Blaming the victims : spurious scholarship and the Palestinian question / Edited by Christopher Hitchens and Edward W. Said

This book demonstrates how the denial of truth about the Palestinians by governments and the media in the West has led to the current impasse in Middle East politics. The book attempts to redress a sustained crime against historical truth in order to make a more rational future possible. 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 exposé 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 suppressed: 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.

English