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| Tel Aviv today (Pro-Palestinian students at Columbia, Yale, MIT, NYU yell, "Hamas we love you! Burn Tel Aviv to the ground!") |
The famous author Mark Twain managed to hitch a ride on a steam ship to the Holy Land in 1867. The young man joined a group of pilgrims he sarcastically named "the Innocents."
The ship was called Quaker City, a former Civil War ship. A budding writer, Twain's passage was paid for by a Californian newspaper. He wrote about the Holy Land in his novel Innocents Abroad, and unlike other writers of the day who Romanticized the place, Twain drew blood in his usual acerbic style -
Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies.
Twain described in vivid detail, the squalor and desolation across the land and his description of Jerusalem is stark -
Renowned Jerusalem itself, the stateliest name in history, has lost all its ancient grandeur, and is become a pauper village; the riches of Solomon are no longer there to compel the admiration of visiting Oriental queens; the wonderful temple which was the pride and the glory of Israel, is gone. Palestine is desolate and unlovely. And why should it be otherwise? Palestine is no more of this work-day world. It is sacred to poetry and tradition. It is dream-land.
There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent, not for thirty miles in either direction, and one may ride ten miles hereabouts and not see ten human beings.
...nasty villages of miserable huts and the usual assemblage of squalid humanity - disfigured wretches fringed with filthy rags and infested with vermin, naked and sore-eyed children in all stages of mutilation and decay.
So said Mark Twain 150 years ago.
A day ago, after reading Golda Meir's autobiography, My Life, Chriss Rainey commented on my last article in a similar fashion:
When we think of the modern state of Israel, we naturally think of skyscrapers and freeways and shopping malls and all the things that go with a well established country, but it is important to remind ourselves that it wasn't like it is now when the sparse number of Palestinians roamed around there. The land was unusable. Either swamp or desert. And the Palestinians had no problem AT ALL selling it to Jews who bought it up one small patch at a time. In fact they thought the Jews were fools to think they could eek out a living on this useless ground.
Determination and talent built that little country with blood sweat and tears starting in small communes of families who worked like dogs to improve land and turn it into a place they could life secure and in peace. They didn't steal this land. They bought and paid for it. And if now they choose not to sell it to anyone but a Jew, I'm fine with that.
I see that you are bowing to your jewish masters and continuing to post boot-licking articles about Israel. You only embarrass yourself. And you know what? They still hate you.
ReplyDeleteAnd before you tell me that the Blessed Mother was jewish, she became a Christian on Pentecost. So...there's that.
I'm always disappointed when comments get personal. Argue the issues. The situation in the Middle East is complex and long-standing. There are those who don't want peace on both sides of the conflict and there are many who benefit from war. Here's an interesting article on the conflict. Things are rarely as black and white as people want to make them. https://history.howstuffworks.com/world-history/zionism.htm
ReplyDeleteWell, Anonymous, your comment must mean that you're a leftist college student type siding with Hamas, bowing to terrorists. And you know what? Hamas still hates you. Furthermore, I'll believe what I want to believe which include FACTS.
ReplyDeleteFrom another famous author, Roald Dahl. His memoirs describing a 1941 encounter with a refugee from Europe who he met while stationed in Palestine as a member of the RAF:
ReplyDelete"You seem surprised to find us here," the man said. "I am," I said. "I wasn't expecting to find anyone."
"We are everywhere," the man said. "We are all over the country."
"Forgive me," I said, "but I don't understand. Who do you mean by we?"
"Jewish refugees."
I really didn't know what he was talking about. I had been living in East Africa for the past two years and in those times the British colonies were parochial and isolated. The local newspaper, which was all we got to read, had not mentioned anything about Hitler's persecution of the Jews in 1938 and 1939. Nor did I have the faintest idea that the greatest mass murder in the history of the world was actually taking place in Germany at that moment.
"Is this your land?" I asked him.
"Not yet," he said.
"You mean you are hoping to buy it?"
He looked at me in silence for a while. Then he said, "The land is at present owned by a Palestinian farmer but he has given us permission to live here. He has also allowed us some fields so that we can grow our own food."
"So where do you go from here?" I asked him. "You and all your orphans?"
"We don't go anywhere," he said, smiling through his black beard. "We stay here."
"Then you will all become Palestinians," I said. "Or perhaps you are that already."
He smiled again, presumably at the naivety of my questions.
"No," the man said, "I do not think we will become Palestinians."
