40 Friday, August 10, 1984 It it THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS RN HE IDE DEBATE . INSIDE T BY JOSEPH AARON Special to The Jewish News JOAN PETERS, the author of a controversial new book that is being called 'a historical event claims that the 'facts' about the origins of the Arab-Jewish con- flict are all wrong . TM T he Middle East, no stranger to conflict East, that before 1948, there were no prob- • and upheaval, is about to be turned lems between Arabs and Jews." upside down. In fact, says Peters, the problems began By a book. long before there were Zionists. Problems A book that says forget what you know caused not by Jews, but by Arabs. "It started about the Middle East. Forget what you in the 7th century, with the rise of Islam. It's know about the issues and the arguments then that all the hateful words about Jews and the history and the problems. Because it begin to appear in the Koran. That's because simply ain't so. For what the book, From it was then that Jews refused to take.on the Time Immemorial, does in 601 pages and Islamic faith. Jews at that time were living 1,792 footnotes is, says author Joan Peters, in many parts of Arabia. They had originally methodically "tear apart the fabric of concep- settled many of those areas, including the tions about the Arab-Israel problem." so-called purely Arab territory of Saudi Ara- It does that, Peters told the BALTIMORE bia. Because of their refusal to accept Islam JEWISH TIMES, by "refuting the common wis- and stubborn insistence on keeping their dom of many years," showing that crucial Judaism, they were slaughtered, subjugated, `facts' and assumptions about the basis of the treated as infidels, unbelievers. The Koran dispute are wrong. Such as the 'fact' that said Jews were to be humiliated and so, until the Zionists came along, Jews and throughout the Arab world, throughout the Arabs lived peacefully side by side. Wrong, centuries, Jews were tortured, ghettoized, says Peters. The 'fact' that Palestine was his- often killed. That tradition was carried to torically a place with a very high Arab and Palestine." very low Jewish population. Wrong, says All of this can be seen, says Peters, in a Peters. The Tact' that Jewish, mostly Euro- 19th century report by the British consul in pean, immigrants, determined to establish Palestine. He noted a rare occurrence a their own homeland, came in and kicked Moslem being arrested for the very common Arabs out of the native land they had been in occurrence of robbing, pillaging, and abusing for centuries. Wrong, says Peters. Jews in their house. The consul reported that All. those wrongs have been accepted as as he was being arrested, the Moslem be- rights, says Peters, thanks to British bias came indignant, saying, "It has been our which kept them from keeping records about right from time immemorial to take what the Arab population in Palestine, lack of belongs to the Jews, without an accounting." Israeli proof and an abundance of Arab That factor, says Peters, "is pivotal-and propaganda. Me propaganda has been pro- can't be ignored in the Palestinian question lific and expensively done," says Peters. "It's today. It shows the Arabs' innate inbred been hammered away and reiterated year abhorrence towards a subjugated group of after ye'ar until even the victims of the Big second-class citizens becoming equals in the Lie, the Israelis, have come to believe it. The Middle East. Which means that what is at real facts, once known, were buried. To find the bottom of all the problems of the Middle theM was a matter of excavating." East is the very long-standing belief that And excavating Peters did for Seven what is the Jews' in the Israel is the right of years, gathering information which showed the Moslems from time immemorial to take, that what we have come to accept as truth, without an accounting. So if they have to use isn't. And showed that maybe one reason the subterfuge and say they were• expelled from problems of the Middle East go on is that their honieland to take 'the Jewish state what really caused them hasn't been known. away from the Jews, they will." Peters did it by digging up buried evidence And so they have. But, says Peters, just and finding new evidence from unread Otto- as we have been wrong about when the prob- man and British archives, League of Nations lems started, so, too, have we been wrong reports, private conversations of world lead- about why they started. "I, like most, was led ers, obscure library records and census data to believe from the Zionist statements that and an original investigation of Palestinian Jews returned to Palestine after 2,000 years, immigration. forced themselves into the country and forced In the end, what she came up with was out the mass of Arab natives who had been there from time immemorial. not what she started out to get. A veteran journalist who has written extensively on "In fact," says Peters, "Jews were always foreign affairs and was a consultant to the in Palestine, never left entirely and were Carter Administration on the Middle 'East, there before the Arabs came in." To show Peters decided to write a book on the Middle that, Peters focuses on 1870, when Jews be- East after covering the Yom Kippur War. An gan moving in significant numbers to Pales- ardent civil rights and anti-Vietnam activist, tine. They settled, she notes, in western Peters was troubled by the Palestinian refu- Palestine, an area continuously inhabited by gees she saw and so wanted to help them by Jews since the Diaspora. And they settled in explaining how their plight came to be and a land that was impoverished and sparsely whose responsibility it was. populated. Armed with the common wisdom, Peters It was, sayS Peters, only after Jews had expected to find reasons to be sympathetic of settled and begun to work the land, reclaim- the Palestinians and critical of the Israelis. ing what had been uncultivated for centur- But the more she learned, the less things ies, that Arabs, from Egypt, Syria, Lebnon, were coming out the way she expected. And, Jordan, began to flock to the territory to live. she says, she had trouble understanding Until then, she notes, the Arab inhabitants why. "For a long time I myselfthought what I came and went without any special attach- was finding couldn't be possible. I kept avoid- ment to the place. "There was no intrinsic ing it, kept putting it away, filing it in a Palestinian nationalism." folder with a question mark on it. But the In fact, an original demographic survey more I uncovered, the bigger the file got. It of who was in Palestine in 1893 shows that was like a Chinese puzzle where you open Jews outnumbered Moslems -- with 59,431 one box and find the cover of another box and Jewd living there and 56,347 Moslems. • you open it and find the cover ofanother box." That was to be reversed, though, as Otto- The box that got all that started took man and later British law tightly restricted Peters back more than 1,200 years. "The con- Jewish immigration while at the same time ventional wisdom says Israel and the Zion- leaving Arab immigration uncontrolled. ists created all the problems in the Middle That occurred despite the fact that in 1917 , i 1 2,0111111"''....zr•mftwer-e" . , .