ZIONISM FROM THF. STANDPOINT OF ITS \ ICTIMS S5 It seems as if God has covered the soil of Palestine with rocks and marshes and sand, so that its beauty can only be brought out by those who love it and will devote their lives to healing its wounds,” The context o f this remark, how ever, is a sale made to the Zionists by a wealthy absentee landlord (the Lebanese Sursuk family) o f unpromising marshland. W eizmann admits that this particular sale was of some, by no means a great deal, of Palestine, yet the impression he gives is o f a whole territory essentially unused, unappreciated, misunderstood (if one can use such a word in this connection). Despite the people who lived on it, Palestine was therefore to be made useful, appreciated, understandable. The native inhabitants were believed curiously to be out o f touch with history and, it seemed to follow , they were not really present. In the following passage, written by Weizmann to describe Palestine when he first visited there in 1907, notice how the contrast between past neglect and forlornness and present “ tone and progressive spirit” (he was writing in 1941) is intended to justify the introduction o f foreign colonies and settlements. A dolorous country it was on the whole, one of the most neglected corners of the miserably neglected Turkish Empire. [Here, Weizmann uses “ neglect" to describe Palestine's native inhabitants, the fact of whose residence there is not a sufficient reason to characterize Palestine as anything but an essentially empty and patient territory, awaiting people who show a proper care for it,] Its total population was something above six hundred thousand, of which about eighty thousand were Jews. The latter lived mostly in the cities. . . . But neither the colonies nor the city settlements in any way resembled, as far as vigor, tone and progressive spirit are concerned, the colonies and settlements of our day.)! O ne short-term gain was that Zionism "raised the vaiue of the . . . land,” and the Arabs could reap profits even if politically the land was being cut out from underneath them. A s against native neglect and decrepitude, Weizmann