"Poor," "starving" Gazans collect antique cars with WEALTH in Palestine

http://israelmatzav.blogspot.com/2010/07/poor-starving-gazans-collect-antique.html


Sunday, July 04, 2010
Poor, starving Gazans collect antique cars

This article is noteworthy because it drips with bias. Note what I have highlighted from al-AP:

In this besieged land where every bumpy road quickly reaches a dead end of fences and walls, vintage car collecting is not exactly a typical hobby.

But in a first-ever show here, Gaza's small cadre of antique auto aficionados unveiled their classic roadsters this week and brought back memories of a time when Gazans weren't hemmed in by impenetrable borders.

Most of the 30 cars on display in a Gaza City parking lot date from the late 30s to the late 70s, and were purchased in Egypt — a previous ruler of Gaza — or in Israel, which captured the strip from Egypt in the 1967 Mideast War. They've weathered the elements since — along with two Palestinian uprisings and a recent war with Israel.

Import routes have been closed since 2007, when Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza following the Islamic militant group Hamas' takeover of the tiny Mediterranean coastal territory. With nearly everything banned except essential humanitarian supplies, spare parts couldn't come in either.

Gaza's collectors brought in what they could through illegal tunnels connecting the strip to Egypt, but were also forced to do a lot of mixing and matching, said Mahfouz Kabariti, the show's organizer.

For the record, Gazans have been restricted from entering Israel since they perpetrated terror attacks in the late '90's and the 'blockade' was largely a response to the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit in June 2006.

But it seems that al-AP will believe anything....

Dramatic Video on the History of Israel

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=ZprVPKi-W6s

What siege in Gaza? Living Large by Scamming World Community

http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/4427.htm

July 2, 2010 Special Dispatch No.3077

Egyptian Columnist: 'What Siege Are They Talking About?'; 'The Egyptian People.... [Should] Pray to Allah to Smite Them With [Such a] Siege'

In his column in the Egyptian daily Rooz Al-Yousuf, dated June 29, 2010, Muhammad Hamadi gave statistics from a Hamas website showing that despite all the talk of a siege on the Gaza Strip, and in contrast to claims that Egypt has a role in starving the Palestinian people there, so many goods are streaming into Gaza that supply is greater than demand – and that as a result, produce, poultry, and beef are cheaper there than in Egypt.

He concluded that life under siege in Gaza is easier than it is in Egypt, where the people would love such a siege.

The following are translated excerpts from the article:

Hamas Has "Turned to Resistance Online and In the Media"

"After the [Hamas] movement abandoned the real resistance and turned to resistance online and in the media, one of Hamas's many websites published an important report comparing prices of goods and produce in Egypt and in Gaza.

"The report states: A kilo of watermelon in Gaza costs less than one Egyptian lira, while in Egypt it costs over two lira; a kilo of tomatoes in Gaza costs less than half a lira, while in Egypt it costs 1.5 lira; a kilo of potatoes in Gaza costs half a lira, while in Egypt it costs two lira; a kilo of onions in Gaza is one lira, while in Egypt a kilo of onions is 1.5 lira; a kilo of garlic in Gaza is 10 lira, while in Egypt it is 15 lira.

"A kilo of chicken in Egypt is 20 lira, and in Gaza it goes for only 10 lira. The average price of a kilo of beef in Egypt is 60 lira – while in besieged Gaza it goes for five lira. A tray of eggs in Egypt is 19 lira, while in Gaza it is only 10 lira."

"What Siege Are They Talking About?"

"This comparison of prices between Egypt and Gaza, which has been under siege for three years, as they say, shows that life under siege is cheaper, more convenient, and easier...

"So what siege are they talking about? Does the siege cause prices to drop? And how are goods flowing into Gaza despite the siege? ...

"These questions are not being raised [here] in expectation of an answer from Hamas, but they are directed at all Hamas supporters in Egypt who see nothing wrong with accusing their own country of betraying the Palestinian cause and of starving the helpless Palestinian people with the oppressive siege on Gaza.

"If this is what it's like in Gaza under siege, then the Egyptian people, who have been burned by the fire of prices and who peel off part of their limited income to save the besieged Gaza residents, [should] pray to Allah to smite them with [such a] siege, if the seige will lead to lower prices and make it possible for every common citizen to buy eggs, meat, and poultry like the Gaza residents do."

Is anti-semitism still happening today?

On Fri, Jul 9, 2010 at 7:11 AM, Coffinman wrote:
The jew bankers started the war.
And Germany suffered.
And the jews are still sucking German blood.


On Sun, Jul 11, 2010 at 8:08 AM, Jude wrote:
Hitler went against Jews because at that time they tried to take over the full economy of Germany. Check the statistics.


On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 5:31 AM, alan B'Stard M P wrote:
at least the KKK don't lie and deceive about a blood lie and earn money from tragedy
A


On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 5:17 PM, Coffinman wrote:
No, the three jew-spawned religions are all rotten


On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 5:14 PM, Coffinman wrote:
Dismantle the jewish state.


On Fri, Jul 9, 2010 at 7:11 AM, Coffinman wrote:
The jew bankers started the war.
And Germany suffered.
And the jews are still sucking German blood.

On Sun, Jul 11, 2010 at 1:49 AM, alan B'Stard M P wrote:

that jewish Boycott of germany ruined the german economy.

Turkey's Attacks on Kurds Excused; Israel's Self-Defense Condemned

Opinion: Israel Attacks and the World's Oldest Hatred

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach
Special to AOL News
(June 29) -- Anti-Semitism is the world's oldest hatred. Yet it was a prejudice that I thought the world was moving past. But clearly, with the endless vitriol shown toward Israel, it is alive and well.

What's that? Hatred of Israel is not motivated by anti-Semitism? Yeah, I thought so too. I was even naive enough to write column after column admonishing my fellow Jews not to jump to such simplistic conclusions.

Surely, hatred of Israel was due to the Jewish state being terrible at PR. Surely Israel, a lone democracy in a sea of tyranny, assumed that the justice of its cause was so self-evident as to require no explanation. A renewed PR effort was necessary.

Or maybe the endless and unjust criticism of Israel was simply a manifestation of the world's natural proclivity to champion the underdog. The Arabs, numbering in the hundreds of millions, have somehow successfully positioned themselves as being oppressed by 6 million Israeli Jews. All of this could account for why Israel, a thriving democracy where 1 million Israeli Arabs vote and have robust representation in the Israeli Knesset, is hated while its tyrannical, terrorist neighbors escape censure.

I now know that none of this is true, and that hatred of Israel is just another manifestation of the world's oldest hatred.

Believe me. It pains me to write this. It represents a fundamental defeat for my Jewish Universalist worldview. I believe with every fiber of my being that we are all God's children, part of an indivisible human family. That Arabs and Jews are equal before God and that we are all brothers. And the knowledge that I will never be fully included in that family due to a deep-seated hostility to my people is devastating beyond words.

But what else are we to conclude?

Why would British academics ban their Israeli counterparts and not, say, the Chinese, whose human rights abuses and slaughter of innocent civilians at Tiananmen Square took place before the whole world?

The Turks bomb Kurdish independence fighters on a regular basis and continue to deny their genocide of more than a million helpless Armenians. Yet their condemnation of Israel over the Gaza flotilla gains international currency.

Hugo Chavez brutally dismantles Venezuelan democracy, imprisons his political opponents, locks up judges and persecutes a free press that criticizes him. But his condemnation of a genocidal Israel is lauded by countries throughout the world.

And the U.N. censures Israel on a monthly basis while countries like Libya sit on its Human Rights Council. If that isn't rank anti-Semitism, then the word has no meaning.

Israel's obviously not perfect. Like any moral democracy fighting for its very life, it's going to make mistakes. But compared to Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia and so many other of its neighbors, it is positively angelic.

Disagree? Well, rather than engage in useless and endless debate, let's employ John F. Kennedy's famous argument delivered in the summer of 1963 in his memorable "ich bin ein Berliner" speech. Kennedy addressed the two world systems that were in mortal conflict: capitalism and communism. Each said their side was right. Each brought endless facts to make their case.

"There are many people in the world," Kennedy said, "who really don't understand, or say they don't, what is the great issue between the free world and the communist world. ... There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future. ... And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere, We can work with the communists."

OK. A major dilemma. Two world systems each claiming to be righteous and asserting the other to be evil. How to adjudicate between them? Kennedy did so with memorable eloquence. "Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in, to prevent them from leaving us."

I say the same thing to you. If Israel really is so terrible, if it's government is so evil, then let's put it to the Kennedy test. If all of Israel's most rabid critics were forced to choose to live either in Israel or under Hamas in Gaza, or under Assad in Syria, or under Ahmadinejad in Iran, or under Abdullah in Saudi Arabia or even in communist China, which would they choose?

