An articulate Arab opposition to Zionism evoked significant anxiety among many of Palestine’s Zionists. First among those to express alarm about this phenomenon were those Zionists, like Shimon Moyal, who actually read the Arabic press articles about Zionism. To identify who these first readers were, we must consider the state of Arabic literacy among Late Ottoman Zionists. As late as January 1914, Moshe Smilansky wrote of his fellow Zionists in Palestine:
In the course of thirty years [since the first wave of Jewish nationalist immigration to Palestine], we have not learned the language of the land. In the entire new Hebrew yishuv, there are not even ten people [a minyan] who know how to read and write Arabic. This may seem absurd to the reader, but it is a fact, to our shame. Many of us know how to speak Arabic. But even this knowledge is extremely limited. Most of the [Jewish] Arabic speakers are from the masses of the nation; our intelligentsia in the land is entirely alien to it [Arabic]. Therefore, even the knowledge of “those who know” Arabic is extremely limited. Two years ago, there was an incident in which a high official, an Arab patriot, wished to speak with the Hebrew leaders and asked to speak Arabic. There was not a single person in Jaffa or its surroundings who was able to take up this task and so the residents of Jaffa needed to bring a “speaker” from Jerusalem. And even in Jerusalem, the number [of new Hebrew yishuv members] who know Arabic is two or three.11
Even if Smilansky overstated his claim for rhetorical effect, the basic point—that few Ashkenazic Zionist immigrants in the Late Ottoman period mastered Arabic—is not disputed. As Smilansky suggests, many members of the “new Hebrew yishuv” had learned some Arabic after their arrival in Palestine, but most acquired only the essentials necessary to carry on life in an Arabic-speaking environment (giving them the ability, for example, to engage in simple commerce or to instruct laborers). There were certain notable exceptions, of course, such as the journalist-linguist Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, who not only learned Arabic but used it as one of his sources for expanding the modern Hebrew vocabulary.12 However, the vast majority of Ashkenazic Zionists in Palestine never became literate in Arabic; learning to speak one new language, namely, Hebrew, was a sufficient challenge for most of the immigrants who were at the same time struggling to make a living in a new and foreign environment.13
There were, of course, some Zionists who did not need to learn Arabic as they already knew the language. As discussed in chapter 1, these were the mostly Sephardic Jewish natives of Palestine, as well as Jewish immigrants from Arabic-speaking lands, many of whom affiliated with the Zionist enterprise.14 To be clear, though, not all Jews born in the Middle East were literate in Arabic.15 Arabic literacy, after all, was limited among the population of the Middle East as a whole, and in any case, for many Sephardic Jews, Ladino (not Arabic) was the language spoken at home while Hebrew was the language of prayer and most writing.16 Nonetheless, Sephardic Jews who were born in the Middle East, including of course the Zionists among them, were generally able comfortably to communicate at least orally in Arabic.
Some of these native Middle Eastern Jews, though, were in fact literate in Arabic.17 Two such Arabic-reading and Arabic-writing Jews were Shimon Moyal and Nissim Malul, both central figures in Zionist efforts related to the Arabic press and also the authors of the two Arabic works on Judaism that will be studied in this chapter. Moyal and Malul were colleagues with similar life trajectories.18 Both were Sephardic Jews born in Palestine who spent years in Egypt before returning as passionate Zionists to the Holy Land toward the end of the Ottoman period.19 Moyal was born in 186620 to a wealthy Moroccan Jewish family that had recently arrived in Jaffa. Malul, twenty-six years younger, was born in 1892 to a Tunisian Jewish family in Safed. Moyal was educated in Jewish religious schools in Palestine until the age of sixteen, after which he traveled to Beirut to study Arabic and French and later to Cairo for medical school. During his years in Egypt, he wrote for a number of Arabic newspapers and journals, as did his wife Esther al-Azhari Moyal, herself an influential author and editor of an Arabic women’s journal. The Moyals returned to Palestine in 1908, and Shimon died there less than a decade later, in 1915, at the age of forty-nine.21 Malul and Moyal probably first met in Cairo, where their lives overlapped for several years. During his youth, Malul’s family moved from Jaffa to Tanta (in Lower Egypt) so that his father, Moshe (Musa) Hayyim Malul, could take up the post of rabbi of the community. They then moved to Cairo, where Musa was appointed judge (dayan) on the religious court of the local chief rabbi.22 In Egypt, Nissim Malul continued his education in Jewish religious subjects, but he also formally studied Arabic language and literature. He began publishing frequent articles in the newspaper al-Muqaṭṭam before he too returned to Palestine in 1911, where he lived an active intellectual and political life until his death in 1959 at the age of sixty-seven.
