From Time Immemorial - Wikipedia
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From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab–Jewish Conflict over Palestine is a 1984 book by Joan Peters, published by Harper & Row,[1] about the demographics of the Arab population of Palestine and of the Jewish population of the Arab world before and after the formation of the State of Israel.
It was initially positively received by reviewers such as Barbara W. Tuchman.[2] A short time later, the book's central claims were contradicted by Norman Finkelstein, then a PhD student at Princeton University, who argued that Peters misrepresented or misunderstood the statistics on which she based her thesis.
Reputable scholars and reviewers from across the political spectrum have since discredited the central claims of Peters's book. By the time the 1985 British edition was reviewed, the book received mixed reviews being regarded by some as wrongheaded at best and fraudulent at worst and by others as groundbreaking. Ian Gilmour, a former British Secretary of State for Defence, ridiculed the book as "pretentious and preposterous" and argued that Peters had repeatedly misrepresented demographic statistics,[3] while Israeli historian Yehoshua Porath called it "sheer forgery".[4] In 2004, From Time Immemorial was the subject of another academic controversy, when Finkelstein accused Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz of largely plagiarizing his book The Case for Israel from it.
Synopsis[edit]
According to Peters, most people who call themselves Palestinians are not actually Palestinians, but instead descendants of recent immigrants from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Syria, who came to the land in waves of immigration starting in the 19th century and continuing through the period of the British Mandate. She argues that what is referred to as the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight was not ethnic cleansing, but actually a population exchange that resulted from the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.
Reception[edit]
When the book came out in the US in 1984, it was initially lauded by American writers and public figures including Elie Wiesel, Saul Bellow, Barbara Tuchman, Bernard Lewis, Martin Peretz, Alan Dershowitz, and others. It was—and still is, for some[who?]—held as "totemic" on the Jewish right.[5][6]
When it came out in the UK in 1985, it was met with a more hostile response, receiving critical reviews from publications such as the London Review of Books.[7]
The book provoked public debate, but has since been refuted by reputable scholars, in Israel and elsewhere.[5][6][8]: 153
Initial reception[edit]
On its release in the US the book received considerable critical approval. According to Norman Finkelstein, it had garnered some two hundred favorable notices in the United States by the end of its publication in 1984. In April 1985 it was awarded the National Jewish Book Award in the "Israel" category.[1]
Theodore H. White called Peters' work a "superlative book" that traces Middle East history with "unmatched skill".
Saul Bellow's endorsement on the cover of the book stated:
Every political issue claiming the attention of a world public has its "experts"—news managers, anchor men, ax grinders, and anglers. The great merit of this book is to demonstrate that, on the Palestinian issue, these experts speak from utter ignorance. Millions of people the world over, smothered by false history and propaganda, will be grateful for this clear account of the origins of the Palestinians. From Time Immemorial does not grudge these unhappy people their rights. It does, however, dissolve the claims made by nationalist agitators and correct the false history by which these unfortunate Arabs are imposed upon and exploited.
The book was also praised by Arthur J. Goldberg and Martin Peretz who said: "If (the book is) read, it will change the mind of our generation."[12][13] Peretz suggested that there was not a single factual error in the book. Walter Reich wrote on the book "fresh and powerful ... an original analysis as well as a synoptic view of a little-known but important human story".
Jehuda Reinharz described the book as "valuable synthesis" and "new analysis" that "convincingly demonstrates that many of those who today call themselves Palestinian refugees are former immigrants or children of such immigrants". Ronald Sanders wrote that Peters' demographics "could change the entire Arab–Jewish polemic over Palestine". Sidney Zion wrote that Peters' book was "the intellectual equivalent of the Six-Day War". Timothy Foote acclaimed that the book is "part historic primer, part polemic, part revelation, and a remarkable document in itself". Lucy Dawidowicz wrote that Peters "brought into the light the historical truth about the Mideast". Barbara Probst Solomon called the book "brilliant, provocative and enlightened". Elie Wiesel described the "insight and analysis" of the book. Similar views were expressed by Paul Cowan and others.
