The Jewish perspective of the Arab-Israeli conflict is being systematically suppressed in the academic circles in the US and elsewhere. You can help fighting indoctrination in K-12 schools and university campuses by requesting that the Jewish perspective be heard. Contact teachers, lecturers and professors and let them know that ignoring the Jewish perspective, and presenting only the Muslim perspective of the Arab-Israeli conflict, is plain indoctrination, and betrays the ideals of education.

Below is a letter I lately send to many graduate students and professors at the US universities:

Dear Graduate Student/Professor:

The May 2026 edition of my “Jewish Studies” books are now available for free download (pdf) at the ResearchGate website:

1) “Ethnic Studies in K12 schools: The Jewish module”

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361800823_Ethnic_Studies_in_K12_schools_The_Jewish_module

You will find here a history of the Jewish people, their literature and music, as well as an analysis of the roots of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Do you want to know what Mark Twain thought about the Holy Land? Check pages 80-83. The book is recommended for use in an “Ethnic Studies” course for 9th graders in K-12 schools (compulsory in my state of California, as well as in other states).

2) “The root of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the path to peace”

Lecturers and professors at universities, who deal with the Arab-Israeli conflict in their social and political studies courses, can use instead my book “The root of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the path to peace”:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/364057784_The_root_of_the_Arab-Israeli_conflict_and_the_path_to_peace

3) “La raíz del conflicto árabe-israelí y el camino hacia la paz”

This is the Spanish edition of my second book, available at:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/364058058_La_raiz_del_conflicto_arabe-israeli_y_el_camino_hacia_la_paz

For those who prefer a hard copy: paperbacks are available at Amazon at minimum cost ($0 royalties to the author).

Curious to know what the famous writer Mark Twain thought about the Holy Land? Here is an excerpt of his writings, preceded by a short background introduction (that you will find in my books):

In 1453, Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire – heir to the Roman Empire – fell to the Ottoman forces. For many, the fall of Constantinople signaled the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Renaissance Era in Europe. This date marks also the beginning of the Ottoman Empire, that lasted four hundred years until the end of World War I in 1918.

The map below shows the extent of the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the 19th century.

From this map it can be seen that at the beginning of the 19th century the Ottoman Empire extended over large regions of the Middle East (from today’s Turkey and Iraq and, through Syria and Lebanon till Egypt, and the western Arabian Peninsula along the Red Sea, including the holy cities of Mecca and Medina), the Balkans in Eastern Europe (today’s Greece and extending till Austria) and parts of Northern Africa along the Mediterranean Sea (from today’s Algeria to Libya).

“Palestine” was never recognized as a distinct geographical area during the 400 years of Ottoman rule, and the name “Palestine” seldom appears in official Ottoman documents. Administratively, the Ottoman Empire was divided into provinces, known as ‘eyalets’ (or, after 1864, as ‘vilayets’), and further subdivided into districts, known as ‘sanjaks’. The region of “Palestine” appeared, during the rule of the Ottoman Empire, as part of the eyalets of Beirut and Damascus, and some of its districts were the Sanjak of Acre (today northern Israel) and the Sanjaks of Nablus and Jerusalem (located in the biblical Samaria and Judea, respectively, the latter district including also the coastal cities of Jaffa and Gaza.)

“Around 1800 … Palestine numbered between 250,000 and 300,000 inhabitants. For the same period, the population of the Ottoman Empire as a whole was estimated as between 25 and 32 million people … Istanbul (aka Constantinople) had between 300,000 and 350,000 residents within its city walls, and 600,000 in the wider metropolitan area. Cairo had around 210,000 inhabitants in 1800; … Damascus, Aleppo, and Tunis each about 100,000; Baghdad around 70,000 … Even if some of these figures can be disputed, they still give a rough indication of the relative size of these cities. Palestine, at least outside of the inland hills and mountains, was indeed sparsely populated, and its demographic weight within the Ottoman Empire was small… Around 1800, Jerusalem registered between 8,000 and 10,000 inhabitants, Gaza 8,000, and Nablus 7,500. Safed and Hebron numbered from 5,000 to 6,000; Tiberias, Ramla and Jaffa 2,000 to 3,000; Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Haifa each had 1,000 to 2,000.”