In Israel, they would have the freedom to mercilessly assail their government on the radio, in print and in public squares. In any of these other countries, they would be locked up or killed midway through their inaugural speech. In Israel, if they were female or gay, they would enjoy absolutely full rights and equal protection under the law. In Iran or Saudi Arabia, if female they would be severely punished for not adhering to a certain dress code, and if openly gay, they would be lucky to escape with their lives.

Yet it is Israel that the world hates. Go figure.

Or perhaps there is no need. This kind of hatred has a long and cruel precedent. It comes in many guises. Today it targets
Israel, but at its root it's just good old-fashioned, unbridled, unapologetic Jew hatred.

Ecclesiastes had it right. There is nothing new under the sun.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach hosts "The Shmuley Show" on WABC, 77 AM, in New York City and is the author, most recently, of "Renewal: A Guide to the Values Filled Life." His website is www.shmuley.com. Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.

Jews show unique DNA as Ancient Israelites

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-jewish-iq18-2009apr18,0,7978229.story

Jewish legacy inscribed on genes?
Ashkenazi Jews have a higher rate of some deadly genetic diseases -- and of high IQs. Scientists Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending say that's no coincidence.

Karen Kaplan Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
April 18, 2009

Gregory Cochran has always been drawn to puzzles. This one had been gnawing at him for several years: Why are European Jews prone to so many deadly genetic diseases?

Tay-Sachs disease. Canavan disease. More than a dozen more.

It offended Cochran's sense of logic. Natural selection, the self-taught genetics buff knew, should flush dangerous DNA from the gene pool. Perhaps the mutations causing these diseases had some other, beneficial purpose. But what?

At 3:17 one morning, after a long night searching a database of scientific journals from his disheveled home office in Albuquerque, Cochran fired off an e-mail to his collaborator Henry Harpending, a distinguished professor of anthropology at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

"I've figured it out, I think," Cochran typed. "Pardon my crazed excitement."

The "faulty" genes, Cochran concluded, make Jews smarter.

That provocative -- some would say inflammatory -- hypothesis has landed Cochran and Harpending in the middle of a charged debate about the link between IQ and DNA.

They have been sneered at by colleagues and excoriated on Internet forums. They have been welcomed to speak at a synagogue and a Jewish medical society. They were asked to write a book; that effort, "The 10,000 Year Explosion," was published early this year.

Scientists are increasingly finding that propensities for human behaviors -- for addiction, aggression, risk-taking and more -- are written in our genes. But the idea that some groups of people are inherently smarter is troubling to many. Some scientists say it has such racist implications it's unworthy of consideration.

"What are their theories about those on the opposite end of the spectrum?" asked Neil Risch, director of the Institute for Human Genetics at UC San Francisco, who finds the matter so offensive he can barely discuss it without raising his voice. "Do they have genetic theories about why Latinos and African Americans perform worse academically?"

The biological basis for intelligence can be a thankless arena of inquiry. The authors of "The Bell Curve" were vilified 15 years ago for suggesting genes played a role in IQ differences among racial groups.

But Cochran, 55, and Harpending, 65, say there's no question that as a whole, Ashkenazi Jews -- those of European descent -- have an abundance of brain power. (Neither man is Jewish.)

Psychologists and educational researchers have pegged their average IQ at 107.5 to 115. That's only modestly higher than the overall European average of 100, but the gap is large enough to produce a huge difference in the proportion of geniuses. When a group's average IQ is 100, the percentage of people above 140 is 0.4%; when the average is 110, the genius rate is 2.3%.

Though Jews make up less than 3% of the U.S. population, they have won more than 25% of the Nobel Prizes awarded to American scientists since 1950, account for 20% of this country's chief executives and make up 22% of Ivy League students, the pair write.

"People are perfectly willing to admit that some people are taller or some people are shorter," Cochran said. "But no one wants to say 'This group is smarter.' "

--

Once Cochran gets talking, it's hard to get him to stop. He jumps from idea to idea, beginning new sentences before finishing old ones. In e-mail discussion groups, where he befriended Harpending, he thrives on debating people and proving them wrong.

A PhD physicist, he started out in El Segundo, developing satellite imaging systems and other optics hardware for Hughes Aircraft in the 1980s. As the Cold War ended and defense budgets shrank, Cochran moved his family to Albuquerque and became an optics consultant while indulging his amateur interest in biology.