Some reviewers, while describing the book in favourable terms, did point to some deficiencies in Peters' scholarship. Martin Kramer in The New Leader (May 1984) wrote that the book raises overdue questions about the demographic history of Palestine in a way that cannot be ignored, but also referred to "serious weaknesses" in the book, and Peters' "rummaging through archives and far more balanced historical studies than her own for whatever evidence she can find to back up her thesis". He goes on to say that "It is specially unfortunate because on the central point of her book, the demographic argument, Peters is probably right."[15] Daniel Pipes in Commentary (July 1984) initially stated that Peters' "historical detective work has produced startling results, which should materially influence the future course of the debate about the Palestinian problem." He did, however, caution readers that "the author is not a historian or someone practiced in writing on politics, and she tends to let her passions carry her away. As a result, the book suffers from chaotic presentation and an excess of partisanship", and said that critics of her hypothesis should feel obliged to 'make a serious effort to show her wrong by demonstrating that many thousands of Arabs did not emigrate to Palestine in the period under question.'[16]
Two years later Pipes wrote in a letter to The New York Review of Books explaining positive initial reactions and later academic reviews, with the latter showing technical deficiencies of her book, but adding that Peters' central thesis, of large-scale Arab immigration into Palestine, had still not been refuted:
From Time Immemorial quotes carelessly, uses statistics sloppily, and ignores inconvenient facts. Much of the book is irrelevant to Miss Peters's central thesis. The author's linguistic and scholarly abilities are open to question. Excessive use of quotation marks, eccentric footnotes, and a polemical, somewhat hysterical undertone mar the book. In short, From Time Immemorial stands out as an appallingly crafted book.
Granting all this, the fact remains that the book presents a thesis that neither Professor Porath nor any other reviewer has so far succeeded in refuting.[17]
Initially the book received very few unfavorable reviews. According to Norman Finkelstein, by the end of 1984 only three critical reviews had appeared, those by Finkelstein in In These Times (September 5–11, 1984), Bill Farrell in the Journal of Palestine Studies (Fall 1984) and Alexander Cockburn in The Nation (October 13, 1984). Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, professor of religion at Dartmouth College and vice president of the World Jewish Congress remarked that he thought Peters had "cooked the statistics" and that her scholarship was "phony and tendentious", recycling ideas promoted by right-wing Zionists since the 1930s.[18] Finkelstein claimed that at an international conference on Palestinian demography at Haifa University in Israel in mid 1986, the theses of her book were, citing Haaretz as his reference, almost unanimously ridiculed by the participants.[note 1]
Criticism[edit]
Peters' claims in the book have been refuted by reputable scholars.[5][6][8]: 153
Norman Finkelstein[edit]
Norman Finkelstein wrote that Peters' book was 'among the most spectacular frauds ever published on the Arab-Israeli conflict,'[20] arguing that its substance was based on extensive plagiarization of a work by Ernst Frankenstein published in the 1940s. His 1984 review was based on his doctoral thesis, later expanded and published in Image and Reality of the Israel–Palestine Conflict. Finkelstein went into a close examination of all of Peters' notes and sources, and argued that her work persistently misrepresented or distorted the primary documents. His systematic critique of the book, attacking the two major pillars of Peters' thesis, which he regarded as a 'threadbare hoax' supported by the 'American intellectual establishment', had a major impact of later reviews of the book, especially those in Great Britain.[citation needed]
Firstly, in a number of lists, tables and examples Finkelstein juxtaposes the historical evidence Peters presents with extended quotations of the primary and secondary source material showing its original context. By doing so Finkelstein argues that the "evidence that Peters adduces to document massive illegal Arab immigration into Palestine is almost entirely falsified." For example, Peters cites the Hope Simpson Enquiry as having said that "Egyptian labor is being employed" in supporting her thesis of Arab immigration to Palestine. The actual Hope Simpson Report passage says "[In Palestine] Egyptian labor is being employed in certain individual cases ..." In another instance, Peters cites the Anglo-American Survey of Palestine as having found that "the 'boom' conditions in Palestine in the years 1934–1936 led to an inward movement into Palestine, particularly from Syria" when, as Finkelstein demonstrates, the Survey, in the very next sentence, notes that "The depression due to the state of public disorder during 1936–1939 led to the return of these people and also a substantial outward movement of Palestinian Arabs who thought it prudent to live for a time in Lebanon and Syria."
Secondly, in a detailed analysis of the demographic study central to Peters' book, Finkelstein argued that Peters' conclusions are not supported by the data she presents. Finkelstein asserts that the study "is marred by serious flaws: (1) several extremely significant calculations are wrong; and (2) numbers are used selectively to support otherwise baseless conclusions". His primary contention is that Peters divided up Palestine into five regions for her demographic study to confuse the reader, assigning regions I, II, and IV as Israel and III and V as the West Bank, then claiming that most of the refugees from 1948 had actually emigrated from the West Bank and Gaza (Area V) a year earlier, when Finkelstein argues they just as well could have come from northern Israel (Area IV). Finkelstein's deconstruction of the evidential basis for what had become a best-selling book, hailed for its quality by numerous American intellectuals, initially encountered difficulties in securing a publishing venue that might have given his findings a wider airing. In a retrospective reflection he opined that:
The periodicals in which From Time Immemorial had already been favorably reviewed refused to run any critical correspondence (e.g. The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly, Commentary). Periodicals that had yet to review the book rejected a manuscript on the subject as of little or no consequence (e.g. The Village Voice, Dissent, The New York Review of Books). Not a single national newspaper or columnist contacted found newsworthy that a best-selling, effusively praised "study" of the Middle East conflict was a threadbare hoax.
