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ISRAEL

Mainstream Media Distorts Reality on Israeli Settlements Even a simple announcement by the Israeli government is used as a platform to bash Israel.

Reprinted from en.mida.org.il.

Yesterday, Israel’s government approved construction of a new settlement in Judea and Samaria (aka West Bank). Media outlets CNN, BBC and the NY Times wasted no time publishing stories that distort the truth, if not outright lie. These mistakes range from offering a false impression of reality to actually getting facts wrong. Such elementary mistakes expose the disconnect between mainstream media outlets and basic truths of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

For example, CNN wrote that this is Israel’s ‘first new settlement in Palestinian territory in more than 20 years’. The first part of the sentence is misleading and the second part is false. Israel has not built new communities in Judea and Samaria because it has given numerous chances for the Palestinian leadership to come to the table and reach an agreement. However, the Palestinians continually refused. Instead, the article leads the reader to believe that this is a new policy meant to stifle any chance for a peace agreement.

The second part of the statement asserts that Israel is building in Palestinian territory. This is because CNN incorrectly believes that Israel has no legal rights to the West Bank. Israel’s legal rights to controlling the West Bank and building communities there under international law have been affirmed time and again by respected authorities on the subject, including: Professor Eugene Rostow, Professor Julius Stone , Professor Eugene Kontorovich, Professor Avi Bell and more.

BBC wrote that this new settlement is being built after ‘the largest settlement, Amona, was evacuated by police last month.’ Amona, far from being the largest settlement, was probably one of the smallest settlements existing in the West Bank, approximately 40 families. Yet, this gives the impression that even the largest settlement in the West Bank was evacuated, and thus why not evacuate the entire West Bank.

And the New York Times topped it off by cherry picking statements to make it look as if Israel was disrespecting the Trump Administration. Author of the article, Isabel Kershner, who has been accused of anti-Israel bias in the past, writes that Israel is building settlements despite President Trump’s request ‘to hold off on settlement activity’. Then she writes that ‘the United States has long considered the settlements an obstacle to peace.’ Those two statements are mixing apples with oranges.

The Trump Administration, while suggesting that Israel hold off on settlements for a little bit, explicitly said in a press release that they ‘don’t believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace’. This was a clear departure from past US policy, especially under the Obama Administration, yet Kershner ignores that, and prefers to think that Barack Obama is still president.

BARONESS JENNY TONGE, UK’S BLACK BELT ISRAEL BASHER AND BDS SUPPORTER HAD A CARDIAC PROCEDURE

“…..on hearing through the grapevine that Baroness Tonge, who recently underwent cardiac surgery in London, required two stents, I can’t help wondering, in view of her two most recent Facebook posts, whether she checked the provenance of those stents first…..” Daphne Anson
From a website dedicated to BDS:

Balloon Expandable Stent

B-Stent

Invented in Israel by an Israeli!

Preferably before an emergency situation (whereby your judgement may be clouded by urgency and the optimum medical response) please inform your Cardiologist to ensure that a Balloon Expandable Stent is NEVER used. Request open heart surgery!

First things first. B-Stent does not stand for Beyar Stent, although its inventor, Prof. Rafael Beyar, an invasive cardiologist and biomedical engineer at the Technion and former dean of its medical school, did come up with the original design for a metal stent, used to keep clogged arteries open.

“The B is for balloon expandable, not Beyar or best,” said Beyar, who developed the idea with his brother, Motti, a mechanical engineer.

It was 1989, and the Beyar brothers were considering a heart stent based on the stent used by urologists.

“People didn’t believe you could have a stent for the heart,” said Beyar.

“But our concept was, if you could do it for urology, why not for cardiology?”

The advantage of a stent, which is a wire mesh tube used to prop open an artery that’s recently been cleared, is its ability to hold arteries open while offering enough flexibility for “the tortuous path of arteries,” added Beyar.

The stent stays in the artery permanently, holds it open, improves blood flow to the heart muscle, and relieves symptoms such as chest pain.

“The results in patients were remarkable,” said Beyar. “You could see where the [diseased] artery starts and ends. You could get around curves and get good results. No one else had that.”

By then, Instent, the brothers’ startup, had been formed, and clinical trials in the early 1990s led to the final product in 1995. By that time, Instent merged with the American company Medtronics, which took the product to market worldwide.