He worked for a while with evolutionary biologist Paul Ewald on theories that germs cause common disorders like heart disease and Alzheimer's. The pair courted controversy by postulating that some unidentified pathogen prompts a hormonal imbalance that makes babies more likely to become gay.

Cochran read more than 15 genetics textbooks and became intrigued by the deadly diseases that disproportionately afflict Ashkenazi Jews: Tay-Sachs, a neurological disorder that debilitates children before killing them, usually by age 4. Canavan disease, which turns the brain into spongy tissue and typically claims its victims before they can start kindergarten. Niemann-Pick disease Type A, in which babies accumulate dangerous amounts of fats in various organs and suffer profound brain damage and death before their second birthday.

He was struck by the fact that so many of the diseases involved problems with processing sphingolipids, the fat molecules that transmit nerve signals.

This seemed an unlikely coincidence. Genetically isolated groups often have higher rates of certain diseases. But of the more than 20,000 human genes, only 108 are known to be involved in sphingolipid metabolism. The odds of Ashkenazi Jews having four sphingolipid storage disorders by random chance are less than 1 in 100,000, he calculated.

He talked it over with Harpending, an expert in human population genetics. They came to believe this was an example of heterozygote advantage -- where having two copies of a mutated gene can mean disaster but one copy is helpful.

The most famous example of this is sickle cell anemia, which strikes people of African descent who have two defective copies of the hemoglobin B gene. As a result, they make red blood cells that are too curvy to carry oxygen to critical organs.

People who have only one bad copy make useful red blood cells that are deformed just enough to protect them from the malaria parasite, insulating them against the disease.

Instead of sickle cell anemia, Ashkenazi Jews had to contend with Tay-Sachs, Niemann-Pick and other diseases.

Instead of malaria resistance, Cochran and Harpending reasoned, Jews got an IQ boost.

--

The idea didn't come out of nowhere. Researchers have been drawn to the question of Jewish intelligence and genetic diseases at least since the 1920s, when some of the disorders were first being studied. Many physicians remarked on the unusual intelligence of their patients.

One of the first to conduct a systematic study was Dr. Roswell Eldridge, a neurogeneticist at the National Institutes of Health. He compared IQs of 14 children with torsion dystonia -- a neurological disorder afflicting Ashkenazi Jews that twists the body through uncontrollable muscle contractions -- against 10 of their healthy siblings and against unrelated Jewish students matched by age, sex and school.

The patients had an average IQ score of 121, compared with 111 for the control students, he found. Siblings had an average IQ of 119, compared with 112 for their matched controls. The results were published in 1970 in the medical journal Lancet.

Dr. Ari Zimran, director of Shaare Zedek Medical Center's Gaucher Clinic in Jerusalem, thought he would get similar results by studying the very bright patients he treated for Gaucher disease, another Ashkenazi genetic disorder in which excessive amounts of a fatty substance build up in certain organs, causing pain, fatigue and other symptoms.

His small study in the 1980s found no difference between IQs of patients and unaffected relatives. A larger study might have done so, Zimran said. But he decided not to pursue it.

"There is enough anti-Semitism," he said.

Cochran and Harpending are the first to make a broad case linking multiple Jewish genetic diseases to intelligence. Their theory draws on history, statistics, neurobiology and population genetics.

Jews first came to Europe in the 8th and 9th centuries, long before they were known for intellectual prowess, Cochran and Harpending say. They worked as traders before taking financial jobs made available by Christians who were forbidden by the Church from charging interest. By 1100, local registries listed most Ashkenazi Jews as lenders.

That set the stage for natural selection to do its work, Cochran and Harpending theorized. Jews didn't intermarry, keeping their gene pool closed. They were subjected to periodic persecution, which kept the population from outgrowing its professional niche.

According to the theory, the smartest individuals made the most money, and the wealthiest families had the most surviving children. The genes of the most intelligent Jews spread most, slowly raising the average IQ of the entire group.

Over 40 generations -- roughly 1,000 years -- an increase of just 0.3 points per generation would have added up to a cumulative advantage of 12 points, Cochran and Harpending theorized. Some of their other models projected a benefit of 16 to 20 IQ points.

They wrote up their theory and sent it off to a journal. It was rejected.

