I tried to find that "vast wasteland" supposed quote from Mark Twain. It's all over the internet - people saying, "And I quote" - but of course they are NOT quoting at all! Just saying "and I quote" is not the same as actually providing a reference. People fall for that since it's the "interwebs" hahaha. So here is the actual quote from Mark Twain that I could find (keep in mind there is no use of the word "wasteland" in his book at all)
"Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery, I think Palestine must be the prince. The hills are barren, they are dull of color, they are unpicturesque in shape. The valleys are unsightly deserts fringed with a feeble vegetation that has an expression about it of being sorrowful and despondent. The Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee sleep in the midst of a vast stretch of hill and plain wherein the eye rests upon no pleasant tint, no striking object, no soft picture dreaming in a purple haze or mottled with the shadows of the clouds. Every outline is harsh, every feature is distinct, there is no perspective — distance works no enchantment here. It is a hopeless, dreary, heart-broken land."
. Innocents Abroad brought global attention to the sorry state of Palestine and proved that Palestine was a land without a people for a people without a land just 15 years before the First Aliya and subsequent waves of Jewish immigration.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/unto-the-nations-505760
No it didn't! Twain never called Palestine a "vast wasteland"
a vast stretch of hill and plain
is not a wasteland
The central Jezreel Valley, roughly 380 square kilometers in size
Riding on horseback through the Jezreel Valley, Twain observed, “There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent – not for 30 miles in either direction. There are two or three small clusters of Bedouin tents, but not a single permanent habitation. One may ride 10 miles, hereabouts, and not see 10 human beings.”
This is the "proof" that Palestine is a wasteland? 30 miles square of 300 people?
Palestine/Area
2,324 mi²
So 6070.932 square kilometers... which is about 15 Jezreel Valleys.... clearly the population of that Valley is not demonstrative of all of Palestine considering:
| Palestine demographics of 1882 | show 24,000 Jews | 276,000 | non-Jews 300,000 | total people 8.0% Jews |
300,000 people is a lot more than 300 people x 15 or 4500 people.
Throughout Innocents Abroad, Twain explicitly states that the area was desolate and devoid of inhabitants.
Really?
Mark Twain:Palestine is desolate and unlovely. And why should it be otherwise ? Can the curse of the Deity beautify a land ?p. 608 desolate is not the same as "devoid of people" -
Rather Desolate means "devoid" of perspective in landscape! Mark Twain:these low, shaven, yellow hillocks of rocks and sand, so devoid of perspective,can not suggest the grand peaks that compass Tahoe like a wall, and whose ribbed and chasmed fronts are clad with stately pines that seem to grow small and smaller as they climb,Note that's the only use of the word "devoid" in that book by Mark Twain.
https://mediamonitors.net/farrahs-lies-and-distortion-of-facts-about-palestine/
Joseph Farrah et. al.
In an article “The Jews took no one’s land”, Farrah wrote: “Let me state this plainly and clearly: The Jews in Israel took no one’s land. When Mark Twain visited the Holy Land in the 19th century, he was greatly disappointed. He didn’t see any people. He referred to it as a vast wasteland.
No he didn't!
https://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Articles/Story845.html
Twain had encountered in Europe, along with the teeming cities and towns of Turkey and Syria, the land of the bible was not just a jarring contrast, it was inconceivable in light of the rich history with which it was associated. Western civilization owed itself to countless centuries of events that had occurred in this exact geographic location, and yet it was a veritable wasteland, whose inhabitants – of all faiths and cultures – were primitive and unsophisticated.
https://rabbidunner.com/mark-twain-visits-the-holy-land/
Is it a "veritable" wasteland or a "vast" wasteland?
“this wasteland of Palestine,”
https://archive.nytimes.com/thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/20/netanyahus-embrace-of-mark-twain/
Wasteland is literally NOT a word in Mark Twain's book!!
Strange since Netanyahu's book does not claim Mark Twain said "vast wasteland" and he gives the page number references!
Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad (New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1984), pp. 385, 398.
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Page 447
57. Twain, Innocents Abroad, pp. 384, 403, 414, 442, 480, 485-86.
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Page 462
6. Twain, Innocents Abroad, p. 379.
https://archive.nytimes.com/thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/20/netanyahus-embrace-of-mark-twain/
Netanyahu and Joan Peters quote Twain saying the Jezreel Valley was without “a single permanent habitation.” But James Gelvin of UCLA’s recent history of Israel-Palestine discusses how the valley was extensively cultivated and that Palestinian villagers who lived throughout the hill areas built khirab (sing. khirba), meaning ruins in Arabic, as temporary shelter for planting and harvest.
Gelvin notes that the “forsaken state of these satellite villages created an impression on Palestine among Western visitors and Zionist settlers far removed from reality…. Little did tourists like Twain or advocates of settlement like the early Zionists comprehend that the seemingly abandoned and ramshackle villages on the plain indicated an increase in security and prosperity, not an absence of habitation.”
Many of the year-round villages were not in places mentioned in the Bible, so Western visitors didn’t see them. Thus the ill-informed anecdotes of Mark Twain (whom I otherwise love) inform the self-serving justifications of Netanyahu’s expansionist and, frankly, chauvinist policies. How sad.
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