Joan Peter's work was polemical, and being polemical, she presented a lot of easy targets for her opponents, which they slammed. However, she also based her arguments on a pretty solid demographic research effort, well researched. Those who slam her generally confine themselves to slamming her polemical arguments without undertaking the much harder work of going over her research about demographic figures. I've seen only one researcher do it, in the NY Review of Books (his name escapes at the moment), and even then he only nibbled at the edges.
It's very informative that you would say this, after I posted this link directly to you:
Message 16665936
Norman Finkelstein did his Ph.D. thesis specifically going over all of Joan Peters' primary sources and raw data. He specifically criticized her manipulations and falsification of demographic data. He specifically criticized her fraudulant citations from her sources, as well as plagiarism from several old Zionist propaganda tracts. Despite all this, you say you "haven't seen" anyone go after her demographic research. Thank you for making perfectly clear to all just how dishonest you are.
<<< That a scholarly work meets with critical acclaim would hardly be news,
were it not for the fact that From Time Immemorial is among the most
spectacular frauds every published on the Arab-Israeli conflict. In a field
littered with crass propaganda, forgeries, and fakes, this is no mean
distinction. But Peters's book has thoroughly earned it.
The fraud in Peters's book is so pervasive and systematic that it is hard
to pluck out a single thread without getting entangled in the whole
unravelling fabric. To begin with, the fraud falls into two basic
categories. First, the evidence that Peters adduces to document massive
illegal Arab immigration into Palestine is almost entirely falsified. Second,
the conclusions that Peters draws from her demographic study of Palestine's
indigenous Arab population are not borne out by the data she presents. To
confound the reader further, Peters resorts to plagiarism. >>>
ukar.org
Tom |
