From: bdm@cs.anu.edu.au (Brendan McKay)
Subject: Joan Peters (Was: MEQ #6)
Reply-To: bdm@cs.anu.edu.au
Organization: Australian National University
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 08:47:53 GMT

In some article, AS.VXF@forsythe.stanford.edu (Vic Filler) writes:
>In article <bdm.718295126@cs.anu.edu.au>,
>bdm@cs.anu.edu.au (Brendan McKay) writes:

I will be kind and assume that you put  Distribution: usa  on your
posting by accident.  I am not in the usa.

>>The myth of massive Arab immigration after Zionist settlement began
>>is just that, a myth.  If you think otherwise, I suggest you post
>>some evidence.
>
>Good joke--"some evidence." The matter has been well documented for
>decades.  The most recent example:  Joan Peters, "From Time
>Immemorial." This study has never been in any way refuted.  Some of
>the more aberrant Israel-hating revisionist loonies fantasize that
>their off-the-wall asseverations have annihilated Peters.  Are you
>one of those?

Haha, another Joan Peters sucker.  Let's discover a few aberrant 
Israel-hating revisionist loonies:

Yehoshua Porath of Hebrew University, an authority on the Arabs
of Palestine and the author of two books on the subject:

   "I think it's a sheer forgery.  In Israel, at least, the book
    was almost universally dismissed as sheer rubbish except
    maybe as a propaganga weapon."

Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, professor of religion at Dartmouth
College and vice-president of the World Jewish Congress:

   "I think that she's cooked the statistics.  I think the right-
    wingers in Israel have an interest in cooking the statistics.
    The scholarship is phony and tendentious.  I do not believe
    that she has read the Arabic sources that she quotes."

[From "Dispute Flares Over Book On Claims to Palestine" by Colin 
 Campbell, New York Times, Nov 28, 1985, page C-13]

>>Before the Zionist "threat" (describing it from their viewpoint)
>>they had no reason for overt nationalism.  That doesn't detract
>>the slightest from their rights as a group.
>
>Another hot one.  Say, while you're sitting on high parceling out
>rights to groups, mind telling us what WOULD detract from some
>group's rights.  Does Boy Scout Troop 78 in Ohio have a right to
>raise an army and take a seat at the UN, in your opinion?  Do
>historical facts matter at all to you?

Historical facts, eh?  Let's see how Joan Peters stacks up against
historical facts:

[Extract from an old article of mine]

Peters' claims of massive immigration shortly before 1895 are taken
uncritically from a book of Frankenstein and are summarised as follows:

   According to perhaps the detailed and scientific of these, the study of
   the French geographer Vital Cuinet [Syrie, Liban et Palestine, 1896],
   the population of Western Palestine by 1895 had grown to more than
   450,000, of which Muslims numbered roughly 252,000 throughout Western
   Palestine.
      1882: 141,000 "settled" Muslims
      1895: 252,000 "settled" Muslims
   The above figures for the Muslim population would indicate that their
   number almost doubled in the thirteen years between 1882 and 1895.
   This hardly seems possible.  Even if we assume a high rate of natural
   increase of 1.5 percent per annum for that thirteen-year period, the
   population would not have increased to more than 170,000 or so.  [p244]

Before considering these figures, let me note a common device of Ms Peters.
When it suits her she forgets about Christian Arabs, and when it doesn't
suit her she doesn't.  Similarly, she sometimes treats Bedouin as if they
didn't exist and at other times counts them.  (The word "settled" is meant
to exclude them.)  This gives her an extra couple of degrees of freedom in
presenting her statistics.

Anyway, let's consider the numbers as they stand.  If accurate, they appear
at first sight to represent an actual growth rate of 4.56% per annum, which
is about equal to the highest observed rate of natural increase of Israeli
Muslims since 1949.  Such a rate for the 19th century would be hard to
believe, so there is a case to answer.  To know the strength of this case,
we need to consider
(i) How reputable was Vital Cuinet?
(ii) How accurately can populations be counted without a proper census?
(iii) Is there any component of the increase that Peters conveniently forgot?
(iv) Is there other relevant evidence that tells a different story?

On (i): Cuinet is generally held in higher regard than most of his
contemporary demographers of Palestine, but experts know that his numbers
must be treated with great care.  Peters claims that "Cuinet did not have
the benefit of the Turkish census figures" [p527], but this is well-known to
be false [Por2, McC] and indicates the depth of Peters' ignorance of the
subject.  Cuinet often used Turkish figures, but modified them arbitrarily
according to his whim and his political motives.  For example, in some cases
his figures were obtained by taking the number of males counted by the Turks
and multiplying by four [McC].  He may have had some reason to believe the
Turkish figures to be too low, but his arbitrary choice of the factor four
suggests one-digit accuracy at most, and perhaps less.  In other cases, he
divided the Ottoman figures by something [McCarthy, cited in Far].  He also
inflated the number of Christians at the expense of Muslims, even inventing
concentrations of thousands of Christians where there were few or none [Por2].
His reason for doing this was that he wanted to support French territorial
claims to Palestine.