Harpending said he gave it to an anthropologist friend, editor of another journal, who asked to publish it there. That plan was called off. The friend, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the topic, said the paper was clearly controversial and its extraordinary claims required extraordinary evidence -- which was lacking.

The paper found a home in a 2006 issue of the Journal of Biosocial Science, published by Cambridge University, after its release online in 2005.



The theory quickly spread among anthropologists and geneticists.

Within a few months, "every academic I came in contact with knew about this," said R. Brian Ferguson, an anthropologist at Rutgers University in Newark, N.J. Many found it irresistible. A young colleague told Ferguson that the paper convinced him of the power of using genetics to study behavioral differences among people.

To Ferguson, that was a dangerous idea. There may indeed be versions of genes that are unique to Ashkenazi Jews, but it would be impossible, he said, to prove that those genes are responsible for higher IQs.

"This is not a legitimate area of research," he said.

Others are more receptive to the theory, despite its thorny implications.

Dr. Melvin Konner, a biological anthropologist at Emory University in Atlanta, said he's impressed by the theory's ability to explain why all the Ashkenazi diseases are clustered "on about five pages of a biochemistry textbook." But, he added, Cochran and Harpending still have to show that the genes play a direct role in brain development.

"There's evidence that some of them do," he said. "It's not a crazy idea. It's just not nearly a proven idea."

It would be easy to test the theory, said Steven Pinker, a Harvard cognition researcher: "See if carriers of the Ashkenazi-typical genetic mutations score higher on IQ tests than their noncarrier siblings."

Cochran and Harpending readily acknowledge the need for such experiments. But they have no plans to do them. They say their role as theorists is to generate hypotheses that others can test.

"One criticism about our paper is 'It can't mean anything because they didn't do any new experiments,' " Cochran said. "OK, then I guess Einstein's papers didn't mean anything either."

A MUSLIM ASKS.....

On Mon, Jun 21, 2010 at 11:15 AM, Mubashir Inayet wrote:

Friends, ASA

Watching the news on TV I am shocked to learn how two Muslim ethnic groups are hacking each other to death in Kyrgyzstan. In Afghanistan the Northern Muslims speaking a different dialect are enemies of the southerners who speak Pushto.

In Pakistan, and in Karachi alone there are ethnic groups operating at violent odds with each other and although they are Muslims. Baluchs, Punjabis, Pushtoons, Muhajirs and Sindhis accuse each other of usurping rights!! There are political parties based on language and culture!!

The famous war between Kurds and Turks is still going on. We know the breakup of Pakistan and Bangladesh.

This reads like Europe of Medieval ages with 100 years wars and conflict in the name of sectarian and ethnic belief!! Someone remarked recently on the net that when Muslims are not fighting their real or percieved enemies, they get busy killing each other!! Why does bloodshed has to be the preferred solution to grievances?

QUESTION: Has religion failed in it's goal to unite believers? Does ethnicity tinged with sectarianism trumps faith? Does religion takes a back seat when it comes to self interest? If so, why?

I know the first knee jerk reply "They" make us fight". Even if true, why does religion and brotherhood not be a barrier to them making us fight?

Any thoughts outside the box? Any ideas?

Thanks. Mubashir

You think Anti-Semitism is in the Past?

On Sun, Jun 27, 2010 at 8:43 AM, Dirk Chardet wrote:
This ALL is very tricky, with the Saudi Royal Family being ...................... JEWISH originally and maybe still.


On Sun, Jun 27, 2010 at 10:17 PM, GennaHart gennahart@sbcglobal.net wrote:
David Duke is an honorble man who has never told a lie about the jews.

He even went to prison on a trumped up tax charge because he was critical of Jewish actions around the world.


On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 7:52 AM, John Hansen wrote:
>If the Jews put down their weapons today there would be no more Israel.

Sounds like a win/win to me.


On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 2:22 AM, wrote:
Ask not what the world did to Jews; ask why the Jews deserved it.


On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 7:27 AM, Alex James wrote:
All Zionist leaders have admitted that they speak with forked tongue.

Nazi Movement is Alive and Dangerous Today

On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 2:55 PM, alan B'Stard M P wrote:

Who made their nation economically strong and the best standard of living in the world whie the U.S and others were suffering? The Nazis did.


On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 4:52 PM, Randulf Johan Hansen wrote:

You have obviously forgotten that the Jew FDR had promised Jew Churchill to do his utmost to bring America into the war of England's side.

FDR, the Jew, forced Japan to attack Pearl Harbor.

