Palestine, a Land virtually laid waste with little population

Couldn't "finish" it without "re-editing" it, eh? Say, do your crew still use terms like "untermensch?"

Tom Sowell always says the reason Jews, overseas Chinese, and other successful diasporas are hated is exactly because they show the locals that prosperity is simply a matter of hard work.

Assertion is not proof. Especially from you. Come back and dispute what has been posted.

"Making the desert bloom," re-visited: Challenging another false Zionist Myth Written May 2000 One of the Zionist myths is that before they arrived in Palestine there was nothing but barrenness and emptiness. In essence, so the myth goes, it was a desert. But due to their efforts that desert blossomed like a rose to become what it is today. In a recent letter (April 29/00) written to National Public Radio (Rev.) G. Simon Harak challenges this myth when it was once again mentioned by Maxine Davis on the radio show "The Savvy Traveler." Below you can read Mr. Harak's letter. Dear Savvy Traveler, In her Feature Story "postcard" which is mostly about India, Maxine Davis wrote about her parents' travels, reminiscing, "My parents saw Israel when it was still desert and Japan before cars." I can understand the part about Japan without cars, but at exactly what point in time did her parents see Israel when it was "still desert?" It couldn't have been in 1946. That was the year that Walter C. Lowdermilk, Assistant Chief of US Soil Conservation Service, examined Palestine, and compared it to California, except that "the soils of Palestine were uniformly better" [_Palestine's Economic Future: A Review of Progress and Prospects_ (London, UK: Percy Lund Humphries and Co., Ltd., 1946), 19-23. It couldn't have been in 1945, when Palestine had over 600,000 dunums of land planted with olive trees, producing nearly 80,000 tons of olives, and accounting for 1 percent of the olive oil production for the WORLD [_Statistical Abstract of Palestine, 1944-45_ (Department of Statistics, Government of Palestine), 225], and produced nearly 245,000 tons of vegetables [_A Survey of Palestine_, for the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, Vol.I, 325-26]. It couldn't have been in 1943, when Palestine produced 280,000 tons of fruit, excluding citrus fruits [_Statistical Abstract of Palestine, 1944-45_, 226]. It couldn't have been in 1942, when Palestine produced nearly 305,000 tons of grains and legumes [_A Survey of Palestine_, Vol.I, 320]. It couldn't have been in 1939, when Palestine exported over 15 million cases of citrus fruit [ _A Survey of Palestine_, Vol. 1, 337]. But maybe Ms. Davis's parents went to Israel/Palestine more than 60 years ago. Could it have been "a desert" then, I wonder. Well, they couldn't have gone in the early 1900s and found a desert, because Moshe Dayan pointed out that "Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages . . . There is not one place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population" [_Ha'aretz_ Interview, April 4, 1969_]. It couldn't have been in 1893. That was the year the British Consul advised his government of the value of importing trees from Jaffa to improve production in Australia and South Africa [quoted in Marwan R. Beheiry, "The Agricultural Exports of Southern Palestine, 1885-1914," _Journal of Palestinian Studies_ Vol. 10, No. 4, 1981, p. 67] It couldn't have been in 1887, when Lawrence Oliphant's visit to the Esdralon Valley prompted him to marvel at the "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" [quoted from Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, ed., _The Transformation of Palestine_ (Chicago, IL: Northwestern Press, 1971), 126]. It couldn't have been any time between 1856 and 1882, because the German geographer Alexander Scholch found that in those years, "Palestine produced a relatively large agricultural surplus which was marketed in neighboring countries," and to Europe [Alexander Scholch, "The Economic Development of Palestine, 1856-1882," _Journal of Palestinian Studies_ Vol 10, No. 3, 1981, 36-58]. And in 1859 a British missionary described the southern coast of Palestine as "a very ocean of wheat," observing that "the fields would do credit to British farming" [quoted from James Reilly, "The Peasantry of Late Ottoman Palestine," _Journal of Palestine Studies_, Vol. 10 No. 4, 1981, p. 84]. It couldn't have been in 1856, when Henry Gillman, the American consul in Jerusalem, suggested that Florida citrus growers could learn from Palestinian grafting techniques [Beheiry, 75-76]. And really, it couldn't have been any time during the 18th or 17th centuries. French economic historian Paul Masson acknowledges that during that time, imports of wheat from Palestine saved France from numerous famines [Beheiry, 67]. Could it have been earlier then? Apparently not. In 1615, Englishman George Sandys described Palestine as "a land that flows with milk and honey," with "no part empty of delight or profit" [quoted in Richard Bevis, "Making the Desert Bloom: An Historical Picture of Pre-Zionist Palestine," _The Middle East Newsletter_, Vol. 2, Feb.-Mar., 1971, p.4]. In the late 10th century, a visitor wrote, "Palestine is watered by the rains and the dew. Its trees and its ploughed lands do not need artificial irrigation. Palestine is the most fertile of the Syrian provinces" [Guy Le Strange, _Palestine under the Moslems_ (Beirut, Lebanon, Khayat, 1965), 28.]. Before he died in 986 AD, Muqqadisi, who lived in Jerusalem, told of Palestine produce that "was particularly copious and prized: fruit of every kind (olives, figs, grapes, quinces, plums, apples, dates, walnuts, almonds, jujubes and bananas), some of which were exported, and crops for processing (sugarcane, indigo and sumac)" [quoted in Walid Khalidi, _Before Their Diaspora_ (Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1984), 28-29. It seems, then, that Ms. Davis is "remembering" a "desert" land that never existed. The point is, of course, that she (and with her, you) are just propagating a Zionist fabrication that the Zionists "made the desert bloom," and so "deserve" the land from which they expelled the Palestinians. I hope that next time, you will not inadvertently invite us to travel to lands that never existed, and uncritically accept a mythology that underwrites ethnic cleansing. We travelers need to be more "savvy" than that, don't you agree?* *Most of this information can be found in Issa Nakhleh, _Encyclopedia of the Palestine Problem_ (New York, NY: Intercontinental Books 1991).

