Joan Peters (Joan Peters Caro nee Friedman), 78, the author of the infamous and viciously anti-Palestinian book “From Time Immemorial,” died this week, according to an announcement from a relative posted on Facebook. Click to view Obituary.
The premise of the Peters book is that the Christian and Muslims who were forced to flee Palestine in the face of terrorist attacks by the Jewish-led militias the Haganah, Irgun and Stern Gang were in fact little more than a “population transfer” that was “justified.”
Peters argued that the Palestinians who lost their lands and homes to the State of Israel during the fighting that began in the 1940s and ended with Palestine’s near destruction in 1948, were replaced by Jews from Arab countries who entered Israel.
Pro-Israel activists and anti-Arab racists have long argued that the Jewish Arabs were forced to leave the Arab World and fled to Israel for safety. The truth, of course, is that Jewish Arabs were enticed to leave by Israel which sought to build up its population. In 1947, the population of the proposed “Jewish State” in the partition of Palestine was only 50 percent Jewish and 50 percent non-Jewish. In order to create the Jewish State in 1948, the Jewish militias had to force non-Jews to flee, not just from the proposed partitioned Jewish State but from the areas of the proposed partitioned Palestinian State that Jewish militias and terrorist organizations conquered during the wear.
Israel in 1948 consisted not only of the area set aside for the Jewish State under the UN Partition but also half of the area set aside for the Arab State and most of Jerusalem, which was designated to be an international zone.
Israel has never recognized the United Nations resolution urging it to return the lands it acquired in conflict both in 1948 and in 1967 and today leads the fight to block the creation of a Palestinian State that would be the home to Muslims and Christians from Palestine who were expelled by Israel.
In the pro-Israel atmosphere of the United States, books that aggressively defended Israel and Jewish claims to Palestine, and that viciously berated the rightful claims of Christians and Muslims to lands in Israel, were celebrated in the biased American news media and in the equally biased and racist American book publishing industry.
Although Peters’ book was celebrated, it was a partisan support that fueled sales, not the accuracy of its content. And it fed the conflict and did not bring either side together.
Click here to read Noam Chomsky’s review of the book which was originally published in 1984.
But that’s not unusual in America, which has always had a bias against Muslims and Christians from the Middle East.
The racist book “From Time Immemorial” was heavily promoted by journalists who were her friends and who embraced her sometimes hateful views of Palestinian Arab Muslims and Christians.
Although members of the Arab American community opposed the book and its ugly contents, they do not celebrate anyone’s death. They wish only that she might have dedicated her life to embrace a genuinely more positive objective that would have brought peace not divisions to Palestine and Israel.
The conflict between Jews and Arabs in Palestine has created an extremist movement of fanatics on both sides who reject peace based on Two-States. Yet peace based on Two-States is exactly what is needed to protect Jews, Christians and Muslims in Palestine.
The book, From Time Immemorial, created much suffering for Palestinians and Arabs, and fueled the divisions that kept the two sides apart. Naturally, it received the National Jewish Book Award for Israel.
May she rest in peace.
Ray Hanania is an award winning political and humor columnist who analyzes American and Middle East politics, and life in general. He is an author of several books.
Hanania covered Chicago Politics and Chicago City Hall from 1976 through 1992 at the Daily Southtown and the Chicago Sun-Times. He began writing in 1975 publishing The Middle Eastern Voice newspaper in Chicago (1975-1977). He later published “The National Arab American Times” newspaper (2004-2007).
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Hanania is the recipient of four (4) Chicago Headline Club “Peter Lisagor Awards” for Column writing. In November 2006, he was named “Best Ethnic American Columnist” by the New American Media. In 2009, Hanania received the prestigious Sigma Delta Chi Award for Writing from the Society of Professional Journalists. He is the recipient of the MT Mehdi Courage in Journalism Award. He was honored for his writing skills with two (2) Chicago Stick-o-Type awards from the Chicago Newspaper Guild. In 1990, Hanania was nominated by the Chicago Sun-Times editors for a Pulitzer Prize for his four-part series on the Palestinian Intifada.
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Hanania is the US Special Correspondent for the Arab News Newspaper, covering Middle East and Arab American issues. He writes for the Southwest News newspaper group writing on mainstream American issues.
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Arabs and CHRISTIANS who were forced to flee???? Sorry, that is fiction. Christians have never been forced to flee Israel, but have met with increasing violence at the hands of Arabs/Muslims. As I remember it, Arabs were invited by the new Israeli government to stay on and build a better country for all the inhabitants, but those who refused to leave were slaughtered by Arabs! Isn’t it interesting how revisionists continue to attempt to rewrite history whenever they think people have forgotten what actually happened? As for the UN directive for Israel to return lands she won in a war, those lands provided a buffer zone between Arabs who were shooting children as they worked on Israeli kibbutzim. There would have been no need for such wars if Arabs had not been using Israelis for target practice. I certainly find it ironic that the Arab newspaper is claiming that Arabs and Christians are planning to work together for a Palestinian State. This at a time when Arabs and other Muslims the world over are calling for death to all Christians!
Joan Peters was a decent person. And I am sorry she passed away. I don’t think that we should hate simply because we disagree. But I think her book was one of the most viciously anti-Palestinian books published, and there have been so many horrible books. Shame on you for being a fanatic and not embracing moderation.
Anyone who’s read the book knows that you’re maliciously slandering it and the incontrovertible facts it presents. Shame on you. But, being that you’re doing it for Islam, you’re proud, so of course you aren’t shamed.
http://www.danielpipes.org/1110/from-time-immemorial