ABSTRACT
In May 2012, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) hosted Ilan Pappé, an Israeli new historian, as part of his Canadian speaking tour. His talk focused on ‘The False Paradigm of Peace: Revisiting the Palestine Question’. In introducing the ten most salient mythologies underpinning Zionist/Israeli discourse and its ‘regime of truth’, Pappé made the following claim about conflict resolution:
Any attempt to solve a conf lict has to touch upon the very core of this conf lict and the core more often than not lies in its history. A distorted or manipulated history can explain quite well a failure to end a conf lict whereas a truthful and comprehensive look at the past can facilitate a lasting peace and solution. A distorted history can in fact do more harm, as the particular case study of Israel and Palestine shows: it can protect oppression, colonization and occupation.