Why do you try to pollute this thread by throwing in your nazi buzzwords?

Not up for honest discourse today?

Good propaganda post. I find the comment above an excellent summary of the Lynch Mob's beliefs...

"I see the Pales not as a people"

Not sure, but was your "propaganda" comment self-descriptive? I have a few reasons for asking...
First, you didn't dispute a single point in the article, you only called it "propaganda." Not particularly compelling.
Second, the quote you chose to address, you took out of context. All the more easy to miss the point, I suppose. Here's the actual quote:
"I see the Pales not as a people but as a gang like the Cripes or the Bloods. I see Israel as the Homeowner's Association."
An analogy was being made. You might disagree with it, but address the analogy.
Further, the phrase "a people" is not synonymous with "people." The statement, "I see the Pales not as a people," is not equvalent in meaning to "I see the Pales not as people." No one is suggesting that "Palestinians," or Crips or Bloods aren't people.
The point being made, the one you failed to address, is that there is no Historical basis for the claim that there is any such thing as a "Palestinian people."
Palestine is one name of a particular geographical region. Just like South America, or Indochina, or Southern California. While people live in all of those places, the fact that they might have a common geographical perimeter doesn't make them "peoples," with coherent and Historically valid national identies.
That's the point being made here about the "Palestinians." That's the argument you might consider addressing. Specifics would be nice.

The thread clearly demonstrates that Jerusalem, and the Dome of the Rock were never holy to the Moslems, until Israel reunited the city in 1967.

The severe neglect, and deterioration of the mosque while it was under Moslem control for hundreds of years illustrates that they really had no interest in that mosque, as an important religious site.

It has become a religious icon for them only as a lever against Israel. Another total Arab lie. All the Arabs do is LIE, LIE , LIE!!!

You appear to know more about terms like that then I do.

Not unlike "the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people", something that was never heard of before 1967.

