Twain's Full description of Palestine

[ForeverYoung436]

Taken from the book "Innocents Abroad":

We traversed some miles of desolate country, a desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action. The further we went, the more repulsive and dreary the landscape became. No landscape exists that is more tiresome to the eye than that which bounds to the approaches to Jerusalem...Rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt, those signs that indicate the presence of Moslem rule, abound. Jerusalem is mournful and dreary and lifeless. I would not desire to live here. It is a hopeless and heart-broken land. Bethlehem is untenanted by any living creature. Stirring scenes occur in the Valley of Jezreel no more. There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent, not for 30 miles in either direction. There is not a single permanent habitation. One may ride 10 miles hereabouts and not see 10 human beings. To find the sort of solitude to make one dreary, one must come to Galilee--these unpeopled deserts, these rusty mounds of barreness that never do shake the glare from their harsh outlines, and faint and fade into vague perspective, that melancholy ruin of Capernaum, this stupid village of Tiberias, slumbering under its six funereal palms. We reached Tabor safely. Nazareth is forlorn, Jericho the accursed lies a moldering ruin today. Bethany is in poverty and humiliation. A desolate country where the soil is rich enough, but is given wholly to weeds. A silent, mournful expanse, a desolation, we never saw a human being on the whole route. There was hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the cactus and olive tree, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country. It is empty, destitute and a barren desert. Palestine sits in sackloth and ashes, desolate and unlovely. It is dreamland.

My own notes, especially for those like Tinmore, who have never even been there:
Galilee is now full of trees. I have camped there. Nazareth, Tiberias and Jerusalem are beautiful, bustling cities. Even the desert blooms.

 

[Jroc]

Taken from the book "Innocents Abroad":

We traversed some miles of desolate country, a desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action. The further we went, the more repulsive and dreary the landscape became. No landscape exists that is more tiresome to the eye than that which bounds to the approaches to Jerusalem...Rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt, those signs that indicate the presence of Moslem rule, abound. Jerusalem is mournful and dreary and lifeless. I would not desire to live here. It is a hopeless and heart-broken land. Bethlehem is untenanted by any living creature. Stirring scenes occur in the Valley of Jezreel no more. There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent, not for 30 miles in either direction. There is not a single permanent habitation. One may ride 10 miles hereabouts and not see 10 human beings. To find the sort of solitude to make one dreary, one must come to Galilee--these unpeopled deserts, these rusty mounds of barreness that never do shake the glare from their harsh outlines, and faint and fade into vague perspective, that melancholy ruin of Capernaum, this stupid village of Tiberias, slumbering under its six funereal palms. We reached Tabor safely. Nazareth is forlorn, Jericho the accursed lies a moldering ruin today. Bethany is in povery and humiliation. A desolate country where the soil is rich enough, but is given wholly to weeds. A silent, mournful expanse, a desolation, we never saw a human being on the whole route. There was hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the cactus and olive tree, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country. It is empty, destitute and a barren desert. Palestine sits in sackloth and ashes, desolate and unlovely. It is dreamland.

My own notes, especially for those like Tinmore, who have never even been there:
Galilee is now full of trees. I have camped there. Nazareth, Tiberias and Jerusalem are beautiful, bustling cities. Even the desert blooms.

You mean it wasn't an Arab paradise?

 

[ForeverYoung436]

Taken from the book "Innocents Abroad":

We traversed some miles of desolate country, a desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action. The further we went, the more repulsive and dreary the landscape became. No landscape exists that is more tiresome to the eye than that which bounds to the approaches to Jerusalem...Rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt, those signs that indicate the presence of Moslem rule, abound. Jerusalem is mournful and dreary and lifeless. I would not desire to live here. It is a hopeless and heart-broken land. Bethlehem is untenanted by any living creature. Stirring scenes occur in the Valley of Jezreel no more. There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent, not for 30 miles in either direction. There is not a single permanent habitation. One may ride 10 miles hereabouts and not see 10 human beings. To find the sort of solitude to make one dreary, one must come to Galilee--these unpeopled deserts, these rusty mounds of barreness that never do shake the glare from their harsh outlines, and faint and fade into vague perspective, that melancholy ruin of Capernaum, this stupid village of Tiberias, slumbering under its six funereal palms. We reached Tabor safely. Nazareth is forlorn, Jericho the accursed lies a moldering ruin today. Bethany is in povery and humiliation. A desolate country where the soil is rich enough, but is given wholly to weeds. A silent, mournful expanse, a desolation, we never saw a human being on the whole route. There was hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the cactus and olive tree, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country. It is empty, destitute and a barren desert. Palestine sits in sackloth and ashes, desolate and unlovely. It is dreamland.

My own notes, especially for those like Tinmore, who have never even been there:
Galilee is now full of trees. I have camped there. Nazareth, Tiberias and Jerusalem are beautiful, bustling cities. Even the desert blooms.

You mean it wasn't an Arab paradise?

I found some more excerpts of how Palestine looked before Zionism, from the book "Innocents Abroad":

Palestine is desolate and unlovely. And why should it be otherwise? Can the curse of the Deity beautify a land? (This refers to a Christian tradition that the land had been cursed.)
Palestine is no more of this work-day world. It is sacred to poetry and tradition--it is dream-land.
Of all the lands that are for dismal scenery, I think Palestine must be the prince. The hills are barren, they are dull of color, they are unpicturesque in shape. The valleys are unsightly deserts fringed with a feeble vegetation that has an expression about it of being sorrowful and despondent. The Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee sleep in the midst of a vast stretch of hill and plane wherein the eye rests upon no striking object, no soft picture dreaming in a purple haze or mottled with the shadows of the clouds. Every outline is harsh, every feature is distinct, there is no perspective--distance works no enchantment here. It is a hopeless, dreary, heart-broken land. Palestine sits in sackloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies.
Gray lizards, those heirs of ruin, of sepulchres and desolation, glided in and out among the rocks or lay still and sunned themselves. Where prosperity has reigned and fallen; where glory has flamed and gone out; where beauty has dwelt and passed away; where gladness was, and sorrow is; where the pomp of life has been, and silence and death brood in its high places, there this reptile makes his home, and mocks at human vanity.

