'She Also Exposed The Big Lie Which Tells Of A "Zionist Invasion" Of A Supposedly Arab Country': A seminal author remembered

 "My goal is to shed light on those same facts and relationships that were hidden from me, and to give this book to others who made the same mistakes that I did."

So explained Joan Peters (pictured), author of From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine, who died recently.

You have to be over a certain age to remember Joan Peters' book, published by Harper & Row, and the sensational reception it had.  The year was 1984, and it debunked the received wisdom regarding the history and demography of the land called Palestine, which led, inevitably, to controversy and attempts to discredit her conclusions.

The fruit of her researches surprised Joan Peters herself, for although Jewish herself (she was born Joan Friedman in Chicago in 1936) she really only became interested in the subject while covering the Yom Kippur War for CBS and was, it seems, inclined towards the Palestinian Arab cause when she started on her book.

Discussing her work, the prominent scholar Dr Daniel Pipes has observed, inter alia:

'Although the Jews alone moved to Palestine for ideological reasons, they were not alone in emigrating there. Arabs joined them in large numbers, from the first aliyah in 1882 to the creation of Israel in 1948. "The Arabs were moving into the very areas where Jewish settlement had preceded them and was luring them." Arab immigration received much less attention because both the Turkish and British administrators (before and after 1917, respectively) took little interest in them....

As a result, officials in Palestine counted only a small percentage of the Arab immigrants. British records for 1934 show only 1,734 non-Jews as legal immigrants and about 3,000 as illegals. Yet, according to a newspaper interview in August 1934 with the governor of the Hauran district in Syria, "In the last few months from 30,000 to 36,000 Hauranese had entered Palestine and settled there." In 1947, British officials had counted only 37,000 Arabs as the aggregate of non-Jewish immigrants in Palestine since 1917—hardly more than had come from one district of Syria in less than one year alone.

Non-Jewish immigrants came from all parts of the Middle East, including Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Transjordan (as Jordan was once known), Saudi Arabia, the Yemens, Egypt, Sudan, and Libya. Thanks to British unconcern, Arab immigrants were generally left alone and allowed to settle in Mandatory Palestine. So many Arabs came, Miss Peters estimates, that "if all those Jews and all those Arabs who arrived in ... Palestine between 1893 and 1948 had remained, and if they were forced to leave now, a dual exodus of at least equal proportion would in all probability take place. Palestine would be depopulated once again." ....

What took hundreds of thousands of Arabs to Palestine? Economic opportunity. The Zionists brought the skills and resources of Europe. Like other Europeans settling scarcely populated areas in recent times—in Australia, Southern Africa, or the American West—the Jews in Palestine initiated economic activities that created jobs and wealth on a level far beyond that of the indigenous peoples. In response, large numbers of Arabs moved toward the settlers to find employment.

The conventional picture has it that Jewish immigrants bought up Arab properties, forcing the former owners into unemployment. Miss Peters argues exactly the contrary, that the Jews created new opportunities, which attracted emigrants from distant places. To the extent that there was unemployment among the Arabs, it was mostly among the recent arrivals....

The data unearthed by Joan Peters indicate that Arabs benefited economically so much by the presence of Jewish settlers from Europe that they traveled hundreds of miles to get closer to them.

In turn, this explains why the definition of a refugee from Palestine in 1948 is a person who lived there for just two years: because many Arab residents in 1948 had immigrated so recently. The usual definition would have cut out a substantial portion of the persons who later claimed to be refugees from Palestine.

Thus, the "Palestinian problem" lacks firm grounding. Many of those who now consider themselves Palestinian refugees were either immigrants themselves before 1948 or the children of immigrants. This historical fact reduces their claim to the land of Israel; it also reinforces the point that the real problem in the Middle East has little to do with Palestinian-Arab rights.'  [Emphasis added, here and below]

Nadav Shragai now notes:

'....[Joan Peters] slaughtered the sacred cow known as "the Palestinian refugee problem" by revealing just how the United Nations altered the criteria for gaining refugee status in order to exacerbate the problem well beyond its proper dimensions. Peters discovered that the U.N.'s changing requirements for being listed as a Palestinian refugee essentially turned them into something else, something far different from other refugees in distant crises.

Peters even offered proof that many of the Palestinian refugees that earned special status in the eyes of the U.N. were never even residents of prestate Israel "from time immemorial," contradicting a long-standing Palestinian claim. Instead, these were immigrants who had only arrived quite recently.

There were many who followed in Peters' footsteps. They backed up her facts, but she was the first to bring them to light. Peters was the first to challenge the underlying assumptions of Palestinian wretchedness and refugee status. ...

The debate that was sparked by Peters' book has never been more relevant since it laid the foundations for later works of research on the subject of refugee status. Prior to the "birth" of the Palestinian matter, the customary definition of refugee was an individual who was forced to leave their residence from time immemorial due to war, hostile actions, or expulsion.

The U.N.'s alternate definition of refugee, which was applied solely to the Palestinians, states that a refugee is anyone who lived in the area that currently encompasses the State of Israel for a period of two years prior to the founding of the state in 1948. The Arab League, which was the driving force behind the newly reconfigured definition, managed to significantly inflate the number of refugees. Indeed, many of the refugees who fled or were expelled from the country did immigrant to prestate Israel during the British Mandate period.

Ze'ev Galili, a veteran Israeli journalist, often used his newspaper column to cite Peters' work. He even had a hand in the reissuance of her book in the early part of the previous decade.

"Not only did Peters expose the bluff of the criteria for refugee status," he said, "but she also exposed the big lie which tells of a 'Zionist invasion' of a supposedly Arab country, even though it is known that the First Aliyah consisted of Jews coming to an empty country, while a very significant percentage of the Arab population in 1948 were immigrants who came here after the advent of Zionism."...

Peters found that the Arab population grew in proportion to the rising Jewish presence in the country. Indeed, the economic prosperity generated by the budding Zionist enterprise, particularly in the latter stages of the 19th century, spurred internal Arab migration from Transjordan and the highlands (the traditional areas of Arab settlement in Palestine). It also invited illegal Arab immigration from all over the Middle East. Arabs settled along the coastal plain and the Shfela region, both areas that were inhabited primarily by Jews.

Peters' conclusion was clear: Most of the Palestinian refugees of 1948 who fled the coastal area were not, as the Palestinians claim, inhabitants of the land "from time immemorial," but instead were recent newcomers. They were not refugees. Instead, they were economic migrants who eventually would return to their original homes after the founding of the state....

The number of documents that Peters unearthed was tremendous. Her prolific research was also a source of confusion. Some disagreed with the numbers she cited in her research, but even her critics had a difficult time contradicting what was painfully obvious -- hundreds of thousands of Arabs had settled in the heart of Jewish-populated areas. When they were expelled, they were given the status of refugees, even though they had not been here "from time immemorial.".... 

Read  the entire article here

Quelle Horreur! 100 "Stars" & 600 Spear Carriers Won't Be Going To Israel

My previous post concerns a despicable example of Israel-demonisation at a British Law School.

This one concerns another, if less worrisome, example of Israel-demonisation coming out of the messed-up old Mother Country.

For playing now at The Guardian Theatre of the Absurd is The Peter, Mike, and Miriam Show.

Yes, the cultural boycott of Israel has been declared in a letter to The Guardian, that usual repository of such onslaughts against the little Jewish State, signed by various theatrical, artistic and musical types including a number of "ashamed Jews" with the prominent three whose forenames I give above leading the cast. Peter Kosminsky, Mike Leigh, and Miriam Margolyes (pictured) need no introduction as stars of the anti-Israel pantheon.  (Remember Ray Cook's fabulous post regarding Miriam here ?)

They are among 100 advance guards (the ones whose names are best likely to resonate with the general public) of a 700-strong boycotting brigade – many very small fry indeed, and unlikely to be much missed in Israel or any other overseas or domestic  venue for that matter – have warned (in that typically self-righteous egotistical style that all such statements share) that:

'Along with more than 600 other fellow artists, we are announcing today that we will not engage in business-as-usual cultural relations with Israel. We will accept neither professional invitations to Israel, nor funding, from any institutions linked to its government.... Now we are saying, in Tel Aviv, Netanya, Ashkelon or Ariel, we won’t play music, accept awards, attend exhibitions, festivals or conferences, run masterclasses or workshops, until Israel respects international law and ends its colonial oppression of the Palestinians.'

 See the full  letter, tweeted so triumphantly by the Lib-Dem baroness above and by the usual suspects in the Israel-demonising movement, here.

 Full list of signatories here

Andy de la Tour

Among the reasons for signing:

People ask – why a cultural boycott of Israel? Why not other regimes? Because Israel has displaced, exiled and imprisoned an entire people, the Palestinians. Because Israel aspires to be a democracy even as it thrives on its apartheid treatment of its non-Jewish citizens. Because Britons have an especial duty to right the historic wrong when Great Britain enabled the occupation of Palestinian land for Zionist settlement. Because the most important Palestinian political and non-governmental organisations have asked us to. Andy de la Tour, actor and writer (See Andy in full anti-American flood here)

As we rightly remember the Holocaust that killed so many Jewish people and destroyed much of Jewish culture across Europe, so we also need to remember the devastating violence being directed at Palestinian people and their culture today – and ponder the disturbing fact that this is being organised by the Jewish state created after World War II.  Ian Christie, cultural historian, broadcaster

Whatever happened to empathy in the Jewish story? Ordinary Israelis, rise up against your warmongering leaders whose actions are wholly lacking in imagination. Guy Sherwin, film artist/performer and teacher

I ask Israel to turn the other cheek, keep your word and forget playing to the politics of selfishness, so that the real world, of which artists are a part, can do the right things to help end this hideous criminal anger that Israel is displaying.  Paul Watson, documentary filmmaker, writer and teacher

My favourite – not, obviously, for the heinous and chutzpahdik goal it seeks but for its refreshing frankness of aim:

I dream of a one nation state, a united Palestine and Israel that defines citizenship by neither religion nor race, but by those prepared to live together in peace. I cherish the invaluable cultural contributions to our world made by both Jews and Arabs. Barnaby Rogerson, writer and publisher [biographer of Mohammed]

I wonder how many of these "stars" and spear carriers, who reject Israel's right and obligation to defend its citizens from terror, are familiar with Pallywood, and its dishonest lachrymose productions such as what might be dubbed "The Miracle on Shuhada Street"?   (See that blockbuster busted here.)  

Update: For a less polite view of the Guardian letter signatories than I offer see Edgar Davidson's post here

A distinguished thespian of the Anti-Israel theatre of the absurd adds his John Hancock:

Yes, that's how farcical this thing's getting!

"We Are Gravely Concerned About This Unbalanced, Delegitimising Conference": British Law School To Hold Israel-Bashing Event in April

Anti-Israel protest, Southampton, 2014; photo Daily Echo

As reported by the London Jewish News, a newspaper with a commendable habit of stealing a march on the long-established "organ of Anglo-Jewry" the Jewish Chronicle (which as we saw could not be bothered to report the 9/11 link that downed Stephen Sizer, even though they were tipped off about it by yours truly shortly after it appeared on 20 January), an Israel-bashing conference is due to take place from 17-19 April, organised by the Law School at the University of Southampton.

The conference is entitled "International Law and the State of Israel: Legitimacy, Responsibility and Exceptionalism".

A look at the Law School's website here reveals that the organising committee of the conference includes Professor Oren Ben-Dor (an ex-pat Israeli who has a history of Israel-bashing pro-BDS activity), Professor Professor Suleiman Sharkh (whose speciality is evidently not law but electrical engineering), and Ms. Juman Asmail (a Palestinian student activist).  American Professor George Bisharat is also seminally involved.

Announces the website:

'This conference will be the first of its kind and constitutes a ground-breaking historical event on the road towards justice and enduring peace in historic Palestine. It is unique because it concerns the legitimacy in International Law of the Jewish state of Israel. Rather than focusing on Israeli actions in the 1967 Occupied Territories, the conference will focus on exploring themes of Legitimacy, Responsibility and Exceptionalism; all of which are posed by Israel’s very nature.

The conference aims to explore the relatedness of the suffering and injustice in Palestine to the foundation and protection of a state of such nature and asks what role International Law should play in the situation. It will take place over a whole weekend and will involve leading thinkers: scholars from law, politics, philosophy, theology, anthropology, cultural studies history and other connected disciplines

 Key speakers and various panels will diagnose the legal position with regard to the nature of Israel thus enabling a much needed platform for scholarly debate and disagreement.'

 The Jewish News reports, inter alia:

 'Tory peer Lord Leigh said: “It is very disappointing that a distinguished university like Southampton has organised this conference. They have never held a conference questioning the right of existence of any other country.”....

Despite opposition from Jewish community leaders – several of whom have lodged protests with the university’s vice-chancellor – organisers have pressed ahead with the convention on 17-19 April, saying they hope it will “serve as a platform for scholarly debates rather than positing an activist aim”.

 Jewish Leadership Council chief executive Simon Johnson ...said: “We are gravely concerned about this unbalanced, delegitimising conference, which will have a detrimental impact on cohesiveness. We have asked the vice-chancellor to reconsider.”

He added: “It’s a fine line between academic freedom, which we all cherish, and delegitimisation and discrimination. This conference seems to hover around that line.”'  [Emphasis added]

Who's Blue, Pussycat? Blue Enough To Sue? Gorgeous George, That's Who

Shocking as the shade of pink

He's blue?

Well, obviously not politically.

His colour's more – well, look left.

But the man infamous for playing a pussycat lapping milk from the manicured hands of the winsome Rula Lenska as he lies at her feet is feeling really blue.

Reflecting bitterly on what he insists is his horrendous treatment on last week's BBC Question Time, George dubs Cristina Odone (who as we saw in a previous blogpost of mine placed her hand lightly on his arm to interject a point) "the saintly figure with wandering hands who is never done telling us what a Christian she is".

He places her among the "bit-players on the panel", who also comprise, in his words,

'the hapless Tristram Hunt MP (who attended the same expensive public school as [Jonathan] Freedland, in fact I was the only person sitting at the table who hadn’t been educated at a private school)....'

In basic black, with an old chum of ours

Moreover:

'I feel very let down by David Dimbleby. I have known him a long time, have always respected him and I didn’t expect the serial failures of which he was clearly guilty....

 The audience selection supposedly scientifically calibrated was laughably biased. Ludicrous and counter productive though that turned out to be, there was no guarantee of that outcome.

 I know of several pro-Palestinian supporters, Muslims, and Respect members who were turned down in their attempts to join the audience. Fanatic supporters of Israel evidently had no such difficulty....

 A special place in the hall of shame must go to the Guardian’s executive editor Jonathan Freedland selected for the role of chief prosecutor in the show trial. The Guardian, a faux liberal newspaper which last summer accepted (that which even Rupert Murdoch had declined) a paid full page advertisement from an Israeli organisation while the blood was still running in the streets of Gaza seeking to justify the slaughter and slander the Palestinians, thousands of whom had by then been slain.

 There is intense competition for the title of Hypocrite in Chief at The Guardian but Freedland in my view shades it....'

But since getting all that off his chest, Gorgeous George has mounted a defamation suit against a Guardian journalist.

Read all about it here

On A South African Campus, An Evil Call For A Special Kind Of Apartheid

Well might Cape Town author and columnist Max du Preez tweet the message at left.

Well might others share his outrage.

From the Durban University of Technology in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, comes a grotesque example of apartheid with a twist.

Reports a South African newspaper:

Jewish students at the Durban University of Technology (DUT) who supported the State of Israel should be kicked out, the Students Representative Council (SRC) has demanded. 

And this applies to students who are sponsored by the Israeli government. The demands, sent to the DUT management, have shocked and angered Jewish organisations.  

The vice-chancellor of the university, Professor Ahmed Bawa, said the demand by the SRC and the Progressive Youth Alliance that the DUT deregister all Jewish students “is totally unacceptable”. 

The Secretary of the SRC, Mqondisi Duma, said: “As the SRC, we had a meeting and analysed international politics. We took the decision that Jewish students, especially those who do not support the Palestinian struggle, should deregister.”

 On Tuesday night, Natan Pollack – the national chairman of the South African Union of Jewish Students – said the suggestion was “deplorable”. 

“To discriminate against people because of their religious and political standpoint goes against freedom of speech,” Pollack said. 

Chairwoman of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, Durban-based Mary Kluk, said she was “appalled” and said it was unacceptable such demands could be made in an academic institution.  [Emphasis added]

 More regarding the situation in South Africa here

"Terror Denialists" John & Jen Talk Obama's "Random" Talk, & Bibi Talks Tough On Iran

Barack Obama has recently said:

"It is entirely legitimate for the American people to be deeply concerned when you've got a bunch of violent, vicious zealots who behead people or randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris. ..." (See and read more here)

Watch a couple of Obama spokespeople tie themselves in knots as reporters question them regarding Obama's term "randomly".

First, White House press secretary John Earnest, attempting to stay cool under pressure, but obviously addled, insists that the victims were "randomly where they happened to be" and explaining that "randomly" is a valid term because These individuals were not targeted by name".

He's also asked some tough questions regarding the respective threat from terrorism versus global warning.

Second, Jen Psaki of the State Department, almost squirming under questioning by an intrepid reporter regarding Obama's "randomly" remark.  (Transcript here)

She then went into damage-control mode, making a desperate  tweet on behalf of her master:

Watch the pundits on Fox News disgustedly dissect the situation, and flay the "terror denialist" mindset that underlies the present American administration.

Meanwhile, Bibi Netanyahu has just issued the following statement:

"First, on behalf of the people of Israel, I wish to send condolences to President Obama, the American people and the family of Kayla Mueller. We stand with you.

Israel’s survival is not a partisan issue, not in Israel nor in the United States.

This doesn’t mean that from time to time Israeli governments have not had serious disagreements with American administrations over the best way to achieve the security of Israel.

Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, declared Israel’s independence in the face of strong opposition from US Secretary of State George Marshall. Likewise, Prime Minister Eshkol’s decisions at the start of the Six Day War, Prime Minister Begin’s decision regarding the nuclear reactor in Iraq, and Prime Minister Sharon’s decisions to press ahead with Operation Defensive Shield; these were all strongly opposed at the time by American administrations.

Disagreements over Israel’s security have occurred between prime ministers in Israel from the left and from the right and American presidents from both parties.'

None of these disagreements led to a rupture in the relationship between Israel and the United States.

In fact, over time, our relationship grew stronger.

But we do have today a profound disagreement with the United States administration and the rest of the P5+1 over the offer that has been made to Iran. 'This offer would enable Iran to threaten Israel's survival.'This is a regime, Iran, that is openly committed to Israel’s destruction. It would be able, under this deal, to break out to a nuclear weapon in a short time, and within a few years, to have the industrial capability to produce many nuclear bombs for the goal of our destruction.'This is not a personal disagreement between President Obama and me. I deeply appreciate all that he has done for Israel in many fields

 Equally, I know that the President appreciates my responsibility, my foremost responsibility, to protect and defend the security of Israel.]I am going to the United States not because I seek a confrontation with the President, but because I must fulfil my obligation to speak up on a matter that affects the very survival of my country. 'I intend to speak about this issue before the March 24th deadline and I intend to speak in the US Congress because Congress might have an important role on a nuclear deal with Iran."

Egyptian Journalist on IS's Atrocities (video)

Noted the Israeli Arabist scholar Mordechai Kedar in an important analysis of the meaning and motivation of the horrible death of Moaz al-Kasasbeh:

'[T]he burning alive of the Jordanian pilot is not a new propaganda weapon invented by ISIS, as some of the media commentators on the movie claimed. This is a method of eliminating enemies that is well known and documented in early Islamic sources, and based on a deductive legal principle in Sharia law.'

Below, in a video from the invaluable Memri.org, is Egyptian journalist and TV host Ibrahim Eissa insisting on 3 February that IS's atrocities are rooted in Islamic sources:

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaHaWta7AFI)