Zionist FAQs: Isn't it true that Palestine was destitute until Israelis made its desert bloom?

Harvesting olives in Ramallah's hills early 1900s

From the early stages of Zionism to the present, Zionists have propagated the myth that the most important land bridge in human history (Palestine) was empty and romantically waiting for 2,000 years for Jews to bloom its Negev desert. As it will be proven below, based on British Mandatory primary sources, this myth about Palestine and its indigenous people was concocted to romanticize the "Jewish return and redemption of the Promised Land". Soon, you shall find that Jews reversed no global warming, and what was destitute in 1948 is still destitute, which is a fact that can be easily proven by using Google's Satellite view. Let's get a detailed accounting of the agricultural production in Palestine for the season of 1944-1945; we will directly cite a British Mandate's primary source (Survey of Palestine, p. 325-27 and 377) as follows:

Source: Survey of Palestine, prepared by the British Mandate for the United Nations, p. 323-327
* Value in Palestinian Pound
** Non-citrus fruits. Note Citrus production=248,274 dunums, of which 120,897 dunums were Jewish-owned (Supplement to Survey of Palestine, p. 37)
*** One Dunum = 1,000 sq. meters.
Click here to view the exact scanned pages from Survey of Palestine from which we extracted the data.

As you digest the earlier figures, pay attention to how Palestinian farming wasn't (and to a large extent still is in the West Bank) geared to generate profit (a.k.a cash crop), but rather to feed themselves and others (in this case, the Jews). For example, notice how little grain, vegetables, and melons were planted by the Jews, and that by itself is very telling about who was and still is connected to the land. Thus, these numbers force us to conclude that not for the Palestinians (who "didn't exist" in the minds of many), the Jews would have found it hard to feed themselves! For the love of God, how can today's Jews call themselves "indigenous to the land" when they planted very few olives? What was tragically funny was that soon after Nakba, the Jews went out of their way to destroy Palestinian olive groves because they had little use for them (Sacred Landscape, p. 165). Is it possible that was done because over 60% of Israeli Jews are allergic to olive pollen! The last two sentences should make you recognize how tragically funny the Zionist narrative is.

Let's contemplate the following land statistics about Palestine (based on CIA's WorldFact Book) before we draw any conclusions.

Boxing Jaffa's famous oranges 1898-1914.

These statistics show that the indigenous population planted 13 times more than newly immigrated European colonizers, which explains why most Jews preferred to work in the services and manufacturing industries. It should be emphasized that the Jewish Agency and the Jewish National Fund provided many subsidies and incentives (such as free consultation, loans, and attractive long-term lease programs) to encourage Jews to "redeem" the land. On the other hand, Palestinian agriculture was profitable and sustainable without little assistance from the colonial government (see for yourself how the British favored Jews when it came to loans). For God's sake, the Palestinian Bedouin tribes managed to double the size of cultivated lands in the Beersheba district between 1930 and 1936, which had a Jewish population of under 1% as of Nakba! We were stunned to find David Ben-Gurion confirming such data as of Oct. 1935 (Jewish Frontier, page 27)! This fact alone speaks volumes and conclusively proves who planted the desert!

It should be emphasized that Jews owned under 6% of Palestine, of which only 44% was used for agricultural purposes by Jews (see Survey of Palestine, p. 376). In this regard, we ask the reader how this myth could be true if Jews cultivated under 3% of Palestine.

Hitler's Message To The West: If Jews are such noble citizens and you care about them, how come you're not letting them in?

The Systematic Destruction Of Palestinian Olive and Orange Groves Soon After Nakba?

Soon after Nakba, the victorious Jews destroyed most of the usurped Palestinian farms and groves, especially olive and orange groves, since those required extensive labor to maintain and harvest! In this regard, it is worth citing the Israeli Zionist writer Meron Benvenisti, who described the Palestinian landscape as he and his father saw it soon after Nakba:

Were the British so STUPID as to promise COMPLETE INDEPENDENCE to Palestinians in 1939 (who, of course, "didn't exist") while the Indians had been DREAMING of such a thing for 400 years?

"The destruction of hundreds of thousands of dunums of fruit-bearing trees does not fit Israel's self-image as a society that knows how to make the desert bloom [a simple Google image search, we prove that this process is still on going to this date]. And the contention that the green Arab landscape had been destroyed because of the necessity of adopting the crops to the agricultural practices of the Jews only underscores the conclusion that it was not the war that had caused this devastation, but rather the disappearance of the specific human community that had shaped the landscape per its needs and preferences. The destruction of vast areas of orchards did not attract the same degree of interest as had the demolition of the Arab villages, even though it perhaps had a more devastating effect on the landscape." (Sacred Landscape, p. 165). For those who are curious, here is a before-and-after picture depicting what the author was referring to. The olive groves in Mughayir (north east of Ramallah) were turned into a wasteland.

