With the Turks in Palestine

CHAPTER VII

FIGHT­ING THE LO­CUSTS

While I was trav­el­ing in the south, an­oth­er men­ace to our peo­ple's wel­fare had ap­peared: the lo­custs. From the Soudan they came in tremen­dous hosts--black clouds of them that ob­scured the sun. It seemed as if Na­ture had joined in the con­spir­acy against us. These lo­custs were of the species known as the pil­grim, or wan­der­ing, lo­cust; for forty years they had not come to Pales­tine, but now their vis­ita­tion was like that of which the prophet Joel speaks in the Old Tes­ta­ment. They came full-​grown, ripe for breed­ing; the ground was cov­ered with the fe­males dig­ging in the soil and de­posit­ing their egg-​pack­ets, and we knew that when they hatched we should be over­whelmed, for there was not a foot of ground in which these eggs were not to be found.

The men­ace was so great that even the mil­itary au­thor­ities were obliged to take no­tice of it. They re­al­ized that if it were al­lowed to ful­fill it­self, there would be famine in the land, and the army would suf­fer with the rest. Dje­mal Pasha sum­moned my broth­er (the Pres­ident of the Agri­cul­tur­al Ex­per­iment Sta­tion at Ath­lit) and in­trust­ed him with the or­ga­ni­za­tion of a cam­paign against the in­sects. It was a hard enough task. The Arabs are lazy, and fa­tal­is­tic be­sides; they can­not un­der­stand why men should at­tempt to fight the _Djesh Al­lah_ (“God's Army”), as they call the lo­custs. In ad­di­tion, my broth­er was se­ri­ous­ly hand­icapped by lack of petroleum, gal­va­nized iron, and oth­er ar­ti­cles which could not be ob­tained be­cause of the Al­lies' block­ade.

In spite of these draw­backs, how­ev­er, he at­tempt­ed to work up a sci­en­tif­ic cam­paign. Dje­mal Pasha put some thou­sands of Arab sol­diers at his dis­po­si­tion, and these were set to work dig­ging trench­es in­to which the hatch­ing lo­custs were driv­en and de­stroyed. This is the on­ly means of cop­ing with the sit­ua­tion: once the lo­custs get their wings, noth­ing can be done with them. It was a hope­less fight. Noth­ing short of the cooeper­ation of ev­ery farmer in the coun­try could have won the day; and while the peo­ple of the pro­gres­sive Jew­ish vil­lages strug­gled on to the end,--men, wom­en, and chil­dren work­ing in the fields un­til they were ex­haust­ed,--the Arab farm­ers sat by with fold­ed hands. The threats of the mil­itary au­thor­ities on­ly stirred them to half-​heart­ed ef­forts. Fi­nal­ly, af­ter two months of toil, the cam­paign was giv­en up and the lo­custs broke in waves over the coun­try­side, de­stroy­ing ev­ery­thing. As the prophet Joel said, “The field is wast­ed, the land mour­neth; for the corn is wast­ed: the new wine is dried up, the oil lan­guisheth.... The land is as the gar­den of Eden be­fore them, and be­hind them a des­olate wilder­ness.”

Not on­ly was ev­ery green leaf de­voured, but the very bark was peeled from the trees, which stood out white and life­less, like skele­tons. The fields were stripped to the ground, and the old men of our vil­lages, who had giv­en their lives to cul­ti­vat­ing these gar­dens and vine­yards, came out of the syn­agogues where they had been pray­ing and wail­ing, and looked on the ru­in with dimmed eyes. Noth­ing was spared. The in­sects, in their fierce hunger, tried to en­gulf ev­ery­thing in their way. I have seen Arab ba­bies, left by their moth­ers in the shade of some tree, whose faces had been de­voured by the on­com­ing swarms of lo­custs be­fore their screams had been heard. I have seen the car­cass­es of an­imals hid­den from sight by the un­du­lat­ing, rustling blan­ket of in­sects. And in the face of such a men­ace the Arabs re­mained in­ert. With their cus­tom­ary fa­tal­ism they ac­cept­ed the lo­cust plague as a nec­es­sary evil. They could not un­der­stand why we were so fran­tic to fight it. And as a mat­ter of fact, they re­al­ly got a good deal out of the lo­custs, for they loved to feast up­on the fe­male in­sects. They gath­ered piles of them and threw them up­on burn­ing char­coal, then, squat­ting around the fire, de­voured the roast­ed in­sects with great gus­to. I saw a four­teen-​year-​old boy eat as many as a hun­dred at a sit­ting.