i really don't know why god gave his chosen people one of the ugliest places on earth, i mean even jordan has more beautiful landscapes than israel/palestine. god could have given them any other better place. i know israels had done enormous efforts to beautify it but its usless. mark twain said that when he visited it in 1867 its the ugliest place on earth.

not all is shiny is gold, and not all what's precious shine.

who cares what you think of Israel or what the 'glorious' Mark Twain had to say about it...? if this is your first post, it's easily recognizable that all you want is to bash with us... try some more political statements - it's arguable, unlike the beauty of the 100th smallest country in the world.

In the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, a litany of Christian travelers - Siebald Rieter and Johann Tucker, Arnold Van Harff and Father Michael Nuad, Martin Kabatnik and Felix Fabri, Count Constantine Francois Volney and Alphonse de Lamartine, Mark Twain and Sir George Gawler, Sir George Adam Smith and Edward Robinson - found Palestine virtually empty, except for Jewish communities in Jerusalem, Safed, Shechem, Hebron, Gaza, Ramleh, Acre, Sidon, Tyre, Haifa, Irsuf, Caesarea, and El Arish, and throughout Galilee towns - Kfar Alma, Ein Zeitim, Biria, Pekiin, Kfar Hanania, Kfar Kana and Kfar Yassif. To stay, these Jews had submitted to innumerable conquerors, taxes, pogroms and degradation. But they stayed. In 1799, Palestine was still so much in need of people that Napoleon Bonaparte championed a full-scale return of Jews.

In the early 19th century, Palestine was a backward, neglected province of the Ottoman Empire. Travelers to Palestine from the Western world left records of what they saw there. The theme throughout their reports is dismal: The land was empty, neglected, abandoned, desolate, fallen into ruins.

In Jerusalem, all reports and journals of travelers, pilgrims and government representatives during these years, repeatedly record the poverty, filth and neglect and the desolate nature of the countryside. Early photographs show lepers in rags and dilapidated buildings. Jerusalem was surrounded by marauding bands of Bedouin Arabs and had to close her gates at nightfall and reopen them at first light, a practice that was similar in Biblical times.

Some quotes from the writings of these visitors before modern times:

* Nothing there [Jerusalem] to be seen but a little of the old walls which is yet remaining and all the rest is grass, moss and weeds. [English pilgrim in 1590]

* The country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is of a body of population. [British consul in 1857]

* There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent [valley of Jezreel] -- not for 30 miles in either direction... One may ride ten miles hereabouts and not see ten human beings. ... For the sort of solitude to make one dreary, come to Galilee ... Nazareth is forlorn ... Jericho lies a moldering ruin ... Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and humiliation... untenanted by any living creature... A desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds ... a silent, mournful expanse ... a desolation ... We never saw a human being on the whole route ... Hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive tree and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil had almost deserted the country ... Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery Palestine must be the prince. The hills barren and dull, the valleys unsightly deserts [inhabited by] swarms of beggars with ghastly sores and malformations. Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes ... desolate and unlovely ... [Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, 1867]

i really don't know why god gave his chosen people one of the ugliest places on earth, i mean even jordan has more beautiful landscapes than israel/palestine. god could have given them any other better place. i know israels had done enormous efforts to beautify it but its usless. mark twain said that when he visited it in 1867 its the ugliest place on earth.

:lol:

"unlike the beauty of the 100th smallest country in the world."

I am curious, which are those 99 other smaller countries. :lol: