There is no shortage of propaganda aimed at Palestinians. If you look hard enough, you can find some myth or slogan that can fill any niche. Hell, even if you don’t believe Palestinians exist in the first place, you’ll find a whole arsenal of period appropriate writings proving that we’re a figment of someone’s imagination.
One popular myth that resurfaces every once in a while, is the myth that Palestine was a mostly empty region, and those who call themselves Palestinians were only attracted to the area in the mandatory period due to the prosperity accompanying Zionist settlement.
Claiming Palestine was empty prior to the arrival of Zionist colonists is nothing new, in fact it’s a pretty popular trope in virtually all settler colonial contexts [You can read more about this here]. The “innovation” lies in claiming that Palestinians were only attracted to the area during the mandate period to seek employment from the industrious colonists, and that in fact the majority of Palestinians today are the descendants of these illegal migrants.
All it takes to dispel this nonsense is a glance at the Nüfus (Ottoman population registry) or the much later British mandate census data to see that the land has never been empty. Additionally, inspecting these numbers tells quite a clear tale of a minority settler population growing next to a large native majority.
But why is this myth so popular?
While by no means the first to put forward this myth, it was greatly popularized by Joan Peters in her book From Time Immemorial, where she attempted to empirically “prove” this, by inspecting population records from various sources. Needless to say, that at the time it was a smash-hit among Zionists in the United States. Finally, there was this meticulous scholarly work that proved once and for all that the Palestinians as a people were fictitious, while simultaneously relieving Israel from all moral responsibility for creating millions of refugees. Praise for the book rained in from every corner, Saul Bellow wrote that “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.” Theodor White, Barbara Tuchman, Walter Reich, Lucy Dawidowicz, Elie Wiesel and many, many others lauded the book for its insight and analysis.
Wow, this seems like the real deal!
However, before I start packing up my belongings to exile my fictitious self, perhaps some further investigation is warranted.
The main argument of this myth relies on so much misdirection, cherry-picking of data, outright falsification of sources, jumping to conclusions and relying on assumptions, to the point where I struggle to imagine any of these reviewers actually having read the book. At least not without overlooking enough egregious academic misconduct to land you in front of a disciplinary committee. The book was such naked, unsubstantiated propaganda that Noam Chomsky thinks it was probably put together by some intelligence agency, with Peters merely signing her name onto it.
Peter’s main argument is that the growth of the Palestinian Arab population was not natural, and was rather the result of some secret migration that was somehow left undocumented. This is done mainly through a tortured twisting of her sources and purposefully omitting qualifiers and any data which contradicts her assertion.
Naturally, I am not the first to write about Peter’s manipulation of sources and bad faith interpretation of data, nor will I be the last. I will not list in this article every single inconsistency or error in Peter’s writing, as that would probably take a book in itself. Thankfully, this work has already been done for us, and you can browse detailed breakdowns of Peter’s work in the “Further reading” section. Perhaps the best known debunking of Peter’s book comes from Norman Finkelstein, who meticulously documented the problems in detail. For example, Finkelstein uses this claim to illustrate the way Peter’s manipulates quotes and data:
Peters “relies” on Carr-Saunders World Population to present the claim that:
“Medical and sanitary progress has made little headway among the Palestinian Arabs as yet, and cannot account for any considerable fall in the death-rate.”
However, if you are as diligent as Finkelstein, and check the source being relied upon, it paints quite a different picture:
“Medical and sanitary progress, so far as it affects the personal health and customs, has made little headway among the Palestinian Arabs as yet, and cannot account for any considerable fall in the death-rate. But general administrative measures, in the region of quarantine, for example, have been designed in the light of modern knowledge and have been adequately carried out. Measures of this kind can be enforced almost overnight. … Therefore we can find in these administrative changes, brought about by the British occupation of Palestine, what is in any case a tenable explanation of the natural increase of population among Arabs.”
That is to say, that medical and sanitary progress in the personal health and customs had not yet made headway, however, implemented administrative measures such as quarantines and other measures had been implemented and is seen by Carr-Saunders as a likely explanation for the decrease in death rates.