 

[pbel]

Taken from the book "Innocents Abroad":

We traversed some miles of desolate country, a desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action. The further we went, the more repulsive and dreary the landscape became. No landscape exists that is more tiresome to the eye than that which bounds to the approaches to Jerusalem...Rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt, those signs that indicate the presence of Moslem rule, abound. Jerusalem is mournful and dreary and lifeless. I would not desire to live here. It is a hopeless and heart-broken land. Bethlehem is untenanted by any living creature. Stirring scenes occur in the Valley of Jezreel no more. There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent, not for 30 miles in either direction. There is not a single permanent habitation. One may ride 10 miles hereabouts and not see 10 human beings. To find the sort of solitude to make one dreary, one must come to Galilee--these unpeopled deserts, these rusty mounds of barreness that never do shake the glare from their harsh outlines, and faint and fade into vague perspective, that melancholy ruin of Capernaum, this stupid village of Tiberias, slumbering under its six funereal palms. We reached Tabor safely. Nazareth is forlorn, Jericho the accursed lies a moldering ruin today. Bethany is in poverty and humiliation. A desolate country where the soil is rich enough, but is given wholly to weeds. A silent, mournful expanse, a desolation, we never saw a human being on the whole route. There was hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the cactus and olive tree, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country. It is empty, destitute and a barren desert. Palestine sits in sackloth and ashes, desolate and unlovely. It is dreamland.

My own notes, especially for those like Tinmore, who have never even been there:
Galilee is now full of trees. I have camped there. Nazareth, Tiberias and Jerusalem are beautiful, bustling cities. Even the desert blooms.

All those beautiful trees planted were uprooted Palestinian trees replanted with their blood!
Go sell your story in a Flea Market!

 

[Phoenall]

Taken from the book "Innocents Abroad":

We traversed some miles of desolate country, a desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action. The further we went, the more repulsive and dreary the landscape became. No landscape exists that is more tiresome to the eye than that which bounds to the approaches to Jerusalem...Rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt, those signs that indicate the presence of Moslem rule, abound. Jerusalem is mournful and dreary and lifeless. I would not desire to live here. It is a hopeless and heart-broken land. Bethlehem is untenanted by any living creature. Stirring scenes occur in the Valley of Jezreel no more. There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent, not for 30 miles in either direction. There is not a single permanent habitation. One may ride 10 miles hereabouts and not see 10 human beings. To find the sort of solitude to make one dreary, one must come to Galilee--these unpeopled deserts, these rusty mounds of barreness that never do shake the glare from their harsh outlines, and faint and fade into vague perspective, that melancholy ruin of Capernaum, this stupid village of Tiberias, slumbering under its six funereal palms. We reached Tabor safely. Nazareth is forlorn, Jericho the accursed lies a moldering ruin today. Bethany is in poverty and humiliation. A desolate country where the soil is rich enough, but is given wholly to weeds. A silent, mournful expanse, a desolation, we never saw a human being on the whole route. There was hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the cactus and olive tree, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country. It is empty, destitute and a barren desert. Palestine sits in sackloth and ashes, desolate and unlovely. It is dreamland.

My own notes, especially for those like Tinmore, who have never even been there:
Galilee is now full of trees. I have camped there. Nazareth, Tiberias and Jerusalem are beautiful, bustling cities. Even the desert blooms.

All those beautiful trees planted were uprooted Palestinian trees replanted with their blood!
Go sell your story in a Flea Market!

What Palestinian blood as in this age the only Palestinians were the Jews.

 

[TheOldSchool]

Amazing how religious zealotry has driven so many to die, and to continue dying, over a strip of desert wasteland.

 

[Coyote]

Taken from the book "Innocents Abroad":

We traversed some miles of desolate country, a desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action. The further we went, the more repulsive and dreary the landscape became. No landscape exists that is more tiresome to the eye than that which bounds to the approaches to Jerusalem...Rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt, those signs that indicate the presence of Moslem rule, abound. Jerusalem is mournful and dreary and lifeless. I would not desire to live here. It is a hopeless and heart-broken land. Bethlehem is untenanted by any living creature. Stirring scenes occur in the Valley of Jezreel no more. There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent, not for 30 miles in either direction. There is not a single permanent habitation. One may ride 10 miles hereabouts and not see 10 human beings. To find the sort of solitude to make one dreary, one must come to Galilee--these unpeopled deserts, these rusty mounds of barreness that never do shake the glare from their harsh outlines, and faint and fade into vague perspective, that melancholy ruin of Capernaum, this stupid village of Tiberias, slumbering under its six funereal palms. We reached Tabor safely. Nazareth is forlorn, Jericho the accursed lies a moldering ruin today. Bethany is in poverty and humiliation. A desolate country where the soil is rich enough, but is given wholly to weeds. A silent, mournful expanse, a desolation, we never saw a human being on the whole route. There was hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the cactus and olive tree, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country. It is empty, destitute and a barren desert. Palestine sits in sackloth and ashes, desolate and unlovely. It is dreamland.

My own notes, especially for those like Tinmore, who have never even been there:
Galilee is now full of trees. I have camped there. Nazareth, Tiberias and Jerusalem are beautiful, bustling cities. Even the desert blooms.

Mark Twain's writing is the only source you guys ever use to make this claim - over and over. Twain was a skilled writer, and also a writer of fiction who took literary license. I don't believe historians use this as a basis for their findings.

 

[Coyote]

"A land without a people for a people without a land"

Use of the phrase by Jewish Zionists
In 1901 in the New Liberal Review, Israel Zangwill wrote that "Palestine is a country without a people; the Jews are a people without a country".[7][15]

In a debate at the Article Club in November of that year, Zangwill said "Palestine has but a small population of Arabs and fellahin and wandering, lawless, blackmailing Bedouin tribes."[16] "Restore the country without a people to the people without a country. (Hear, hear.) For we have something to give as well as to get. We can sweep away the blackmailer—be he Pasha or Bedouin—we can make the wilderness blossom as the rose, and build up in the heart of the world a civilisation that may be a mediator and interpreter between the East and the West."[16]

In 1902, Zangwill wrote that Palestine "remains at this moment an almost uninhabited, forsaken and ruined Turkish territory".[17] However, within a few years, Zangwill had "become fully aware of the Arab peril", telling an audience in New York, "Palestine proper has already its inhabitants. The pashalik of Jerusalem is already twice as thickly populated as the United States" leaving Zionists the choice of driving the Arabs out or dealing with a "large alien population".[18] He moved his support to the Uganda scheme, leading to a break with the mainstream Zionist movement by 1905.[19] In 1908, Zangwill told a London court that he had been naive when he made his 1901 speech and had since "realized what is the density of the Arab population", namely twice that of the United States.[20] In 1913 he went even further, attacking those who insisted on repeating that Palestine was "empty and derelict" and who called him a traitor for reporting otherwise.[21]

According to Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Zangwill told him in 1916 that, "If you wish to give a country to a people without a country, it is utter foolishness to allow it to be the country of two peoples. This can only cause trouble. The Jews will suffer and so will their neighbours. One of the two: a different place must be found either for the Jews or for their neighbours".[22]

In 1917 he wrote "'Give the country without a people,' magnanimously pleaded Lord Shaftesbury, 'to the people without a country.' Alas, it was a misleading mistake. The country holds 600,000 Arabs."[23]

In 1921 Zangwill wrote "If Lord Shaftesbury was literally inexact in describing Palestine as a country without a people, he was essentially correct, for there is no Arab people living in intimate fusion with the country, utilizing its resources and stamping it with a characteristic impress: there is at best an Arab encampment, the break-up of which would throw upon the Jews the actual manual labor of regeneration and prevent them from exploiting the fellahin, whose numbers and lower wages are moreover a considerable obstacle to the proposed immigration from Poland and other suffering centers".[24]

In 1914 Chaim Weizmann, later president of the World Zionist Congress and the first president of the state of Israel said: "In its initial stage Zionism was conceived by its pioneers as a movement wholly depending on mechanical factors: there is a country which happens to be called Palestine, a country without a people, and, on the other hand, there exists the Jewish people, and it has no country. What else is necessary, then, than to fit the gem into the ring, to unite this people with this country? The owners of the country [the Ottoman Turks?] must, therefore, be persuaded and convinced that this marriage is advantageous, not only for the [Jewish] people and for the country, but also for themselves".[25]

 

[ForeverYoung436]

"A land without a people for a people without a land"

Use of the phrase by Jewish Zionists
In 1901 in the New Liberal Review, Israel Zangwill wrote that "Palestine is a country without a people; the Jews are a people without a country".[7][15]

In a debate at the Article Club in November of that year, Zangwill said "Palestine has but a small population of Arabs and fellahin and wandering, lawless, blackmailing Bedouin tribes."[16] "Restore the country without a people to the people without a country. (Hear, hear.) For we have something to give as well as to get. We can sweep away the blackmailer—be he Pasha or Bedouin—we can make the wilderness blossom as the rose, and build up in the heart of the world a civilisation that may be a mediator and interpreter between the East and the West."[16]

In 1902, Zangwill wrote that Palestine "remains at this moment an almost uninhabited, forsaken and ruined Turkish territory".[17] However, within a few years, Zangwill had "become fully aware of the Arab peril", telling an audience in New York, "Palestine proper has already its inhabitants. The pashalik of Jerusalem is already twice as thickly populated as the United States" leaving Zionists the choice of driving the Arabs out or dealing with a "large alien population".[18] He moved his support to the Uganda scheme, leading to a break with the mainstream Zionist movement by 1905.[19] In 1908, Zangwill told a London court that he had been naive when he made his 1901 speech and had since "realized what is the density of the Arab population", namely twice that of the United States.[20] In 1913 he went even further, attacking those who insisted on repeating that Palestine was "empty and derelict" and who called him a traitor for reporting otherwise.[21]

According to Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Zangwill told him in 1916 that, "If you wish to give a country to a people without a country, it is utter foolishness to allow it to be the country of two peoples. This can only cause trouble. The Jews will suffer and so will their neighbours. One of the two: a different place must be found either for the Jews or for their neighbours".[22]

In 1917 he wrote "'Give the country without a people,' magnanimously pleaded Lord Shaftesbury, 'to the people without a country.' Alas, it was a misleading mistake. The country holds 600,000 Arabs."[23]

In 1921 Zangwill wrote "If Lord Shaftesbury was literally inexact in describing Palestine as a country without a people, he was essentially correct, for there is no Arab people living in intimate fusion with the country, utilizing its resources and stamping it with a characteristic impress: there is at best an Arab encampment, the break-up of which would throw upon the Jews the actual manual labor of regeneration and prevent them from exploiting the fellahin, whose numbers and lower wages are moreover a considerable obstacle to the proposed immigration from Poland and other suffering centers".[24]

In 1914 Chaim Weizmann, later president of the World Zionist Congress and the first president of the state of Israel said: "In its initial stage Zionism was conceived by its pioneers as a movement wholly depending on mechanical factors: there is a country which happens to be called Palestine, a country without a people, and, on the other hand, there exists the Jewish people, and it has no country. What else is necessary, then, than to fit the gem into the ring, to unite this people with this country? The owners of the country [the Ottoman Turks?] must, therefore, be persuaded and convinced that this marriage is advantageous, not only for the [Jewish] people and for the country, but also for themselves".[25]

I wanted to quote the full text. Usually in these instances, only 2 or 3 sentences are quoted.

