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Ilan Pappe - Jo Wilding

“I support compulsory transfer. I do not see in it anything immoral . . . The Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen, such as a war.” David Ben-Gurion writing to his son, 1937. The 1948 Palestine-Israel War is known to Israelis as 'The War of Independence', but for Palestinians it will forever be the Nakba, the 'catastrophe'. Around a million people were expelled from their own country at gunpoint, civilians were massacred and hundreds of Palestinian villages were deliberately destroyed. Denied for almost six decades, had it happened today it could only have been called "ethnic cleansing." Ilan Pappe is an Israeli Jew, a world-renowned expert and author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006) joins Middle East Panorama for an exclusive interview. 

Don't Shoot the Clowns - Taking a circus to the children of Iraq. But what was a bunch of clowns doing in Iraq in the first place? What possible use could they be to a country suffering war and occupation, where families are torn apart by grief and children are shocked and terrified? Jo Wilding had moments when she doubted her own plans, until she saw the transforming effect that laughter has. >> Jo Wilding >> Montage by Amanda

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