From abroad, we are accustomed to believe that Eretz Israel is presently almost totally desolate, an uncultivated desert, and that anyone wishing to buy land there can come and buy all he wants. But in truth it is not so.

Ahad Ha'am (Asher Ginsberg), 'A Truth from Eretz Israel' (1891)
 
Ha'am was a prominent Zionist theoretician who devoted his life to the concept of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine, but he never attempted to deny the existence of a Palestinian people. On the contrary, he warned his fellow Jews against the 'great error' of treating Palestinians with contempt and of regarding Arabs as 'savages of the desert'. Yet as recently as 2011 two Republican presidential candidates in the USA, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, both baldly denied the existence of a Palestinian people.
 
Such claims are clearly preposterous and irrational. Of course there are Palestinian people, just as there was once a united Palestine. And while the majority of Palestinians are Arab Muslims, there are also Arab Christians, as well as Jews, Samaritans, Armenians, Greeks, Circassians, Druze, Bedouin and others, still living side-by-side in the intertwined patchwork of territories that now comprise Israel and Palestine.
 
This seems axiomatic. But for those who continue seriously to doubt the present demographic evidence, or perhaps the written word, there remains an indisputable third source of proof – pictures of historic Palestine and its people, taken between the mid 19th century (the first known photograph of Palestine dates from as early as 1837) and the end of the British Mandate in 1948… Read More