In any case, Cuinet's figure of 141000 in 1882 is contradicted by more
authoritative figures.  According to numbers derived from the Ottoman
registration system, McCarthy [McC] shows that the total settled population
of Kudus (Jerusalem) Sanjak alone was about 250682 in 1882/3.  Unless less
than 56% of the population were Muslim, and no Muslims at all lived in the
remaining parts of Palestine, Cuinet's estimate is obviously way too low.
(Note that Kudus sanjak included Nablus and Gazza; less than a third of
the population was in Jerusalem city.)

On (ii): We have some experimental evidence for this.  In [Kar1, Kar2] we
have some examples of small parts of the Ottoman empire whose population
was estimated more than once.  For the vilayets of Erzeroum, Van and Bitlis
around 1880 we have estimates of 528000, 567575 and 280000 Muslims,
compared to the census figure of 821476.  For the vilayet of Diarbekir
about 1880 we have estimates of 145000 and 562778 Muslims, against the
census figure of 328174.  For Sivas province in 1880 we have estimates
of 80000 [not a typo], 694437, 584604, 729872 and 567818 Muslims, against
the Ottoman yearbook figure of 892850.  What these examples demonstrate
is that estimating population is very difficult.  These estimates for the
same place vary by as much as a factor of ten.  To see what this does to
Peters' argument, suppose generously that Cuinet was correct to within 30%.
Then the annual rate of increase could have been anywhere between 0.43%
and 8.88%.  In other words, we can positively conclude almost nothing.

Now for (iii): Cuinet and most other counters indicated that a large fraction
of the Muslim population were not "settled" but migratory Bedouin.  He gives
the number of Muslim Bedouin as 65000 in 1895.  How many were there in 1882?
I don't know of any estimates that are better than wild guesses.  However,
it is known [Kar2] that the Ottomans had a policy of encouraging the
Bedouin to settle down, and that this policy was having some success.
Thus, some genuine residents of Palestine in 1882 were not counted as
"settled" but were (they or their children) "settled" by 1895.  I can't
estimate the numbers, but these people certainly were not "immigrants".
Peters' "careful analysis" ignores this point completely.

Finally to point (iv): One tool for the direct analysis of population
movements is provided by the detailed population registers maintained
by the Ottomans.  In many cases, these state the place of birth of
each registered person.  I am not aware of any analysis of this data
before 1905, but for persons registered in the Jerusalem or Hebron
districts in 1905, an analysis appears in [Sch].  Here are the
breakdowns for place of birth of Muslims, in percent.

                     Cities              Villages
district       Jerusalem  Hebron     Jerusalem  Hebron

same place        78.0     96.7        93.9     94.8
other Palestine   10.3      2.5         5.7      4.4
not Palestine     11.7      0.8         0.4      0.8

These numbers not only contradict Peters' claims, they give strong
direct evidence of the _lack_ of substantial immigration during the
few decades up to 1905.

---
I conclude from this analysis that Peters' statistical evidence for massive
immigration during 1882-1895 is nonexistent.  Only her secondary evidence
remains.  That consists mostly of travellers' tales of immigration.  Since
there no doubt was some immigration, it proves nothing that some people
described it.  Similarly, she gives the standard highly-selective collection
of tales of uninhabited wastelands in Palestine, ignoring the large number
of accounts of the opposite.  As just one example of the sort of "travellers'
tale" that somehow didn't get into Peters' book is the following, from the
famed Jewish writer Ahad Ha'am in 1891:

   We abroad are used to believing that Eretz Israel is now almost totally
   desolate, a desert that is not sowed, and that anyone who wishes to
   purchase land there may come and purchase as much as he desires.  But
   in truth that is not the case.  Throughout the country it is difficult
   to find fields that are not sowed.  Only sand dunes and stony mountains
   that are not fit to grow anything but fruit trees - and this is only
   after hard labor and great expense of clearing and reclamation - only
   these are not cultivated.
   [Kol Kotve Ahad Ha-am, p23; copied from an article of R. Khalidi]

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

References.

[Far] W. Farrell, Joan Peters and the Perversion of History, Journal
     of Palestine Studies, 14 (1984) 126-134.
[Kar1] K. H. Karpat, Ottoman population records and the census of
     1881/82-1893, Intern. J. Middle East Studies, 9 (1978) 237-274.
[Kar2] K. H. Karpat, Ottoman population 1830-1914 (Univ. Wisconsin
     Press, 1985).
[McC] J. McCarthy, The population of Ottoman Syria and Iraq, 1878-1914,
      Asian and African Studies, 15 (1981) 3-44.
[Por1] Y. Porath, Mrs. Peters's Palestine, The New York Review of Books,
     Jan 16, 1986.
[Por2] Y. Porath, rejoinder to letters about [Por1], same journal,
     Mar 27, 1986.
[Sch] U. O. Schmelz, Population characteristics of Jerusalem and Hebron
     districts according to the Ottoman census of 1905, in Ottoman
     Palestine 1800-1914 (G. Gilbar, ed.), (Brill Leiden, 1990).

So Vic, where has all that evidence gone?  Oh, by the way, did you
know that Peters used Ottoman statistics that were not even available
at the time she wrote her book?  What scholarship! 

Oh, I also have a file of examples where Peters deliberately doctored
historical documents.  Shall I post it?  Shall I?

>Vic

Brendan.

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