“In regional terms, the demographic weight of Palestine remained small into the nineteenth century, and its economic potential insignificant. Its importance for the Ottomans was less economic than strategic, with the strategic dimension largely determined by religion … But more important than the holy sites of Palestine themselves was the protection of the Islamic pilgrimage route to Mecca and Medina, which was crucial to the legitimacy of the Ottoman dynasty and the local rulers. To protect the route, the Ottomans constructed roads, ports, and fortifications, stationed troops at critical points, and maintained facilities such as rest areas, wells, food and water.”

[excerpts from Gudrun Kramer’s book “A history of Palestine”, Princeton University Press, 2008]

Mark Twain on Palestine in the 19th century

Samuel L. Clemens (literary name: Mark Twain), was commissioned by the San Francisco journal Daily Alta California, to write his impressions during his long tour to Europe and the Holy Land during the year 1867. Mark Twain arrived in Palestine by land, after visiting Damascus and Beirut. The periodic letters to the journal where later put together in a book, titled “The innocents abroad”, published in year 1869. “The innocents abroad” was Mark Twain’s first major book, and it became his best-selling book during his lifetime. Here are some short excerpts of his impressions of the Holy Land:

“I can see easily enough that if I wish to profit by this tour and come to a correct understanding of the matters of interest connected with it, I must studiously and faithfully unlearn a great many things I have somehow absorbed concerning Palestine. I must begin a system of reduction. Like my grapes which the spies bore out of the Promised Land [*], I have got everything in Palestine on too large a scale. Some of my ideas were wild enough. The word Palestine always brought to my mind a vague suggestion of a country as large as the United States. I do not know why, but such was the case. I suppose it was because I could not conceive of a small country having so large a history.”

[*] Twain refers here to the story in the Bible (Numbers 13 and 14) about the surveyors Moses sent to scout the Promised Land. They returned with giant grapes, so big that it took two men to carry one cluster.

“Gray lizards, those heirs of ruin, of sepulchers and desolations, glided in and out among the rocks or lay still and sunned themselves. Where prosperity has reigned, and fallen; where glory has flamed, and gone out; where beauty has dwelt, and passed away; where gladness was, and sorrow is; where the pomp of life has been, and silence and death brood in its high places, there this reptile makes his home, and mocks at human vanity. His coat is the color of ashes: and ashes are the symbol of hopes that have perished, of aspirations that came to nought, of loves that are buried. If he could speak, he would say, Build temples: I will lord it in their ruins; build palaces: I will inhabit them; erect empires: I will inherit them; bury your beautiful: I will watch the worms at their work; and you, who stand here and moralize over me: I will crawl over your corpse at the last.”

“A fast walker could go outside the walls of Jerusalem and walk entirely around the city in an hour. I do not know how else to make one understand how small it is … The population of Jerusalem is composed of Moslems, Jews, Greeks, Latins, Armenians, Syrians, Copts, Abyssinians, Greek Catholics, and a handful of Protestants … It seems to me that all the races and colors and tongues of the earth must be represented among the fourteen thousand souls that dwell in Jerusalem. Rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt … Leppers, cripples, the blind, and the idiotic, assail you on every hand, and they know but one word of but one language apparently – the eternal ‘bucksheesh’ [begging for money] … Jerusalem is mournful, and dreary, and lifeless. I would not desire to live here.”

Mark Twain, from his book “The innocents abroad”, excerpts from Chapters 46, 47 and 53.

Palestine and Jerusalem – on the eve of the birth of modern Zionism – were distant and neglected places of the Ottoman Empire, and were not in the minds of the Muslim world.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)