 

[Phoenall]

Taken from the book "Innocents Abroad":

We traversed some miles of desolate country, a desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action. The further we went, the more repulsive and dreary the landscape became. No landscape exists that is more tiresome to the eye than that which bounds to the approaches to Jerusalem...Rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt, those signs that indicate the presence of Moslem rule, abound. Jerusalem is mournful and dreary and lifeless. I would not desire to live here. It is a hopeless and heart-broken land. Bethlehem is untenanted by any living creature. Stirring scenes occur in the Valley of Jezreel no more. There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent, not for 30 miles in either direction. There is not a single permanent habitation. One may ride 10 miles hereabouts and not see 10 human beings. To find the sort of solitude to make one dreary, one must come to Galilee--these unpeopled deserts, these rusty mounds of barreness that never do shake the glare from their harsh outlines, and faint and fade into vague perspective, that melancholy ruin of Capernaum, this stupid village of Tiberias, slumbering under its six funereal palms. We reached Tabor safely. Nazareth is forlorn, Jericho the accursed lies a moldering ruin today. Bethany is in poverty and humiliation. A desolate country where the soil is rich enough, but is given wholly to weeds. A silent, mournful expanse, a desolation, we never saw a human being on the whole route. There was hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the cactus and olive tree, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country. It is empty, destitute and a barren desert. Palestine sits in sackloth and ashes, desolate and unlovely. It is dreamland.

My own notes, especially for those like Tinmore, who have never even been there:
Galilee is now full of trees. I have camped there. Nazareth, Tiberias and Jerusalem are beautiful, bustling cities. Even the desert blooms.

Mark Twain's writing is the only source you guys ever use to make this claim - over and over. Twain was a skilled writer, and also a writer of fiction who took literary license. I don't believe historians use this as a basis for their findings.

NO we use contemporary reports from the period and Ottoman census results that all show that Palestine was devoid of life over most of its land surface. And that most of its people lived in the towns and cities, and farmed the land close to the towns and cities. We don't use the reports published by a committee that paid others to go out and count the numbers of people, and they in turn paid locals to provide the numbers. Mark Twain's writings are just used as icing on the cake to support the facts from such sources as the Catholic church and the Ottoman records

 

[Phoenall]

Taken from the book "Innocents Abroad":

We traversed some miles of desolate country, a desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action. The further we went, the more repulsive and dreary the landscape became. No landscape exists that is more tiresome to the eye than that which bounds to the approaches to Jerusalem...Rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt, those signs that indicate the presence of Moslem rule, abound. Jerusalem is mournful and dreary and lifeless. I would not desire to live here. It is a hopeless and heart-broken land. Bethlehem is untenanted by any living creature. Stirring scenes occur in the Valley of Jezreel no more. There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent, not for 30 miles in either direction. There is not a single permanent habitation. One may ride 10 miles hereabouts and not see 10 human beings. To find the sort of solitude to make one dreary, one must come to Galilee--these unpeopled deserts, these rusty mounds of barreness that never do shake the glare from their harsh outlines, and faint and fade into vague perspective, that melancholy ruin of Capernaum, this stupid village of Tiberias, slumbering under its six funereal palms. We reached Tabor safely. Nazareth is forlorn, Jericho the accursed lies a moldering ruin today. Bethany is in poverty and humiliation. A desolate country where the soil is rich enough, but is given wholly to weeds. A silent, mournful expanse, a desolation, we never saw a human being on the whole route. There was hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the cactus and olive tree, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country. It is empty, destitute and a barren desert. Palestine sits in sackloth and ashes, desolate and unlovely. It is dreamland.

My own notes, especially for those like Tinmore, who have never even been there:
Galilee is now full of trees. I have camped there. Nazareth, Tiberias and Jerusalem are beautiful, bustling cities. Even the desert blooms.

Mark Twain's writing is the only source you guys ever use to make this claim - over and over. Twain was a skilled writer, and also a writer of fiction who took literary license. I don't believe historians use this as a basis for their findings.

NO we use contemporary reports from the period and Ottoman census results that all show that Palestine was devoid of life over most of its land surface. And that most of its people lived in the towns and cities, and farmed the land close to the towns and cities. We don't use the reports published by a committee that paid others to go out and count the numbers of people, and they in turn paid locals to provide the numbers. Mark Twain's writings are just used as icing on the cake to support the facts from such sources as the Catholic church and the Ottoman records

 

[Phoenall]

"A land without a people for a people without a land"

Use of the phrase by Jewish Zionists
In 1901 in the New Liberal Review, Israel Zangwill wrote that "Palestine is a country without a people; the Jews are a people without a country".[7][15]

In a debate at the Article Club in November of that year, Zangwill said "Palestine has but a small population of Arabs and fellahin and wandering, lawless, blackmailing Bedouin tribes."[16] "Restore the country without a people to the people without a country. (Hear, hear.) For we have something to give as well as to get. We can sweep away the blackmailer—be he Pasha or Bedouin—we can make the wilderness blossom as the rose, and build up in the heart of the world a civilisation that may be a mediator and interpreter between the East and the West."[16]