He also said that many of the statistics Peters cited were in Turkish, a language that Peters was unable to read. Finkelstein also mocked as a racist absurdity Peters's argument that, because Palestinians ranged so much in skin tone, from fair skinned to dark brown skinned, that they could not be descended from the same land. On the occasion of Peters' death, Finkelstein, in a long interview with Adam Horowitz, contextualized the thesis and the book's reception within Israel's emerging image problem after its invasion of Lebanon in 1982.[24]
Other criticism[edit]
Noam Chomsky defended and promoted Finkelstein's critique, commenting in his book Understanding Power:
[As] soon as I heard that the book was going to come out in England, I immediately sent copies of Finkelstein's work to a number of British scholars and journalists who are interested in the Middle East—and they were ready. As soon as the book [From Time Immemorial] appeared, it was just demolished, it was blown out of the water. Every major journal, The Times Literary Supplement, the London Review, The Observer, everybody had a review saying, this doesn't even reach the level of nonsense, of idiocy. A lot of the criticism used Finkelstein's work without any acknowledgment, I should say—but about the kindest word anybody said about the book was "ludicrous," or "preposterous."[2]
Chomsky recounted that, on its UK release, the book was subject to a number of scathing reviews. David and Ian Gilmour in the London Review of Books (February 7, 1985)[3] heavily criticized Peters for ignoring Arab sources, and "censorship of Zionist sources that do not suit her case". They also present examples that in their view show that Peters misuses the sources which she does include in her work. They accuse Peters of basic errors in scholarship, such as the citation of Makrizi, who died in 1442, to support her statements about mid-nineteenth century population movements.[3] Albert Hourani, reviewing the book in The Observer (March 3, 1985) stated:
The whole book is written like this: facts are selected or misunderstood, tortuous and flimsy arguments are expressed in violent and repetitive language. This is a ludicrous and worthless book, and the only mildly interesting question it raises is why it comes with praise from two well-known American writers.[25]
Following the book's negative reception in the UK, more critical reviews appeared in the United States. Columbia University professor Edward Said wrote unfavorably in The Nation (October 19, 1985),[4] while Robert Olson dismissed the book in The American Historical Review (April 1985), concluding:
This is a startling and disturbing book. It is startling because, despite the author's professed ignorance of the historiography of the Arab-Israeli conflict and lack of knowledge of Middle Eastern history (pp. 221, 335) coupled with her limitation to sources largely in English (absolutely no Arab sources are used), she engages in the rewriting of history on the basis of little evidence. ...The undocumented numbers in her book in no way allow for the wild and exaggerated assertions that she makes or for her conclusion. This book is disturbing because it seems to have been written for purely polemical and political reasons: to prove that Jordan is the Palestinian state. This argument, long current among revisionist Zionists, has regained popularity in Israel and among Jews since the Likud party came to power in Israel in 1977.[26]
Reviewing the book for the November 28, 1985 issue of The New York Times, Israeli historian Yehoshua Porath described it as a "sheer forgery," stating, "In Israel, at least, the book was almost universally dismissed as sheer rubbish except maybe as a propaganda weapon."[18] In 1986, Porath repeated his views in The New York Review of Books, and published a negative review that cites many inaccuracies.[4]
William B. Quandt, in the June 1996 edition of Foreign Affairs, stated that it had been demonstrated Peters' claims in the book were based on "shoddy scholarship". Quandt praises Finkelstein's "landmark essay" on the subject, crediting him and other scholars with bringing to light the deficiencies in Peters' work.[27] In 2005 Israeli historian Avi Shlaim credited Finkelstein with proving that the book was "preposterous and worthless". Shlaim stated that the evidence adduced by Finkelstein was "irrefutable" and the case he had made against Peters' book was "unanswerable".[28]
Writing for The New Yorker in 2011, David Remnick described the book as "an ideological tract disguised as history", "propaganda" and "pseudo-scholarship". He stated that while the book was a commercial success and had been praised by a number of writers and critics, it had been thoroughly discredited by Israeli historian Yehoshua Porath along with many others. He points out that even some right wing critics who had originally favoured the book later accepted the flaws in its scholarship.[29]
Advocates
