Joan Peters thesis would be irrelevant even if it was genuine.

Submitted by Andy Dyer (United Kingdom), Nov 22, 2006 at 12:45

Joan Peters is (by the sound of it) probably wrong. There needn't be much immigration to the region for the figures to stack up.

She's wrong about Zionist development encouraging Palestinians to move in, because most (later all) of the immigrants were against employing any Arabs. Where they did employ them, it was only on the most insecure basis, to be replaced by other immigrants just as soon as possible. If there is some form of aggregation going on, the development that brought them in was largely that of the British.

She's wrong about the Palestinians needing economic progress to survive and prosper (quite a lot of people left the region in the recession during WWI, but it was not the Palestinians doing so).

She's wrong about them being peripatetic - there'd be very few in stinking refugee camps (or in Gaza and the West Bank) if that was the case.

But most striking is that she and the Zionists believe that robbing people because they've only been there 10 or 50 years is somehow alright. Claiming that it is only reminds most western people (few of whom live near where they were born) that it's not alright.

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