It's invidious to quote oneself, but there are times when one has to do it - Re: [RHETORIC] Joan Peter's critics still say her facts were correct! Thu Apr 15 00:11:39 2004
Some words I wrote: > the book as a whole. Whatever the findings, Israel's right to exist does > not hinge on Peters' claims that the land was empty when the Jews arrived > and that the Palestinians are recent arrivals. The right of a country to > exist depends on its recognition of individual rights. I would dearly love to see the Sioux, et cetera, take the United States to court with this as the main legal principle. �And in that case, why did Arafat have to declare he recognized Israel's right to exist? // And something else I wrote in a private email to Hank (I am quoting it because I am not quoting Hank, I am quoting (fair use) two other authors) : // I note, though, that Finkelstein identifies Peters' numbers as precisely those numbers provided by the "pro-Arab British". �Let me quote, Ch 2, pg 26: "[...]A close reading of Peters' voluminous footnotes reveals the fact that she relies almost exclusively on the standard official documents of the period - the 1930 Hope Simpson Report, the 1937 Peel Commission Report, the 1945-46 Anglo-American Survey of Palestine, the Annual British reports to the league of Nations and so on. �None of this evidence is new. (8) ��������This discovery raises an intriguing question. �Without exception these official, mostly British-authored reports conclude that - in the words of teh Survey of Palestine - 'Arab immigration for the purposes of settlement [in Palestine] is insignificant'. (9) �Yet, Peters manages to use these _very_ _same_ documents to 'prove' precisely the contrary. �How does she manage this astonishing _volte_ _face_?" In relation to that, let me quote from one of the heroes of my adolescence, a man named Martin Gardner: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000547F6-C50D-1CC6-B4A8809EC588EEDF&pageNumber=2&catID=2 "How can we tell if someone is a scientific crank? Gardner offers this advice: (1) "First and most important of these traits is that cranks work in almost total isolation from their colleagues." Cranks typically do not understand how the scientific process operates that they need to try out their ideas on colleagues, attend conferences and publish their hypotheses in peer-reviewed journals before announcing to the world their startling discovery. Of course, when you explain this to them they say that their ideas are too radical for the conservative scientific establishment to accept. (2) "A second characteristic of the pseudo-scientist, which greatly strengthens his isolation, is a tendency toward paranoia," " // And: // Just a point I'd like to make on this, about one much and deservedly ridiculed Joan Peters: In Norman G. Finkelstein's "Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict", Ch 2, pg 25, he writes: "On two occasions, Peters suggests that the number of illegal Arab immigrants who had settled in the Jewish areas of Palestine was 'great enough to compare with [the] admittedly immigration-based increase of the Jews' (p. 275; see also p. 337). �That would put total 'illegal' or 'unrecorded' Arab immigration at about 370,000. �Elsewhere (p. 381), Peters seems to set her sights considerably lower - 'at least 200,000' through 1939, she reports. �In a third place (p. 298), she implies that almost the entire Arab population of Palestine was immigrant and not indigenous.(3) �That would put the total number of 'hidden' Arab immigrants and their descendants at roughly 1,300,000. �In still a fourth place (p. 258), Peters muses whether Arab immigration into the Jewish-settled areas of Palestine between 1893 and 1947 may have been in the 10:1 ratio to Jewish immigration she purports to establish for the very first years of modern Zionist settlement.(4) �By this calculation, Arab immigration into Palestine's Jewish-settled areas through 1947 would've been on the order of 3,700,000, that is well over the 1,000 per cent greater than the second of Peter's estimates quoted above. �What is even more astonishing is that this figure is nearly three times the _total_ Arab population in _all_ of Palestine in 1947. (5) " I skimmed past that the first few times I read his book, then recently I reread it and that jumped out at me. �If I had been one of the ones taken in by Joan Peters' fallacious scholarship, I would've felt much the way I actually did when I read some of the take-downs of Erich von Daniken as a teenager, after having bought his book and read it and actually believed it! Joan Peters is a joke! �She's sucking in all those numerically illiterates, by all appearances. �I couldn't stop laughing when I read that - heck, I'm a reader of SF, and one of the SF readers' rare delights is taking down some author who hasn't crossed his "t"s and dotted his "i"s. �And it's even better when you're in control of a speciality that said SF author has infringed good sense on, and he/she hasn't realized it! �In this case, the speciality is counting numbers and remembering what has been previously stated - I'm in training as a Speech and Language Therapist - maybe I'll get around to diagnosing Joan Peters' problems with memory, or maybe it's beyond my speciality as such, and is merely a matter of basic honesty, pure and simple as that. // "Each to his creed," said Yaotl. "So do men choose between hope and despair." � � �"Yes, creeds mean very little," Coth answered the dark god, still speaking almost gently. "The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true. So I elect for neither label. I merely know that, at the end of all my journeying, there remains for me only to settle down, in my comfortable castles yonder in Poictesme, and to live contentedly with my fine-looking wife Azra and with my son Jurgen.". � � � � �-- The Silver Stallion, Chap. 26 Shalom l'kol uvrakha Wesley Parish On Mon, 08 Nov 2004 10:17, donnella whitacre wrote: > she has quite a lot of quote and maps and resources all of which she backs > up. i have heard her favorably reveiwed by many people in this area. i > wonder with a bibliography as big as the book how she could be so wrong. > she names the people she quotes and i have these quotes from other sources. > i have heard mark twain quoted in a few lines, but she quotes a whole > letter of his in which he speaks of his diappointment with the lack of > people and the desolation of the land. i dont' use just one person, i have > read much of what she said elsewere. just didn't have the sources she > quoted to back them up. it is kinda hard to dicker with the very people > who said those things isn't it? how can you screw up the actual census > records or officals who say these things? also many of the arabs she quote > are very pro israel? she was the white house consultant on the middle east > in `1977 and lectured extensivelly on the middle east. Philip m Hauser > Director Emeritus Population Research Center, University of Chicago and > former acting director of the U.S.Census states:" her book provides > demographic and hsitoric perspectives which have been inexplicably and > substantially ingorned until now." Saul Bellows, S.D. Gotein, the Institute > of Sdvanced Study, Princeton. William v. O'Brian Gerogetown University , > the New Rebulic, National Review, Altantic Monthy, Los Angeles time, > Toronto Star and many many more are witness that some one thinks she is > saying some thing worth will. i have heard people dispute small things in > her book but never dispute the whole contents. > > > "(ARTEMIS)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > ================== > FIGHT THE RIGHT! > ================== > > I would not use Peters as a source. Most scholars, including those who are > more sympathetic to the Zionist cause will not use her data, referring to > it instead as pseudo-scholarship, since most of her own sources are not <snip> -- Wesley Parish * * * Clinersterton beademung - in all of love. RIP James Blish * * * Mau e ki, "He aha te mea nui?" You ask, "What is the most important thing?" Maku e ki, "He tangata, he tangata, he tangata." I reply, "It is people, it is people, it is people." ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Make a clean sweep of pop-up ads. Yahoo! Companion Toolbar. Now with Pop-Up Blocker. Get it for free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/L5YrjA/eSIIAA/yQLSAA/XgSolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> ----- / o o \ ===OO=====OO============================================= (4)Portals (2)News Wikis (2)Conferences - No BuSHIT! 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