Lies of Our Times "Making the desert bloom"

Lies of Our Times

Ezra LeRant and the Big Lie

Colour of conflict-Rule of law separates Israel from Palestinians-By Ezra Levant -- Calgary Sun, Mon, July 18, 2005

How did I miss this hmm, must have been overwhelmed with the historical revisionism being spouted off in the Calgary Sun by that other right wing columnist; Dink Byfield.

And low and behold here is another case of historical revisionism, the big lie of Zionism being blathered about by LeRant. It's the lie we all grew up with after the 1948 annexation and occupation of Palestine. That the Arab section was a desert and the Zionists brought agriculture, irrigation and productivity to the land.

What they did was actually take over olive groves and orange groves that has been the source of Palistines wealth for hundreds of years. Agriculture in Palestine 1948

Learning their lessons from Goebbels the Zionists created the 'big lie' to justify their 'Anschluss' of Palestine from the British protectorate because they needed 'Lebensraum'. And this 'big lie' is repeated again in LeRant's cloumn.

'Most of Israel is a desert. But half of Israel is lush green. It wasn't always this way. When Zionists a century ago set about building modern Israel, they had to build irrigation projects. Millions of trees were planted. Now Israel is a large agricultural exporter; in the words of its former prime minister, David Ben Gurion, the desert was made to bloom. But the land is only green in the Jewish areas of the country; Arab villages, especially those areas under control of the Palestinian Authority, are brown and dead. It is possible to spot the border between Israel and Lebanon or Syria by looking to see where the green ends and the brown begins. It's the reason why the pre-1967 border between Israel and Jordan was known as the Green Line. Why is this? Many explanations, no doubt -- the Zionist ideology was rooted in the land. The Jews invested in developing irrigation and other agricultural technology. But the real reason is the same reason why Israel is a success and Arab nations -- and the would-be nation of Arab Palestine -- are failures. '

Gee, LeRant what could that be?

"The Arab world doesn't have rule of law, while the Jewish state does.".

Gee Ezra would that be Talamudic law? Since Isreal is a religious state. And gee Ezra thats a broad brush stroke to paint all Arabs with, including peoples of the Middle East who are not Jews but are also not Arabs.

Some are Muslims so they adhere to Muslim Shira law. Some are Christians and they abide by the Old and New Testament laws, some rooted in Judaism. Some are communists, and they follow the Labour Theory of Value, a law of economics. Some have gone to Oxford and Harvard and follow common law of English origin. Some follow Napoleanic Law. Some are Druze and have their own community laws they have followed for centuries.

Nope not to racist zionist Ezra, the "Arabs" are all primitive lawless peoples, despite many of them being of the same semitic root cultures as the Jews.

Some of the Palestinians are not even Arabs, just as Kurds are not Arabs, but with the broad racist brush of the Zionist apologists like LeRant, they all get lumped together.

There is a simple reason, to deny the real history of the Zionist State in Isreal.

That it was founded by Zionist terrorists who so terrified the British and the UN that they succumbed to them, allowing them territory in Palestine.

The Zionist state and its military machine then spent twenty years pushing the Palestinian and Isreali Arab community out. As they are doing today destroying Palestinatian villages, olive groves and orange groves, in order to build their new Berlin Wall, err security wall.

Irrigation was not a Zionist invention, contrary to LeRant, it was adapted by them for use in Palestine. Until then irrigation was based on artisian wells and troughing used by the Palistinians. The introduction of large scale irrigation coincided with the development of capitalist agribusiness, that is large scale farming for export. While the Palestinians were farming on a village basis.

The types of agriculture which take place in Palestine are annual and seasonal agricultures such as grains and vegetables, or lasting agricultures such as fruitful trees. Grain plantation was flourished in Marj ben Amer, Gaza Plain, Bier Sheba and some of the inside plains; and vegetable plantation was flourished in the coastal plain around Java and Ramlah and in the Jordan Valley. The most important kind of fruitful trees is the citrus trees which were planted by modern manner of plantation. At the beginning, only the Arabs planted this kind of trees which increased in the period between 1895 and 1915; the Planted area increased from (6.600) donums to (30.000) donums, and the production increased from (18.199) tons to (64.000) tons. Citrus trees concentrated in the coastal plain between Haifa and Gaza and in the Jordan River. The Java orange is one of the best kinds of the Palestinian orange due to the thickness of its peal, its nice aroma and to its relative freedom from seeds. This kind of orange was being exported to Damascus, East of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, England and France. The exported orange in the years 1913/1914 reached about (1.553.861) boxes. Agriculture in Palestine during the British Mandate

Until the Isreali invasion of 1967 both Palestinian and Isreali agriculture were on par. It was the direct result of the annexation and occupation of the Gaza Strip and West Bank by the Zionist State that destroyed their economic competitors. The destruction continues today with occupation troops, settlers , and Sharon's Berlin Wall being built through the agricultural lands of the Palestinians.

So congratulations for repeating the 'Big Lie' of Zionism and embellishing it with a racist generaliztion of the non-Zionist people of the middle east. You win the Goebbels award for journalism.

Impacts of Water and Export Market Restrictions on Palestinian Agriculture
Agriculture remains a dominant sector of the Palestinian economy. It represents a major component of the economy’s GDP, and employs a large fraction of the population. Furthermore, the agricultural sector is a major earner of foreign exchange and supplies the basic needs of the majority of the local population. In times of difficulty, the agricultural sector has acted as a buffer that absorbs large scores of unemployed people who lost their jobs in Israel or other local sectors of the economy. Palestinian agriculture is constrained by available land and water, as well as access to markets. These constraints have been the object of political conflict, as Israeli authorities have limited available land, water and markets.

In 1967, Palestinian agricultural production was almost identical to Israel's: tomatoes, cucumbers and melons were roughly half of Israel's crop; plums and grape production were equal to Israel's; and Palestinian production of olives, dates and almonds was higher. At that time, the West Bank exported 80% of the entire vegetable crop it produced, and 45% of total fruit production (Hazboun, S., 1986).

The agricultural sector was hit hard after Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Thereafter the sector’s contribution to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the Palestinian Occupied Territories declined. Between 1968/1970 and 1983/1985 the percentage of agricultural contribution to the overall GDP in the West Bank fell from 37.4-53.5% to 18.5-25.4% (UNCTAD, 1990). The labour force employed in this sector has also declined. Between 1969 and 1985, the agricultural labour force, as a percentage of the total labour force, fell from 46 to 27.4% (Kahan, D., 1987).

posted by eugene plawiuk 1:38 PM

"Making the desert bloom" re-visted

Challenging another false Zionist Myth
April, 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).

Sincerely yours,

(Rev.) G. Simon Harak, S. J. gsharaksj@hotmail.com

Baltimore, MD