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Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question
Since the 1948 war which drove them from their heartland, the Palestinian people have consistently been denied the most basic democratic rights. Blaming the Victims shows how the historical fate of the Palestinians has been justified by spurious academic attempts to dismiss their claim to a home within the boundaries of historical Palestine and even to deny their very existence.Beginning with a thorough expos� of the fraudulent assertions of Joan Peters concerning the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine prior to 1948, the book then turns to similar instances in Middle East research where the truth about the Palestinians has been systematically from the bogus-though still widely believed-explanations of why so many Palestinians fled their homes in 1948, to today's distorted propaganda about PLO terrorism. The volume also includes sharp critiques of the wide consensus in the USA which supports Israel and its territorial ambitions while maintaining total silence about the competing reality of the Palestinians.
304 pages, Paperback
Published September 13, 2001
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About the author
Edward W. Said
232 books4,247 followers(Arabic Profile إدوارد سعيد)
Edward Wadie Said was a professor of literature at Columbia University, a public intellectual, and a founder of the academic field of postcolonial studies. A Palestinian American born in Mandatory Palestine, he was a citizen of the United States by way of his father, a U.S. Army veteran.
Educated in the Western canon, at British and American schools, Said applied his education and bi-cultural perspective to illuminating the gaps of cultural and political understanding between the Western world and the Eastern world, especially about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Middle East; his principal influences were Antonio Gramsci, Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, Michel Foucault, and Theodor Adorno.
As a cultural critic, Said is known for the book Orientalism (1978), a critique of the cultural representations that are the bases of Orientalism—how the Western world perceives the Orient. Said’s model of textual analysis transformed the academic discourse of researchers in literary theory, literary criticism, and Middle-Eastern studies—how academics examine, describe, and define the cultures being studied. As a foundational text, Orientalism was controversial among the scholars of Oriental Studies, philosophy, and literature.
As a public intellectual, Said was a controversial member of the Palestinian National Council, because he publicly criticized Israel and the Arab countries, especially the political and cultural policies of Muslim régimes who acted against the national interests of their peoples. Said advocated the establishment of a Palestinian state to ensure equal political and human rights for the Palestinians in Israel, including the right of return to the homeland. He defined his oppositional relation with the status quo as the remit of the public intellectual who has “to sift, to judge, to criticize, to choose, so that choice and agency return to the individual” man and woman.
In 1999, with his friend Daniel Barenboim, Said co-founded the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra, based in Seville, which comprises young Israeli, Palestinian, and Arab musicians. Besides being an academic, Said also was an accomplished pianist, and, with Barenboim, co-authored the book Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society (2002), a compilation of their conversations about music. Edward Said died of leukemia on 25 September 2003.
Edward Wadie Said was a professor of literature at Columbia University, a public intellectual, and a founder of the academic field of postcolonial studies. A Palestinian American born in Mandatory Palestine, he was a citizen of the United States by way of his father, a U.S. Army veteran.
Educated in the Western canon, at British and American schools, Said applied his education and bi-cultural perspective to illuminating the gaps of cultural and political understanding between the Western world and the Eastern world, especially about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Middle East; his principal influences were Antonio Gramsci, Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, Michel Foucault, and Theodor Adorno.
As a cultural critic, Said is known for the book Orientalism (1978), a critique of the cultural representations that are the bases of Orientalism—how the Western world perceives the Orient. Said’s model of textual analysis transformed the academic discourse of researchers in literary theory, literary criticism, and Middle-Eastern studies—how academics examine, describe, and define the cultures being studied. As a foundational text, Orientalism was controversial among the scholars of Oriental Studies, philosophy, and literature.
As a public intellectual, Said was a controversial member of the Palestinian National Council, because he publicly criticized Israel and the Arab countries, especially the political and cultural policies of Muslim régimes who acted against the national interests of their peoples. Said advocated the establishment of a Palestinian state to ensure equal political and human rights for the Palestinians in Israel, including the right of return to the homeland. He defined his oppositional relation with the status quo as the remit of the public intellectual who has “to sift, to judge, to criticize, to choose, so that choice and agency return to the individual” man and woman.
In 1999, with his friend Daniel Barenboim, Said co-founded the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra, based in Seville, which comprises young Israeli, Palestinian, and Arab musicians. Besides being an academic, Said also was an accomplished pianist, and, with Barenboim, co-authored the book Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society (2002), a compilation of their conversations about music. Edward Said died of leukemia on 25 September 2003.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews
January 6, 2025
This is an excellent and must read on the conflict, but it is very academic, I should warn you. It reads like a textbook rather than human interest, so it is hard to get into, but it is worth the trouble.
There is a section devoted to debunking the lies in From Time Immemorial, which is enlightening to say the least, even if you haven't read the book because those lies are repeated over and over by the 'Israel can do no wrong' crowd.
This is a great explanation of the often neglected Palestinian point of view. The Israeli position is always well supported, understood and explained in our media and government; you will be a step ahead of the majority by reading this book since you will know both sides.
In a world where criticism of Israel = anti-Semitism, you have to do yourself a favor and read this book! Decide for yourself.
There is a section devoted to debunking the lies in From Time Immemorial, which is enlightening to say the least, even if you haven't read the book because those lies are repeated over and over by the 'Israel can do no wrong' crowd.
This is a great explanation of the often neglected Palestinian point of view. The Israeli position is always well supported, understood and explained in our media and government; you will be a step ahead of the majority by reading this book since you will know both sides.
In a world where criticism of Israel = anti-Semitism, you have to do yourself a favor and read this book! Decide for yourself.
December 17, 2011
Viva la Palestine!
