Jewish Immigration Quotes
Because of the classic historical anti-Semitism and discrimination, Jews were barred from land ownership and as a result few were farmers or had agricultural experience in their families. They were tradesmen, artisans, professionals in Europe. So amongst Jews and non Jews alike the notion of Jews settling the land of Palestine and farming it or trapping, the way the Boers had in South Africa or the French in Canada, was not a very credible image. The Zionists, realizing this potential weakness, placed strong emphasis on agriculture, developed the agricultural kibbutz concept and encouraged Jews to become farmers. The effort was so successful that almost all the leading early Zionist immigrants to Palestine became farmers. When independence came to Israel, the Jewish agriculture was more productive than most of that in Europe and almost on a par with small farms in the United States. The Israelis were known for “making the desert bloom.
This is the first statement of a Jewish nation since Biblical Times.
The large Jewish immigration to America was like most immigrations before and since. Some elements of American society thought the immigrants undesirable and worse. Others felt America needed immigrant labor to grow and do the undesirable chores of society. Still others saw immigration to America as a part of American destiny. Herzl’s understanding of America was superficial and the anti-Semitism that many Jews faced dominated his thinking on the subject.
Some Palestinians and other Arabs either ignore or are delusional about history as the Jews had been in the Area for 5 thousand years, and when Christ was born and died and Christianity born, the Jews were the majority population in the area of Israel and Palestine. Even in the Muslim Controlled Ottoman Empire, Jews were living in the area and are described on thousands of Ottoman legal and historical documents. The reason that this quotation is so important is that Abbas was supposed to be the most reasonable of the Arab leaders regarding a two state solution, and here in 2014 he argued that the Jews to not belong in the area and have no roots there. The other Hamas Arab leaders required in their charter the destruction of Israel and the death of all Jews anywhere in the world. Who then, many conservative Israelis ask, can Israel reasonably negotiate with as no state will negotiate for its own existence—especially the most democratic, most developed, and has the highest average standard of living for its citizens and the most freedom for Arabs of any nation in the Middle East.
