By David Shayne, Special to The Jewish Sound
“In other cases, the more or less universally used description of ‘eligibility” [to be considered ‘refugees’] included those people who were forced to leave ‘permanent’ or ‘habitual’ homes. In the case of Arab refugees, however, the definition had been broadened to include any persons who had been in Palestine for only two years before Israel’s statehood in 1948…. However during the…political evolution of a new image for these Arabs, from ‘refugees’ to ‘Palestinian people’ excluded from plots of land inhabited by them from time immemorial, I found myself returning uneasily to that ‘two year’ clause.”
Thus Joan Friedman Caro, better remembered as Joan Peters, explained the title in her controversial 1984 book, “From Time Immemorial.”
Peters died on January 6 at age 78. She left behind her family and a legacy from a distinguished career in journalism. But for her book, it is unlikely any one other than her friends and family would have noted her passing.
In her book, Peters explains how she originally intended to write sympathetically of the Palestinian narrative. But in the course of her research, she discovered that the UN defined “Arab refugees” from Palestine as any Arab who had been in Palestine for more than two years because thousands of Arabs, mostly from Syria, had immigrated to Palestine during the 1930s. Therefore, a significant portion of the Arab population uprooted during Israel’s War of Independence was not native to the country.
Joan Peters went on to explain that as she delved more and more into the historical record, including British Government archives from its 30-year rule over Palestine (from 1917 until 1948), she ended up writing a drastically different book from the one she originally envisioned.
Her book took on other shibboleths of the anti-Zionist narrative, such as the oft-repeated accusation that large numbers of Arab peasants were displaced and rendered destitute by Jewish land acquisitions, a claim contradicted by the record.
The book caused quite a stir when it first appeared. Critics from the left ripped the book apart, accusing Peters of everything from sloppy research to intentional distortion of the historical record. She had her defenders as well, but even some of those admitted that in places her research was deficient.
Peters did not publicly engage her critics, but withdrew from public life to the extent she never wrote another book and appears to have stopped working as a journalist as well. She remained involved in pro-Israel advocacy however, and became active in monitoring abuses by UNWRA, the UN organization established to assist Palestinian Arab refugees.
I have to agree the book is not the best written I’ve ever read. The organization is poor and it is difficult to follow. But it is an important and useful book, it is well supported with citations of various records, and plenty of other sources confirm her basic themes.
Four years before Peters published her book, Israeli author Arieh Avneri wrote a book covering many of the same topics, which was translated into English under the name “The Claim of Dispossession.” Although Peters’s book does not mention Avneri, he reached the same conclusions.
I still refer to “From time Immemorial” when I am researching the Arab-Jewish conflict and I recommend it from time to time, although it is not for readers who are unfamiliar with the Israel’s history or are looking for a brief overview-type work.
But, more importantly, I admire Joan Peters’s courage and tenacity, her refusal to simply accept the “common wisdom” at face value, and her choice instead to dig into the historical record and conform the views to the facts, rather than the other way around, as happens far too often.