“We were racing against the clock to get it out there,” said Beyar. “Some investors said we were wasting our time, that it was too risky. But we stuck with it because we saw the results and believed it would change the world.”

Why Is J Street Calling Israel an ‘Occupier’? The term is a polite way of demonizing the Jewish nation. By Alan Clemmons

Mr. Clemmons, a Republican, is a member of the South Carolina House.

At a recent conference at the United Nations on strategies to defeat the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement, J Street—a Jewish, progressive advocacy group that claims to reject BDS—sent some of its constituents to stir up controversy. J Street members wore T-shirts reading “anti-BDS & anti-occupation” and when invited to ask questions, referred to Israel as an “illegal occupier.”

The former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky was also in attendance. His “3D” test has become the standard used by the U.S. State Department and other institutions to determine when criticism of Israel crosses the line into anti-Semitism. Mr. Sharansky’s three Ds are delegitimization, demonization and double standards. Measured this way, J Street is itself anti-Semitic.

Using the term “occupier” is a polite way of demonizing Israel as a thief. It suggests that Jewish invaders colonized territory rightfully belonging to the Arabs. Talk about a double standard. To suggest that Jews are occupiers in a region known for more than 3,000 years as Judea is as ridiculous as suggesting that Arabs currently living in Arabia are occupiers.

“Occupier” is a legal term that does not apply to Israel. Israel’s legal title and rights to its present territory were established in the San Remo resolution, an agreement adopted by victorious Allied Powers after World War I, confirmed by the League of Nations, and incorporated into the U.N. charter. None of the Jewish people’s rights to live, emigrate to and settle the land of Israel have ever been revoked, nullified or superseded by a subsequent act of international law.

Calling Israel an “occupier” has become essential to anti-Israel forces, as they persist in efforts to delegitimize the Jewish state. A U.N. resolution passed in December demands that “Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory.”

Tarring Israel with the “occupier” label also gives its violent enemies grounds upon which to portray terrorism as resistance to occupation. When an Israeli killed a Palestinian who was attempting to stab an Israeli soldier in 2015, the Palestinian Authority claimed that the occurrence “exposes the ugly face of the occupation” and “its crimes against the helpless Palestinian people.”

CAROLINE GLICK: LEAVING THE BIG TENT

“If I will have to choose between losing more lives of Israelis, whether they are civilians or soldiers, or losing you, I will sadly, sorrowfully, rather lose you.”And as Ohana noted, “Each and every one of them [was] targeted to kill us.”

The divided beteen Israelis and American Jews seems to be growing. Indications of the widening gap came last week with reports of a confrontation between an American Jewish activist and four members of Knesset, from across the political spectrum, at a synagogue near Boston.

As reported at The Algemeiner, at the end of a forum at Brookline’s Congregation Kehillath Israel, an audience member named Shifrah told the four Israeli lawmakers, “You are losing me and you are losing many, many people in the Jewish community… I cannot look the other way when three Israeli teenagers are brutally murdered and the response is to kill 2,300 Palestinians [in Operation Protective Edge in 2014]. I want to know what you are doing to make peace with the Palestinians. I want to know what the government is doing to make peace.”

Despite the general fractiousness of Israeli politics, the lawmakers, who spanned the Right-Left spectrum, rejected the woman’s claims. Not one of them was willing to accept her view that Israel was morally impaired for defending itself from Hamas’s terror war against it. Each in his or her own way pointed out that the woman’s question exposed a callous indifference and utter ignorance to the actual situation in Israel.

Speaking last, Likud MK Amir Ohana noted that Israel didn’t enter into its war with Hamas three years ago because of the execution and abduction of the three youths by Palestinian terrorists. Israel went to war against Hamas in Operation Protective Edge because the terrorist regime in Gaza began pummeling Israel with tens of thousands of mortars, rockets and missiles.

Ohana concluded, “If I will have to choose between losing more lives of Israelis, whether they are civilians or soldiers, or losing you, I will sadly, sorrowfully, rather lose you.”

To a degree, the Brookline exchange was a watershed event. This is true for two reasons.

First, there was the unanimity of the responses. And second, the lawmakers were willing to walk away from the increasingly vocal anti-Israel faction of the American Jewish community.

Shifrah’s statement was a moral and criminal indictment of Israel. It was also an egregious slander of the entire country.