Rael Isaac defended the book in Commentary, claiming: "Much of Finkelstein's malevolent attack is similarly wrong. He incorrectly adds 40,000 Arabs to Miss Peters's projections of the number of Arabs who could have been expected, on the basis of natural increase, to live in the Galilee and Negev (what she calls "Area IV") in 1947, and then accuses her of not accounting for them properly. He charges her with "falsifying" the Anglo-American Survey of Palestine of 1945-46 by claiming that it discloses tens of thousands of Arab illegal immigrants who had been brought into Palestine during the war when in fact (according to Finkelstein) it states only that 3,800 laborers had been brought in. Yet the Survey does list many thousands of laborers who were brought in under official arrangements or came on their own." Peters was criticized for relying on different sources for establishing the Jewish and non-Jewish population in 1893, but Isaac defended this on the grounds that the Ottoman census would have excluded most Jews as non-citizens, while the figures cited from French geographer Vital Cuinet were likely close to the truth. Isaac conceded that Peters' attempts to reconstruct the population were tentative and overstated, and acknowledged some errors in the book, but concluded that they did not undermine Peters' thesis. Isaac also cited Arieh Avneri's The Claim of Dispossession as further supporting Peters' claims "with regard both to Arab in-migration and to Arab immigration."[20]
In an online article entitled, "The Hazards of Making the Case for Israel" Professor Alan Dershowitz, writes:
The Chomsky-Finkelstein-Cockburn mode of ad hominem attack proved particularly successful against Peters because the words "hoax," "fraud," "fake," and "plagiarism" are so dramatic and unforgettable, as is the charge that Peters did not actually write the book. ... It did not seem to matter that none of these charges made by Chomsky, Finkelstein and Cockburn were even close to the truth. All Finkelstein had managed to show was that in a relatively small number of instances, Peters may have misinterpreted some data, ignored counter-data, and exaggerated some findings—common problems in demographic research that often appear in anti-Israel books as well.[30]
Both Alexander Cockburn[31] and Finkelstein have argued that Dershowitz's own book on the subject reproduced verbatim some key points of Peters' research as his own.[32]
Further debate[edit]
The book, though widely acclaimed when it was issued, came to be treated with disdain by a number of scholars and historians, whose analyses gave rise to a controversy. In the pages of The New York Review of Books (March 1986), Daniel Pipes and Ronald Sanders, two of the book's early supporters, engaged in an exchange with Yehoshua Porath, one of its most vehement critics. Pipes gave his overview of the state of the argument, stating Peters' work had "been received in two ways at two times. Early reviews treated her book as a serious contribution to the study of the Arab-Israeli conflict and late ones dismissed it as propaganda."[33]
In the exchange both Pipes and Sanders accepted some of the charges that had been leveled at the book. In reference to the harsh criticism, Sanders said that Peters had "brought this upon herself" and acknowledged that "patient researchers have found numerous examples of sloppiness in her scholarship and an occasional tendency not to grasp the correct meaning of a context from which she has extracted a quotation." Pipes stated that he would not dispute the technical, historical, and literary faults identified by the book's critics.
Ronald Sanders argued that all of that does little to undermine the central thesis of Peters:
But the fact remains that there is an original and significant argument at the heart of her book, and this has scarcely been dealt with by critics, apart from Mr. Porath, who only weakly challenged it.[33]
Anthony Lewis, in an opinion piece for The New York Times, compared American and Israeli responses to the book:
Israelis have not gushed over the book as some Americans have. Perhaps that is because they know the reality of the Palestinians' existence, as great Zionists of the past knew. Perhaps it is because most understand the danger of trying to deny a people identity. As Professor Porath says, "Neither historiography nor the Zionist cause itself gains anything from mythologizing history."[12]
According to Rael Isaac, "most notices in Israel were favorable, and the book is being published by the Kibbutz Hameuchad—a Labor publishing house—which has assigned it to one of Israel's top translators."[20]
See also[edit]
- ^ The 15 June 1986 issue of Haaretz (Israel) reported that at an international conference on Palestinian demography at Haifa University, virtually all the participants ridiculed Peters's demographic 'theses', and the most authoritative scholar in attendance, Professor Yeshoshua Ben-Arieh of Hebrew University, condemned the Peters enterprise for discrediting the 'Zionist cause'."
References[edit]
- ^ Jump up to:a b "Past Winners". Jewish Book Council. Retrieved January 21, 2020.
- ^ Jump up to:a b Chomsky, Noam (2002). "The Fate of an Honest Intellectual". Understanding Power. The New Press. pp. 244–248. ISBN 978-1-56584-703-3 – via Chomsky.info.
That was the big intellectual hit for that year: Saul Bellow, Barbara Tuchman, everybody was talking about it as the greatest thing since chocolate cake.
- ^ Jump up to:a b c Gilmour, Ian & Gilmour, David (February 7, 1985). "Pseudo-Travellers". London Review of Books. 7 (2): 8–10. Retrieved September 3, 2020.
- ^ Jump up to:a b c Porath, Yehoshua (January 16, 1986). "Mrs. Peters's Palestine". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved August 17, 2019.