May 27, 2024
Oggi più che altri giorni trovo importante recensire questa lettura. C'è solo in inglese e l'ho preso in un momento che davano eBook gratis ma lo consiglio molto. È una raccolta di saggi, con la collaborazione di Edward Said e interventi di (tra i tanti) Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein e Rashid Khalidi. È del 1988 ma rimane attuale perché il tema è la narrazione distorta sulla popolazione palestinese, su come bugie e falsità sono state portate avanti per legittimare i soprusi che Israele, fin dagli anni '40 del '900, infliggeva sui palestinesi. Ci sono punti davvero importanti che toccano anche la Nakba, passando per l'archeologia, per arrivare fino alla guerra nel sud del Libano. L'ho trovato davvero interessante e aiuta molto nel comprendere come la narrazione pro Isr., che va avanti da decenni, abbia permesso i peggiori orrori e lo vediamo ancora adesso. ✊🏻🍉
September 29, 2024
An exceptionally impressive assessment of the Israel-Palestine subject. The scholarly work is so sophisticated and nuanced the majority of it went over my head. It is not very accessible for someone like me with very minimal knowledge of the issue, but I am absolutely pleased for it to be readily accessible for me to revisit in my library whenever the times call.
What I will say, is that I sympathise with those belonging to the regions (that is the least we can attribute) of Palestine that have forever felt displaced and ignored by the West. At worst, in fact, have they seriously been victims of radical propaganda as a result of their weak socio-political status in comparison to Israel (the US's most foreign funded aid). This is a complex issue that I do not at this time possess a concrete perspective on.
What I will say, is that I sympathise with those belonging to the regions (that is the least we can attribute) of Palestine that have forever felt displaced and ignored by the West. At worst, in fact, have they seriously been victims of radical propaganda as a result of their weak socio-political status in comparison to Israel (the US's most foreign funded aid). This is a complex issue that I do not at this time possess a concrete perspective on.
January 15, 2025
Ben Gurion’s Tikkun Olam Empathy: “If we know the family - [we must] strike mercilessly, women and children included.” Netanyahu said terrorism comes from “communist totalitarianism and Islamic (and Arab) radicalism.” Who knew Netanyahu is clueless about Zionist terrorism in their bombing of the King David Hotel, or their massacres at Tantura, Deir Yassin, and Qibya? Bibi also defined terrorism as “the deliberate and systematic murder, maiming, and menacing of the innocent to inspire fear for political reasons.” By Bibi’s own definition, the same terrorism Israel has been doing every day since October 7th, 2023. To disregard Palestinian concerns, Netanyahu has said, “The root cause of terrorism lies not in grievances but in a disposition towards unbridled violence. This can be traced to a world view.” Translation: Bibi is saying it takes one to know one.
This 1988 book says that each Israeli citizen in 1988 was getting $1,400 annually from US taxpayers, while each member of the IDF was underwritten to the tune of $9,750 annually. Just as white settlers in the US Wild West fantasized that they were “hewing civilization out of the wilderness” and not pushing the indigenous off the land, today’s Zionist settlers have the same narrative - settler-colonialism redefined as noble actions. Think of Israel’s fallback M.O. as “Exploiting Jewish fears of another Holocaust.”
Michael Walzer says, “for the people, solidarity with the oppressed is a moral obligation.” For US liberals however, solidarity with the actual oppressed like in Gaza, Kashmir or Western Sahara is ONLY a moral obligation if their heroes Biden, Harris, Hillary Clinton and Rachel Maddow tell them on TV it is. No chance of that happening. The Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 gives France Syria and Lebanon, and Britain got Palestine, Iraq and Transjordan. In 1891, Ahad Ha’am wrote that Palestinian land was not empty as Zionists claimed but “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 only after hard labor and great expense of clearing and reclamation – only these are not cultivated.”
In 1931, the Jewish population of Palestine was 174,606 against a total of 1,033,314. By 1946 it was 608,225 Jews against a total of 1,913,112. Not exactly an empty land. Professor Janet Abu-Lughod comments on Israel’s settler-colonial speed record of forced dispossession: “Except for the extermination of the Tasmanians, modern history knows no cases in which the virtual complete supplanting of the indigenous population by alien stock has been achieved in as little as two generations. Yet this, in fact, is what has been attempted in Palestine since the beginning of the twentieth century.” The King-Crane commission of 1919 concluded that “the Zionists look forward to a practically complete dispossession” of the Palestinian people. “It sought not only to exploit but also to displace”. Gandhi told a Zionist emissary, “you want to convert the Arab majority into a minority.” Nehru said Palestine was not empty but “was already someone else’s home.”
The idea of Palestine had to be consciously erased by Zionists (Golda Meir style) and so Menachem Begin explained why this way: “If this is Palestine and not the land of Israel, then you are its conquerors and not tillers of the land. You are invaders. If this is Palestine, then it belongs to a people who lived here before you came.” Much easier to deny the existence of the Palestine people. “The objective of the Israeli invasion (of Lebanon) was to eliminate the Palestinian presence in Lebanon.” But most of the Palestinians in Lebanon then were “neither fighters nor equipped with sufficient funds to travel.” Think of Palestinians as “a peasantry that is alienated from its land.” “No Palestinian has a Palestinian passport.” The author points out one more threat (rarely discussed by Zionists) caused by Palestinians on page 291: they have a very advanced “political consciousness.” Well said. This was a great book – not as much usable info as other Israel/Palestine books I’ve reviewed but that is largely because this book is so old (1988).
This 1988 book says that each Israeli citizen in 1988 was getting $1,400 annually from US taxpayers, while each member of the IDF was underwritten to the tune of $9,750 annually. Just as white settlers in the US Wild West fantasized that they were “hewing civilization out of the wilderness” and not pushing the indigenous off the land, today’s Zionist settlers have the same narrative - settler-colonialism redefined as noble actions. Think of Israel’s fallback M.O. as “Exploiting Jewish fears of another Holocaust.”
Michael Walzer says, “for the people, solidarity with the oppressed is a moral obligation.” For US liberals however, solidarity with the actual oppressed like in Gaza, Kashmir or Western Sahara is ONLY a moral obligation if their heroes Biden, Harris, Hillary Clinton and Rachel Maddow tell them on TV it is. No chance of that happening. The Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 gives France Syria and Lebanon, and Britain got Palestine, Iraq and Transjordan. In 1891, Ahad Ha’am wrote that Palestinian land was not empty as Zionists claimed but “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 only after hard labor and great expense of clearing and reclamation – only these are not cultivated.”
