by vampyregirl » Fri 16 Jan 2009, 11:54:56
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('3aidlillahi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')hen Mark Twain visited Palestine in 1869 he described the land as barren and desolate and only sparsley populated.
Of course that's BS. Here's what a Zionist Jew, Ahad Ha'am, wrote in 1891:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'F')rom abroad, we are accustomed to believe that Eretz Israel is presently almost totally desolate, an uncultivated desert, and that anyone wishing to buy land there can come and buy all he wants.
But in truth it is not so. In the entire land, it is hard to find tillable land that is not already tilled; only sandy fields or stony hills, suitable at best for planting trees or vines and, even that after considerable work and expense in clearing and preparing them- only these remain unworked. ... Many of our people who came to buy land have been in Eretz Israel for months, and have toured its length and width, without finding what they seek
Estimates of the population of Palestine at the time (west of the Jordan) were about half a million. Hardly desolate or unpopulated.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')n 1852 the American writer Bayard Taylor travelled across the Jezreel Valley, which he described in his 1854 book The Lands of the Saracen; or, Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily and Spain as: "
, with its village-crowned mounds rising from it like islands; and it presents one of the most striking pictures of luxuriant fertility which it is possible to conceive."[182]