Israel - why all the fuss ? (part 2)
Miracles, schmiracles!
Miracles? Bah! There's no such thing as a miracle! Then how do we explain ...
(i)The reclaiming of the land
In the middle of the nineteenth century there were no more than 50,000 - 100,000 people living in the whole of Palestine. It was an empty, neglected place bereft of beauty or significance.
In the Muslim world, of which this was a part, Jerusalem had no real status, the whole country was seen as just one of those places you have to cross (and occasionally have a fight in) to get to more interesting places. The country was owned by Turkey (of which the only modern-day legacy is the profusion of Kebab bars - albeit of a kosher variety) who cared little of the Arab peasants and others who lived there. It was a treeless waste, with a few motley towns, and malaria-ridden swamps. This is what Mark Twain, the American writer, wrote in 1869:
'Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery, I think Palestine must be the prince. It sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies. The hills are barren, they are dull of colour, they are unpicturesque in shape. The valleys are unsightly deserts, fringed with feeble vegetation. The Dead Sea and Sea of Galilee sleep in the midst of a vast stretch of hill and plain where the eyes rest upon no pleasant tint, no striking object, no soft picture. One may ride ten miles, and not see ten human beings. A blistered, naked, treeless land'.
A century later a wilderness had become a modern country, to compare with many in Europe. A miracle, no? You may say a human miracle, but I could also point you to the numerous passages in the Bible that pointed forwards to this time.
In the Book of Isaiah we read, "they will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated; they will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations."
And this is how they did it ...
The Turkish landowners were short of ready cash. They quickly found out that they could raise funds by selling off parcels of land in Palestine. Jewish money was as good as anyone else's, so they grabbed at the opportunity. The Turkish government soon caught on and banned it, though it still carried on - illegal Jewish money was also as good as anyone else's, and now there was more of it, as the black market rate was of course higher. Meanwhile, because of the state of the land, many non-Jews were leaving the land, only to be replaced by Jews zealous for the land and with a love for it that 1800 years of exile hadn't blunted.
Between 1880 and 1914 these pioneering Jews started, slowly, to transform the land. They worked on the swamps and the undrained rivers. Life was tough, if you didn't die of malaria, you could be killed by Bedouins. Soon Jewish villages were springing up all over, and the towns of Jerusalem, Tiberias, Safed and Haifa started to grow. In 1909 they founded the first modern Jewish city, Tel Aviv. Life was still tough, although disease wasn't so much the problem. Attacks by Arab neighbours increased, even though, through the efforts of these Jewish pioneers, life for all in the land was improving - including the Arab neighbours. But things have never really been straightforward for Jews!