In 1931, the Jewish population of Palestine was 174,606 against a total of 1,033,314. By 1946 it was 608,225 Jews against a total of 1,913,112. Not exactly an empty land. Professor Janet Abu-Lughod comments on Israel’s settler-colonial speed record of forced dispossession: “Except for the extermination of the Tasmanians, modern history knows no cases in which the virtual complete supplanting of the indigenous population by alien stock has been achieved in as little as two generations. Yet this, in fact, is what has been attempted in Palestine since the beginning of the twentieth century.” The King-Crane commission of 1919 concluded that “the Zionists look forward to a practically complete dispossession” of the Palestinian people. “It sought not only to exploit but also to displace”. Gandhi told a Zionist emissary, “you want to convert the Arab majority into a minority.” Nehru said Palestine was not empty but “was already someone else’s home.”
The idea of Palestine had to be consciously erased by Zionists (Golda Meir style) and so Menachem Begin explained why this way: “If this is Palestine and not the land of Israel, then you are its conquerors and not tillers of the land. You are invaders. If this is Palestine, then it belongs to a people who lived here before you came.” Much easier to deny the existence of the Palestine people. “The objective of the Israeli invasion (of Lebanon) was to eliminate the Palestinian presence in Lebanon.” But most of the Palestinians in Lebanon then were “neither fighters nor equipped with sufficient funds to travel.” Think of Palestinians as “a peasantry that is alienated from its land.” “No Palestinian has a Palestinian passport.” The author points out one more threat (rarely discussed by Zionists) caused by Palestinians on page 291: they have a very advanced “political consciousness.” Well said. This was a great book – not as much usable info as other Israel/Palestine books I’ve reviewed but that is largely because this book is so old (1988).
February 26, 2015
الكتاب جيد رغم كونه مجموعة مقالات، ولكنها قيمة جداً.
January 8, 2008
The subtitle of this bk is "Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question". I'm barely knowledgable about Palestine, basically just supportive of the Palestinian cause because it seems so flagrantly clear that the Israelis have displaced them. At any rate, I found it to be convincing that the editors, Edward Said & Christopher Hitchens, are legitimate scholars on the subject & found that they stated their case clearly & convincingly.
January 31, 2016
There is a definite tension between the two editors of this collection. Mr. Said favors assertion over demonstration. Nothing is more grating than a seemingly reasonable assertion that is never backed up. In one article, Said refers to a marvelous collection of Arabic documents in Lebanon that no one had used in their research on the subject. He then proceeds to tell his readers nothing about them, not even a sample. Am I to travel hither and thither just for a taste?
January 27, 2024
"Whatever may have prompted their [Palestinians to] flight, they had a right to expect to return home after the end of hostilities. Nobody has so far been so bold as to deny that that right was stripped from them."
Extremely enlightening and very well written. No unnecessary verbose that makes text incomprehensible! It is accessible and very well explained, with many supporting sources
Extremely enlightening and very well written. No unnecessary verbose that makes text incomprehensible! It is accessible and very well explained, with many supporting sources
December 31, 2023
Incredibly informative essays by incredibly intelligent people. It's heartbreaking to learn nothing has really changed in the Israeli government's rhetoric since this book was published in the 80s.
May 16, 2024
Horrifying and heartbreaking collection of essays by renowned journalists and scholars about the evil genocide israelis have been committing since 1948 and how facts have been toned down for the western world to benefit zionism.
May 28, 2023
Any good-natured human is able to grasp the helplessness of being a victim, least of all someone who has experienced state oppression. Assessing the political divides reveals, however, countless pairs of ideological rivalry are founded on politics, religion, and economics. They exhibit cohesion transcendent of culture, language and nationality. Such a bliss has been unreachable for the powerless camp.
Apathy dished out elsewhere never makes outsiders the target of criticism, because such widespread ignorance has matched the expected results of state propaganda. To quote from China’s greatest dictator, ‘the more chaotic the better’, the same wisdom pervades official mouthpieces which run day and night to tame the truth and disperse disinformation.
This edited book adds that Israel is not a lone wolf. The belligerent nascent regime used to walk away from UN resolutions or condemnations under the filial auspices of the US, who had repeatedly vetoed and cleared their ally’s name. So much so that Noam Chomsky lambasted the world police as ‘the world’s leading terrorist power’.
Before I take the merits of this 1988 book too far, it is worth taking a moment to frame the conflict under today’s lenses. The world has changed, so is their internal situation after the Oslo Accords 1993 and Camp David Summit 2000. Increasingly limited are the options Israeli and Palestinian have, and choose over violence.
In the May/June 2023 issue of Foreign Affairs, several professors from George Washington University call for acceptance of ‘one-state reality’. It is the elephant in the room that realpolitiks on both sides will see why. But if they were to stave off a new acme of the conflict, partly due to the shifted public opinions and partly the right-leaning Israeli climate, they could have let the people see how. Otherwise, so deep are the scars that the status quo is humiliating to either side.
Apathy dished out elsewhere never makes outsiders the target of criticism, because such widespread ignorance has matched the expected results of state propaganda. To quote from China’s greatest dictator, ‘the more chaotic the better’, the same wisdom pervades official mouthpieces which run day and night to tame the truth and disperse disinformation.
This edited book adds that Israel is not a lone wolf. The belligerent nascent regime used to walk away from UN resolutions or condemnations under the filial auspices of the US, who had repeatedly vetoed and cleared their ally’s name. So much so that Noam Chomsky lambasted the world police as ‘the world’s leading terrorist power’.
Before I take the merits of this 1988 book too far, it is worth taking a moment to frame the conflict under today’s lenses. The world has changed, so is their internal situation after the Oslo Accords 1993 and Camp David Summit 2000. Increasingly limited are the options Israeli and Palestinian have, and choose over violence.
