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From Time Immemorial is an 1984 book by Joan Peters arguing that Jews had lived in and around Palestine since the dawn of recorded history. She argues against the idea that 20th century Jewish immigration pushed out indigenous Arabs, but claims that the growth of the Arab population in the region was largely due to immigration. 1984 (MCMLXXXIV) was a leap year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Joan Peters is a former Jewish CBS journalist and author best known for her discredited book From Time Immemorial, published in 1984. ...
Palestine (Hebrew: ×רץ ישר×ל Eretz Israel, Arabic: Ùلسطين FilastÄ«n or FalastÄ«n, see also Land of Israel) is one of many historical names for the region between the Mediterranean Sea and the banks of the Jordan River, plus various adjoining lands to the east and south. ...
This is one of the most controversial books on Middle East history. A map showing countries commonly considered to be part of the Middle East The Middle East is a region comprising the lands around the southern and eastern parts of the Mediterranean Sea, a territory that extends from the eastern Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. ...
Peters argues in her book that a large portion of Palestine's 1948 non-Jewish population were recent immigrants from adjacent Arab states. Map of the British Mandate of Palestine. ...
Immigration is the act of moving to or settling in another country or region, temporarily or permanently. ...
The Arabs (Arabic: عرب ) are a large and heterogeneous ethnic group found throughout the Middle East and North Africa. ...
- "Much of Mrs. Peters's book argues that at the same time that Jewish immigration to Palestine was rising, Arab immigration to the parts of Palestine where Jews had settled also increased. Therefore, in her view, the Arab claim that an indigenous Arab population was displaced by Jewish immigrants must be false, since many Arabs only arrived with the Jews." [1]
Peters concludes therefore that many of the refugees from the 1948 Arab-Israeli war were not native Palestinians. Jews (Hebrew: יהודי×, Yehudim) are followers of Judaism or, more generally, members of the Jewish people (also known as the Jewish nation, or the Children of Israel), an ethno-religious group descended from the ancient Israelites and converts who joined their religion. ...
The Arabs (Arabic: عرب ) are a large and heterogeneous ethnic group found throughout the Middle East and North Africa. ...
The 1948 Arab-Israeli War is referred to as the War of Independence (Hebrew: מלחמת העצמ×ות) or as the War of Liberation (Hebrew: מלחמת השחרור) by Israelis. ...
Assessments
The book was controversial from the time of its publication and remains so. Many prominent right wing political commentators and politicians continue to promote it, but academic historians of Palestine have almost unanimously ignored or dismissed it.
Reviewing the book for the January 16, 1986 issue of The New York Review of Books, Yehoshua Porath, a prominent Israeli scholar in the field of Palestinian history wrote that Peters made "highly tendentious use — or neglect — of the available source material". But more crucially, he wrote, "is her misunderstanding of basic historical processes and her failure to appreciate the central importance of natural population increase as compared to migratory movements." Porath concluded: The New York Review of Books (or NYREV) is a biweekly magazine on literature, culture, and current affairs published in New York which takes as its point of departure that the discussion of important books is itself an indispensable literary activity. ...
Yehoshua Porath is Professor Emeritus of Middle East History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. ...
This article or section contains information that has not been verified and thus might not be reliable. ...
For other senses of this word, see history (disambiguation). ...
This article is about non-human migration. ...
- "Readers of her book should be warned not to accept its factual claims without checking their sources. Judging by the interest that the book aroused and the prestige of some who have endorsed it, I thought it would present some new interpretation of the historical facts. I found none. Everyone familiar with the writing of the extreme nationalists of Zeev Jabotinsky's Revisionist party (the forerunner of the Herut party) would immediately recognize the tired and discredited arguments in Mrs. Peters's book. I had mistakenly thought them long forgotten. It is a pity that they have been given new life." [2]
The liberal critic and author Norman Finkelstein also dismissed the book by arguing in his book Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict that much of Peters' scholarship was fraudulent. From Time Immemorial later became the central issue in the Dershowitz-Finkelstein affair. Zeev Jabotinsky Zeev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky (alternatively Zhabotinski) (Hebrew: , Russian: ; October 18, 1880 - August 4, 1940) was a Zionist leader, author, orator, soldier, and founder of the Jewish Legion in World War I. // Early life Born in Odessa, Ukraine, he was raised in a traditional Jewish home and learned...
Herut (Hebrew: חרות Freedom) was the political party of the Revisionist Zionist movement in Israel. ...
Norman G. Finkelstein (born December 8, 1953), the son of Holocaust survivors, is an American assistant professor of political science at DePaul University known for his controversial writings pertaining to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and for his criticisms of the way he sees the Holocaust being handled by certain parties...
A highly acclaimed study of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by Norman Finkelstein; author of the Holocaust Industry. ...
Shortly after the publication of the book The Case for Israel, Norman Finkelstein accused its author, Alan Dershowitz of fraud, falsification, plagiarism and nonsense, claiming that Dershowitz had plagiarized Joan Peters discredited book From Time Immemorial. ...
The neoconservative American Middle East author Daniel Pipes expressed a more favorable opinion, stating: Neoconservatism describes several distinct political ideologies which are considered new forms of conservatism. ...
Daniel Pipes Daniel Pipes (born September 9, 1949) is an American neoconservative[1] columnist, author, counter-terrorism analyst, and scholar of Middle Eastern history. ...
- "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. Miss Peters's central thesis is that a substantial immigration of Arabs to Palestine took place during the first half of the twentieth century. She supports this argument with an array of demographic statistics and contemporary accounts, the bulk of which have not been questioned by any reviewer, including Professor Porath."
(19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s The 20th century lasted from 1901 to 2000 in the Gregorian calendar (often from (1900 to 1999 in common usage). ...
Demography is the study of human population dynamics. ...
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