In 1902, Zangwill wrote that Palestine "remains at this moment an almost uninhabited, forsaken and ruined Turkish territory".[17] However, within a few years, Zangwill had "become fully aware of the Arab peril", telling an audience in New York, "Palestine proper has already its inhabitants. The pashalik of Jerusalem is already twice as thickly populated as the United States" leaving Zionists the choice of driving the Arabs out or dealing with a "large alien population".[18] He moved his support to the Uganda scheme, leading to a break with the mainstream Zionist movement by 1905.[19] In 1908, Zangwill told a London court that he had been naive when he made his 1901 speech and had since "realized what is the density of the Arab population", namely twice that of the United States.[20] In 1913 he went even further, attacking those who insisted on repeating that Palestine was "empty and derelict" and who called him a traitor for reporting otherwise.[21]

According to Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Zangwill told him in 1916 that, "If you wish to give a country to a people without a country, it is utter foolishness to allow it to be the country of two peoples. This can only cause trouble. The Jews will suffer and so will their neighbours. One of the two: a different place must be found either for the Jews or for their neighbours".[22]

In 1917 he wrote "'Give the country without a people,' magnanimously pleaded Lord Shaftesbury, 'to the people without a country.' Alas, it was a misleading mistake. The country holds 600,000 Arabs."[23]

In 1921 Zangwill wrote "If Lord Shaftesbury was literally inexact in describing Palestine as a country without a people, he was essentially correct, for there is no Arab people living in intimate fusion with the country, utilizing its resources and stamping it with a characteristic impress: there is at best an Arab encampment, the break-up of which would throw upon the Jews the actual manual labor of regeneration and prevent them from exploiting the fellahin, whose numbers and lower wages are moreover a considerable obstacle to the proposed immigration from Poland and other suffering centers".[24]

In 1914 Chaim Weizmann, later president of the World Zionist Congress and the first president of the state of Israel said: "In its initial stage Zionism was conceived by its pioneers as a movement wholly depending on mechanical factors: there is a country which happens to be called Palestine, a country without a people, and, on the other hand, there exists the Jewish people, and it has no country. What else is necessary, then, than to fit the gem into the ring, to unite this people with this country? The owners of the country [the Ottoman Turks?] must, therefore, be persuaded and convinced that this marriage is advantageous, not only for the [Jewish] people and for the country, but also for themselves".[25]

Thanks for destroying one of the islamonazi propaganda lies once and for all, will you post the retraction of team palestines claims and tell them they are wrong the next time they post the manipulated words of Zangwill.

 

[ForeverYoung436]

Taken from the book "Innocents Abroad":

We traversed some miles of desolate country, a desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action. The further we went, the more repulsive and dreary the landscape became. No landscape exists that is more tiresome to the eye than that which bounds to the approaches to Jerusalem...Rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt, those signs that indicate the presence of Moslem rule, abound. Jerusalem is mournful and dreary and lifeless. I would not desire to live here. It is a hopeless and heart-broken land. Bethlehem is untenanted by any living creature. Stirring scenes occur in the Valley of Jezreel no more. There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent, not for 30 miles in either direction. There is not a single permanent habitation. One may ride 10 miles hereabouts and not see 10 human beings. To find the sort of solitude to make one dreary, one must come to Galilee--these unpeopled deserts, these rusty mounds of barreness that never do shake the glare from their harsh outlines, and faint and fade into vague perspective, that melancholy ruin of Capernaum, this stupid village of Tiberias, slumbering under its six funereal palms. We reached Tabor safely. Nazareth is forlorn, Jericho the accursed lies a moldering ruin today. Bethany is in poverty and humiliation. A desolate country where the soil is rich enough, but is given wholly to weeds. A silent, mournful expanse, a desolation, we never saw a human being on the whole route. There was hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the cactus and olive tree, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country. It is empty, destitute and a barren desert. Palestine sits in sackloth and ashes, desolate and unlovely. It is dreamland.

My own notes, especially for those like Tinmore, who have never even been there:
Galilee is now full of trees. I have camped there. Nazareth, Tiberias and Jerusalem are beautiful, bustling cities. Even the desert blooms.

Mark Twain's writing is the only source you guys ever use to make this claim - over and over. Twain was a skilled writer, and also a writer of fiction who took literary license. I don't believe historians use this as a basis for their findings.

Even if Twain took literary license, it is clear that Palestine was a backwater, neglected Ottoman province.

 

[pbel]

Taken from the book "Innocents Abroad":

We traversed some miles of desolate country, a desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action. The further we went, the more repulsive and dreary the landscape became. No landscape exists that is more tiresome to the eye than that which bounds to the approaches to Jerusalem...Rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt, those signs that indicate the presence of Moslem rule, abound. Jerusalem is mournful and dreary and lifeless. I would not desire to live here. It is a hopeless and heart-broken land. Bethlehem is untenanted by any living creature. Stirring scenes occur in the Valley of Jezreel no more. There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent, not for 30 miles in either direction. There is not a single permanent habitation. One may ride 10 miles hereabouts and not see 10 human beings. To find the sort of solitude to make one dreary, one must come to Galilee--these unpeopled deserts, these rusty mounds of barreness that never do shake the glare from their harsh outlines, and faint and fade into vague perspective, that melancholy ruin of Capernaum, this stupid village of Tiberias, slumbering under its six funereal palms. We reached Tabor safely. Nazareth is forlorn, Jericho the accursed lies a moldering ruin today. Bethany is in poverty and humiliation. A desolate country where the soil is rich enough, but is given wholly to weeds. A silent, mournful expanse, a desolation, we never saw a human being on the whole route. There was hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the cactus and olive tree, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country. It is empty, destitute and a barren desert. Palestine sits in sackloth and ashes, desolate and unlovely. It is dreamland.