- ^ Jump up to:a b c Khalidi, Rashid (March 15, 2016), Rashid Khalidi - The Hundred Year War in Palestine, SOAS University of London, SOAS University of London, retrieved March 9, 2023
- ^ Jump up to:a b c Remnick, David (December 11, 2011). "Newt, the Jews, and an "Invented" People". The New Yorker. Retrieved March 9, 2023.
- ^ "The legacy of Joan Peters and 'From Time Immemorial'". Mondoweiss. January 17, 2015. Retrieved March 9, 2023.
- ^ Jump up to:a b Making Israel. Benny Morris. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 2007. ISBN 978-0-472-02652-4. OCLC 733242210.
- ^ Jump up to:a b Lewis, Anthony (January 13, 1986). "Abroad At Home; There Were No Indians". The New York Times. Retrieved August 17, 2019.
- ^ Peretz, Martin (July 23, 1984), The New Republic.
- ^ Kramer, Martin (May 14, 1984). "The New Case for Israel". The New Leader. Archived from the original on May 13, 2005. Retrieved August 17, 2019.
- ^ Pipes, Daniel (July 1984). "From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine by Joan Peters". Commentary. Retrieved August 17, 2019 – via danielpipes.org.
- ^ Pipes, Daniel (March 27, 1986). "Letter to the Editor". New York Review of Books. Retrieved August 17, 2019 – via danielpipes.org.
- ^ Jump up to:a b Campbell, Colin (November 28, 1985). "Dispute Flares Over Book on Claims to Palestine". The New York Times. Retrieved May 3, 2010.
- ^ Jump up to:a b c Isaac, Rael (July 1, 1986). "Whose Palestine?". Commentary. Retrieved August 17, 2019.
- ^ Horowitz, Adam (January 28, 2015). "Norman Finkelstein on Joan Peters legacy (and Dershowitz's legal troubles)". normanfinkelstein.com. Retrieved August 17, 2019.
- ^ Chomsky, Noam (2002). "Chapter 7: Intellectuals and Social Change (Footnotes)". Understanding Power. The New Press. Archived from the original on February 12, 2002.
- ^ Olson, Robert (April 1985). "From Time Immemorial, by Joan Peters". The American Historical Review. 90 (2): 468.
- ^ Quandt, William B. (June 1996). "Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict by Norman G. Finkelstein". Foreign Affairs. Retrieved August 17, 2019.
- ^ Shlaim, Avi (Winter 2006). "Confidential Peer review of 'Beyond Chutzpah' for the University of California Press, 9 February 2005" (PDF). Journal of Palestine Studies. XXXV: 88. Archived from the original (PDF) on November 27, 2010. Retrieved August 17, 2019.
- ^ Remnick, David (December 11, 2011). "Newt, the Jews, and an "Invented" People". The New Yorker. Retrieved August 17, 2019.
- ^ Dershowitz, Alan (2009). "The Hazards of Making The Case for Israel". JBooks.com. Retrieved August 17, 2019.
- ^ Cockburn, Alexander (September 25, 2003). "Alan Dershowitz, Plagiarist?". The Nation. Retrieved August 17, 2019.
- ^ Abraham, Matthew (January 2, 2014). Out of Bounds: Academic Freedom and the Question of Palestine. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. p. 65. ISBN 978-1-4411-3823-1.
- ^ Jump up to:a b Porath, Yehoshua (March 27, 1986). "Mrs. Peters's Palestine: An Exchange". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved August 17, 2019.
Bibliography[edit]
External links[edit]
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From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine
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From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine Paperback – 1 February 2001
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 255 ratings
This monumental and fascinating book, the product of seven years of original research, will forever change the terms of the debate about the conflicting claims of the Arabs and the Jews in the Middle East. The weight of the comprehensive evidence found and brilliantly analyzed by historian and journalist Joan Peters answers many crucial questions, among them: Why are the Arab refugees from Israel seen in a different light from all the other, far more numerous peoples who were displaced after World War II Why, indeed, are they seen differently from the Jewish refugees who were forced, in 1948 and after, to leave the Arab countries to find a haven in Israel Who, in fact, are the Arabs who were living within the borders of present-day Israel, and where did they come from Joan Peters's highly readable and moving development of the answers to these and related questions will appear startling, even to those on both sides of the argument who have considered themselves to be in command of the facts. On the basis of a definitive weight of hitherto unexamined population and other historical data, much of it buried in untouched archives, Peters demonstrates that Jews did not displace Arabs in Palestine-just the reverse: Arabs displaced Jews; that a hidden but major Arab migration and immigration took place into areas settled by Jews in pre-Israel Palestine; that a substantial number of the Arab refugees called Palestinians in reality had foreign roots; that for every Arab refugee who left Israel in 1948, there was a Jewish refugee who fled or was expelled from his Arab birthplace at the same time-today's much discussed Sephardic majority in Israel is in fact composed mainly of these Arab-born Jewish refugees or their offspring; that Britain, the Mandatory power, winked at and even encouraged Arab immigration into Palestine between the two World Wars; that by disguising the Arab immigrants as "indigenous native Palestinian Arabs," the British justified their restrictions on Jewish immigration and settlement, dooming masses of European Jews to destruction in the Nazi camps. Joan Peters also unfolds a historical record to shatter the widely held belief that Arabs and Jews harmoniously coexisted for centuries in the Arab world-the fact is that the Jews, along with other non-Muslims, were second-class citizens, oppressed in the Muslim world for more than a millennium. And this continuing prejudicial tradition of hostility underlies, as well, every Arab action toward the state of Israel. In addition to her pioneering archival researches, Joan Peters has frequently traveled in the Middle East, conducting numerous interviews and gathering the personal observations of the first-rate reporter she is. The result is a book that has already had a major impact on policy discussions of one of the most vital and intractable of the world's problems, shrouded until now in a fog of misinformation and ignorance. Distributed exclusively by Jonathan David Publishers.
