38 Herzl, Complete Diaries, 757. Herzl spells the name Krämer.
39 The reference here is to the physician Aaron Meir Masie (1858–1930). Born in Eastern Europe, he studied in Mir, Zurich, and Paris before immigrating to Palestine in 1888. He was appointed chief medical officer for the Rothschild settlements. See Joseph Gedaliah Klausner, “Masie, Aaron Meir,” EJ2
40 Ibid., 762.
41 Herzl’s accusation is, as far as I have been able to tell, nowhere corroborated nor repeated.
42 The fact that Kremer was in Palestine in 1898, of course, also indicates that he was either a member of the pre-Zionist Jewish community of Palestine or that he had come to Palestine in the first wave of Zionist immigration.
43 On the generally ethnic usage of the term Ishmaelites, see Israel Ephʿal, “Ishmaelites,” EJ2; “Ishmael,” EQ; and “Races,” EQ. On Ishmael in rabbinic sources, see Bakhos, Ishmael on the Border.
44 ha-Or, December 12, 1910.
45 Kremer, in ha-Ẓevi 25:56 (December 18, 1908), 3, acknowledged that he sometimes published with these initials, though he claims that someone else had done so as well, and that, as a result, to avoid confusion and so as not to be associated with another’s views, he would cease to do so. However, given that this 1910 article is on the same subject as Kremer’s typical articles, it would seem that, sometime between 1908 and 1910, Kremer had reclaimed his initials for the purposes of articles in Ben-Yehuda’s papers.
46 ha-Ẓevi 25:75 (January 10, 1909), 2.
47 ha-Ḥerut 3:6 (November 4, 1910), 1–2.
48 Cf. Gad Frumkin, who retrospectively wrote that in this period “the Muslims among the Arabs saw themselves as close to the religion and race [la-dat ve-la-geza’] of the Jews.” Frumkin, Derekh shofet bi-rushalayim, 218. Cited in Bartal, “Du-kiyum nikhsaf,” 10.
49 ha-Ḥerut 3:13 (November 21, 1910), 3. It is also possible, of course, that the term Christians here refers to non-Arab Christians, such as British Christians who were then in control of the region, but this is left ambiguous.
50 ha-Ẓevi 25:30 (November 13, 1908), 1–2.
51 the dictionary entry ʿarvi in the Ben-Yehuda dictionary was written later by Moshe Zvi Segal. See the editor’s note, MBY, vol. 9.
52 Ben-Yehuda’s papers pay particular attention to a specific subset of Christian Arabs, namely, “Orthodox Arabs.” See, for instance, ha-Ẓevi, November 25, 1908; December 22, 1908; December 24, 1908; January 4, 1909; March 24, 1909.
53 The editors on the masthead at this point were Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, his wife Hemda, and their son Itamar Ben-Avi. Presumably one of them edited this section.
54 The phrase used is ha-kever ha-kadosh, which the author places in quotation marks. It is not clear whether these marks are meant to be derisive or simply indicate the name of the location.
55 ha-Ẓevi 25:57 (December 20, 1908), 2.
56 Literally: “houses.”
57 ha-Ẓevi 25:71 (January 5, 1909), 2.
58 See also ha-Ẓevi 25:155 (April 25, 1909), 2, on the murder of “the Christian Arab representative arslan Bey.” The reference here is to the murder of Muhammad Arslan Bey on April 13, 1909, in Istanbul. For a contemporary observer’s account, see McCullagh, The Fall of Abd-Ul-Hamid, 316.
59 ha-Ẓevi 25:175 (May 19, 1909), 2.
60 The article indicates that “the Arabs” made this arrangement. This is presumably a reference to the “Christian Arabs” from the previous sentence, but the fact that they are listed simply as Arabs here is yet another complication in this question of nomenclature.
61 In telling of the contract they signed with the sailors, the author refers to them here simply as “the Arabs,” but the previous paragraph makes it clear that these Arabs are exclusively “Christian Arabs.”
62 The reports of the murder of the “Christian Arab” delegate are all the more curious and revealing because the murdered delegate was not actually Christian. Muhammad Arslan was a Druze emir from Lattakia in the vilayet of Beirut. The presence in Palestine and the broader Levant of a non-Jewish community that was neither Christian nor properly Muslim might have complicated the perspective of some Zionists who viewed their neighbors in dichotomous religious terms. While Zionists (and later Israelis) would come to relate to the Druze very differently from the way they treated Palestine’s other non-Jewish residents, at this early stage of encounter some may not have understood the distinctions and presumed that, in the Levant, a non-Muslim non-Jew was a Christian. In contrast to their views of Christians and Muslims, Jews generally lacked an inherited discourse or approach to the Druze, members of an esoteric religious sect formed in the eleventh century. On Arslan, see McCullagh, The Fall of Abd-Ul-Hamid, 96–97, 148;Akarlı, The Long Peace, 153; Prätor, Der Arabische Faktor in der jungtürkischen Politik, 60. On the Druze of Palestine, see Falah, “A History of the Druze Settlements in Palestine during the Ottoman Period,” 31–48. On the relationship between the State of Israel and the Druze, see, for instance, Parsons, “The Druze and the Birth of Israel”; Frisch, “The Druze Minority in the Israeli Military”; Gelber, “Antecedents of the Jewish-Druze Alliance in Palestine.” I am grateful to Jens Hanssen for pointing out the Zionist newspapers’ mislabeling of Arslan as a Christian.