My own notes, especially for those like Tinmore, who have never even been there:
Galilee is now full of trees. I have camped there. Nazareth, Tiberias and Jerusalem are beautiful, bustling cities. Even the desert blooms.

Mark Twain's writing is the only source you guys ever use to make this claim - over and over. Twain was a skilled writer, and also a writer of fiction who took literary license. I don't believe historians use this as a basis for their findings.

NO we use contemporary reports from the period and Ottoman census results that all show that Palestine was devoid of life over most of its land surface. And that most of its people lived in the towns and cities, and farmed the land close to the towns and cities. We don't use the reports published by a committee that paid others to go out and count the numbers of people, and they in turn paid locals to provide the numbers. Mark Twain's writings are just used as icing on the cake to support the facts from such sources as the Catholic church and the Ottoman records

Foreveryoung: And that most of its people lived in the towns and cities, and farmed the land close to the towns


That's exactly how most of the OLD WORLD was settled mostly for protection against banditry like the Zionists!

 

[Coyote]

Taken from the book "Innocents Abroad":

We traversed some miles of desolate country, a desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action. The further we went, the more repulsive and dreary the landscape became. No landscape exists that is more tiresome to the eye than that which bounds to the approaches to Jerusalem...Rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt, those signs that indicate the presence of Moslem rule, abound. Jerusalem is mournful and dreary and lifeless. I would not desire to live here. It is a hopeless and heart-broken land. Bethlehem is untenanted by any living creature. Stirring scenes occur in the Valley of Jezreel no more. There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent, not for 30 miles in either direction. There is not a single permanent habitation. One may ride 10 miles hereabouts and not see 10 human beings. To find the sort of solitude to make one dreary, one must come to Galilee--these unpeopled deserts, these rusty mounds of barreness that never do shake the glare from their harsh outlines, and faint and fade into vague perspective, that melancholy ruin of Capernaum, this stupid village of Tiberias, slumbering under its six funereal palms. We reached Tabor safely. Nazareth is forlorn, Jericho the accursed lies a moldering ruin today. Bethany is in poverty and humiliation. A desolate country where the soil is rich enough, but is given wholly to weeds. A silent, mournful expanse, a desolation, we never saw a human being on the whole route. There was hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the cactus and olive tree, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country. It is empty, destitute and a barren desert. Palestine sits in sackloth and ashes, desolate and unlovely. It is dreamland.

My own notes, especially for those like Tinmore, who have never even been there:
Galilee is now full of trees. I have camped there. Nazareth, Tiberias and Jerusalem are beautiful, bustling cities. Even the desert blooms.

Mark Twain's writing is the only source you guys ever use to make this claim - over and over. Twain was a skilled writer, and also a writer of fiction who took literary license. I don't believe historians use this as a basis for their findings.

NO we use contemporary reports from the period and Ottoman census results that all show that Palestine was devoid of life over most of its land surface. And that most of its people lived in the towns and cities, and farmed the land close to the towns and cities. We don't use the reports published by a committee that paid others to go out and count the numbers of people, and they in turn paid locals to provide the numbers. Mark Twain's writings are just used as icing on the cake to support the facts from such sources as the Catholic church and the Ottoman records

MidEast Web - Population of Palestine

Palestine was not empty, not even close.

 

[Coyote]

Taken from the book "Innocents Abroad":

We traversed some miles of desolate country, a desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action. The further we went, the more repulsive and dreary the landscape became. No landscape exists that is more tiresome to the eye than that which bounds to the approaches to Jerusalem...Rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt, those signs that indicate the presence of Moslem rule, abound. Jerusalem is mournful and dreary and lifeless. I would not desire to live here. It is a hopeless and heart-broken land. Bethlehem is untenanted by any living creature. Stirring scenes occur in the Valley of Jezreel no more. There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent, not for 30 miles in either direction. There is not a single permanent habitation. One may ride 10 miles hereabouts and not see 10 human beings. To find the sort of solitude to make one dreary, one must come to Galilee--these unpeopled deserts, these rusty mounds of barreness that never do shake the glare from their harsh outlines, and faint and fade into vague perspective, that melancholy ruin of Capernaum, this stupid village of Tiberias, slumbering under its six funereal palms. We reached Tabor safely. Nazareth is forlorn, Jericho the accursed lies a moldering ruin today. Bethany is in poverty and humiliation. A desolate country where the soil is rich enough, but is given wholly to weeds. A silent, mournful expanse, a desolation, we never saw a human being on the whole route. There was hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the cactus and olive tree, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country. It is empty, destitute and a barren desert. Palestine sits in sackloth and ashes, desolate and unlovely. It is dreamland.

My own notes, especially for those like Tinmore, who have never even been there:
Galilee is now full of trees. I have camped there. Nazareth, Tiberias and Jerusalem are beautiful, bustling cities. Even the desert blooms.

Mark Twain's writing is the only source you guys ever use to make this claim - over and over. Twain was a skilled writer, and also a writer of fiction who took literary license. I don't believe historians use this as a basis for their findings.

Even if Twain took literary license, it is clear that Palestine was a backwater, neglected Ottoman province.

It may have been, but it was hardly empty - just as the American west wasn't empty.

