"While Jewish pioneers were few, it could be evaded. Writing in 1907, when there were about 10,000 settlers, Isaac Epstein, a Russian-born teacher who had come to Palestine in 1886, called attitudes towards the Arabs "the hidden question". He criticised the leaders of the Zionist movement who engaged in politics while ignoring that "there resides in our treasured land an entire people which has clung to it for hundreds of years ... The Arab, like all other men, is strongly attached to his homeland"." (thanks Jasser)