This is what my friend Leila had to say about the NYT article on water and food in the Middle East in my previous post. (I post with her permission):

"Of course they have to portray the Israeli with his high tech saying "you have to farm like an engineer, not like a peasant." Typical.

My late friend Karl Linn, trained at that elite Zionist agriculture school in Palestine who at the end of his life was a complete anti-Zionist - Karl Linn told me that he had reconsidered all of the principles of Israeli agriculture. He felt they had completely ignored the traditional, sustainable wisdom of Palestinian farmers, to their detriment. He was an urban gardening grand master and devoted to sustainability and social justice, even though it meant rejecting Zionism which had saved his life when he fled the Nazis as a child. I once referred to him as an Israeli and he corrected me. He left Palestine in '47 and he never believed he was an Israeli.

Yes they will farm like engineers and destroy their soil and their water table like stupid engineers. Viva los campesinos!

God help all the people of the Middle East."

Karl Linn's homepage is: http://www.karllinn.org/

Leila blogs as Dove's Eye View - An Arab-American woman sees signs of hope on http://bedouina.typepad.com