Shifrah stood before a crowd of American Jews at a synagogue and alleged libelously that in retribution for the murder of three boys, Israel maliciously killed 2,300 innocent Gazans.

And the Knesset members told her not to let the flap slam her on her way out of the pro-Israel tent.

This action was long in the making and long overdue. For more than a decade, American Jews led by radical rabbis and thought leaders have been threatening Israel.

You are making us embarrassed, Peter Beinart and his supporters have said. We won’t be able to keep supporting Israel if you don’t succumb to all the demands that the PLO and Hamas are making. Their terrorism – that is, their “resistance to occupation” – is understandable.

Do Palestinians Want a Two-State Solution? Western statesmen and politicians have long asserted that the two-state solution commands majority support on the ground. Most Palestinians say otherwise. Daniel Polisar

Last December, while defending the Obama administration’s decision to allow passage of a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel’s settlement policy, outgoing Secretary of State John Kerry laid out the options facing Israelis and Palestinians:https://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/2017/04/do-palestinians-want-a-two-state-solution/

[I]f the choice is one state, Israel can either be Jewish or democratic—it cannot be both—and it won’t ever really be at peace. Moreover, the Palestinians will never fully realize their vast potential in a homeland of their own with a one-state solution. Most on both sides understand this basic choice, and that’s why it’s important that polls of Israelis and Palestinians show there is still strong support for the two-state solution—in theory. They just don’t believe that it can happen.

In emphasizing the “strong” popular support on both sides for a two-state solution, Kerry was following in his own footsteps. Whether in public statements or in private meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, he had repeatedly cited polling evidence to advance his case for a two-state solution throughout his four-year tenure at the State Department.

The claim was a staple of other American policymakers during this period as well. Martin Indyk, special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, asserted at a Washington conference in 2014 that “Consistently over the last decade, polling on both sides reveals majority support for the two-state solution.” Vice-President Joseph Biden opined at another Washington conference that year that “Israel’s future as a democratic homeland for the Jewish people depends on . . . reaching a two-state solution. . . . It is a difficult job to stay engaged . . . [but] we continue to believe that, at least I do, and the president does . . . that the vast majority of Israelis and Palestinians, they think that it is the right way to go.” Echoing the same idea, a July 2016 statement by the Middle East Quartet—consisting of the U.S., Russia, the EU, and the UN—declared that “the majority of people on both sides . . . express their support for the goal of two states living side by side in peace and security.”

As with Kerry’s, such statements were routinely qualified by the worry that, popular support notwithstanding, the two-state solution was in jeopardy due to actions taken by the two sides. Indyk lamented that “neither side believes the other side wants [the two-state solution], and neither seems to understand the concerns of the other.” In the “seriously concerned” view of the Quartet’s members, the parties’ “continuing on the current course will make this [two-state] prospect increasingly remote.”

In brief, it is commonly asserted that there is majority support among Palestinians and Israelis for a two-state solution, but that misguided policies and a growing lack of mutual understanding are rapidly closing the window of opportunity.

In what follows, my purpose is to determine what in fact is the extent and the nature of support for a two-state solution among the Palestinians. When especially relevant, I will also make reference to findings from surveys of Israelis, though to this and related issues in Israeli public opinion I plan to devote a more in-depth examination in the future.

As with Israeli opinion, the benefits of investigating Palestinian public opinion should be obvious. Palestinian views on a two-state solution have substantial ramifications regarding the leeway their leaders have in negotiations with Israel, the expectations with which Israelis should approach talks, the ability of third-party brokers like the U.S. to bring the sides together, the steps most likely to bring about a peaceful and stable resolution, and the prospects that a two-state solution will be durable if the sides succeed in striking a deal.

Fortunately, Palestinian public opinion need not be the subject of assertion or speculation. According to David Pollock, a leading scholar in the field, Palestinian survey research is of very high quality, and it should be noted as well that polls of Palestinians are carried out frequently and by a variety of reputable institutes.

In preparing this essay, I have examined 400 surveys carried out by five Palestinian research centers, each of which has conducted regular polls in the West Bank and Gaza for many years and has made the results available online in English and Arabic. In addition, leading international pollsters have carried out their own surveys of Palestinians, generally in conjunction with one of these firms or with the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion (PCPO); I have used these as well. Though I have also been given access to some polls not publicly available, this piece, like my previous Mosaic essay, “What Do Palestinians Want?,” is based only on data freely accessible online so that my findings and interpretations can more easily be challenged or confirmed.