To add salt to the wound, Israelis replaced the native plants with trees that are unsuitable for the area (such as pine trees), which, every once and a while, go up in flames exposing indigenous people's terraces! Anyhow, if you care about this subject and you have ten minutes to spare, here is an excellent video by Monoweiss on this subject.

Let's analyze this concocted myth from another angle by comparing the current Israeli and Lebanese agricultural production. Based on the CIA's online Worldfact Book, we have collected the following data for the year 2006:

Jaffa Orange Company, looted by Zionist Jews

After linearly adjusting Lebanon's statistics to reflect the size difference (in arable land size and demographics) compared to Israel's, Lebanon's agricultural production becomes $2.8 billion, a little short of Israel's ($3.64 billion). While contemplating these facts, it's also worth noting the following facts about both countries:

• The great majority of Israel's Jewish population are urban dwellers, mostly concentrated in and around the cities of Tel-Aviv-Jaffa, Jerusalem, and Haifa. This explains why only 2.6% of the Israeli workforce is in agriculture. It may surprise the reader that Israel has the highest rate of urban dwellers of any industrial country. Click here for a graph illustration.
• Agriculture in Israel has always been heavily subsidized by the Israeli government; otherwise, Lebanon's agricultural production would have been much larger than 1.39 billion.
• Abla Mohamad Daoud Dajani outside here family's looted house in Baq'ah neighborhood - Jerusalem. Click the image for more such pictures that document Palestinians' dispossession.
  Israel has been investing billions of dollars, mostly financed by U.S. taxpayers, to divert freshwater from the Jordan River and Tiberias Lake. On the other hand, Lebanon has no such fortune where all its freshwater makes it to the sea without any effort to retain it.
• The Lebanese infrastructure was devastated during the 1982-2000 Israeli occupation and its civil war. And if it weren't for this devastation, Lebanon's agricultural production would have been much larger than $1.39 per year.

JFK said it BEST in 1939: Palestine Was Hardly Britain's to Give Away

In other words, since the Lebanese and Palestinian societies were very similar in many areas, it's easy to conclude that Palestinians would have produced as much as the Lebanese if it weren't for their dispossession by the Israelis.

It should be emphasized that even the most zealous of Zionists will find it hard to disprove that Jaffa's citrus plantations were first planted, marketed to Europe, packaged, and harvested by mainly Palestinian Arab companies, click here for the proof. As early as 1891, Ahad Ha'Am (a leading Eastern European Jewish essayist) tried to open many Jewish eyes to the fact that Palestine was not a desolate place; he reported upon visiting Palestine for three months in 1891:

"We abroad are used to believe the Eretz Yisrael is now almost totally desolate, a desert that is not sowed ..... But in truth, that is not the case. Throughout the country, it is difficult to find fields that are not sowed. Only sand dunes and stony mountains are not cultivated." (Righteous Victims, p. 42)

Palestinian women harvesting cotton in the village of Kafr Saba in 1937

For the moment, let's assume that the baseless myth is true; the questions that many Palestinians ask are:

• Even if it was "true" that Jews made Palestine's desert bloom, does that legitimize the outright theft of the Palestinian people's homes, farms, businesses, banks, cars, buses, schools, ... etc.? Does that justify the expulsion of the indigenous population to make way for the newly arrived European Jewish refugees? It should be noted that Palestinians owned and operated over 94% of Palestine's lands as of 1945; click here for a map illustration. In November 1947, the architect of the "transfer solution," Yosef Weitz, stated that the collective DISPOSSESSION of the Palestinian people was an inevitable outcome because of the high rate of land ownership among Palestinians. He stated:
  Fake Valore: Why did two of Israel's future PMs, Menachem Begin and Yizhak Shamir, bomb WWII war efforts while their families were being gassed in Poland?

  "[most of the land] not Jewish-owned or even in the category of the state domain whose ownership could be automatically assumed by a successor government. Thus, of 13,500,000 dunums (6,000,000 of which were desert and 7,500,000 dunums of cultivatable land) in the Jewish state according to the Partition plan, only 1,500,000 dunums were Jewish-owned." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 182)

• Could one legitimize the outright theft of the American New Yorkers' homes, cars, banks, schools, ... etc., since American Jews are the ones who converted New York City into the world's financial and industrial metropolis? It's not only that Jewish Americans are the largest minority in New York City; they practically built it from the ground up (actually, NYC has more Jews than Tel Aviv, excluding the metropolitan area). In other words, if such an argument logically justifies dispossessing and ethnically cleansing the Palestinian people, why isn't it a good argument for collectively dispossessing and ethnically cleansing the American non-Jewish population in New York City? Watch Prof. Alan Dershowitz for two minutes articulating our point.

