I have no doubt that the absence so far of the paradigm of ethnic cleansing is part of the reason why the denial of the catastrophe has been able to go on for so long. I want to make a case for the paradigm of ethnic cleansing and use it to replace the paradigm of war as the basis for the scholarly research of and public debate about 1948. The "new history" narrative and recent Palestinian historiographical inputs somehow failed to enter the public realm of moral conscience and action. But Pappe's concern here is public opinion as well as historiographical debate: All but one of these authors (Morris) would probably agree with Pappe's position that what happened to the Palestinians in 1948 fits the definition of ethnic cleansing, and it certainly is not news to Palestinians themselves, who have always known what happened to them. These include works by Walid Khalidi, Simha Flapan, Nafez Nazzal, Benny Morris, Nur Masalha, and Norman Finkelstein, among others. Ilan Pappe has added another work to the many that have already been written in English on the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the expulsion of more than 750,000 Palestinians from their homes.
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