A LOW POINT FOR THE AMERICA/ISRAEL POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE

Anti-Israel Voices at AIPAC’s ConferenceHow can a pro-Israel group invite a Hamas apologist? Daniel Greenfield

The low point of the AIPAC policy conference came when Nancy Pelosi read a letter from J Street. The letter, officially authored by David Price and Gerry Connolly, urged opposing “unilateral actions by either of the two parties that would push the prospects for peace further out of reach.”

That’s a euphemism for Jews living in Jerusalem and other parts of Israel claimed by Islamic terrorists.

Price and Connolly are some of the more anti-Israel Democrats in Congress. Price was one of the “Hamas 54” members of Congress who had signed another letter calling for an end to the Israeli embargo on Hamas in Gaza. Connolly is known for his associations with the Muslim Brotherhood. He had defended funding the PA even when it included members of Hamas.

But AIPAC is a bipartisan organization. That means it has to have leading Democrats like Pelosi over. It’s the figures whom AIPAC chose to invite that are truly troubling.

Among the list of speakers was Robert Malley. Malley had been originally dropped by Obama during the campaign due to his contacts with Hamas on behalf of Soros’ International Crisis Group.

Once Obama was secure, Malley was brought back in and quickly moved up the ranks.

Malley is about as anti-Israel as they come. AIPAC had invited the author of an article titled, “Making the Best of Hamas’ Victory”. The article urged funding Hamas and warned, “don’t ostracize or actively undermine a Hamas-backed PA.”

He co-wrote an article with Aaron David Miller, another speaker at the AIPAC conference, which argued that, “A national unity government between Fatah and Hamas appears within reach… America shouldn’t stand in the way — regardless of whether Hamas recognizes Israel or formally renounces violence.”

At one point, Malley was too anti-Israel for Obama. Now he’s good enough for AIPAC. If AIPAC can’t draw the line at Robert Malley where can it draw the line?

But it’s not just about who was invited to AIPAC. It’s the sharp contrast with who wasn’t invited.

David Bedein of the Center for Near East Policy Research had sought to offer a briefing on UNRWA’s links to terrorism. His latest book investigates the ugly nature of the Palestinian Authority. He couldn’t get anywhere with AIPAC. On the list however is Laura Blumenfeld of the State Department, a former Washington Post reporter who headed communications for the Kerry Israel-bashing peace bid.

Palestinians: The Diploma for Terror by Bassam Tawil

A glance at their leaders and senior officials tells them that Palestinian Authority jobs go to “graduates” of Israeli prisons.

Besides sending a message to Palestinians about who is valued in Palestinian society, the Fatah leader is also making it clear that the path to leadership and employment passes through Israeli prisons. Abbas’s senior representative is telling Palestinians that there is no need for them to pursue actual education: Israeli prisons are the best “universities.”

The longer the time spent in prison, the higher the military rank. Ten years will earn them the rank of Colonel. More than that will earn them General. The path to winning a job with a PA ministry also passes through Israeli prisons. These are the leaders touted as role models to young Palestinians.

Palestinians who are being held in Israeli prisons are “a model for sensibility and national culture and constitute a pillar for the establishment of a Palestinian state.” This glorification of Palestinian prisoners, many of whom are behind bars for murdering Jews, was issued last week by Fayez Abu Aitah, a senior representative of President Mahmoud Abbas’s ruling Fatah faction.

Abu Aitah’s words of appreciation for murderers of Jews came during a visit he paid to Hatem al-Maghari, a Palestinian Authority (PA) policeman who was released last week after serving 17 years in prison for his role in the lynching of two Israeli reserve soldiers who mistakenly entered Ramallah. Upon his arrival at his home in the town of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, Al-Maghari received a hero’s welcome. Hundreds of Palestinians have since converged on his home to congratulate him on his release from prison and heap praise him on for his “contribution” to the Palestinian cause.

Abbas’s Fatah was quick to embrace al-Maghari as “one of our sons” in order to send a message to Palestinians that the Fatah faction is also involved in terror attacks against Israel. For years, Fatah’s opponents have been accusing it of abandoning the “armed struggle” in favor of a peace process with Israel. Groups such as Hamas, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and Palestinian Islamic Jihad continue to criticize Fatah for not being sufficiently active in the terror campaign against Israel.