If they were born there, raised there, or their parents were born and raised there before being thrown out and turned into exiles and the place is called palestine, then I guess they have the right to call themselves palestinians.

Wouldn't you call yourself an american? or maybe you would prefer a united states of american? or a north american? or whatever...

At least that's something. Palestine was agriculturally productive in some places but still depopulated. The Jews paid steep prices for marginal land and made something of it. No land was stolen.

In 1875 the Temple Mount looks like a dump. This not what a productive and populated land does with it most important religious shrines. Where were all the Muslims back in 1875 to make the Dome of the Rock and Al Aksa Mosque look at least semi-decent?

If they were born there, raised there, or their parents were born and raised there before being thrown out and turned into exiles and the place is called palestine, then I guess they have the right to call themselves palestinians.

How about the 800,000 Jews who were booted out of Arab lands post 1948??? All I see is population exchange. One of many that happened after WW2. Now all these surrounding Arab nations have no Jews while Israel has 1,000,000 Muslim citizens

So are you saying these people have no rights?

When I said never again I meant it for the arab as well as the jew, for the german as well as the russian... How about you, or does the ghettoization of people not bother you if they happen to be the wrong people?

"Making the desert bloom," re-visited: Challenging another false Zionist Myth Written May 2000 One of the Zionist myths is that before they arrived in Palestine there was nothing but barrenness and emptiness. In essence, so the myth goes, it was a desert. But due to their efforts that desert blossomed like a rose to become what it is today.

Let's start at the top with the main straw man argument here...
"One of the Zionist myths is that before they arrived in Palestine there was nothing but barrenness and emptiness. In essence, so the myth goes, it was a desert."
No... The Historical fact is that much of Israel then, as now, was desert. No one claims, except on hyperbolic occasion, that it was "nothing but desert." It's not an example of serious thinking to dispute those types of claims.
But you'll have to concede that there is less desert now than there was then. This is because of the efforts of Jewish immigrants and Israelis siince the late 19th Century. They were assisted by some of the indigenous Bedouins, and by itinerant Arab immigrants who came to work on the Jewish land projects. The land wasn't empty, but there wasn't a big enough population to do the work.
These Arab immigrants form the bulk of the ancestral population of the so-cailled "Palestinians." BTW, you're aware, are you not, that their leader, Yasser Arafat, was born in Cairo to Egyptian parents?
Having dealt with the straw man, we can now afford to stipulate the bulk of the supporting arguments may even be true, though their contexts can be disputed.
Doesn't change the fact the the notion of a Historically coherent "Palestinain" people, with any kind of a national identity, is unabashed fiction.

Reviewed at Amazon:

Myth buster, September 14, 2001
Reviewer:
This exceedingly well-documented book (From Time Immemorial) lays bare the false claim that Jewish settlers dispossessed Arab people from their land in Palestine. The examination of records from 1830 onward will shock most readers.

In the first place, Palestine's population barely grew for 250 years--rising from 205,000 Moslems, Christians and Jews in 1554 to only 275,000 in 1800. In the second, records from 1830, 1863, 1878 and 1893 and 1917, among others, demonstrate that when the heaviest Jewish immigration began in 1880, a large proportion of the 425,000 to 440,000 Arabs in Palestine were themselves recent immigrants.

Many came from Egypt: The 1831 invasion by the Egyptian Khedive, Ibrahim Pasha, forced Palestine fellaheen, urban dwellers and Bedouin to permanently flee Ottoman military drafts and taxes. The 1837 Great Earthquake and epidemics that followed further cut their numbers. In their wake came Ibrahim Pasha's Egyptian Arabs, who settled the empty land. In 1831 alone, 6,000 Egyptian Arabs settled in Akko. But the Egyptian Arab-Hinadi, Ghawarna tribes settled in the Beit Shean and Hula Valleys and in the Jordan Valley towns of Ubeidiya, Delhamiya and Kafer-Miser. In the Hula Valley, the Egyptian ez-Zubeids later sold their land to Jewish settlers from Yessud-Hama'ala. According to an 1893 British Palestine Exploration Fund report, Egyptians composed most of the population in Jaffa.

