(JNS.org) Joan Peters, a former CBS news producer and a renowned author on the subject of the Arab-Israeli conflict, died Jan. 6 at age 76.

Peters was best known for her 1984 book on pre-state Israel, From Time Immemorial, in which she argued that a large fraction of the Arabs of British Mandatory Palestine were not indigenous to the land, but rather arrived through waves of immigration from the 19th century onwards.

At the time of its publication, Peters’s book drew widespread acclaim and sparked a lengthy debate on the demographics of pre-1948 Israel that continues to this day.

“Joan was a force of nature, passionately devoted to Israel and the Jewish people,” Andrea Levin, executive director of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), told JNS.org. “Her landmark book, From Time Immemorial, upended conventional wisdom about the Palestinian Arabs, documenting the fact that many were new arrivals – not ancient inhabitants – attracted by British and Zionist economic development during the Palestine Mandate.”

“[Peters] was a beloved friend and we were enormously proud to count her a member of CAMERA’s Chicago Advisory Board,” added Levin.