Notice how dropping the important signifier, and removing the information from its original context completely flipped the conclusions of the paragraph. This practice is repeated often throughout the entire book. Another method used to inflate numbers to support her argument, is to suggest that any evidence of something is but “the tip of the iceberg” to quote Finkelstein. She asserts that since the British turned a blind eye to Arab illegal immigration, then only the most flagrant cases were actually deported. That means that for every reported deportation of an Arab immigrant from Palestine, there must have been many others whose conduct was not so flagrant as to be deported. Naturally, she arrived to the conclusion that the British turned a blind eye to Arab immigration through tortured manipulation of data, similar to the example shown above.
It should be noted that this myth was difficult to argue even when it first emerged. For example, the Anglo-American Survey of Palestine in 1946 concluded that:
That each [temporary migration into Palestine] may lead to a residue of illegal permanent settlers is possible, but, if the residue were of significant size, it would be reflected in systematic disturbances of the rates of Arab vital occurrences. No such systematic disturbances are observed. It is sometimes alleged that the high rate of Arab natural increase is due to a large concealed immigration from the neighbouring countries. This is an erroneous inference. Researches reveal that the high rate of fertility of the Moslem Arab woman has remained unchanged for half a century. The low rate of Arab natural increase before 1914 was caused by:
(a) the removal in significant numbers of men in the early nubile years for military service in other parts of the Ottoman Empire, many of whom never returned and others of whom returned in the late years of life; and (b) the lack of effective control of endemic and epidemic diseases that in those years led to high mortality rates.
There is also ample evidence that her sources are often outright false or fabricated, for example Anthony Lewis brings up how Peters cites a report by the Institute for Palestine Studies which”…found that 68 percent of the Arabs who became refugees in 1948 ‘left without seeing an Israeli soldier.”’ Lewis informs us, that the report “was actually about refugees in the 1967 war, and the percentage was of just 37 refugees who were studied.” Other sources are utterly useless and unreliable, such as the journals and hearsay of random European travelers to Palestine, which we’re supposed to believe over a century of population and census data.
Fortunately for us, the love affair with this book did not spread outside the United States. As a matter of fact, it was severely panned by critics in the United Kingdom, and even failed to find traction in Israel itself, with Israeli academics and historians calling it nonsense.
Unfortunately for us, the book is still widespread in the United States, and has received multiple reprints, even today and after its thorough debunking, it still maintains a 4.5 out of 5 star rating on Amazon and other online book retailers.
At the risk of repeating myself, but as always, propaganda does not care for facts, but for political utility, and in this case, it is naked to see that the political message is all that matters. I find it difficult to believe that all these “esteemed” reviewers somehow managed to miss all the issues apparent in the book. Sadly, this belief is reinforced by the fact that even when the problems with the book were made apparent, barely any of these reviewers recanted their position. Even Elie Wiesel, who was made aware of the problems early on never recanted his support for the book, choosing to remain silent instead, as his blurb, praise and name continued to be printed in each subsequent edition of the book. I would have liked to remind the late Mr. Wiesel that silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented, but I suppose he always did have a blind spot for Palestinian torment.
Ultimately, Peters’ book was relegated to the dustbin of history, at least in academia. It is exceedingly difficult to quote from this book and be taken seriously as a scholar. However, the pseudo-scientific illusion of empiricism that undergirds her writing still animates many dehumanizing myths regarding Palestinians to this day.
Peters fabricates, misrepresents and cherry-picks her way through hundreds of pages in an attempt to deny the existence of the Palestinian people and absolve Israel of its original sin. Her attempts have been, and will remain unsuccessful. The truth tends to find a way, if not now, then in the future, and as the popular saying goes: “You can’t cover the sun with a sieve”.
- Said, Edward W., and Christopher Hitchens, eds. Blaming the victims: Spurious scholarship and the Palestinian question. Verso, 2001.
- Finkelstein, Norman G. Image and reality of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Verso, 2003.
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Kamel, Lorenzo. Imperial perceptions of Palestine: British influence and power in late Ottoman times. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015.
- Chomsky, Noam. “The fate of an honest intellectual.” Understanding Power: The indispensable Chomsky, 2002: 244-248.
- Lewis, Anthony. ABROAD AT HOME; There Were No Indians, The New York Times, January 13th, 1986.
- Gilmour, Ian, and David Gilmour. “Pseudo-Travellers.” Journal of Palestine studies, 14.4, 1985: 129-141.
- Porath, Yehoshua. “Mrs. Peters’s Palestine.” New York Review of Books, 1986.