From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab–Jewish Conflict over Palestine is a 1984 book by Joan Peters, published by Harper & Row, 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. 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, while Israeli historian Yehoshua Porath called it "sheer forgery". 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 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 When the book came out in the US in 1984, it was initially lauded by American writers and public figures such as Elie Wiesel, Saul Bellow, Barbara Tuchman, Bernard Lewis, Martin Peretz, Alan Dershowitz, and others. It was—and still is, for some—held as "totemic" on the Jewish right.
When it came out in the UK in 1985, it was met with a more hostile response, according to Mondoweiss. It received a critical review from the London Review of Books.
The book provoked public debate, but has since been refuted by reputable scholars, in Israel and elsewhere.
Initial reception 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.
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. Peretz said, "If (the book is) read, it will change the mind of our generation."Peretz, Martin (July 23, 1984), The New Republic. 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. In an article written for The New Leader in May 1984, Martin Kramer 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 criticised Peters' "rummaging through archives and far more balanced historical studies than her own for whatever evidence she can find to back up her thesis". However, Kramer went on to say that this was "especially unfortunate because on the central point of her book, the demographic argument, Peters is probably right."
In July 1984, Daniel Pipes, writing for Commentary, 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." Two years later, in 1986, 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.
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 between 5-11 September 1984, Bill Farrell in the fall 1984 issue of the Journal of Palestine Studies, and Alexander Cockburn in The Nation on 13 October 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. Citing an issue of Haaretz as his reference, Finkelstein claimed that at an international conference on Palestinian demography at Haifa University in Israel in June 1986, the theses of her book were almost unanimously ridiculed by the participants.
Criticism Peters' claims in the book have been refuted by reputable scholars.
Norman Finkelstein Norman Finkelstein wrote that Peters' book was 'among the most spectacular frauds ever published on the Arab-Israeli conflict,' 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.
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.