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
Israeli breakthrough in cancer treatment. This could be it. Teams of Israeli scientists from Tel Aviv University and Sheba and Hadassah Medical centers working together have triggered cell death in tumors. Derivatives of the compound Phenanthridine caused cancer cells to self-destruct in the most resistant and incurable cancers such as pancreatic. Watch this space! http://www.jewishpress.com/news/israel/israeli-scientists-find-mechanism-that-causes-cancer-cells-to-self-destruct/2017/03/27/ http://www.impactjournals.com/oncotarget/index.php?journal=oncotarget&page=article&op=view&path%5B%5D=15343

Prolonging the lives of cancer patients. Professor Dror Harats, CEO of VBL Therapeutics on ILTV News described the Phase 2 results of VB-111. The treatment (now in Phase 3 trials) doubles survival time for brain tumor patients and ovarian cancer patients. It works for most solid tumor cancers. (Reported here previously)
https://www.youtube.com/embed/4HeISdYw7d8?rel=0

Israeli doctor leads world congress on miscarriage. (TY Eli) Professor Asher Bashiri of Israel’s Soroka University Medical Center led the 2017 World Congress on Recurrent Pregnancy Loss, held in Cannes, France. Doctors representing over 50 countries attended. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4911295,00.html

PolyPid joins US infectious disease program. I reported previously (twice) about Israel’s PolyPid slow-release antibiotic bone implants. PolyPid has just been accepted into the US FDA Qualified Infectious Disease Program – a new FDA status for innovative products in the treatment of bacteria resistant to antibiotics.
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-fda-fast-tracks-israeli-co-polypid-1001180587

Incubating nine medical startups. Israel’s Teva and Philips Healthcare selected 9 from 750 startups for their Sanara joint Israeli medical incubator. They include MeWay (nebulizer) Myhomedoc (smartphone checkup and diagnosis), BReathme (asthma management), Purecare (gum treatment), Lensfree (lowers CT radiation), Lifegraph (migraine prevention), Lidus (blood vessel suturing) and SpirCare (lung capacity measurement).
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-teva-philips-israel-incubator-selects-9-projects-1001180561

Israeli takeover of UK cancer biotech. Israel’s BiolineRx is buying UK’s Agalimmune,for $6 million. The private UK-based company has developed an innovative, anti-cancer immunotherapy platform. treatment that not only kills the tumor cells at the site of injection, but also brings about a durable, follow-on, anti-metastatic immune response. http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-biolinerx-buys-uk-co-1001182333

Telegraphic reminders of reality by Ruthie Blum

Upon her return from a class trip to Poland, taken as part of her Israeli high school education, my ‎daughter recounted with passion the experience of seeing the Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau — now a museum of atrocities — in person. ‎

I asked her how she felt about the letter I and the other parents had been instructed to write in secret, which the teacher was to ‎distribute three days after the 11th graders arrived in Poland. In my letter, I tried to provide ‎comfort for the emotional distress I assumed she would feel seeing the fingernail marks on the walls of the gas chambers ‎and the rooms full of Jewish hair, eyeglasses and shoes. But I also wanted to say something ‎uplifting about the history and future of our people, without prompting a cynical roll of her eyes.‎

I did this by expressing how proud I was to be the mother of native Israeli children, born and raised in ‎the Jewish state established just a few years after Adolf Hitler’s defeat and unsuccessful attempt at ‎executing the Final Solution. This, I told her, was one answer to her and her brothers’ occasional questions about why I left the land of Toys ‘R’ Us and Macy’s for Jerusalem, of all places.‎

‎”You’re not going to believe this coincidence,” my daughter said. “A girl in my class whose mother is ‎American wrote almost the same thing as you did. But her conclusion was that this was why we ‎needed a Palestinian state.”‎

This story came to mind with the release Thursday of a German-language telegram sent by Third Reich ‎SS commander Heinrich Himmler to Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini. The document, ‎dated around Nov. 2, 1943, was uncovered in the archives of Israel’s National Library. ‎

‎”From the outset, the National Socialist [Nazi] movement of Greater Germany has been a standard ‎bearer in the battle against world Jewry,” Himmler wrote to al-Husseini. “For this reason, it is closely ‎following the battle of freedom-seeking Arabs, particularly in Palestine, against the Jewish invaders. ‎The shared recognition of the enemy and the joint fight against it are creating the strong base [uniting] ‎Germany and freedom-seeking Arabs around the world. In this spirit, I am pleased to wish you, on the ‎‎[26th] anniversary of the wretched Balfour Declaration, warm wishes on your continued fight until the ‎great victory.”‎