In the May/June 2023 issue of Foreign Affairs, several professors from George Washington University call for acceptance of ‘one-state reality’. It is the elephant in the room that realpolitiks on both sides will see why. But if they were to stave off a new acme of the conflict, partly due to the shifted public opinions and partly the right-leaning Israeli climate, they could have let the people see how. Otherwise, so deep are the scars that the status quo is humiliating to either side.
October 14, 2013
Said doesn't seem like a particularly coherent thinker here. A lot of Said's introductory essay is just sort of ranting, as is Chomsky's essay. Finkelstein's is interesting, if a bit technical. I wasn't familiar with Peters' book, so I couldn't assess Finkelstein's. Hitchens' essay is awesome and solid, as one should expect from Hitchens. Kidron's essay is suggestive though uncorroborated. The final essay is good, as an overview of Palestinian identity.
January 10, 2024
---The training of humanities and social science academics involves objectively investigating a research study and weighing the facts and information. PhD-trained writers reflect upon this requirement and academic bias when compiling and writing their papers. Scholars without a PhD degree will interact with an intellectual milieu that will remind them of impartiality and rigour. This gives academic work value and meaning. The failure to achieve this standard results in studies open to critical analysis, with the intellectual flaws and failings made clear.
---An example of such a critical review of academic bias is Edward W. Said and Christopher Hitchens's edited book Blaming The Victims: Spurious Scholarship And The Palestinian Question (1988, 2001). The essays in this book, by different authors, address how and why the Palestinian people have been the victims of rewritten histories that seek to marginalise and subordinate them and deny them their identity, national status and territorial homeland.
---Said and Hitchens's book is crucial because it focuses on the politicisation of intellectual debate, ideas, and ethnic stereotypes and their power to persuade and influence government policy-makers. From early on, Palestinians were strategically disadvantaged; Said and Hitchens comment: “It is by no means an exaggeration to say that the establishment of Israel as a state in 1948 occurred partly because the Zionists acquired control of most of the territory of Palestine, and partly because they had already won the political battle for Palestine in the international world in which ideas, representations, rhetoric, and images were at issue” (Said & Hitchens, 2001, Introduction, Loc 55).
---As a consequence, Said and Hitchens argue that if the Palestinians are dismissed and not taken seriously in the media and scholarly institutions, there is all likelihood that their condition will worsen. Indeed, Palestinians will experience increasing loss of human rights, lands, homes, and their sustainable future in the region at the hands of the Israeli government, Israeli settlers—and their pro-Zionist supporters in the West. (Chiefly, the United States provides significant support to Israel with subsidised aid, armaments, diplomacy, and strategic coordination.) The struggle against anti-Palestinian misinformation and propaganda is an ongoing one. The result of this is aggression and violence by the Israeli state towards the Muslim and Christian Arabs of Palestine. At the same time, the military occupation of the Palestinian lands becomes further entrenched.
---Furthermore, Said and Hitchens comment that resistance to the status quo by Palestinians is labelled by some Western observers in negative ways: “...because attention to Israel has been institutionalized and because its valence is so positive in Western public life, there has been a tendency, in the US especially, to associate resistance to Israel not simply with ‘terrorism’ and ‘communism,’ but also with anti-Semitism”, say Said and Hitchens (Said & Hitchens, 2001, Introduction, Loc 75). At the same time, Said and Hitchens note that the Palestinian liberation case became drowned out by Arab stereotypes evident in the United States media: “the mad Islamic zealot, the gratuitously violent killer of innocents, the desperately irrational and savage primitive” (Said & Hitchens, 2001, Introduction, Loc 75).
---Notwithstanding, voices have emerged among scholars and activists from all backgrounds (Western, Jewish and Arab) that seek to correct the misuse and false interpretations of Palestinian history and historiography. Blaming The Victims contains four parts and eleven chapters. The essays in Part One (‘The Peters Affair’) are Chapter One ‘Conspiracy of Praise’ by Edward W. Said and Chapter Two ‘Disinformation and the Palestine Question: The Not-So-Strange Case of Joan Peters’s From Time Immemorial’ by Norman Finkelstein; both authors deconstruct (the non-academic) Joan Peters arguments in her From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine (Harper and Row, 1984). Paradoxically, numerous United States and Israel-supporting scholars acclaimed her book. Peters’s (mis-)use of the documents resulted in her asserting that Palestinians and other Arabs immigrated to Palestine, particularly between 1920 and 1943. As a result, Palestinians’ claims to a native homeland could be ignored. Peters gives succour to the Zionist claim that Palestine had no sizeable native population and was, therefore, ripe for settlement of Jewish immigrants (fleeing historical persecution in Europe and Russia). However, both authors debunk Peters's theory. Finkelstein says the book is “among the most spectacular frauds ever published on the Arab-Israeli conflict” (Said & Hitchens, 2001, Chapter 2, Loc 177).
---Part Two (‘Myths Old and New’) highlights contemporary perceptions about Arabs and Muslims. Chapter Three, ‘Broadcasts’, by Hitchens, states that supposed radio broadcasts made in 1948 by senior Arabs requesting Palestinians to leave their homelands voluntarily most likely never occurred and that Arabs were forcibly expelled from their homelands by the Jewish militia, Zionist underground groups, and settlers. Chapter Four, ‘Truth Whereby Nations Live’, by Peretz Kidron, reports one alleged eye-witness account of Israeli authorities ordering the (unsuccessful) expulsion of Nazareth’s unarmed Arab population in 1948.
---The following two chapters investigate negative stereotyping, double standards, and persuading and unconsciously influencing the minds of Western audiences. Noam Chomsky’s essay (Chapter Five) explores ‘Middle East Terrorism and the American Ideological System’. While Chapter Six, ‘The Essential Terrorist’, written by Edward W. Said.