 

[Jroc]

Taken from the book "Innocents Abroad":

We traversed some miles of desolate country, a desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action. The further we went, the more repulsive and dreary the landscape became. No landscape exists that is more tiresome to the eye than that which bounds to the approaches to Jerusalem...Rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt, those signs that indicate the presence of Moslem rule, abound. Jerusalem is mournful and dreary and lifeless. I would not desire to live here. It is a hopeless and heart-broken land. Bethlehem is untenanted by any living creature. Stirring scenes occur in the Valley of Jezreel no more. There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent, not for 30 miles in either direction. There is not a single permanent habitation. One may ride 10 miles hereabouts and not see 10 human beings. To find the sort of solitude to make one dreary, one must come to Galilee--these unpeopled deserts, these rusty mounds of barreness that never do shake the glare from their harsh outlines, and faint and fade into vague perspective, that melancholy ruin of Capernaum, this stupid village of Tiberias, slumbering under its six funereal palms. We reached Tabor safely. Nazareth is forlorn, Jericho the accursed lies a moldering ruin today. Bethany is in poverty and humiliation. A desolate country where the soil is rich enough, but is given wholly to weeds. A silent, mournful expanse, a desolation, we never saw a human being on the whole route. There was hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the cactus and olive tree, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country. It is empty, destitute and a barren desert. Palestine sits in sackloth and ashes, desolate and unlovely. It is dreamland.

My own notes, especially for those like Tinmore, who have never even been there:
Galilee is now full of trees. I have camped there. Nazareth, Tiberias and Jerusalem are beautiful, bustling cities. Even the desert blooms.

Mark Twain's writing is the only source you guys ever use to make this claim - over and over. Twain was a skilled writer, and also a writer of fiction who took literary license. I don't believe historians use this as a basis for their findings.

NO we use contemporary reports from the period and Ottoman census results that all show that Palestine was devoid of life over most of its land surface. And that most of its people lived in the towns and cities, and farmed the land close to the towns and cities. We don't use the reports published by a committee that paid others to go out and count the numbers of people, and they in turn paid locals to provide the numbers. Mark Twain's writings are just used as icing on the cake to support the facts from such sources as the Catholic church and the Ottoman records

MidEast Web - Population of Palestine

Palestine was not empty, not even close.

From your post...

The major conclusion is "The nature of the data do not permit precise conclusions about the Arab population of Palestine in Ottoman and British times" Anyone who pretends otherwise is deliberately misleading you

.

 

[Coyote]

Taken from the book "Innocents Abroad":

We traversed some miles of desolate country, a desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action. The further we went, the more repulsive and dreary the landscape became. No landscape exists that is more tiresome to the eye than that which bounds to the approaches to Jerusalem...Rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt, those signs that indicate the presence of Moslem rule, abound. Jerusalem is mournful and dreary and lifeless. I would not desire to live here. It is a hopeless and heart-broken land. Bethlehem is untenanted by any living creature. Stirring scenes occur in the Valley of Jezreel no more. There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent, not for 30 miles in either direction. There is not a single permanent habitation. One may ride 10 miles hereabouts and not see 10 human beings. To find the sort of solitude to make one dreary, one must come to Galilee--these unpeopled deserts, these rusty mounds of barreness that never do shake the glare from their harsh outlines, and faint and fade into vague perspective, that melancholy ruin of Capernaum, this stupid village of Tiberias, slumbering under its six funereal palms. We reached Tabor safely. Nazareth is forlorn, Jericho the accursed lies a moldering ruin today. Bethany is in poverty and humiliation. A desolate country where the soil is rich enough, but is given wholly to weeds. A silent, mournful expanse, a desolation, we never saw a human being on the whole route. There was hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the cactus and olive tree, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country. It is empty, destitute and a barren desert. Palestine sits in sackloth and ashes, desolate and unlovely. It is dreamland.

My own notes, especially for those like Tinmore, who have never even been there:
Galilee is now full of trees. I have camped there. Nazareth, Tiberias and Jerusalem are beautiful, bustling cities. Even the desert blooms.

Mark Twain's writing is the only source you guys ever use to make this claim - over and over. Twain was a skilled writer, and also a writer of fiction who took literary license. I don't believe historians use this as a basis for their findings.

NO we use contemporary reports from the period and Ottoman census results that all show that Palestine was devoid of life over most of its land surface. And that most of its people lived in the towns and cities, and farmed the land close to the towns and cities. We don't use the reports published by a committee that paid others to go out and count the numbers of people, and they in turn paid locals to provide the numbers. Mark Twain's writings are just used as icing on the cake to support the facts from such sources as the Catholic church and the Ottoman records

MidEast Web - Population of Palestine

Palestine was not empty, not even close.

From your post...

The major conclusion is "The nature of the data do not permit precise conclusions about the Arab population of Palestine in Ottoman and British times" Anyone who pretends otherwise is deliberately misleading you

.

Exactly...yet you chose to leave out the next two sentences immediately following:

"We can reach some general conclusions - Palestine was not empty when Zionists started arriving, there was some Arab immigration as well etc. But we cannot give a precise number in any case, and even if we could, it would not constitute evidence to back any moral claims. "

Not empty. Maybe it's time to lay that canard to rest.

 

[Jroc]

Taken from the book "Innocents Abroad":

We traversed some miles of desolate country, a desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action. The further we went, the more repulsive and dreary the landscape became. No landscape exists that is more tiresome to the eye than that which bounds to the approaches to Jerusalem...Rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt, those signs that indicate the presence of Moslem rule, abound. Jerusalem is mournful and dreary and lifeless. I would not desire to live here. It is a hopeless and heart-broken land. Bethlehem is untenanted by any living creature. Stirring scenes occur in the Valley of Jezreel no more. There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent, not for 30 miles in either direction. There is not a single permanent habitation. One may ride 10 miles hereabouts and not see 10 human beings. To find the sort of solitude to make one dreary, one must come to Galilee--these unpeopled deserts, these rusty mounds of barreness that never do shake the glare from their harsh outlines, and faint and fade into vague perspective, that melancholy ruin of Capernaum, this stupid village of Tiberias, slumbering under its six funereal palms. We reached Tabor safely. Nazareth is forlorn, Jericho the accursed lies a moldering ruin today. Bethany is in poverty and humiliation. A desolate country where the soil is rich enough, but is given wholly to weeds. A silent, mournful expanse, a desolation, we never saw a human being on the whole route. There was hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the cactus and olive tree, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country. It is empty, destitute and a barren desert. Palestine sits in sackloth and ashes, desolate and unlovely. It is dreamland.

