Response to Finkelstein and Masalha

Abstract

Norman Finkelstein appears to have confused me with Joan Peters. He views 1948-and, I am sure, most other years-through a thick film of preconceived notions and prejudices. In describing-in The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949 (1988) and 1948 and After (1990)-what actually happened in 1948 rather than what generations of Israeli and Palestinians propagandists said had happened, I had hoped that at least some preconceptions and prejudices, on both sides, might fall away. It seems that I have had some success in this respect in Israel. Finkelstein is wrong about the degree of penetration of my work into the Israeli consciousness-the quotations from Yitzhak Rabin, Menahem Milson, and Amos Kenan notwithstanding.' Even before the publication of Birth in Hebrew, a high school history textbook-MiGalut LeKomemiyut [From Exile to Establishment/Independence], Vol. I, by David Shahar (1990)carried a four-page extract from one of my articles on the Palestinian exodus, originally published in Ha'Aretz in 1989. Birth is already required reading in courses at several Israeli universities. Would that a similar penetration had occurred on the Palestinian side. To judge from Finkelstein's and Masalha's critiques of Birth and 1948, this has not yet happened; clearly, outworn preconceptions and prejudices prevail. These underlie-and tarnish-Finkelstein's and Masalha's articles. In the case of Finkelstein, the critique is accompanied and reinforced by innuendo