, upon his arrival at the airport in Detroit, USA, he was detained and interrogated by the FBI.
As he reported, the interrogation and detention by the FBI agents was aimed at framing a relationship with Hamas and the Palestinian resistance. “I arrived Monday at the Detroit airport and the FBI took me in for a two-hour investigation, and my phone was also taken. Am I a Hamas supporter? Do I regard the Israeli actions in Gaza a genocide? What is the solution to the “conflict” (seriously this what they asked!) Who are my Arab and Muslim friends in America… What kind of relationship [do] I have with them? They had [a] long phone conversation with someone, the Israelis? and after copying everything on my phone allowed me to enter”, the historian commented on Facebook on May 15.
The interrogation and investigation of Ilan Pappé’s private communications are reprehensible and represent nothing more than the repressive policy of U.S. imperialism. “The good news is—actions like this by the USA or European countries taken under pressure from the pro-Israeli lobby or Israel itself smell of sheer panic and desperation in reaction to Israel’s becoming very soon a pariah state, with all the implications of such a status,” Pappé stated.
From the IWU-FI we stand in solidarity with Ilan Pappé and repudiate this arrest and interrogation against the historian and against all the fighters around the world who are mobilizing in support of the Palestinian resistance.
76 years after the Nakba, the state of Israel is preparing its military intervention on Rafah, putting at risk the lives of the 1.5 million Palestinians living in the city. We denounce Israel as genocidal and we raise all over the world the banner for a unique, secular, democratic and non-racist Palestine that allows the return of all Palestinians to their lands. No to the invasion of Rafah! Israel out of Palestine! From the river to the sea, Palestine will win!