Does Ilan Pappé Support Israel?

Maya Mizrachi Feb 26, 2025 Updated Jul 27, 2026 3 min read

Short answer: As of July 2026, Ilan Pappe does not support Israel as a Jewish or Zionist state. He is an Israeli-British historian, born in Haifa in 1954 to German-Jewish parents who fled Nazi persecution, who has spent nearly two decades as one of the world's most prominent anti-Zionist voices. He calls the 1948 Palestinian displacement "ethnic cleansing," rejects the two-state solution, advocates for a single binational state, and is an active leader of the academic Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

What Ilan Pappe has actually said and done

November 7, 1954: Born in Haifa to Ashkenazi German-Jewish parents who had fled Nazi persecution in the 1930s, according to Wikipedia's biographical record.
1984 to 2007: Served as a senior lecturer at the University of Haifa and directed the Emil Touma Institute for Palestinian Studies from 2000 to 2008, per the same Wikipedia entry.
2007: Left Israel for the University of Exeter after the University of Haifa's president publicly called for his resignation over his endorsement of an academic boycott of Israel. Pappe has said he faced attempts to expel him and death threats, as detailed by Wikipedia and corroborated in an interview with Ceasefire Magazine.
2007 to present: Directs the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter and remains a leading advocate of BDS, writing in that same Ceasefire Magazine interview that boycotts of Israel parallel the anti-apartheid campaign against South Africa.
May 16, 2024: Detained and interrogated for roughly two hours by FBI and DHS agents at Detroit Metro Airport, questioned about his views on Hamas and Gaza, with his phone contents copied before he was allowed to enter the United States for planned talks. Reported by PEN America and Democracy Now!.
October 13, 2025: Told Democracy Now! that despite the Gaza ceasefire, Palestinians still face what he called elimination and genocide, and that Israeli government policy toward Palestinians had not changed.
February 27, 2026: Published commentary via CounterPunch, tied to his book "Israel on the Brink: Eight Steps for a Better Future," arguing Israel is self-destructing economically, militarily, and politically, and calling the two-state solution a "rotting corpse," while noting that polls showed 93 percent of the Jewish Israeli population supported the ongoing war.
June 5, 2026: Appeared at Ghent University's "Palestine Talks Spring 2026" event, continuing his lecture-circuit advocacy for Palestinian rights and a one-state framework.

His Jewish identity and where he stands apart from most Israeli critics

Pappe is one of Israel's "new historians," known for using Israeli military archives, notably Plan Dalet, to argue that the 1948 displacement of Palestinians was a deliberate, planned campaign rather than an incidental byproduct of war, a reading most mainstream Israeli historians dispute. His major works, including "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" (2006), "Ten Myths About Israel" (2017), and his newest book, "Israel on the Brink," argue that Zionism was a settler-colonial project and that only a single democratic binational state, Palestinian refugee return, and accountability for war crimes can produce lasting peace.

His family history is real and documented: his parents were German Jews who fled the Nazis and settled in Haifa. But in his own framing, that biography is a personal and family story, not an endorsement of the State of Israel. He is a self-described anti-Zionist and a longtime, active supporter of BDS, which sets him apart from the many Israeli critics who fault specific government policies while still supporting Israel's existence as a Jewish state. That distinction matters: Pappe does not fall into the "critical friend" category. He is also a controversial figure even among historians; some peers, including a widely cited piece in The New Republic, have accused him of factual sloppiness and of prioritizing political narrative over evidentiary rigor.

The bottom line

Ilan Pappe does not support the State of Israel as a Jewish or Zionist state. He supports its dissolution into a single binational state, actively backs the international boycott movement against Israel, and has repeatedly described Israeli policy toward Palestinians as ethnic cleansing and, in recent years, genocide. His Jewish heritage and Holocaust-refugee family background are real, but he is unambiguously and self-identified as anti-Zionist, not a supporter of Israel.

Support Israel directly

Not everyone with a public platform chooses to stand with Israel, which is exactly why the people who do are worth backing loudly. If Pappe's record leaves you wanting to make your own position clear, our I Stand With Israel bracelet is a simple, everyday way to do it, and it sits inside our full Support Israel collection of gear made for people who want no ambiguity about where they stand.

Last updated July 2026. We update these profiles as the record changes.