So says Roald Dahl, the great storyteller, of one encounter with one unnamed Jewish man. It's hearsay.
ReplyDeleteAnd Mark Twain was a great scholarly historian whose works such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson are right up there with Winston Churchill's Memoires of the Second World War. Not a storyteller like Dahl.
ReplyDeleteFYI - a recount of a direct conversation that you're a party to isn't hearsay.
It's just Dahl's word that what he said was true. Meanwhile, Twain traveled with a group of several people, all of whom could be witnesses.
ReplyDeleteBesides, who would be more likely to tell the truth - Dahl the serial adulterer or Twain the faithful husband.
ReplyDeleteI know an Arab Catholic who still has family in the region. Her stories are more similar to what is recounted by Dahl. I have friends who also know Catholics whose families were displaced when Israel was made a nation.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Mark Twain was not always known for 100% factual accounts. He was known for colorful and interesting accounts with a flair for clever and witty comments.
I would look for more detailed and collaborative account.
Finally, as Catholics, let us not get caught up in evaluating a region based on modern conveniences. My understanding is that Tel Aviv excels in wickedness and vice.
I am so sick and tired of hearing about the Zionist state. I'm satmar through my mother. She always had a hearty disdain for Israel, even after becoming Christian. She taught me well that Judaism is a religion, NOT a race. What once was the faith revealed by God to one semitic people (Hebrews) has now been fulfilled by Our Lord Jesus Christ.
ReplyDeleteChristians are the fulfillment of Israel. WE are Israel now.
These murderous, Zionist clowns calling themselves Jews: I denounce and defy them.
What does being a Jew have to do with living in Palestine. I'm Jewish (along with a heavy admixture of a lot of other bloodlines), and I have no longing for an ancient, long since dead and past period of a part my history.
Might as well go all the way and build a temple and sacrifice calves and stuff.
Such a lot of nonsense.
Christ is the one lamb of God; no more Old Testament stuff needed. Done and over.
It's a shame, really, that Catholics spend so much time defending those that claim to be members of the Jewish religion. What I have seen, and continue to see, are Jews in important positions in the United States government, involving the U.S. in foreign entanglements, always creating conditions for more war; at the same time they REFUTE our faith.
ReplyDeleteAs far as i can tell, the Jews and the Muslims are not destined for the pearly gates. We should pray for them, but also recognize that they have chosen to be away from Christ, and will be condemned for eternity. There is no salvation outside the Catholic Church.
To Anonymous at 9:23 AM,
ReplyDeleteSo according to you it's a waste of time to defend any human being unless they're Catholic? Is that it? If they're not Catholic, to hell with them because that's where you say they'll end up anyway so why bother?
In other words, if you see the Samaritan man on the road, you wouldn't bother to stop because he's a Samaritan and not like you. Why take the time to bother yourself with that useless human being. He's going to die and go to hell anyway. Unbelievable!
Susan---No.
DeleteIn other words, (my words, not yours) I object to being taxed by the U.S.G. to drop bombs on Semites, that is Jews and Arabs, for a war that has gone on forever.
It is past the time for all peace-loving people to stop the flow of money, tax money, to governments to fund atrocities in order to support heathens killing other heathens on the other side of the globe.
What is unbelievable to me are the numbers of people, like yourself, that cheerlead for the killings to continue forever.
I object to being taxed for the West's proxy war in Ukraine where Zelensky, who refuses to negotiate, wants war "to the last man" to continue forever. An entire generation of Ukrainian men has been wiped out. The US is sending missiles to kill Russian civilians. Are you on board with that. Are you an Anglo who hates Slavs?
ReplyDeleteIt would be "heavenly" if all people on earth stopped wars and fighting and killing but we don't live in heaven. We live on earth where man hates man and there are wars and fighting and killing. Yes, we pray for bloodshed to end, but as long as Hamas exists they will keep killing Jews. Hamas said that they would do October 7th again and again and again until Israel is annihilated. That is genocide. Israel's only answer is to wipe out Hamas, which uses its own people for human shields.
As far as your Feeneyism, you can believe that heresy from that weird Boston priest if you want. I don't buy it. The Church is necessary for salvation but one does not have to be a card-carrying member. The Feeney heresy negates Baptism of Desire and Baptism of Blood. Therefore I can ask the 21 Coptic Martyrs for prayers if I want. Don't tell me what to believe. I'll believe what I want. I will not be boxed in. No wonder Vatican II happened.