6 Israel and the Arab-Israeli Conflict
was then a generally desolate Palestine in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries . They overcame extraordinary obstacles in land reclamation , farming , water resources , malaria , and other health hazards , while also defending against violent attacks by some local Arabs . Their efforts laid the foundation for the modern State of Israel .
Speaking of the desolation , the American author and humorist Mark Twain visited the area in 1867 . This is how he described it :
… [ A ] desolate country whose soil is rich enough , but is given over wholly to weeds — a silent mournful expanse …. A desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action …. We never saw a human being on the whole route …. There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere . Even the olive and the cactus , those fast friends of the worthless soil , had almost deserted the country .
To fast-forward for a moment , any visitor to Israel can see the miraculous transformation of the land , as forests were lovingly planted ( Israel is one of the only countries that entered the 21st century with more trees than it had 100 years ago ), the soil was irrigated and tilled , and thriving cities , including Tel Aviv , and towns were built .
Israel ’ s adversaries to this day maliciously twist the meaning of Zionism — the movement for self-determination of the Jewish people — and try to present it as a demonic force . Moreover , they seek to depict the area as well-developed by the local Arabs , who were somehow shoved aside by the arriving Jews . Their larger goal is to undermine Israel ’ s raison d ’ être and isolate the state from the community of nations .
This happened , for example , in 1975 , when the UN General Assembly , over the strenuous objections of the democratic countries , adopted a resolution labeling Zionism as “ racism ,” a canard that emerged from Soviet-Arab collaboration . The resolution was finally repealed , with U . S . leadership , in 1991 , but the canard resurfaced in 2001 at the World Conference Against Racism in Durban , South Africa . The Arab bloc , however , failed in its effort to have Zionism condemned in the conference documents , even as widespread