63 Some version of this report was apparently first published in Hod ha-zman, a periodical published first in St. Petersburg, then in Vilnius.
64 The terms used here are muslimiyut, literally “Muslimness,” and noẓriyut, which might be translated as either “Christianity” or “Christianness.”
65 Even if this article was simply copied verbatim from Hod ha-zeman, the fact that this particular article was chosen (from among the countless others in the contemporary press) for inclusion in ha-Ẓevi suggests that the editors appreciated its tone and implication.
66 The text reads: “All of them—milvad be-rosham—all of them are haters of humanity.” The phrase milvad be-rosham is ambiguous but may mean “aside from their leader.” I am uncertain whom the author has in mind here.
67 The term used is humaniyut, which might also be rendered “humanism.”
68 ha-ʿam: literally, “the people” or “the nation.”
69 ha-Ẓevi 25:47 (December 8, 1908), 3.
70 Indeed, Russian Christians, a population particularly despised in the Ottoman context.
71 The section titled Doʾar ha-Ẓevi was a sort of classifieds section of ha-Ẓevi, for which advertisers and other correspondents paid a small fee (a tenth-piece) per line. See, e.g., ha-Ẓevi 25:39 (November 24, 1908), 3, for an explanation of the system.
72 ha-Ẓevi 25:42 (November 27, 1908), Supplement, 2. C.Q.F.D. is the French equivalent of the Latin term of logic Q.E.D. The continuation of this notice becomes even more inscrutable.
73 Ibid.
74 The related idea of the Jewish Arab or the Arab Jew has been the subject of much discussion in recent years. See, e.g., Shenhav, The Arab Jews; Somekh, Baghdad, Yesterday; Gottreich, “Historicizing the Concept of Arab Jews in the Maghrib,” 433–51; Levy, “Historicizing the Concept of Arab Jews in the Mashriq,” 452–69; Jacobson, From Empire to Empire, 111–16.
75 ‘Am here could also be taken as “people.”
76 The phrase is ha-ḥezyon ha-ʿarvi. Because the term ʿarvi can mean both Arab and Arabic, that is, both an ethnic group and a language, there is always a degree of interpretation in which one engages in translating the word. This is especially treacherous in a project such as that of this chapter, which aims to be sensitive to the choice of terminology in these newspapers. I therefore render the present phrase as “Arabic Theater” and not “Arab Theater” with an awareness that the intended meaning may have been the latter, even though, in my view, this would seem unlikely.
77 See previous note.
78 ha-Or 2:55:230 (December 22, 1910), 3.
79 On the Bibas visit, see Snir, “Arabness, Egyptianness, Zionism, and Cosmopolitanism,” 139; Yehoshua and Yehoshua, Yerushalayim ha-yeshanah ba-ʿayin u-va-lev, 220–2
1.
80 ha-Or 2:58:233 (December 26, 1910), 3. Interestingly, the advertisement that this acting troupe subsequently placed in ha-Or does not mention Bibas’s ethnic or religious identity, nor, for that matter, the language of the play. The title of the play is listed as The Vision of Joseph the Righteous, and the ad offers only these details: “In the light of day on Thursday, the 28th of Kislev, the Egyptian organization headed by the famous actor Rahamim Bibas will perform the interesting story of Joseph the Righteous in five acts.” The ad further indicates that the proceeds will benefit the Society of Love and Brotherhood, a Hebrew nationalist organization primarily of Jerusalemite Sephardim (though there were some Ashkenazim as well) that, at its peak, counted about two hundred members. The organization existed from 1910 to 1913. See Bezalel, Noladetem ẓiyonim, 217–18.
81 See below on Yitzhak Ben-Zvi and David Ben-Gurion’s World War I–era writings on Palestine.
82 ha-Ẓevi 25:64 (December 28, 1908), 2. The author ends with what seems to be a critique of Jewish values: “How strange is the nation of Israel, satisfied with so little indeed: prayer and death, death and prayer. For what does it need to live?”
