John Kearney: Netanyahu's gift of Mark Twain book to Obama is loaded

Did you see the news item noting that Netanyahu is giving Obama a copy of Mark Twain's travelogue to the Levant from Innocents Abroad? This may seem a peripheral news item, but it isn't -- not in terms of the sad history of propaganda marshaled by Zionists against Palestinians.

In 1984 Joan Peters' From Time Immemorial was published, and Twain's satire, The Innocents Abroad (1869) was thus canonized in the Zionist effort to erase the history of Arabs in Palestine. Peters argued that Palestine was effectively empty until Jewish Zionists came on the scene in the late 19th century, and that Arabs then emigrated from surrounding lands to take advantage of economic opportunities provided by the Zionists. Hence, the Arabs are"arrivistes," have no legitimate claim to be refugees.

Among other"sources," Peters relied on Twain's savaging portrayal of the Holy Land as a filthy, backwards, empty place. Peters makes no effort to contextualize Twain's remarks: namely, that he was skewering nineteenth century America's sacred cows about the glories of Europe and the sacredness of the Holy Land. Twain, it should be noted, also said Greece, Syria and Lebanon are empty. And we now know that in his nonfiction Twain was happy to invent as necessary to fit his tale.