Mark Twain in Palestine: How Satire Was Twisted into Zionist Propaganda

Zionists often selectively quote Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad to claim 19th-century Palestine was “a land without a people.” In reality, Twain also described fertile and verdant valleys circled by villages, and groves of olives, figs and pomegranates. But Twain wasn’t doing fieldwork—he was a satirist hired by a newspaper to entertain readers' back home. Contemporary travelers, researchers and Ottoman records show a populated, cultivated land exporting millions of oranges and liters of olive oil. This video exposes how satire was cherry-picked and twisted into propaganda—and restores the truth of a living, working Palestine.

Sources:
Primary economic data
Alexander Schölch, “European Penetration and the Economic Development of Palestine, 1856–1882,” Studies in the Economic and Social History of the Middle East (Oxford, 1981).
↳ Data tables on Jaffa port exports

“Agricultural Exports via Jaffa (1856–1882),” Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question, Palestinian Studies Digital Archive.
↳ Reproduces Schölch’s series and consular data showing a trade-balance surplus.

Citrus statistics
Schölch, ibid.; summarized in consular reports cited by The Oxford Handbook of Palestine and the Palestinian Diaspora (2020) and regional press data (Haifa and Jaffa ports).

Travel sources
Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad (1869)

Edward Robinson, Biblical Researches in Palestine (1838).

Victor Guérin, Description géographique, historique et archéologique de la Palestine (1868-1880).

Bayard Taylor, The Lands of the Saracen (1854).

Laurence Oliphant, Haifa, or Life in Modern Palestine (1887).

Population & land use
Beshara Doumani, Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700–1900 (1995).

Justin McCarthy, The Population of Palestine: Population Statistics of the Late Ottoman Period and the Mandate (1990).