Arab and Muslim immigrants also came from Algeria, Damascus, Yemen, Afghanistan, Persia, India, Tripoli, Morocco, Turkey and Iraq. The French conquest of Algeria, for example, led to the eventual rebellion and imprisonment of Abd el-Kadar el-Hassani, whose followers in 1856 fled to Syria and the Lower Galilee towns of Shara, Ulam, Ma'ader, Kafer-Sabet, Usha (near present-day Ramat-Yohanan), the Mount Atlas village of Qedesh and villages on Lake Hula and in the Upper Galilee, where they spoke Berber. In Ramle, immigrants spoke Qebili, a Mugrabi dialect. Circassian refugees from the Caucasus settled in Trans-Jordan and as far east as Caesarea.

Arab immigration continued to rise through World War I, despite locusts, the Ottoman draft and more epidemics. Egyptian laborers, contractors and businessmen flooded the country. By 1922, the Moslem population had more than doubled to 566,311, including 62,500 Bedouins. The 1931 Mandatory government census counted 693,147 permanent Moslem residents, including 66,553 Bedouins. It also gave the natural increase of the population as 132,211--57,125 less than the absolute increase. Only illegal Arab immigration explains this contradiction, Avneri shows.

The next census, in 1948, followed unprecedented economic growth, during which illegal Arab immigration continued. From April 1934 to November 1935, for example, 20,000 Haurani Arabs came to Palestine. These and thousands of other Arab immigrants worked on farms, construction projects (building roads, railroads and the Haifa port), and government and municipal jobs. Syrians and Lebanese Arabs were free to come with nothing but border passes, and they came along with immigrants from Somalia, Trans-Jordan, Persia, India, Ethiopia and the Hejaz. Mandatory government rules required the supervision of immigration, but Palestine's borders remained porous to all but Jews. In all, Avneri shows that 35,000 to 40,000 illegal Arab immigrants came from 1931 to 1947--on top of up to 20,000 other Arab immigrants who arrived from 1935 to 1945.

The book also carefully examines numerous historical descriptions of a desolate landscape, composed almost entirely of swamps and deserts, and sold to the Jewish people by absentee Arab landlords, appointed by the Ottoman government, at enormous profits. Dozens of sales are documented specifically, including some by the Egyptian el-Husseini family of Yasser Arafat.

Altogether, this book shatters the Arab claim of dispossession.

Hard work and working smart. Some peoples work harder than donkeys but to no avail.

http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/1998/02/03/intl/intl.3.html

Might want to check this out.

You got your cut and paste from here: http://www.iap.org/bloommyth.htm.

You conveniently left off the end of the page which was:

Sincerely yours,
(Rev.) G. Simon Harak, S. J. Baltimore, MD

and the URL which is http://www.iap.org/ or ISLAMIC ASSOCIATION FOR PALESTINE

http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/Vines/5855/

Might want to check this out too.

The descriptions of the land during the Ottoman Empire before the immigration of the Jews began is uniformly that of a barren, depopulated land. These descriptions, like that of Mark Twain's, all by people who were respected writers, and none of whom were Jewish.

The descriptions of the barren land prior to the entry of the Jews on the scene come from multiple sources and are simply quoted by the book referenced above.

Also, I have read the book "From Time Immemorial" and find it to be both well documented and entirely plausible. Its thesis is that Palestine was essentially depopulated until the late 19th century. The rapid rise in population thereafter was due to migration of large numbers of both Jews and Arabs into the country. Since most Arabs in the country are the result of immigration (as with the Jews), neither group has an exclusive claim.

The Palestinians' claim that their families have been there since the Phillistines is totally fabricated bullshi!t. They are no more native to the land than most Blacks are native to South Africa (the Whites arriving there found only a few wandering tribes of Bushmen).