We will return to Moyal and Malul in significant detail in the pages that follow; for the moment, though, it is important to note that it was Jews such as these who were the first to express concern about the opposition to Zionism emerging in the newly aggressive and self-confident Arabic press. The Sephardic-edited newspaper ha-Ḥerut, analyzed in chapter 3, was preoccupied with the problem of the anti-Zionist Arabic press and was in the forefront of what soon became a Zionist communal and institutional obsession. In its very first month of publication, May 1909, ha-Ḥerut printed a supplement on the subject of the Arabic press,23 and within two months the paper was issuing regular and frequent warnings of the “Danger!” in what it identified as the “anti-Semitic” Arabic press.24 While several newspapers were discussed, before long the primary target of Zionist concern was the Haifa-based al-Karmil, the “known enemy-of-Israel newspaper” edited by Najib Nassar, whose Arabic translation of Richard Gottheil’s “Zionism” encyclopedia entry so worried Moyal.25
The concern about an assertive Arabic press opposed to Zionism filtered from the alarmist articles on the pages of periodicals such as ha-Ḥerut to the Zionist institutional leadership in Palestine, Constantinople, and Berlin. The Zionist Organization’s Palestine Office,26 which had been founded in 1908, took heed of the phenomenon and, in 1911, created its own Press Bureau, charged with, inter alia, preparing regular reports on the Arabic press’s articles that related to Jews and Zionism.27 The Press Bureau paid Nissim Malul a salary to prepare translations of relevant Arabic newspaper and journal articles.28 His extensive expository reports, typically written in Hebrew and translated into French and German (to be sent to the Zionist offices in Constantinople and Berlin), were highly valued by the Zionist leadership.29 Moyal, whose independent wealth may have permitted him to do the work gratis, was apparently not on the Palestine Office payroll; instead, he generally published his translations of the Arabic press in ha-Ḥerut.30 Through these reports, Zionists in Palestine and their leadership abroad discovered what was being written and published about them by Arab journalists and intellectuals. Translation, that is to say, was the first step in the “conquest” of the press.
WHY AND HOW TO INFLUENCE THE PRESS
The Zionists’ focus on the Arabic press merits some reflection. If the underlying concern was not with the press per se but rather more broadly with Arab views about Zionism, were there not other means of gauging Arab sentiments or ideas concerning the Jews and Zionism? Zionists might, for instance, have studied the sermons of religious leaders, surveyed workers in the fields, or interviewed Arab notables to determine the range of beliefs on the subject among Arabs. These or other methods might well have yielded a more representative and accurate picture of what the region’s Arabs were thinking about the Zionist movement and its efforts in Palestine.
The preoccupation specifically with the press might be attributed, at least in part, to some of the following factors. First, Zionists and particularly their leadership were an overwhelmingly literate, educated community, and so it was natural for Ruppin’s Palestine Office to turn toward a written, textual source such as newspapers as it sought to assess Arab views. Second,
the press was easily and inexpensively accessible. The Palestine Office simply needed to pay for subscriptions and hire a translator to evaluate Arab sentiments from throughout the region and across the various demographic sectors. At a time when—notwithstanding al-Khalidi’s perception of infinite Zionist capital—funds were limited, this was a more economical option than deploying a team of interviewers and investigators. Third, several of the Arabic-speaking Sephardic intellectuals to whom the Palestine Office appealed, such as Malul, were themselves already active in the general Arabic press in Egypt, Syria, or Palestine; it is thus unsurprising that these Zionist agents believed strongly in the power of the press and argued that the Zionist establishment should take it seriously. Indeed, the writers in ha-Ḥerut and the officials in the Press Bureau imagined that the Arabic press did not reflect Arab views so much as the press created (or, at least, strongly influenced) those views.
While there was widespread Zionist agreement that the advent of this anti-Zionist Arabic press constituted a significant threat to the movement, the appropriate reaction to the threat was less clear.31 Exposing it, by means of translation, was deemed to be a necessary part of the response; for most, however, exposé was not sufficient. One way in which Zionists hoped to improve their portrayal in the Arabic press was financially to assist sympathetic Arabic newspaper editors. The paper that appears to have received the greatest Zionist financial support was an-Nafīr, edited by the Christian Arab Iliya Zakka.32 In 1910 ha-Ḥerut’s editor, Avraham Elmaleh, alerted his readers to the fact that “there is in Jerusalem an Israel-loving Arabic newspaper edited by the young, talented writer Iliya Zakka, who disagrees with al-Karmil and all of the enemies of Israel.” In recognition of Zakka’s “beautiful articles in support of Israel” (and by Israel, Elmaleh meant the Jews), ha-Ḥerut called on its readers to subscribe en masse to an-Nafīr. “Let us create for him just one hundred subscribers, and through him we will be able to respond,” Elmalah wrote, to the slander printed about the Jews and Zionism.33
Ha-Ḥerut also supported Zakka’s paper more circuitously. The Hebrew paper encouraged members of Jerusalem’s Jewish community to study Arabic under Zakka’s instruction. “Mr. Iliya Zakka, editor of an-Nafīr,” ha-Ḥerut reported in November 1910, “is thinking about starting evening classes in Arabic language just for Jews, at a low price. Our brothers, and especially the Russian youth, will be able to advance in a short time through this excellent opportunity, as Mr. Zakka knows Russian very well.”34 Having Russian Jewish immigrants study Arabic with Zakka would not only expand the base of Arabic knowledge into the Ashkenazic community (a goal advocated by many of ha-Ḥerut’s contributors) but also supplement Zakka’s income, permitting him to continue to publish his newspaper and encouraging him to print articles supportive of the Zionists.