Loading melons into a boat for export to Lebanon & Egypt at al-Tantura's seasonal port, 1920-1933

How Did This Myth Evolve And Who Was Behind It?

To drive another nail in this ridiculous myth, we've investigated how this myth evolved, and where and how it was nurtured. Much to our surprise, we discovered that David-Ben-Gurion (the founding father of the "Jewish state") stated while addressing the 19th Zionist Congress that almost half of Beersheba was cultivated (if you care, here is a picture which speaks volumes). That said, Herr Ben-Gurion didn't tell us by whom half of Beersheba was cultivated (see Jewish Frontier, Oct. 1935 Edition, page 27)! Two years later, Herr Ben-Gurion wrote to his son Amos about his plans (more like a dream) of blooming the Negev desert (meaning it wasn't blooming at the time). Most importantly, David admitted the Negev was barren and Jews thinly populated it. As we all know, nothing happened during WWII in the next decade. Therefore, we are forced to conclude that this lie must have evolved and nurtured after the War of Nakba was concluded, and we strongly suspect it was kept alive because of the American Jewish community who adopted Zionism after the 6-Day War (but not before). This was when the big lies (about Palestine and its people) started to be propagate at an industrial scale in the West, especially after the publication of the farce of a book, "From Time Immemorial," which was debunked early on by the NY Times a years after its publication. Sadly, so many Jews have been using this book, knowing in advance that it is a fraud. YES, to them, it seems the truth is not important; gaslighting is way more important.

Browse hundreds of pictures depecting Palestinian culture & folklore

We have found much evidence that the American Jewish community was also behind spreading another much bigger myth that Palestine was empty (the most important land bridge in history) until, of course, the Jews "bloomed" its Negev desert. Whole and behold, we found that Ben-Gurion had debunked this myth in a book he published in 1966 (yes, just seven years before he died) by writing that Palestinians were the majority as early as 1914, "Palestine was not an empty country", and Palestinians were suffering from emigrating (vs. Arab immigration to Palestine) to Latin and South America. In a nutshell, American Jewry has been the driving force behind propagating the big lies that many Israel Jews abandoned a long time ago; click here if you are interested in the boring details. The question is: when American Jewry in mass has been engaged in spreading the big lies about Palestine and its people, how is that not good for antisemitism? At length, we have addressed this subject in another section. This community has been weaponizing its power over the media, economy, and US politicians to spread the BIG LIES about Palestine and its people way more than Israel's Jewry ever did!

The Zionist Version Of Lebensraum: A Map Of The Great Israel

This baseless myth, although an outright lie, attempts to paint a romantic vision for the "Promised Land," i.e., that it was destitute for 2,000 years until the "returning Jews" made its desert "bloom". It is sad to see how far this myth has been propagated in the Israeli school system and society to legitimize the continued collective dispossession and replacement of the Palestinian people. That said, let us be honest: Zionist Jews (especially those in America) are only a product of fascist and colonial Europeans who often paint themselves as "liberals and progressives" to mask their racism. Before we leave you, we ask you to watch Miriam Makeba (the South African singer and actress) for two minutes, proving that the earlier Zionist narrative is nothing but recycled White Man's racist remarks about Africans. Thus, let us not be too harsh in judging Zionist Jews; they were just a product of the pre-WWII era. At the time in Europe and America, racism, colonialism, genocides, Jim Crow, ethnic cleansing, land theft, ...etc were the norm. In a nutshell, birds of a feather flock together:


Dear Jews, now please give yourselves a big hand for this "wonderful gift" to humanity! Mazeltov!

Related Links

• Quoting Mark Twain out of context on Palestine
• Gallery: Hundreds of pre-Nakba pictures showing Palestinians planting & harvesting their lands.
• British Mandate: Agriculture in Palestine, a detailed study.
• British Mandate: Geographic Summary of Palestine: Area, Topography and Climate.
• Zionist Quotes: Do Palestinians Exist, or Don't They? That's The Question?
• Making the Desert Bloom - Fact or Fiction? By Will Dossett
• Landscape and Memory in Israel
• Gallery: Hundreds of pictures showing Israeli Jews ethnically cleansing Palestinians out of their homes.
• Video: A documentary film shows how Israelis uprooted over half a million olive trees in the occupied West Bank.
• Palestine before 1947 by Refa'at Loubani
• Zionist FAQ: Why Palestinians should have a country of their own. Isn't it true that Palestine was empty and inhabited by nomadic people?