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Judy Blakeney
5.0 out of 5 stars Why All The Fuss in the Middle East - Answers
Reviewed in the United States on 4 March 2024
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This book From Time Immemorial should be read by every American confused as I was....why all the controversy and fighting in the Middle East? The excellent research and well written account by historian Joan Peters opened up my eyes to the origins/roots of the Arab- Jewish conflict. True understanding can lead to real, workable solutions that could give us lasting peace among mankind.
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5.0 out of 5 stars This book is immortal
Reviewed in Canada on 1 March 2020
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This book sets our clearly why there are so many Palestinian refugees and that the majority of them did not live in "Palestine" from"Time immemorial" but are mostly workmen and the children of workmen allowed into the country to do manual work for the new Jewish population of what was to become Israel.
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James Colborn Blankson
5.0 out of 5 stars Very educative
Reviewed in Italy on 15 August 2018
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I bought this book a long time ago and I can tell you that to be deceived is your own doing. If you really want to know the truth about this middle eastern conflict especially about Israel then I recommend this book.
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William Weber
5.0 out of 5 stars From Time Immemorial is excellent - a must read
Reviewed in Spain on 25 April 2018
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The book is full of facts and statistics to back-up the affirmations and statements of Mrs. Peters. It is an excellent book and a must read for anybody who has an opinion on the Israeli-Arab conflict.
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Amazon Kunde
5.0 out of 5 stars Detaillierte und übersichtliche Beschreibung des Palästinakonfliktes - mit Quellenangaben
Reviewed in Germany on 15 June 2016
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Es gibt leider recht wenige Erscheinungen, die mit Quellenangaben derart detailliert und übersichtlich die Staatsgründung Israels und den Bevölkerungsaustausch (arabische Flüchtlinge und jüdische Flüchtlinge aus arabischen Ländern) beschreiben. Ich kann dieses Buch auf englisch (das auch in einer hebräischen Übersetzung existiert) wärmstens jedermann empfehlen, der sich seriös mit dem Palästinakonflikt auseinandersetzt!
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Gary
949 reviews
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July 17, 2023
The enemies of truth and of human rights have slammed this book as 'worhtless' simply because it exposes their lies against Israel and her people.
I therefore point out some of the facts in this book that are highlighted (anyone who denies these facts is a liar , whose agenda is another Holocaust of the Israeli people).
1. Israel became a nation in 1312 B.C.E., almost two thousand years before the rise of Islam.
2. Since 1272 B.C.E. the Jews have had a dominion over the land for at least 1,000 years as well as a continuous presence in the land for the past 3,300 years.
3. The only Arab dominion since the conquest in 635 C.E. lasted no more than 22 years.
4. King David made the city of Jerusalem his capital, Mohammed had never been to Jerusalem.
5. For 3000 years, Jerusalem has been known to be the Jewish capital. Jerusalem has never been the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity. When the Jordanians occupied Jerusalem, they never sought to make it their capital and Arab leaders did not specifically come to visit there.
6. Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in the Tanach (Jewish Holy Scriptures) . Jerusalem is never mentioned in the Koran.
7. Jews pray facing Jerusalem wherever in the world they may be. Muslims pray facing Mecca (often with their backs toward Jerusalem).
8. In 1854, according to a report in the New York Tribune, Jews constituted two-thirds of the population of the holy city. (The source: A journalist on assignment to the Middle East that year for the Tribune. His name was Karl Marx. Yes, that Karl Marx.)