My own notes, especially for those like Tinmore, who have never even been there:
Galilee is now full of trees. I have camped there. Nazareth, Tiberias and Jerusalem are beautiful, bustling cities. Even the desert blooms.

Mark Twain's writing is the only source you guys ever use to make this claim - over and over. Twain was a skilled writer, and also a writer of fiction who took literary license. I don't believe historians use this as a basis for their findings.

NO we use contemporary reports from the period and Ottoman census results that all show that Palestine was devoid of life over most of its land surface. And that most of its people lived in the towns and cities, and farmed the land close to the towns and cities. We don't use the reports published by a committee that paid others to go out and count the numbers of people, and they in turn paid locals to provide the numbers. Mark Twain's writings are just used as icing on the cake to support the facts from such sources as the Catholic church and the Ottoman records

MidEast Web - Population of Palestine

Palestine was not empty, not even close.

From your post...

The major conclusion is "The nature of the data do not permit precise conclusions about the Arab population of Palestine in Ottoman and British times" Anyone who pretends otherwise is deliberately misleading you

.

Exactly...yet you chose to leave out the next two sentences immediately following:

"We can reach some general conclusions - Palestine was not empty when Zionists started arriving, there was some Arab immigration as well etc. But we cannot give a precise number in any case, and even if we could, it would not constitute evidence to back any moral claims. "

Not empty. Maybe it's time to lay that canard to rest.

Yeah pretty empty actually. A couple hundred thousand people is pretty empty,for the whole of "Palestine" Do your numbers include the trans Jordan as well?

 

[theliq]

"A land without a people for a people without a land"

Use of the phrase by Jewish Zionists
In 1901 in the New Liberal Review, Israel Zangwill wrote that "Palestine is a country without a people; the Jews are a people without a country".[7][15]

In a debate at the Article Club in November of that year, Zangwill said "Palestine has but a small population of Arabs and fellahin and wandering, lawless, blackmailing Bedouin tribes."[16] "Restore the country without a people to the people without a country. (Hear, hear.) For we have something to give as well as to get. We can sweep away the blackmailer—be he Pasha or Bedouin—we can make the wilderness blossom as the rose, and build up in the heart of the world a civilisation that may be a mediator and interpreter between the East and the West."[16]

In 1902, Zangwill wrote that Palestine "remains at this moment an almost uninhabited, forsaken and ruined Turkish territory".[17] However, within a few years, Zangwill had "become fully aware of the Arab peril", telling an audience in New York, "Palestine proper has already its inhabitants. The pashalik of Jerusalem is already twice as thickly populated as the United States" leaving Zionists the choice of driving the Arabs out or dealing with a "large alien population".[18] He moved his support to the Uganda scheme, leading to a break with the mainstream Zionist movement by 1905.[19] In 1908, Zangwill told a London court that he had been naive when he made his 1901 speech and had since "realized what is the density of the Arab population", namely twice that of the United States.[20] In 1913 he went even further, attacking those who insisted on repeating that Palestine was "empty and derelict" and who called him a traitor for reporting otherwise.[21]

According to Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Zangwill told him in 1916 that, "If you wish to give a country to a people without a country, it is utter foolishness to allow it to be the country of two peoples. This can only cause trouble. The Jews will suffer and so will their neighbours. One of the two: a different place must be found either for the Jews or for their neighbours".[22]

In 1917 he wrote "'Give the country without a people,' magnanimously pleaded Lord Shaftesbury, 'to the people without a country.' Alas, it was a misleading mistake. The country holds 600,000 Arabs."[23]

In 1921 Zangwill wrote "If Lord Shaftesbury was literally inexact in describing Palestine as a country without a people, he was essentially correct, for there is no Arab people living in intimate fusion with the country, utilizing its resources and stamping it with a characteristic impress: there is at best an Arab encampment, the break-up of which would throw upon the Jews the actual manual labor of regeneration and prevent them from exploiting the fellahin, whose numbers and lower wages are moreover a considerable obstacle to the proposed immigration from Poland and other suffering centers".[24]

In 1914 Chaim Weizmann, later president of the World Zionist Congress and the first president of the state of Israel said: "In its initial stage Zionism was conceived by its pioneers as a movement wholly depending on mechanical factors: there is a country which happens to be called Palestine, a country without a people, and, on the other hand, there exists the Jewish people, and it has no country. What else is necessary, then, than to fit the gem into the ring, to unite this people with this country? The owners of the country [the Ottoman Turks?] must, therefore, be persuaded and convinced that this marriage is advantageous, not only for the [Jewish] people and for the country, but also for themselves".[25]

Thanks for destroying one of the islamonazi propaganda lies once and for all, will you post the retraction of team palestines claims and tell them they are wrong the next time they post the manipulated words of Zangwill.

Empty Land Hey,More like Empty Headed BULLSHIT,for that is what this Zionist MUMBO-JUMBO was...........A Zionist who couldn't lie straight in bed.....a lie still clung to by RABID ZIONISTS TODAY.........one of the many reasons Zionists are NOT TRUSTED as far as they can be SPAT.
Why DO SOME JEWS LIE ????????????Easy...BECAUSE THEY ARE TERRORISTS.......CALLED ZIONISTS(TRASH)