I am so sad that few of you have read history written by non-Jews.

Randulf Johan Hansen¨www.thenewsturmer.com

Israel / Palestine was DESERTED WILDERNESS -- almost NO "Palestinians" lived there

http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~dhershkowitz/

First Photos of the Holy Land
Introduction

The first British Governor, Herbert Samuel writing in the Interim Report on the Civil Administration of Palestine to the League of Nations, June 1921, entitled "On the Condition of Palestine after the War" relates that "There are now in the whole of Palestine [what is today the State of Israel and the State of Jordan] hardly 700,000 people".

Today there are 6 million Jews and 4.5 million Arabs in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza alone, not counting Jordan.

These pictures illustrate without a doubt that there was massive Jewish and Arab immigration into Israel: The Jewish refugees fleeing religious and ethnic persecution from European and Arab States, and Arabs immigrants from Syria, Egypt, Jordan, and Iraq. These were not native "Palestinians" as they are called today, rather Arab migrant workers looking for a better standard of living. This story is brought to life in the following pages in over 460 photographs and lithographs of the period.

The Holy Land in the 19th Century
The Holy Land was a poor, largely deserted country during the 19th century. Its inhabitants were backward, its services meagre, its roads of poor quality and unsafe, and its economic activity was very limited. Robbery and assault were everyday occurrences. There were no medical services of any kind and plagues frequently took a heavy toll of life. The population dwindled gradually: entire villages were abandoned and cities became small towns with few inhabitants. Aside from Gaza and Jerusalem, each town in the Holy Land (up to the 1840's) had a populace of less than ten thousand. The deterioration of the country was a result of the negative development in the Ottoman Empire which underwent intensified internal decline from the XVIIth century and on. This fact left its impact on Palestine: the local governors became more corrupt, and neglected their obligations, the troops were beyong control and the Bedouin tribes from the desert broke into cultivated areas, turning vast sections into wilderness. As a result, disorder and insecurity spread, government construction and public works were neglected, agriculture and trade were severely damaged and the farmers were oppressed and impoverished.

The majority of the population was rural but even the urban residents earned their livelihood from agriculture. Some 600 of the country's 700 villages were located in the mountains, while the plains and valleys were largely abandoned, being swampy and infested with malaria. The only settlements in the valleys were situated at the foot of the mountains where they were less exposed to malaria and Bedouin attacks.

In 1831 Ottoman rule was interrupted by Muhammad 'Ali, who occupied Palestine and Syria until 1840. A new era began which was characterized by political and social reform aimed at centralizing control of the country, modernizing the administration and granting equal rights to non-Muslim minorities. The country was opened for the first time to widespread political, cultural and economic activity by the European powers. These new developments continued after the Ottoman rule was resumed in 1840-41. During the second half of the nineteenth century direct Ottoman control was gradually consolidated in all parts of the country, Bedouin attacks were checked, general security increased, the oppression of the urban population was eased to a considerable extent, and the involvement of the European powers expanded greatly. These developments brought about certain improvements in the country's economy and in the conditions of the inhabitants.

Jews of the Holy Land in the 19th Century
The Jews were concentrated mainly in the four "Holy Cities": Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias and Hebron. By and large, the Jews were regarded as second-class citizens of the Ottoman Empire. They encountered legal discrimination at every turn, and evidence given by them was not recognized by the courts. Jews were debarred from attaining high government office. They were subject to daily mockery and scorn, were forbidden to ride camels or horses within the city limits, and were obliged to make way for Moslems. Their persons and possessions were unprotected by law and prone to constant abuse (without any possibility of appealing to the courts of justice). M. Reisher, who lived in Jerusalem, writes in 1866:

"When a Jew walked among them in the market, one would throw a stone at him in order to kill him, another would pull his beard, and a third his ear-lock, yet another spit on his face, and he became a symbol of abuse".

Although their principal source of income was the "Haluka" (financial support from abroad), heavy taxes were imposed on them by the Turkish authorities. Subsequent to the Crimean War (1853-1854), there was a gradual improvement in the predicament of the Jews, mainly as the result of the protection granted them by the consuls in certain cases. In any event, they continued to be second-class citizens reliant on the clemency of the ruling authorities and the Moslem population. From the 1840's the Jewish community grew considerably through new waves of immigrants, mainly from Russia. In the 1880's the Jewish population was further augmented by refugees and agricultural settlements which were founded in many parts of the country. Jewish urban centers (particularly in Jerusalem, Jaffa and Haifa), developed as well.

