Finkelstein's doctoral dissertation was to disassemble a book by Joan Peters, From Time Immemorial (1984), which claimed that Palestine had been largely empty in the early 20th century, and that both ethnicities were immigrants.
This section of the book contains two essays, one by Said and one by Finklestein concerning Joan Peters and her book, From Time Immemorial.
Finkelstein examines and scrutinizes popular historical versions of the conflict by authors such as Joan Peters, Benny Morris, Anita Shapira and Abba Eban.
Joan Peters (born 1938) is a former CBS news producer of documentaries, and the author best known for a number of theses on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, put forward in her controversial book From Time Immemorial, published in 1984, in which she claims that the Palestinians are largely not indigenous to the area and therefore do not have claims to territory.
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While From Time Immemorial was a commercial success and had been praised as a serious contribution to the study of the Arab-Israeli conflict by a number of writers and critics, such as Barbara W. Tuchman, Elie Wiesel, and Robert St. John, it has been also discredited by other historians.
Joan of Arc | Joan Baez | Joan Rivers | Joan Miró | Joan Crawford | Joan Jett | Joan Collins | Joan Sutherland | Joan Bennett | Joan Armatrading | Joan Littlewood | Joan Chen | Melissa Joan Hart | Joan Osborne | Joan Didion | Joan Berger | Bernadette Peters | Roberta Peters | Joan Manuel Serrat | Joan | Joan Allen | Tom Peters | Joan of Arcadia | Joan Robinson | Joan Fontaine | Robert Peters | Joan Mitchell | The Passion of Joan of Arc | Sant Joan d'Alacant | Joan Blaeu |