---In Part Three (The ‘Liberal’ Alternative), Said’s essay (Chapter Seven) ‘Michael Walzer’s Exodus and Revolution: A Canaanite Reading’, details how some Western liberal intellectuals “excuse Israel for actions condemned everywhere else” (Said & Hitchens, 2001, Introduction, Loc 264). Said says, “Walzer’s main point, however, is that culmination of Exodus in the attainment of a Promised Land is really the birth of a new polity, one that admits its members to a communal politics of participation in political and religious spheres”; but, Said, emphases, what becomes of the “unfortunate native inhabitants who by definition are not members of the Chosen People” (Said & Hitchens, 2001, Chapter 7, Loc 3263).
---Part Four (Scholarship Ancient and Modern) examines the past to understand the present. Chapter Eight, ‘Palestine: Ancient and History and Modern Politics’, by G. W. Bowerstock, discusses that Arabs have lived in the region of Palestine since ancient times and noted by the Roman-era occupiers. Chapter Nine, ‘Territorially-Based Nationalism and the Politics of Negation’, by Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, explains how some Zionists see the Palestinian statehood in the context of the construction of Trans-Jordan: “While Israel officially is more circumspect in its pronouncements, its official spokesmen often refer to Jordan as a Palestinian State and claim that Palestinians already therefore have a state of their own” (Said & Hitchens, 2001, Chapter 9, Section 2, Loc 3268).
---Rashid Khalidi’s Chapter Ten, ‘Palestinian Peasant Resistance to Zionism before World War 1’, explores how Palestinian historiography is made difficult by the destruction of documents during the conflicts with Israel. Also, the writing of Palestinian history is often biased against them because non-Palestinians are the authors. Intellectually, Khalidi’s main argument is that Palestinians, with particular reference to the ‘peasant class’, while content to absorb Jewish settlers feeling racism in Europe since the late-nineteenth century onwards, resisted the political Zionist colonialisation claim on their Arab-majority Palestine. After all, the Arab peasants lost jobs and homes because of land sales to settlers. Peasants were involved in disturbances with incoming settlers that the Ottoman law system resolved. Late Ottoman-era Arab newspapers discussed indigenous peoples’ concerns between 1908 and 1914.
---Finally, ‘A Profile of the Palestinian People’ (Chapter Eleven), by Edward W. Said, Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Muhammad Hallaj and Elia Zureik, reviews the condition of the Palestinians. The sections of their co-authored chapter cover history and development (early history, Zionism, the British Mandate), political status and organisation of Palestinians today (including political activity in countries of residence and dispersion, the effect of the 1967 War), The PLO after the 1967 War (political aims, the structure of the PLO, effect of Israeli assault on Lebanon), and demographic circumstances (and the fragmentation of the Palestinian community), and socio-economic circumstances (including Israeli methods of control, education).
---Blaming The Victims has been available for over twenty years, but the debate about allowing Palestinian voices a fair and equal hearing is just as relevant and essential as ever. Here, much responsibility lies with publishers and broadcasters. Said and Hitchens’s book is suitable for students and scholars.
---An example of such a critical review of academic bias is Edward W. Said and Christopher Hitchens's edited book Blaming The Victims: Spurious Scholarship And The Palestinian Question (1988, 2001). The essays in this book, by different authors, address how and why the Palestinian people have been the victims of rewritten histories that seek to marginalise and subordinate them and deny them their identity, national status and territorial homeland.
---Said and Hitchens's book is crucial because it focuses on the politicisation of intellectual debate, ideas, and ethnic stereotypes and their power to persuade and influence government policy-makers. From early on, Palestinians were strategically disadvantaged; Said and Hitchens comment: “It is by no means an exaggeration to say that the establishment of Israel as a state in 1948 occurred partly because the Zionists acquired control of most of the territory of Palestine, and partly because they had already won the political battle for Palestine in the international world in which ideas, representations, rhetoric, and images were at issue” (Said & Hitchens, 2001, Introduction, Loc 55).
---As a consequence, Said and Hitchens argue that if the Palestinians are dismissed and not taken seriously in the media and scholarly institutions, there is all likelihood that their condition will worsen. Indeed, Palestinians will experience increasing loss of human rights, lands, homes, and their sustainable future in the region at the hands of the Israeli government, Israeli settlers—and their pro-Zionist supporters in the West. (Chiefly, the United States provides significant support to Israel with subsidised aid, armaments, diplomacy, and strategic coordination.) The struggle against anti-Palestinian misinformation and propaganda is an ongoing one. The result of this is aggression and violence by the Israeli state towards the Muslim and Christian Arabs of Palestine. At the same time, the military occupation of the Palestinian lands becomes further entrenched.
---Furthermore, Said and Hitchens comment that resistance to the status quo by Palestinians is labelled by some Western observers in negative ways: “...because attention to Israel has been institutionalized and because its valence is so positive in Western public life, there has been a tendency, in the US especially, to associate resistance to Israel not simply with ‘terrorism’ and ‘communism,’ but also with anti-Semitism”, say Said and Hitchens (Said & Hitchens, 2001, Introduction, Loc 75). At the same time, Said and Hitchens note that the Palestinian liberation case became drowned out by Arab stereotypes evident in the United States media: “the mad Islamic zealot, the gratuitously violent killer of innocents, the desperately irrational and savage primitive” (Said & Hitchens, 2001, Introduction, Loc 75).
---Notwithstanding, voices have emerged among scholars and activists from all backgrounds (Western, Jewish and Arab) that seek to correct the misuse and false interpretations of Palestinian history and historiography. Blaming The Victims contains four parts and eleven chapters. The essays in Part One (‘The Peters Affair’) are Chapter One ‘Conspiracy of Praise’ by Edward W. Said and Chapter Two ‘Disinformation and the Palestine Question: The Not-So-Strange Case of Joan Peters’s From Time Immemorial’ by Norman Finkelstein; both authors deconstruct (the non-academic) Joan Peters arguments in her From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine (Harper and Row, 1984). Paradoxically, numerous United States and Israel-supporting scholars acclaimed her book. Peters’s (mis-)use of the documents resulted in her asserting that Palestinians and other Arabs immigrated to Palestine, particularly between 1920 and 1943. As a result, Palestinians’ claims to a native homeland could be ignored. Peters gives succour to the Zionist claim that Palestine had no sizeable native population and was, therefore, ripe for settlement of Jewish immigrants (fleeing historical persecution in Europe and Russia). However, both authors debunk Peters's theory. Finkelstein says the book is “among the most spectacular frauds ever published on the Arab-Israeli conflict” (Said & Hitchens, 2001, Chapter 2, Loc 177).
