Hamas, its leaders and armed militants are alien to Gaza and its people. They’ve parachuted in from some other place and are hiding out in the civilian population — criminally and cynically — using ordinary, innocent Gazans as human shields.

Such is the wisdom of the highest authorities. People like Joe Biden and top European diplomats.

Ilan Pappe sees things differently. In his groundbreaking 2006 work, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, the Israeli-British historian described how Gaza’s people ended up in the tiny enclave — driven from their ancestral lands by Zionist militias in the course of Israel’s founding.

Ilan Pappe is an Israeli-British historian and political scientist, and professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter in the UK. He’s also the director of Exeter’s European Centre for Palestine Studies, and co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies.

The GPM reached Ilan Pappe in Exeter, England, shortly after last week’s huge demonstrations in London.

Listen to our conversation in today’s podcast. Click on the play button above, or go here.

Listen to our complete conversation here:

Collective punishment; denying food, water, electricity, fuel and medicine to a civilian population while waging war on them; targeting hospitals, ambulances, medical workers, schools and residential buildings; forcible transfer; telling civilians to flee, then bombing them (perfidy).

These are unlawful acts under international humanitarian law, and the customary laws of war. In other words, war crimes.

Under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, apartheid and genocide are crimes against humanity.

Is Israel guilty of these crimes? If so, will the political and military leaders who directed them be held to account?

Time will tell.

The GPM spoke about all this with Toby Cadman. Cadman is a barrister with Guernica 37 International Justice Chambers, and Associate Counsel to the Guernica for International Justice group, in London.

Listen to our conversation in today’s podcast. Click on the play button above, or go here.

Listen to our complete conversation here:

Thanks to Dan Weisenberger for his inspired guitar instrumentals.