9. In 1867, Mark Twain took a tour of Palestine and described that land: "A desolate country whose soil is rich enough but is given over wholly to weeds. It is a silent and mournful expanse. We never saw a human."
10. In 1882 census figures of the Ottoman Empire, it was recorded that in the entire land of Israel, there were only 141,000 Muslims, both Arab and non-Arab.
11. A travel guide to Palestine and Syria, published in 1906 by Karl Baedeker, estimated that the total population of Jerusalem was 60,000, of whom 7,000 were Muslims, 13,000 were Christians and 40,000 were Jews.
12. After Zionist Jews came, drained the swamps, and made the deserts blossom Arabs followed them. They came for jobs, for prosperity and for freedom. Arabs arrived in large numbers.
13. In 1922, during the illegal separation of Transjordan, Jews were forbidden to settle on 77% of the disputed territory, while Arab settlements went unrestricted by British.
14. Prior to the Second World War, Mojli Amin, a member of the Arab Defense Committee for Palestine, proposed the following idea "All the Arabs of Palestine will leave and be settled amongst the neighboring Arab countries. In exchange for this, all the Jews living in Arab countries will leave and come and live in Palestine."
15. Did you know that Saudi Arabia was not established until 1913? Lebanon was not established until 1920. Iraq did not exist as a nation until 1932 and Syria until 1941. The borders of Jordan were established in 1946 and those of Kuwait in 1961. Any of the aforementioned nations that say that Israel is only a recent arrival would have to deny their own right of existence. They did not exist as fully-fledged countries, but were all under the control of the Turks. Over 80% of the original British Mandate land was given to the Arabs without any form of population transfer.
16. In 1947, the Jewish state settled on 18% of the original British Mandate land. This was accepted gratefully. The Arabs rejected it with a vengeance and seven Arab states immediately declared war against Israel.
17. In 1948, the Arabs were encouraged to leave Israel by Arab leaders promising to purge the land of Jews. Most of them left in fear of being killed by their own Arab brothers as traitors.
18. Jewish citizens of Arab countries had been forced to flee from Arab brutality, persecution and pogroms.
19. The number of Arabs who left Israel in 1948 was 470,000 (this figure was later inflated after UN offered them free help). The number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands is estimated to be the same.
20. From 1948 to 1967 Arabs made no attempt to create a Palestinian state. Under Jordanian rule, Jewish holy sites were desecrated. Jews and Christians were denied access to places of worship. Under Israeli rule, all Muslim and Christian sites have been preserved and made accessible to people of all faiths.
21. Arabs began identifying themselves as part of a Palestinian people only in 1967, after Israel captured Judea, Samaria and Gaza.
22. Out of the 100,000,000 refugees since World War II, Arab- Palestinians are the only refugee group in the world that have never been absorbed or integrated into their own peoples' lands. Jewish refugees from all over were completely absorbed into the land of Israel.
23. Arab refugees INTENTIONALLY were not absorbed or integrated by the rich Arab oil states that control 99.9 percent of the Middle East landmass. They are kept as virtual prisoners by the Arab power brokers with misplaced hatred for Jews and Western democracy.
24. There is only one Jewish state. There are 54 Muslim countries including 22 Arab nations.
25. The PLO's Charter still calls for the destruction of the State of Israel.
26. Pan-Arabism or the idea of an Arab Caliphate declares that all land that supposedly to belonged to Arabs, must be returned to Arabs.
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Kristofer Petersen-Overton
94 reviews
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October 16, 2012
This book was exposed as a fraud years ago by Norman Finkelstein. It has only marginal value for the colossal chutzpah of the author and perhaps its place in the history of Western fabrications and deception regarding the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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Laura
33 reviews
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May 27, 2011
I'll preface this by dispelling the myth that this book is a 'hoax'. [Brings to mind Mark Twain's quote: "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."] This book is not a hoax. If you follow the tiny circle of people who try to perpetuate that little propaganda tagline (Chomsky, Finkelstein and cronies), they all quote each other. I research this in my graduate work, and when I saw how it all loops back around to the same group, I actually laughed out loud. Funny how easily people fall for propaganda that fits their innate biases...doesn't help peace though.
One of the largest single compilations of research on the subject, with over 1,800 citations, hundreds of primary-source government documents and first-hand testimonies from the British Mandate period, many of which are freely available for public access. (**This is why the propaganda screamers are in such a tizzy - because the data is so damn strong.**)
Ms. Peters served as a Middle East expert during the Carter administration, and now serves as a trustee for The National Committee on American Foreign Policy's Executive Committee. She originally began this project with the intention of proving the legitamacy of Palestinian claims...what she found through her painstaking research was that the Brits allowed a flood of Arabs onto the land in the brief Mandate Period. Her association with Jimmy Carter undoubtedly gave her deeper access to archival WWI documents, much of it from Great Britain - a nation that was most definitely NOT pro-Israel (remember that they kicked Jews off the land east of the Jordan River - 80% of Palestine at the time - and gave it to the Arabs, banning Jewish settlement there. Today that nascent nation is named Jordan, shortened from the original Trans-Jordan. And it's STILL a law in Jordan that only Jews can't own land there. Hear that, CNN??)