---Part Two (‘Myths Old and New’) highlights contemporary perceptions about Arabs and Muslims. Chapter Three, ‘Broadcasts’, by Hitchens, states that supposed radio broadcasts made in 1948 by senior Arabs requesting Palestinians to leave their homelands voluntarily most likely never occurred and that Arabs were forcibly expelled from their homelands by the Jewish militia, Zionist underground groups, and settlers. Chapter Four, ‘Truth Whereby Nations Live’, by Peretz Kidron, reports one alleged eye-witness account of Israeli authorities ordering the (unsuccessful) expulsion of Nazareth’s unarmed Arab population in 1948.
---The following two chapters investigate negative stereotyping, double standards, and persuading and unconsciously influencing the minds of Western audiences. Noam Chomsky’s essay (Chapter Five) explores ‘Middle East Terrorism and the American Ideological System’. While Chapter Six, ‘The Essential Terrorist’, written by Edward W. Said.
---In Part Three (The ‘Liberal’ Alternative), Said’s essay (Chapter Seven) ‘Michael Walzer’s Exodus and Revolution: A Canaanite Reading’, details how some Western liberal intellectuals “excuse Israel for actions condemned everywhere else” (Said & Hitchens, 2001, Introduction, Loc 264). Said says, “Walzer’s main point, however, is that culmination of Exodus in the attainment of a Promised Land is really the birth of a new polity, one that admits its members to a communal politics of participation in political and religious spheres”; but, Said, emphases, what becomes of the “unfortunate native inhabitants who by definition are not members of the Chosen People” (Said & Hitchens, 2001, Chapter 7, Loc 3263).
---Part Four (Scholarship Ancient and Modern) examines the past to understand the present. Chapter Eight, ‘Palestine: Ancient and History and Modern Politics’, by G. W. Bowerstock, discusses that Arabs have lived in the region of Palestine since ancient times and noted by the Roman-era occupiers. Chapter Nine, ‘Territorially-Based Nationalism and the Politics of Negation’, by Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, explains how some Zionists see the Palestinian statehood in the context of the construction of Trans-Jordan: “While Israel officially is more circumspect in its pronouncements, its official spokesmen often refer to Jordan as a Palestinian State and claim that Palestinians already therefore have a state of their own” (Said & Hitchens, 2001, Chapter 9, Section 2, Loc 3268).
---Rashid Khalidi’s Chapter Ten, ‘Palestinian Peasant Resistance to Zionism before World War 1’, explores how Palestinian historiography is made difficult by the destruction of documents during the conflicts with Israel. Also, the writing of Palestinian history is often biased against them because non-Palestinians are the authors. Intellectually, Khalidi’s main argument is that Palestinians, with particular reference to the ‘peasant class’, while content to absorb Jewish settlers feeling racism in Europe since the late-nineteenth century onwards, resisted the political Zionist colonialisation claim on their Arab-majority Palestine. After all, the Arab peasants lost jobs and homes because of land sales to settlers. Peasants were involved in disturbances with incoming settlers that the Ottoman law system resolved. Late Ottoman-era Arab newspapers discussed indigenous peoples’ concerns between 1908 and 1914.
---Finally, ‘A Profile of the Palestinian People’ (Chapter Eleven), by Edward W. Said, Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Muhammad Hallaj and Elia Zureik, reviews the condition of the Palestinians. The sections of their co-authored chapter cover history and development (early history, Zionism, the British Mandate), political status and organisation of Palestinians today (including political activity in countries of residence and dispersion, the effect of the 1967 War), The PLO after the 1967 War (political aims, the structure of the PLO, effect of Israeli assault on Lebanon), and demographic circumstances (and the fragmentation of the Palestinian community), and socio-economic circumstances (including Israeli methods of control, education).
---Blaming The Victims has been available for over twenty years, but the debate about allowing Palestinian voices a fair and equal hearing is just as relevant and essential as ever. Here, much responsibility lies with publishers and broadcasters. Said and Hitchens’s book is suitable for students and scholars.
March 23, 2025
One of the best books to read about the long history of the Palestinian struggle against the occupation. Different chapters by different authors debunking many myths about the origin of Palestinians, their national movement. It also shows the hypocrisy of the west when it comes to the Palestinian question.
February 7, 2025
Very good - made itself somewhat redundant (who takes Joan Peters seriously today?) but still worth reading. Standout essays are the ones on terrorism, Palestinian peasant resistance to Zionist colonisation, and the profile of the Palestinian people
November 16, 2024
I was not ready how academically dry it is
January 3, 2025
A heavy read, but sadly still very relevant even 20+ years later
July 11, 2025
Read 6 years ago, but Goodreads used to list this and The Question of Palestine as one book just different editions. This was the first book I ever read about Palestine, and the first writing by Edward Said that I’ve read. This was also my introduction to Rashid Khalidi, Norman Finkelstein, and Noam Chomsky. Genuinely lifechanging.
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March 12, 2024I have omitted a rating because of this not being what I expected, due to my own fault. I'm not sure why I was under the impression that this was newbie-friendly, but it certainly isn't. It's very dense, and there's a lot of information that is best for people who already have knowledge of the subjects being talked about, especially general Middle Eastern history and conflicts. Considering I don't besides some basic internet research about Palestine, I felt very lost for most of it and didn't feel engaged. Only the very last essay was what I was thinking this was going to be and the only one I could actually follow, as it talked about the origins and actions of Zionism.
March 5, 2024
3.5 stars. This is an important book but most of it is concerned with debunking the spurious scholarship of the day (in the 80s) so some of it has lost a little relevance. Only a little because the same playbook is still being used. It was interesting to see which arguments the zionist entity was using back then because we hear something different these days. Thats how it goes: make up a lie, parade it around, waste everyones time in trying to disprove it, meanwhile ure killing more Palestinians and stealing more land. Once its thoroughly debunked, come out with another lie.
