John F. Kennedy...
When the first Zionist conference met in 1897, Palestine was a neglected wasteland
I first saw Palestine in 1939. There the neglect and ruin left by centuries of Ottoman [Muslim] misrule were slowly being transformed by miracles of [Jewish] labor and sacrifice. But Palestine was still a land of promise in 1939, rather than a land of fulfillment. I returned in 1951 to see the grandeur of Israel. In 3 years this new state had opened its doors to 600,000 immigrants and refugees. Even while fighting for its own survival, Israel had given new hope to the persecuted and new dignity to the pattern of Jewish life. I left with the conviction that the United Nations may have conferred on Israel the credentials of nationhood; but its own idealism and courage, its own sacrifice and generosity, had earned the credentials of immortality.
John F. Kennedy: Speech by Senator John F. Kennedy, Zionists of America Convention, Statler Hilton Hotel, New York, NY
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)
Chapter 2: Encyclopedia of the Palestine Problem
"Encyclopedia of the Palestine Problem"
Mark Twain had no bias one way or the other. He discribed what he saw, your propaganda site is that and thats all you got. Look at all your pathedic arab countries they are a joke. They kill each other, you've got nothing PF idiot your a joke here.