83 ha-Ẓevi 25:75 (January 10, 1909), 1. On the waves of Yemenite Jewish immigration to Palestine in this period, see Druyan, Be-ein “marvad-kesamim”; Druyan, “ʿAliyatam ve-hitʿarutam shel yehudei teiman ba-ʿaliyah ha-rishonah.”
84 ha-Ḥerut 3:43 (January 30, 1911), 3–4.
85 Here, as throughout the literature of this period, the definition and thus referent of the terms “nation” and “land” are ambiguous. The context of the letter suggests broad definitions of both, namely, the Ottoman “nation” and the Ottoman Empire, respectively, but other interpretations might be reasonable as well.
86 ha-Ḥerut 2:100 (May 30, 1910), 2–3.
87 See Khalidi, Palestinian Identity.
88 ha-Ḥerut 2:67 (March 2, 1910), 2.
89 These lectures were published in Drews and Loofs, Hat Jesus gelebt? See also Drews, Die Christusmythe; Drews and Burns, The Christ Myth.
90 The suggestion here would seem to be that the notion of the trinity violates true monotheism.
91 In other words, it would be better to have no Jesus than a Jewish Jesus.
92 ha-Ḥerut 3:18 (December 2, 1910), 1.
93 The reference here is likely to Yosef Hayim Brenner. On the Brenner Affair, see Govrin, “Meʾoraʿ Brener”; Knaʿani, ha-ʿAliyah ha-sheniyah ha-ʿovedet ve-yaḥasah la-dat ve-la-masoret, 71–81. See also Almog, “The Role of Religious Values in the Second Aliyah,” 240–41.
94 Gidney, The History of the London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews, viii.
95 On the medieval antecedents of anti-Christian polemics in Islamic lands, see Lasker, “The Jewish Critique of Christianity under Islam in the Middle Ages.”
96 Literally: “a rabbi for Jews and a Christian Hasid.”
97 ha-Ḥerut 1:29 (August 4, 1909), 3.
98 ha-Ḥerut 1:3 (May 18, 1909), 1.
99 See Cohen, “Fashioning Imperial Citizens,” 3. Cohen identifies a number of myths developed by Ottoman Jewish elites to claim a special relationship between the Ottoman state and the Jews. One of these myths is that “the Jews of Ottoman realms had been mercifully received by the empire in 1492, when they had nowhere else to go.” Cohen astutely draws our attention to the fact that this “picture necessarily excluded Jewish communities who had lived in the area before the Ottoman conquest—such as Greek-speaking Romaniot Jews of the eastern Mediterranean basin or the Arabic-speaking communities spread across the empire—as well as those who had found their way to the empire for reasons unrelated to the Spanish expulsion. In other words, this approach allowed the Judeo-Spanish communities of the empire’s European and Anatolian provinces to stand in as a synecdoche for ‘Ottoman Jewry’ as a whole.” Ha-Ḥerut’s articles might be understood as both participating in this ideological project and working within the discourse already created by the success of the project.
100 ha-Ḥerut 3:45 (February 3, 1911), 2–3.
101 In her discussion of the distinction these papers drew between Christians and Muslims, Abigail Jacobson highlights another important context: the Balkan wars (1912–1913). In the course of these wars, Muslims suffered greatly, and, Jacobson argues, Ottoman Sephardim “may have been influenced by the anti-Christian feelings throughout the empire and developed hostile feelings toward the Christians as well.” Jacobson, From Empire to Empire, 110. While this perceived distinction between Christians and Muslims preceded the Balkan wars, the earlier tensions between Christians and Muslims in the Ottoman Empire’s European territories surely informed Ottoman subjects’ views of religious differences, and the Balkan wars certainly exacerbated these tensions across the empire.
102 ha-Ḥerut 3:43 (January 30, 1911), 3–4.
103 The phrase Ben-Gurion uses here, nirdafim bli ḥasakh (“ceaselessly persecuted”), is likely borrowed from Isaiah 14:6. The prophet writes of the punishment that is suffered by the “wicked” and “tyrants” “that belabored nations in fury, in relentless pursuit (murdaf bli ḥasakh).” Though I am arguing here that Ben-Gurion, like his fellow Second Aliyah socialist Zionists, did not tend to use religion as an interpretative tool for understanding his non-Jewish neighbors in Palestine, he was nonetheless famously interested in the Bible. For some of his addresses to his Bible study group, see Ben-Gurion, Ben-Gurio Looks at the Bible.
104 ha-Aḥdut 1:3, 87.
105 While these quotation marks may merely indicate a borrowing of terminology (from the Arabic muʾminīn), later in the same article Ben-Gurion uses quotation marks in a way that obviously connotes derision. He refers to “the ‘Zionists’ abroad” (outside of the Land) for whom “the yishuv is nothing more than a propaganda tool for ‘their Zionist work.’ ” It would seem that the same sense applies to these quotation marks as well.