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February 20, 2024disclaimer: I don’t really give starred reviews. I hope my reviews provide enough information to let you know if a book is for you or not. Find me here: https://linktr.ee/bookishmillennial
This reads as quite academic (which the title says "Spurious Scholarship," so it's kind of my fault for being surprised), and is a bit dense to get through. It sometimes felt like a chore to finish each essay because some of the paragraphs were so long (I *need* frequent indent breaks, it's a me problem, I know!), there were tables or charts that were not the easiest to read in my digital copy of the book(but I got it for free from Verso Books, so thank yall for continuing to provide so many amazing resources!) and provides a LOT of historical context.
I wouldn't recommend this to someone who is just beginning to learn about the oppression and apartheid treatment of Palestine, but maybe to someone who wants an additional reference to Palestinian history to complement their other reading from Palestinian voices. What was really illuminating about this book was the sheer amount of data the contributors provided as far as numbers of Palestinian refugees in surrounding countries, where the Palestinian diaspora ended up, socioeconomic methods of control over Palestinians, and more.
What's most saddening though, is that this book was written in the 80s, and it's eerie how some contributors predicted the future regarding Israel's goal of forcing all Palestinians out of Palestine, and pushing forward continued mass exodus. It's devastating to read, as we are now past 100+ days of targeted Palestinian genocide in Gaza.
content warnings: Racism, Genocide, War, Xenophobia, Violence, Colonisation, Gaslighting, and Death
This reads as quite academic (which the title says "Spurious Scholarship," so it's kind of my fault for being surprised), and is a bit dense to get through. It sometimes felt like a chore to finish each essay because some of the paragraphs were so long (I *need* frequent indent breaks, it's a me problem, I know!), there were tables or charts that were not the easiest to read in my digital copy of the book(but I got it for free from Verso Books, so thank yall for continuing to provide so many amazing resources!) and provides a LOT of historical context.
I wouldn't recommend this to someone who is just beginning to learn about the oppression and apartheid treatment of Palestine, but maybe to someone who wants an additional reference to Palestinian history to complement their other reading from Palestinian voices. What was really illuminating about this book was the sheer amount of data the contributors provided as far as numbers of Palestinian refugees in surrounding countries, where the Palestinian diaspora ended up, socioeconomic methods of control over Palestinians, and more.
What's most saddening though, is that this book was written in the 80s, and it's eerie how some contributors predicted the future regarding Israel's goal of forcing all Palestinians out of Palestine, and pushing forward continued mass exodus. It's devastating to read, as we are now past 100+ days of targeted Palestinian genocide in Gaza.
content warnings: Racism, Genocide, War, Xenophobia, Violence, Colonisation, Gaslighting, and Death
February 9, 2024
Blaming the Victims is a dense read. Each essay, written by different authors, gives us a glimpse into the lives and histories of the Palestinians under the occupation. I have found this book an invaluable resource for the contextual history of the displacement of the Palestinians in their native land.
The second section, titled “Myths, Old and New” tackles with the idea of Palestinian Identity and the Israeli occupation’s justifications of invasion. The essays deconstructing and flipping the narrative behind the word “terrorist”, written by none other than Noam Chomsky and Edward Said, prove that the Israeli narrative and propaganda uses a large brush to generalize all Arabic people as “Terrorists”, making it easier for their allies, (the United States to name a prominent one) to spread said propaganda and misinformation to further gather support for the Israeli regime on a global scale. Both authors also address the blatant war-crimes and terrorist acts that the state of Israel continues to employ on Palestinian refugees in other countries, most notably, Lebanon. One of my favorite essays in this collection, titled “Palestinian Peasant Resistance to Zionism Before World War I”, illustrates with great detail and research that even before the British Mandate and the Balfour Declaration, Palestinians were already being displaced by Zionist settlers, as much of the land were under registered ownership to non-Palestinian absentee landlords, due to a property law established by the ending Ottoman Empire. What astounds me is that this book was originally published in the late 80s, yet the information here still remains relevant to what is going on in Palestine right now.
This is an important book for many reasons, and I implore all who support the Palestinian Right to Resistance and Right to Return to read what is written here.
The second section, titled “Myths, Old and New” tackles with the idea of Palestinian Identity and the Israeli occupation’s justifications of invasion. The essays deconstructing and flipping the narrative behind the word “terrorist”, written by none other than Noam Chomsky and Edward Said, prove that the Israeli narrative and propaganda uses a large brush to generalize all Arabic people as “Terrorists”, making it easier for their allies, (the United States to name a prominent one) to spread said propaganda and misinformation to further gather support for the Israeli regime on a global scale. Both authors also address the blatant war-crimes and terrorist acts that the state of Israel continues to employ on Palestinian refugees in other countries, most notably, Lebanon. One of my favorite essays in this collection, titled “Palestinian Peasant Resistance to Zionism Before World War I”, illustrates with great detail and research that even before the British Mandate and the Balfour Declaration, Palestinians were already being displaced by Zionist settlers, as much of the land were under registered ownership to non-Palestinian absentee landlords, due to a property law established by the ending Ottoman Empire. What astounds me is that this book was originally published in the late 80s, yet the information here still remains relevant to what is going on in Palestine right now.
This is an important book for many reasons, and I implore all who support the Palestinian Right to Resistance and Right to Return to read what is written here.
June 29, 2024
❌️ CEASEFIRE NOW ❌️
To further educate myself on Israel’s genocidal war on Palestine, I’m still going through some of the books I downloaded for free through the Verso Books website.
This is a collection of essays and editorials set out to disprove some of the lies fabricated through academic research and supported in the USA to uphold the myths of Israel, and it's split into four parts.
“Part one: The Peters affair” is devoted to contesting Joan Peters' book “From time immemorial”, which maintained that there isn’t such thing as a Palestinian or Palestinian history (!!).