This compilation proved to be a ground-breaking achievement in terms of the sheer volume and quality of facts that were uncovered. It is widely-acknowledged and accepted by Middle East scholars seeking to understand the full picture, and is refuted by a handful of people whose personal agendas are negatively impacted by its existence. There are probably people out there who wish they could burn every exisiting copy of this book along with the thousands of documents it references.
This book is a must for any serious scholar on the subject.
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Edwin Stratton-Mackay
53 reviews
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April 11, 2016
Peters' book is not history, and Peters is not a trained historian, but a cherry-picking propagandist. This is nothing more than a pseudo-historical fraud which amounts to a justification for the ethnic-cleansing of Palestine by the government of Israel.
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Roma
165 reviews
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May 8, 2011
This is a intensely fact packed tome, it took me over a month to just read through.
I have now a much better idea of the real history of the region which has been drowned out by a tsunami of anti-Israel propaganda.
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Kelly
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May 5, 2011
I've noticed (so have several other readers) that Goodreads has deleted several relevant comments regarding this book. There were several comments under Bettie's review below (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...) that contained facts relevant to discussion of this book and the topic. I read them the other day, and went back on today to share with my roommate, and they're gone! (???) The comments were written by a grad student on the subject, were well-articulated, and contained zero profanity. In the meantime, Goodreads has consistently left a comment in the top spot that claims this book is a hoax. This is blatantly incorrect and misleading to readers. Shame on you, Goodreads. Karma karma.
It's sad that Goodreads is actually deleting people's comments on this, but leaving those who claim the book is a hoax. The people claiming this did not even read the book (so how does that add to the discussion?). No one has offered one example of what they feel to be a hoax (Is it the one of the hundreds of intra-governmental correspondences from the British Mandate? The maps of Sir Martin Gilbert? The personal interviews with frightened victims living in persecution too scared to use their real names for fear of Muslim retaliation? Or is the UN Session minutes publically available through Freedom of Information?) Hmmmm...no one seems to offer any specific citation that they have a problem with. Like a big temper tantrum, these people seem to hurl the book away and scream "Hoax" without any further rationality or reasoning...perhaps in large part, because Goodreads doesn't require it.
Most of the data cited here is cited by hundreds of other books. People have their panties in a knot over it because Ms. Peters (while working under Jimmy Carter of all people) set out to write a book validating the Palestinian claim to the land...and lo and behold, her research (to her surprise too) was not able to validate most of their claims, and revealed instead, that the British allowed unmitigated illegal Arab immigration to the land while simultaneously blocking Jews from doing the same (even children were sent back to death camps and burned). When Palestinians claimed citizenship, the UN set up a special (and to this day unprecedented) committee just for them. All they needed was to have lived on the land for 2 years and they were declared "refugees". All of this is documented in British sources - the Brits were neutral at best - they abstained from voting Israel to become a state in the 1947 vote, but they did stand idly by while Arabs massacred those pesky Jewish natives, like in Hebron. I guess if you get a population's numbers down to a small enough number, they just don't matter anymore...isn't that right?
So what's the deal with deleting legitimate comments, Goodreads? Or did we just all learn the political opinion of those in charge of filtering there? :)
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Ploni
13 reviews
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May 17, 2011
People who think that Norman Finkelstein has "disproved" this book have not read it.
It is written from a perspective from someone who had a very one sides view and through 7 years of her own research that view changed.
Is the research perfect and infalible? No, since the book was written more documents have been declassified, more information has come to light, but it IS well researched for it's time.
Is it biased? No, it is an honest account from someone who spent 7 years researching trying to get a truthful account of the history. Those who call it biased are those who refuse to see anything right of Chomsky as unbiased.
I got this as an audiobook and as a hardcover.
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Mrs.
287 reviews
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May 3, 2010
The best book I have ever come across regarding the origins and politics, on an international level, of the conflict. The author, a journalist, set out to investigate the issue with a definite agenda and perspective in mind, by her own admission. What she discovered startled her, and caused her to reevaluate her positions.
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Avi
274 reviews
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January 7, 2008
One of the most informative books I have ever read, it clears up a great deal of the propaganda and false information that exists. a 10
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Kevin
124 reviews
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April 4, 2008
This book is by far the most objective view of WTF is going on over there wrt the Isrealis and the band of squatters / former citizens of the Turkish suzerain. Call me biased.
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