Marc39
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- Jun 19, 2009
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In 1615 the English traveler George Sandys described Palestine as "a land that flows with milk and honey; in the midst as it were of the habitable world, and under a temperate clime; adorned with beautiful mountains and luxurious valleys; the rocks producing excellent waters; and no part empty of delight or profit."(4)
A British missionary who lived in Beirut and visited Palestine in 1859 described the southern coastal area as "a very ocean of wheat," and the British Consul in Jerusalem, James Finn, reported that "the fields would do credit to British farming."(5)
The German geographer Alexander Scholch concluded that between 1856 and 1882 "Palestine produced a relatively large agricultural surplus which was marketed in neighboring countries, such as Egypt and Lebanon, and increasingly exported to Europe. These exports included wheat, barley, dura, maise, sesame, olive oil, soap, oranges, vegetables and cotton. Among the European importers of Palestinian produce were France, England, Turkey, Greece, Italy and Malta."(6)
Lawrence Oliphant, who visited Palestine in 1887, wrote that Palestine's Valley of Esdraelon was "a huge green lake of waving wheat, 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."(7) This Palestinian wheat had historically played an important part in international commerce. According to Paul Masson, a French economic historian, "wheat shipments from the Palestinian port of Acre had helped to save southern France from famine on numerous occasions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries."(8)
Agricultural techniques in Palestine, especially in citriculture, were among the most advanced in the world long before the first Zionist settlers came to its shores. In 1856, the American consul in Jerusalem, Henry Gillman, "outlined reasons why orange growers in Florida would find it advantageous to adopt Palestinian techniques of grafting directly onto lemon trees."^ In 1893, the British Consul advised his government of the value of importing "young trees procured from Jaffa" to improve production in Australia and South Africa.(10)
All of this historical evidence from unimpeachable eyewitnesses destroys Israel's contention that it developed Palestine through its colonization. The legend that the Zionists have created, that they made "the desert bloom with roses," is totally without foundation. It is a ploy to gain donations from naive Jews throughout the world and to help extort economic aid from the American Congress. The economic achievements of Israel today are built totally on the capital base of lands, property and possessions usurped from the Palestinian Arabs.
Chapter 2: Encyclopedia of the Palestine Problem
Your quotes are bogus.
My quotes pertaining to the desolate condition of Palestine before Jewish immigration are from official British records.
To wit...
Interim Report on the Civil Administration of Palestine, JULY, 1920--JUNE, 1921, presented to the British Cabinet...
When General Allenby's army swept over Palestine, in a campaign as brilliant and decisive as any recorded in history, it occupied a country exhausted by war. The population had been depleted; the people of the towns were in severe distress; much cultivated land was left untilled; the stocks of cattle and horses had fallen to a low ebb; the woodlands, always scanty, had almost disappeared; orange groves had been ruined by lack of irrigation; commerce had long been at a standstill. A Military Administration was established to govern the country. For nearly two years it laboured, with great devotion, at its restoration. An administrative system, as efficient as the conditions allowed, was set up. The revenue authorised by the Turkish law was collected, and was spent on the needs of the country. A considerable sum, advanced by the Anglo-Egyptian Bank, was lent by the Government in small amounts to the agriculturists, and enabled them to purchase stock and seed, and partly to restore their cultivation. Philanthropic agencies in other countries came to the relief of the most necessitous. Commerce began to revive. It was encouraged by the new railway connection with Egypt, established during the campaign for purposes of military transport. It was assisted also by the construction, with the same object, of a net-work of good roads. The country showed all the signs of gradually returning life.
But the prospects of Palestine are not limited, on the economic side, merely to a return to the standard attained before the war. It has the possibilities of a far more prosperous future. Small in area--comparable in size to Belgium or Wales--its geographical position rendered it in ancient times, and may render it again, a centre of no small importance to the commercial traffic of the larger territories that surround it. Within the limits of a province, it offers the varieties of soil and climate of a continent. It is a country of mountain and plain, of desert and pleasant valleys, of lake and sea-board, of barren hills, desolate to the last degree of desolation, and of broad stretches of deep, fruitful soil. The rainfall of Jerusalem equals that of London. The water problem, over most of the country, is not a question of quantity, but of storage, of pumping and of distribution.
