Quotation from Asher Ginsberg “I did not manage to see even one man living solely from the fruit of his land” — 1891

In his book The Truth from Palestine
(renamed A truth from the Land of Israel
in 1953), commenting on his first visit to Palestine in 1891.

Author : Thematics :
" "There are now about ten colonies standing for some years, and no one of them is able to support itself . . . wherever I strived to look, I did not manage to see even one man living solely from the fruit of his land. . . . In Palestine, as in all lands, the tiller of the land will eat its fruit . . . the traveler can see on both sides of the road fertile fields and valleys covered with grains. The Arabs are working and eating. . . . Grief has engulfed us alone. Why then? The real answer, that any clever man in Palestine knows, is that the first colonists brought with them substantial idealism, but they all lack the qualifications necessary for agriculture and cannot be simple farmers." "

Quoted by Haim Gerber, Zionism, Orientalism, and the Palestinians, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. XXXIII, automne 2003, p. 23.

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