106 In this sense, I disagree with the assertion that ha-Ḥerut’s insistence on distinguishing between Muslim and Christian Arabs was “unique and uncommon.” Jacobson, “The Sephardi Community in Pre–World War I Palestine,” 24. See, for example, Ben-Gurion, “Clarifying Our Political Situation,” ha-Aḥdut 1:3, 89–90.
107 Ben-Gurion, “Clarifying Our Political Situation,” ha-Aḥdut 1:3, 90.
108 For an influential revisionist reading of the place of socialism in socialist Zionism, see Sternhell, The Founding Myths of Israel.
109 For an English translation of the founding statement of ha-Shomer, see Kaplan and Penslar, eds., The Origins of Israel, 1882–1948, 54–56.
110 On the joint composition of this text, and for related correspondence, see Mintz, “Beyn David Ben-Gurion le-Yiẓḥak Ben-Ẓevi.”
111 Ben-Ẓevi, ha-Tenuʿah ha-ʿarvit, 1:19.
112 Ibid.
113 For Ben-Zvi’s earlier writing on the matter, see Ben-Gurion and Ben-Ẓevi, Erets Yisroel in Fergangenhayt un Gegenvart, 37–38. For Ben-Gurion’s discourse on this same issue, see ibid., 319, 326ff. See also Belkind and Ben-Gurion, ha-ʿArvim asher be-ereẓ-yisraʾel, 43ff.
114 On Jewish-Samaritan relations, see Knoppers, Jews and Samaritans.
115 The term here is taken from Genesis 49:15.
116 Ben-Ẓevi, ha-Tenuʿah ha-ʿarvit, 20.
117 Ibid., 20–21. In this sentence, one sees how early twentieth-century Hebrew writers used the terms ‘am, umma, and leʾum fairly interchangeably, all with the sense of nation and nationalism.
118 Tracing the history of this theory and its alternative political uses might yield intriguing results. Two of its early exponents were Yisrael Belkind and Ber Borochov. On the earlier versions, see Gorni, Zionism and the Arabs 1882–1948, 103; Zerubavel, “Memory, the Rebirth of the Native, and the ‘Hebrew Bedouin’ Identity”; Shavit, The New Hebrew Nation, 123–24. See also Barnai, Historiyografiyah u-leʾumiyut, 31–32. Israel Bartal suggested that “the modern political conflict between the Jews and Arabs put an end to the possibility of searching for Jewish roots
within the local population” in Palestine. Bartal, “ ‘ʿAm’ ve-ʿAreẓ’ ba-historiyografiyah ha-ẓiyonit,” 132. The search continues, but now with different political ends. See, e.g., Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People, 182–89.
119 On the “secularity” of this theory, see also Bartal, “ ‘ʿAm’ ve-ʿAreẓ’ ba-historiyografiyah ha-ẓiyonit,” 128–29. Bartal highlights Ben-Zvi’s tenacious commitment to this theory over the course of decades.
120 the phrase amei horetz, which generally carries a negative connotation of ignoramus, here is subverted and regarded positively as those who remained on the land.
121 Jacobson, “Sephardim, Ashkenazim and the ʿArab Question’ in Pre–First World War Palestine,” 126–27.
122 Ha-histadrut ha-poʿalim ha-ẓeʿirim be-ereẓ yisraʾel (known by the shortened name ha-poʿel ha-ẓa’ir) was founded in Petah Tikvah in 1905. For an English translation of the organization’s founding document, see Kaplan and Penslar, The Origins of Israel, 1882–1948, 39–41.
123 In her recent monograph, Jacobson argues that “Zionism indeed played out differently among the Sephardi elite and the European Jewish immigrants to Palestine, especially those of the second ‘aliya.” Jacobson contends that the Sephardic Zionists advocated an “inclusive Zionism” (viewing the Arabs as “possible partners for a future life in the country”) in contrast to the Second Aliyah Ashkenazic Zionists, who advocated an “exclusive Zionism” (one that “excluded the Arabs from the discussion about future life in Palestine”). Jacobson, From Empire to Empire, 97–98.
124 Ibid., 105, 111.
125 ha-Ḥerut 3:16 (November 28, 1910), 2. Cf. Ben-Ẓevi, “On the Question of Founding a Newspaper in Arabic,” ha-Aḥdut 3:4–5 (November 10–17, 1911).
126 Ha-Ḥerut frequently uses the term moledet (“homeland”) to refer to the Ottoman Empire, as can be seen explicitly in the concluding words of this passage.
127 ha-Ḥerut 3:7 (November 7, 1910), 1.
128 See Jacobson, “The Sephardi Community in Pre–World War I Palestine,” 32.
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