What is striking about this telegram is not its contents — which simply constitute yet further evidence ‎of the warm relations between the Nazis and the mufti — but rather how similar its sentiments are to ‎those regularly voiced today. Not in Germany, where one could face charges for such anti-‎Semitic rhetoric, but in the Arab world and Palestinian Authority. ‎

In other words, my daughter did not have to travel to Europe for a tour of Hitler’s gas chambers to be ‎exposed to a purposeful and concerted effort to wipe her and her classmates off the face of the ‎earth.‎

The Myth of Jewish Theft of Arab Land Alex Grobman, PhD

One of the most persistent canards Arabs have exploited against Israel is that she stole Palestinian Arab land, which explains why this dispute remains intractable. This fabrication has led the media to label Israel as occupiers of Palestinian Arab lands. An examination of what the Jews found as they returned to their ancestral homeland, the enormous obstacles they encountered and how they overcame them should debunk this lie. 1

Those Jews who settled in the Yishuv, the Jewish community in the land of Israel before the establishment of the Israeli state, came to a land that was sparsely populated and economically underdeveloped, with sizeable regions of desert, semiarid wilderness and swamps. Before the British arrived in Palestine at the end of World War I, the Ottoman government had practically no involvement in regulating land use, health and sanitary conditions or controls on the construction of private and public buildings. Except for a few roads and a rail line that projected imperial power, there were few public works projects. Resident Arabs, traditional in outlook, had no interest in new plans for their communities. For Herzl and other European Zionists, Turkish Palestine, was inviting because of its lack of government accountability, absence of local Arab initiative, and the “empty landscape.” 2

Condition of the Land

The task facing the early Jewish pioneers in purchasing land and resurrecting neglected desert regions, malarial valleys, swamps, hills and sand seemed almost insurmountable.3 Walter Clay Lowdermilk, a soil conservationist who reclaimed lands throughout the world, found Palestine “a

land impoverished by erosion and neglect.” The “soils were eroded off the uplands to bedrock over fully one-half the hills; streams across the coastal plains were chocked with erosional debris from the hills to form pestilential marshes infested with dreaded malaria; the fair cities and elaborate works of ancient times were left in doleful ruins.” 4

Henry Baker Tristram, an English clergyman and biblical scholar, describes the situation in the mid-19th century: “A few years ago, the whole Ghor [the Jordan Valley] was in the hands of the fellahin, and much of it cultivated for corn. Now the whole of it is in the hands of the Bedouin, who eschew all agriculture, except in a few spots cultivated here and there by their slaves; and with the Bedouin come lawlessness and the uprooting of all Turkish authority. No government is now acknowledged on the east side; and unless the Porte acts with greater firmness and caution than is his wont, it will lose the last vestige of authority on the right bank also, and a wide strip of the most fertile land in all Palestine will be desolated and given up to the Nomads.

The same thing is now going on over the plain of Sharon, where, both in the north and south, land is going out of cultivation, and whole villages rapidly disappearing from the face of the earth. Since the year 1838, no less than 20 villages have been thus erased from the map and the stationary population extirpated. Very rapidly the Bedouin are encroaching wherever horse can be ridden; and the Government is utterly powerless to resist them or to defend its subjects.”5

Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, Dean of Westminster Abbey, added what he saw in Palestine in 1853: “In Judea it is hardly an exaggeration to say that whilst for miles and miles there is no appearance of present life or habitation, except the occasional goat herd on the hill side, or gathering of women at the wells, there is hardly a hill-top of the many within sight which is not covered by the vestiges of some fortress city of former ages. Sometimes they are fragments of ancient walls, sometimes mere foundations and piles of stone, but always enough to indicate signs of human habitation and civilisation…. But the general fact of the ruins of Palestine, whether erect or fallen, remains common to the whole country; deepens and confirm, if it does not create, the impression of age and decay, which belongs to almost every view of Palestine, and invests it with an appearance which can be called by no other name than venerable.” 6

In 1894, Scottish theologian George Adam Smith published his comprehensive investigative report on the Holy Land in which he said: “Judah has lost his eyes, and his raiment is in rags.”7