From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

A sustained effort has been made to discredit this revealing work, by the usual suspects. But the criticism cannot disprove the facts or substance of the central thesis of the book. Despite minor flaws, the truth uncovered by the author is unassailable. True, her polemical excursions are sometimes harsh and the book would have benefited from better editing but the flaws are ultimately of a stylistic, not factual, nature.

From Time Immemorial remains a brilliant refutation of media myths and public perceptions, thoroughly documented and based on verifiable facts provided in almost 200 pages of documentation based on eyewitness reports by historians, scholars, journalists and writers like Mark Twain, interviews with Arabs and Jews, documents in the British archives and official records of the Ottoman Empire. Her discovery of massive migration from North Africa, Lebanon, Syria and from the east across the River Jordan during the era in question stands firm.

The author succeeds in clearing the smog of disinformation created by ideologues and propagandists. Revealed here is the real picture of the demographic history of the Middle East and in particular Israel/Jordan/Palestine during the last decades of Ottoman rule in the 19th century and those of the British Mandate period during the 20th. According to the evidence - of which there is plenty - the area between the Jordan and the Mediterranean was desolate and thinly populated in the latter half of the 19th century.

The arrival of Jewish immigrants from Europe created economic opportunities that attracted people from East of the Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen and Libya, amongst others. This steep population increase owed more to immigration than natural growth. Arab numbers grew in direct proportion to the burgeoning Jewish presence as the demand for labor increased, infrastructure was established and formerly desolate areas like malarial swamps became habitable.

Those that fled in 1948 on the advice of the neighboring countries were Returnees rather than Refugees. Many of those still today considered as Palestinian refugees had been recent immigrants to Mandatory Palestine West of the Jordan in that fateful year. Critics of the book are also strangely silent about the hundreds of thousands of Jews expelled from the Arab world at the same time. The Kingdom of Jordan is the Arab part of what was then Mandatory Palestine and thus the natural home of the Palestinians, which explains why there was no demand for an independent Palestine until after the 1967 war.

The truth does not minimize the tragedy that has been unfolding in the Holy Land throughout the 20th century, a tragedy that has the fearsome potential of eventually involving the whole world. But it helps to provide moral clarity by bringing to light facts that have been ignored or distorted for too long. Other books that might also be of value in this regard are The Nazi Connection to Islamic Terrorism: Adolf Hitler and Haj Amin Al-Husseini by Chuck Morse and Myths and Facts: A Guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict by Mitchell Bard.

If you believe this book's premise -- that Palestinian Arabs only came into Palestine this century -- you would probably believe the Holocaust "revisionists" denial of the Holocaust. Unless you knew better. And most readers of the book probably do as the book is targetted for an audience that is profoundly, even personally, aware of the reality of the Holocaust. Unfortunately, partly as a result of the passions generated by that tragedy, many such are susceptible to believing most lies about the Palestinians. (I believe one ISRAELI university's departments denounced the book as a "web of deceit."

Have you ever heard of Joan Peters again since she has written this book? No? Why not?

Joan Peters may have tried to write a good book. A book to help the Israelis to discard Palestinian claims to return to their villages and homes in Israel. But aiming to help people may even do more harm to the ones you want to help.

This book is a violation of every scientific rule. As a scientist you should be aware that there is a big difference: You can do your job or you can try to help people you like. In the latter case you are no longer of any worth to anybody, because you are now a propagandist. The only result: if you do not discredit science you discredit your own concern; and Joan Peters has - metaphorically spoken - burned herself with this book.

Albert Hourani (Oxford University) called this book "grotesque". Every quote she [Joan Peters] gives proves to be wrong, he says. Other reviewers compared it with "cattle manure".

This voluminous book will cost you a lot of time, and leaves a very bad taste - if you are interested in honest approaches to the truth.