Gilbert Achcar - another bogus scholar

Elder of Ziyon
09 July '10

The Washington Post has a very short review of a book called "The Arabs and the Holocaust - The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives," by Lebanese historian Gilbert Achcar:

Gilbert Achcar probes the differing views of Arabs and Israelis over the migration of Holocaust survivors to the Middle East after World War II. While Israeli narratives center on Jewish expulsion and genocide in Europe, Palestinians and other Arabs speak of the "grievous catastrophe" associated with the establishment of a Jewish homeland: the forced departure of Arabs from Palestinian territories and the subsequent wars.

Achcar, a professor of development studies and international relations in London, carefully examines the long history of Arab-Jewish conflict back through the 19th century, illuminating the range of opinions -- whether Zionist, ultra-nationalist, liberal or anti-Semitic. He points out that, by World War I, opposition to Zionism was central to Palestinian identity and Arab nationalistic consciousness. Palestinian Arabs, both Muslim and Christian, saw Jewish settlement during that period as another form of European colonization. However, early confrontations between Arab peasants and Jewish settlers were not xenophobic or anti-Jewish, Achcar writes, but a predictable outcome of the expulsion of farmers from their lands. Achcar doesn't shy away from the contemporary debate. He argues that the Palestinians are engaged in "the last major anticolonial struggle."

The statement about the early confrontations being because of expulsion of farmers is simply not true. A Christian travelogue of Palestine written in 1874 mentions "Men in Palestine call their fellows 'Jew,' as the very lowest of all possible words of abuse." The first attack of Arabs towards Zionist Jews was in 1886 at Petah Tikva, which was built on former swampland and did not displace anyone.

One gets the impression that Achcar is not being quite as honest and objective as a historian should be.

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