Palestine never was a 'verdant resort'

Diana West, The Washington Times

Transcribed from the clipping

“In 1857, the British consul in Palestine, James Finn, told his government that Palestine ‘is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is that of a body of population.’” The column then quotes Mark Twain on Jericho as “a moldering ruin” and the Galilee as “a desolation... that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action.”

Context added by this archive

The desolate-land argument, running in 2003 in the same terms a Philadelphia paper used in 1812. It does not use the word genocide and is not counted in that set.

Cite this item

"Palestine never was a 'verdant resort'," Vicksburg Post, 10 June 2003. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2003-005. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2003-005

Elsewhere in the archive

Some Israelis contemplate low-grade 'genocide' for PalestiniansThe Free Lance-Star · 2 February 2003 · the same year
Iraq war prompts protests, prayerArgus Leader · 22 March 2003 · the same year
Hundreds of Palestinian minors in Israeli custodyThe Brainerd Dispatch · 17 April 2003 · the same year

This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American and Anglophone newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1812 to 2022. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.

The clipping belongs to the newspaper that printed it, or to the wire service that supplied the copy. It is reproduced here for research, criticism and commentary. The city is derived from the masthead, not read off the clipping.

Something wrong here, or something you know about this clipping? The archive is still being built and corrections are wanted: maria@rozumstudio.com, quoting CP-2003-005.

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