The Landscape of the Holy Land in the 19th Century
The views unfolding before the eyes of visitors to the Holy Land in former times differed from those seen today. To a large extent the landscape was one of desolation and ruin, swamps and uncultivated wilderness, with a sparse and backward population living mainly in small settlements. The most prominent changes have occurred in the coastal plain and the valleys of the interior, the greater parts of which were formerly covered by swamps and sparsely settled by Bedouins and poor Arab peasants. Today, these are the most highly populated and prosperous regions of Israel. The Sharon and certain areas of Samaria and Judea were partly afforested in those days[1]. On the other hand, visitors to the Holy Land found its scenery far more reminiscent of the Biblical world than is the case at present. This also applied to the day-to-day life of its inhabitants and their various occupations, the latter having undergone but minor changes from ancient times to the 19th century. Animals were still being used for ploughing and threshing, flour was ground by millstones as in days of yore, water was brought from the wells in jugs, camel caravans made their way along the roads, women bore bundles of kindling on their heads. All these scenes created the impression of a remote and enchanted world whose association with the Biblical world was inevitable. They were often captured for posterity by the lens of the camera. Today these photographs frequently serve as the sole evidence of a way-of-life and culture which within a single generation will belong wholly to the past.

[1] The map of the Palestine Exploration Fund (1880) demarcates two large oak forests in the Sharon. One of these forests began west of Karkur, while the other extended southward from the Crocodile River almost to the Yarkon River. Some old trees of the former forest still stand west of Benyamina and near Pardess Hanna. No tall trees of the second forest have survived but a considerable area of old stump growth may still be seen.

Towns of the Holy Land in the 19th Century
Few of the urban areas of the Holy Land during the 19th century would measure up to present-day criteria. They were merely large villages or small towns. Even in the "large" cities, such as Acre and Jerusalem, the population did not exceed 10,000. For reasons of defense, some of the towns were surrounded by walls, but towards the middle of the 19th century the latter ceased to be functional (the walls of Safed and Tiberias were destroyed by the earthquake of 1837). Only Jerusalem and Acre were considered to be fortified cities.

The towns were very densely built up and were unable to expand beyond their walls until the mid-19th century because of the Turkish security regulation, prohibiting construction within 850 metres of the city limits. A more liberal approach became manifest only in the latter half of that century when the security situation improved and the influence of the new era began to be felt.


Most of the towns were characterized by an absence of planning, dark, narrow, winding, unpaved alleys, open sewage canals, and small gloomy shops. The majority of the houses, with the exception of those in Jerusalem, Hebron and Nablus, were built of mud[2].

Cultural life and entertainment were totally lacking in the towns, and the latter boasted no avenues, squares, broad streets or public buildings. At sunset the gates of walled cities such as Jerusalem were shut and all late-comers were obliged to spend the night outside.

The markets (bazaars) played a key role. They were very picturesque and aroused the wonderment of pilgrims who flocked to photograph them, in particular the markets of Jaffa, Jerusalem and Bethlehem, as mementos of their visit to the Holy Land. These markets served not only for the sale of goods but were also the place where most of the artisans practised their crafts. There were special markets for the various craftsmen and merchants: metalworkers, tanners, oil vendors, butchers, etc. In certain markets (mainly those in the principal towns), fellaheen offered their produce for direct sale. Thus, there were special livestock markets in Jerusalem (in the Sultan's Pool) and Jaffa, while Safed had a market for grain and charcoal.

During the 19th century the economy of the towns of the Holy Land was largely based on agriculture. Their inhabitants owned fields and orchards in the vicinity and the more affluent among them gained their livelihood by exploiting the labour of the fellaheen.

[2] This was the situation up to the mid-19th century. Towards the end of that century gradual improvements were introduced.


The Milkman in Tiberias, 1858 This rare photograph was taken by the well-known Jerusalemexplorer E. Pierotti and is published here for the first time. [medium][large]

Tiberias before the earthquake of 1837 [medium][large]

Tiberias after the earthquake of 1837 [medium][large]

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Source: "First Photographs of the Holy Land" by Eli ShillerCopyright © 1979, Eli Shiller. All Rights Reserverd. Low grade pictures, published with permission. Not to be stored in any retrieval or storage system.
This page prepared by David Hershkowitz