Notorious anti-Zionist historian Ilan Pappe openly acknowledges that he is not objective, cares little about factual accuracy and readily admits that ideology drives his historical writings and statements. Writing in The Independent, Pappe applies his flawed academic prowess in an attempt to draw a conclusion that fits his hateful vision of Israel.
Referring to a Times of Israel story, Pappe writes about:
the present drive among infertile Jewish parents to seek the sperm of the combatant elite units who fought in Gaza. This is to ensure the purest and most supreme DNA possible for their prospective children. And it is fully supported by the official Israeli Sperm Bank.
. . .
It was bad enough to base the whole Zionist idea on the wish to create an exclusive and supremacist Jewish democracy, in a land where the Jews were not and are not going to be ever such a majority (unless they genocide the local population). But now we are faced with a society that seems to be taking this obsession one step further. The rising demand for IDF sperm suggests that Israelis don’t just have a desire for absolute Jewish majority, but one of the highest quality: the quality you find in the elite units that devastated a huge civilian space called Gaza.
With later references to “visions of ethnic purity and supremacy,” Pappe is drawing a clear analogy between Israeli society and Nazi Germany that placed an ideological value in the purity of the German “race” and the use of eugenics to achieve this.
And what does Pappe base his sweeping portrayal of Israeli society on? According to The Times of Israel story, “Every month, 60 women apply for sperm donations, and in recent days, about half of them have asked for donors with a combat background.”
So 30 out of a sample of 60 infertile women over a time period of days rather than weeks, months or even years is considered a credible sociological, scientific and academic sample of Israel’s 8 million population. Hardly worthy of a high school student let alone a professor.
Pappe claims that a desire from Israeli women seeking soldiers as sperm donors is driven by some sinister motivation connected to the killing of Palestinians in the Gaza conflict. Even Pappe’s reference to the “official Israeli Sperm Bank” conjures images of a fascistic society where some higher authority controls the quality of the DNA. In fact, there are over a dozen sperm banks in Israel, all authorized by the Ministry of Health and attached to hospitals.
Far from Pappe’s vision of Israeli women creating some sort of master race, a look at The Times of Israel story shows a far more obvious motivation in a quote from the director of the Rambam Medical Center’s sperm bank:
“A man who served in a combat unit comes across as someone who has impressive physical attributes that live up to the genetic aspirations of the women,” she explained. “Generally speaking, he will be physically fit and in good health, in addition to other important attributes.”
These other attributes are described as hair color, eye color, skin color, height, education, and health background.
Fellow Independent contributor Howard Jacobson once described Ilan Pappe as “something of a believer in campaigns and conspiracies himself, a man whose work has been questioned at every turn, not least by historians on whose findings he has drawn.”
Pappe’s latest anti-Israel screed only confirms and adds to this damning indictment.
Image: CC BY-NC-SA flickr/Ying Chung Chen, flickr/Stuart Caie
