Lot of people think that the Zionists just sort of barged into a land full of happy Arabs and took over. But any reading Mark Twain’s account of his trip to the Holy Land (Innocents abroad(?)—it’s been awhile) hears the account of a thinly populated, run-down, poorly governed country. The Turks were on the top, then the local sheikhs, and then the local Arabs/Jews who played the roles— respectively — that rednecks and blacks played in the old South. The Zionists brought the first capital into the place along with some fresh blood from Russia and elsewhere. The last were often shocked by what they found, and sometimes made them think that Holy Russia was not that bad after all. The Turks were of two minds about the Jewish gold: the gold was good; that it was Jewish gold, not so good.
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