It is obvious to every passing traveller, and well-known to every European resident, that the country was before the War, and is now, undeveloped and under-populated. The methods of agriculture are, for the most part, primitive; the area of land now cultivated could yield a far greater product. There are in addition large cultivable areas that are left untilled. The summits and slopes of the hills are admirably suited to the growth of trees, but there are no forests. Miles of sand dunes that could be redeemed, are untouched, a danger, by their encroachment, to the neighbouring tillage. The Jordan and the Yarmuk offer an abundance of water-power; but it is unused. Some industries--fishing and the culture and manufacture of tobacco are examples--have been killed by Turkish laws; none have been encouraged; the markets of Palestine and of the neighbouring countries are supplied almost wholly from Europe. The seaborne commerce, such as it is, is loaded and discharged in the open roadsteads of Jaffa and Haifa: there are no harbours. The religious and historical associations that offer most powerful attractions to the whole of the Western, and to a large part of the Eastern world, have hitherto brought to Palestine but a fraction of the pilgrims and travellers, who, under better conditions, would flock to her sacred shrines and famous sites.
The country is under-populated because of this lack of development. There are now in the whole of Palestine hardly 700,000 people, a population much less than that of the province of Gallilee alone in the time of Christ.* (*See Sir George Adam Smith "Historical Geography of the Holy Land", Chap. 20.) Of these 235,000 live in the larger towns, 465,000 in the smaller towns and villages. Four-fifths of the whole population are Moslems. A small proportion of these are Bedouin Arabs; the remainder, although they speak Arabic and are termed Arabs, are largely of mixed race. Some 77,000 of the population are Christians, in large majority belonging to the Orthodox Church, and speaking Arabic. The minority are members of the Latin or of the Uniate Greek Catholic Church, or--a small number--are Protestants.
The Jewish element of the population numbers 76,000. Almost all have entered Palestine during the last 40 years. Prior to 1850 there were in the country only a handful of Jews. In the following 30 years a few hundreds came to Palestine. Most of them were animated by religious motives; they came to pray and to die in the Holy Land, and to be buried in its soil. After the persecutions in Russia forty years ago, the movement of the Jews to Palestine assumed larger proportions. Jewish agricultural colonies were founded. They developed the culture of oranges and gave importance to the Jaffa orange trade. They cultivated the vine, and manufactured and exported wine. They drained swamps. They planted eucalyptus trees. They practised, with modern methods, all the processes of agriculture. There are at the present time 64 of these settlements, large and small, with a population of some 15,000. Every traveller in Palestine who visits them is impressed by the contrast between these pleasant villages, with the beautiful stretches of prosperous cultivation about them and the primitive conditions of life and work by which they are surrounded.
The success of these agricultural colonies attracted the eager interest of the masses of the Jewish people scattered throughout the world. In many countries they were living under the pressure of laws or customs which cramped their capacities and thwarted their energies; they saw in Palestine the prospect of a home in which they might live at ease. Profoundly discontented, as numbers of them were, with a life of petty trade in crowded cities, they listened with ready ears to the call of a healthier and finer life as producers on the land. Some among them, agriculturists already, saw in Palestine the prospect of a soil not less fertile, and an environment far more free, than those to which they were accustomed. Everywhere great numbers of Jews, whose religion causes them to live, spiritually, largely in the past, began to take an active interest in those passages of their ritual, that dwelt, with constant emphasis, upon the connection of their race with Palestine; passages which they had hitherto read day by day and week by week, with the lax attention that is given to contingency that is possible but remote. Among a great proportion, at least, of the fourteen millions of Jews, who are dispersed in all the countries of the globe, the Zionist idea took hold. They found in it that larger and higher interest, outside and beyond the cares and concerns of daily life, which every man, who is not wholly materialist, must seek somewhere.
That's nice.
Note: in the fourth picture, taken in 1937, there is a Palestinian flag on that building.
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGBoGKPZlQE&feature=related]YouTube - Palestine before 1948[/ame]
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjEBQ_bE7uA]YouTube - Palestine Pre-1947[/ame]
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJXC046hzXQ&feature=related]YouTube - The Culture of Palestine[/ame]
Palliewood videos? LOL
Sorry, the British records I have posted about desolate Palestine make your silly bogus videos make you look like a dunce.
Palestine was never self-sufficient pre-Israel.
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