Reddit mentions of Perceptions of Palestine: Their Influence on U.S. Middle East Policy (Updated Edition with a New Afterword)

For one, Mark Twain has no credibility on the subject. Mark Twain was also a racist bigot who hated Arabs. He was also comparing the geography and agriculture he encountered to his home, the United States.

Why do you think Zionists cherry pick this one quote and use it over and over and never provide any credible sources, or should I say; more than just this Mark Twain quote? And why is it always displayed as horribly unsubtle and transparent propaganda (see OP's submission image, which is ridiculously vulgar and lowbrow)


Here are also some of Mark Twain's geographical musings:
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"From Athens all through the islands of the Grecian Archipelago, we saw little but forbidden sea-walls and barren hills, sometimes surmounted by three or four graceful columns of some ancient temples, lonely and deserted---a fitting symbol of desolation that has come upon all Greece in these latter ages. We saw no ploughed fields, very few villages, no trees or grass or vegetation of any kind, scarcely, and hardly ever an isolated house. Greece is a bleak, unsmiling desert, without agriculture, manufactures, or commerce, apparently."




Now lets hear what a famous early Zionist had to say about the region:
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"Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg (18 August 1856 – 2 January 1927), primarily known by his Hebrew name and pen name, Ahad Ha'am (Hebrew: אחד העם‎, lit. one of the people, Genesis 26:10), was a Hebrew essayist, and one of the foremost pre-state Zionist thinkers. He is known as the founder of cultural Zionism."

"In 1891, a Zionist of the first hour, Asher Ginzberg (under the pseudonym Ahad Ha'am, "one of the people"), wrote after a visit to Palestine:

• "We who live abroad are accustomed to believe that almost all Eretz Yisrael is now uninhabited desert and whoever wishes can buy land there as he pleases. But this is not true. It is very difficult to find in the land [ha'aretz] cultivated fields that are not used for planting. Only those sand fields or stone mountains that would require the investment of hard labor and great expense to make them good for planting remain uncultivated and that's because the Arabs do not like working too much in the present for a distant future. Therefore, it is very difficult to find good land for cattle. And not only peasants, but also rich landowners, are not selling good land so easily.."
  
  Bonus Quote
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  "We who live abroad are accustomed to believing that the Arabs are all wild desert people who, like donkeys, neither see nor understand what is happening around them. But this is a grave mistake. The Arab, like all the Semites, is sharp minded and shrewd. All the townships of Syria and Eretz Yisrael are full of Arab merchants who know how to exploit the masses and keep track of everyone with whom they deal – the same as in Europe. The Arabs, especially the urban elite, see and understand what we are doing and what we wish to do on the land, but they keep quiet and pretend not to notice anything. For now, they do not consider our actions as presenting a future danger to them. … But, if the time comes that our people's life in Eretz Yisrael will develop to a point where we are taking their place, either slightly or significantly, the natives are not going to just step aside so easily."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Zionist Sir Moses Montefiore of England
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  Zionist Sir Moses Montefiore of England, who traveled to Palestine in 1839. Wrote about the land of Palestine (before mass Zionist colonialist settlement again in 1838-1839) in particular the city of Safad, Palestine.
  
  
• "From all information I have been able to gather, the land in this neighborhood appears to be particularly favourable for agricultural speculation. There are groves of olive trees, I should think, more than five hundred years old, vineyards, much pasture, plenty of wells and abundance of excellent water; also fig trees, walnuts, almonds, mulberries, &c., and rich fields of wheat, barley, and lentils; in fact it is a land that would produce almost everything in abundance, with very little skill and labour.” Source
  
  
  
  From Mark Twain's "The Innocents Abroad"
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• "The narrow canyon in which Nablous, or Shechem, is situated, is under high cultivation, and the soil is exceedingly black and fertile. It is well watered, and its affluent vegetation gains effect by contrast with the barren hills that tower on either side." (The Innocents Abroad, p. 322)"
  
  
  
• "and the highly successful Palestinian city of Jaffa (in Arabic Yaffa): "We came finally to the noble grove of orange trees in which the Oriental city of Jaffa lied buried." (The Innocents Abroad, p. 360)"
  
  
  
  Random Quotations
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• "Between Ramleh and the hill-country, a distance of about eight miles, is
  the rolling plain of Arimathea, and this, as well as the greater part of
  the plain of Sharon, is one of the richest districts in the world. The
  soil is a dark-brown loam, and, without manure, produces annually superb
  crops of wheat and barley. We rode for miles through a sea of wheat,
  waving far and wide over the swells of land. The tobacco in the fields
  about Ramleh was the most luxuriant I ever saw, and the olive and fig
  attain a size and lusty strength wholly unknown in Italy. Judea cursed of
  God! what a misconception, not only of God's mercy and beneficence, but of
  the actual fact! Give Palestine into Christian hands, and it will again
  flow with milk and honey. Except some parts of Asia Minor, no portion of
  the Levant is capable of yielding such a harvest of grain, silk, wool,
  fruits, oil, and wine. The great disadvantage under which the country
  labors, is its frequent drouths, but were the soil more generally
  cultivated, and the old orchards replanted, these would neither be so
  frequent nor so severe."
  *From Bayard Taylor's "The Lands of the Saracen; or, Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily and Spain" (1854), Page 25
  
  
  
• 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." Source: Marwan R. Beheiry, "The Agricultural Exports of Southern Palestine, 1885-1 9 14", Journal of Palestine Studies, volume 10, No. 4, 198 1, p. 67.
  
  
• English poet George Sandys, who visited Palestine in 1615, found Palestine to be "a land that flowed 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."
  
  
  
• Englishwom­an Lady Hester Stanhope who was in Palestine in 1810: "The luxuriance of vegetation is not to be described.­...Fruits of all sorts from the banana to the blackberry are abundant. The banks of the rivers are clothed naturally with oleander and flowering shrubs.... [The Arab orchards near Jaffa] contained lemon, orange, almond, peach, apple, pomegranat­e and other trees."
  
  
• Upon visiting Gaza in the 14th Century, Syria geographer al-Dimashqi described it as "so rich in trees it looks like a cloth of brocade spread out upon the land." More recently, in the early 20th Century, Gaza historian Ibrahim Skeik recalls the dazzling views of "trees all about the city, olives and almond groves."
  
  
  
  Links
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  Quoting Mark Twain out of context on Palestine
  
  
  Perceptions of Palestine: Their Influence on U.S. Middle East Policy
  
  
  Isn't it true that Palestine was destitute until Israelis made its desert bloom?
  
  
  
  Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I
  
  
  The Innocents Abroad, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)