“Part two: Myths old and new” presents findings on alleged broadcasts from Palestinian leaders that urged the people to leave, as well as how the notion of terrorism operates in the USAmerican ideological system and how it’s been weaponised against the Middle East.
“Part three: The ‘Liberal’ Alternative” is a review of Michael Walzer’s “Exodus and Revolution: A Canaanite reading”.
“Part four: Scholarship ancient and modern” offers a profile of Palestinian history and politics, including the role of peasant resistance, and the Zionist negation of the Palestinian Question.
While unquestionably valuable, this wasn’t an easy book to get through. Largely, it’s a conversation with other texts, and so it’s dense with references, facts and figures to challenge long-held lies. While I did learn some new information, this is more of a specialized book aimed at scholars than an intro to the subject - I would recommend “Ten myths about Israel” or “The punishment of Gaza” instead.
To further educate myself on Israel’s genocidal war on Palestine, I’m still going through some of the books I downloaded for free through the Verso Books website.
This is a collection of essays and editorials set out to disprove some of the lies fabricated through academic research and supported in the USA to uphold the myths of Israel, and it's split into four parts.
“Part one: The Peters affair” is devoted to contesting Joan Peters' book “From time immemorial”, which maintained that there isn’t such thing as a Palestinian or Palestinian history (!!).
“Part two: Myths old and new” presents findings on alleged broadcasts from Palestinian leaders that urged the people to leave, as well as how the notion of terrorism operates in the USAmerican ideological system and how it’s been weaponised against the Middle East.
“Part three: The ‘Liberal’ Alternative” is a review of Michael Walzer’s “Exodus and Revolution: A Canaanite reading”.
“Part four: Scholarship ancient and modern” offers a profile of Palestinian history and politics, including the role of peasant resistance, and the Zionist negation of the Palestinian Question.
While unquestionably valuable, this wasn’t an easy book to get through. Largely, it’s a conversation with other texts, and so it’s dense with references, facts and figures to challenge long-held lies. While I did learn some new information, this is more of a specialized book aimed at scholars than an intro to the subject - I would recommend “Ten myths about Israel” or “The punishment of Gaza” instead.
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November 23, 2023"The Palestinian people – which has had its society destroyed by a movement claiming to achieve national liberation, paradoxically, in the form of settler colonialism – wishes no negative form of self-determination or liberation for itself. Its bitter national experience has bred in it a respect for civil and human rights abrogated by others. The Palestinian vision therefore is predicated upon democracy and justice, upon dignity and community. It is neither about conquest nor about a narrowly defined ethnic nationalism. This is why the question of Palestine has found supporters everywhere among the oppressed people of the world, those with a colonial past and those who oppose colonial injustice today, as well as those in the West who are courageous espousers of truth, justice and human freedom." Said, et al.
"It is as if even the narrative of Palestinian history is not tolerable, and therefore must be told and re-told innumerable times [...] Thus you could be against preventive detention, collective punishment, colonialism, pre-emptive war, racist immigration laws, oppressive rental and housing laws everywhere in the world, but be for them in Israel. All this was justified as intimacy and solidarity with one’s community." Finkelstein
"It is as if even the narrative of Palestinian history is not tolerable, and therefore must be told and re-told innumerable times [...] Thus you could be against preventive detention, collective punishment, colonialism, pre-emptive war, racist immigration laws, oppressive rental and housing laws everywhere in the world, but be for them in Israel. All this was justified as intimacy and solidarity with one’s community." Finkelstein
November 4, 2023
Essaybundel uit de jaren 80, dus op een aantal punten toch al wat gedateerd. Wat niet veranderd is, is de manier waarop dankzij een hele stevige en ronduit doorzichtige lobby de slachtoffers als agressor worden afgeschilderd en andersom. Zo heerst in bepaalde kringen nog steeds het beeld dat de Palestijnen als volk niet eens werkelijk bestaan en dat Palestina een verlaten vlakte was voor de kolonisatie. De vele bewijzen die het tegendeel tonen worden tot op de dag van vandaag genegeerd of ontkend. Alle essayisten in de bundel laten zien dat er geen verbetering in het gebied kan plaatsvinden, zolang het bestaansrecht van de Palestijnen in twijfel getrokken wordt door een groot deel van de wereld. Dat begint misschien wel in de Verenigde Staten, veruit Israëls grootste en belangrijkste sponsor. Goed punt van Saïd zelf: niet alleen de Palestijnen zijn inheems in het gebied, het gros van de Israëlis is dat inmiddels ook. Twee volkeren zitten vast in een spiraal van extreem geweld en onrechtvaardigheid. Maar er is maar één zijde die er een eind aan kan maken.
August 4, 2020
A good read on a subject people should know more about. It is incredible how this situation is presented to us on a daily basis. A people who have been deprived of basic human rights for decades are presented as the problem on ongoing basis. This book features several essays on the subject and does pretty good job of explaining the situation, going back to early 1900 and beginning of the migration. Highly recommend!
July 19, 2015
good read.
These groups of essays serves as an important reminder that the Palestinian cause and the Palestinians have to fight their way towards recognition of their plight. for there was a time where even their "victim-ness" status is denied, this denial was embraced in the publication of so-called books, media and above all international politics.
These groups of essays serves as an important reminder that the Palestinian cause and the Palestinians have to fight their way towards recognition of their plight. for there was a time where even their "victim-ness" status is denied, this denial was embraced in the publication of so-called books, media and above all international politics.
September 11, 2023
As someone with a entry-level understanding of the Israel-Palestine Conflict and whose views have been shaped by information gleamed from the internet and social media, this book was quite dense and times confusing for me to read. However, it was also a fascinating source of information-it is I who made the mistake of picking this as my first book to read such a deep and complex topic.
December 22, 2023
Excellent and informative.
Excellent and informative. Provides the Palestinian perspective so sadly missing in Western Mainstream media. Gives historical and contemporary context to current realities.
Excellent and informative. Provides the Palestinian perspective so sadly missing in Western Mainstream media. Gives historical and contemporary context to current realities.
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