It is difficult to determine whether ha-Ḥerut’s staff believed that Zakka was actually, as they put it, “one of the righteous gentiles whose great sympathy for the Jews” comes from the fact that he was “a free-thinking and truth-loving man,”35 or whether they thought they were in reality purchasing support that would otherwise not be forthcoming. If, however, Yaʿqub Yehoshuʿa, historian of Palestine’s Arabic press, is correct that Zakka’s paper ceased its support and attacked Zionism whenever Zionists’ money failed to come Zakka’s way, then one assumes that ha-Ḥerut’s editors understood the nature of their relationship.36 In any case, the Zionist institutional leadership apparently did engage in more explicit, direct quid pro quos with certain Arabic newspapers (including, it seems, Zakka’s an-Nafīr), offering monetary subventions in exchange for their support.37
To have Zionism presented more favorably in the Arabic press, several Arabic-writing Zionists tried another tack as well: they contributed articles to Arabic newspapers and wrote letters to their editors defending the Jews and Zionism against published attacks. The young Nissim Malul was prominent in this effort, writing frequently for al-Muqaṭṭam and al-Ahrām,38 and Shimon Moyal participated actively as well.39 In 1913 a small group of Sephardic intellectuals, including Elmaleh and Malul, met at the Jaffa home of Moyal and formed Agudat ha-Magen (the Shield Society). The goal of this group, as recalled later by one of its members, was to “explain to the Arab world in the Arabic press that the interests of the Jews of Palestine not only do not conflict with Arab interests, but, on the contrary, they bring great economic and cultural benefit to the Arabs.”40
But the influence Jewish writers could have on an Arabic newspaper in this way was, according to Malul himself, inevitably limited. First of all, from his previous experience in Egypt, where he attempted to use this method to counteract what he deemed to be a growing “antisemitic movement,” Malul found that Arab editors ultimately began charging Jewish contributors for printing their articles. “The same thing that happened with the Egyptian press,” Malul wrote in October 1911, “has happened to us also with the Syrian and Palestinian press.”41 If Zionists had to pay to have their sympathetic articles published, the distinction between this approach and the “subventions” clearly dissolves. Furthermore, if Arabic newspapers were beginning to refuse even to publish articles written by Zionists, all the more unrealistic—Moyal and Malul argued in adjoining opinion pieces in ha-Ḥerut—were calls by Ashkenazic Zionists for Sephardic Zionists to become employed by these newspapers and thus surreptitiously to “infiltrate” their editorial boards and “conquer” them.42 No less problematic was the fact that, according to Malul, the number of Jews commanding the necessary journalistic and linguistic skills to fill such positions did not exceed ten or fifteen, hardly a sufficient number to fill the editorial boards even of just the most important Arabic newspapers.
A ZIONIST NEWSPAPER IN ARABIC AND THE CHARGE OF “ASSIMILATIONISM”
The answer that Moyal and Malul, along with several other Zionists, proposed instead was the creation of the Zionists’ own Arabic newspaper. Such an undertaking would permit Zionists to present their perspective to Arabs on the Zionists’ own terms, without subventions or any sort of dependence on otherwise unsympathetic Arabs.43 This proposal to favorably translate Zionism into Arabic was aired publicly on the pages of ha-Ḥerut, and it stirred intense controversy almost immediately among Palestine’s Zionist community. One Ashkenazic Zionist—Abraham Ludvipol—accused the scheme’s most outspoken early proponent, Shimon Moyal, of being an “assimilationist.” By institutionalizing the use of Arabic by Zionists, the Arabic newspaper idea aimed in reality to break down the linguistic and cultural barriers between Jews and their Arab neighbors, Ludvipol contended. The outrage was only intensified when Moyal insisted, in something of a rhetorical flourish, that it would be worthwhile to sell an entire Zionist colony if, through its sale, “we were to found an Arabic newspaper that would fight our war.”44
The debate between Moyal and Ludvipol exposed tensions within Palestine’s Zionist community, between Sephardim and Ashkenazim. Moyal claimed that Ludvipol’s attack was based in the latter’s irritation that “a Sephardic Easterner dared to prove to him, with evidence, that his European experience and ideas are not always sufficient for him to deal properly with the East.” Moyal excoriated Ludvipol for his condescension toward the Sephardim, insisting that he recall that “you are our guest and that the residents of the Land of Israel and their ancestors suffered terribly over many years in order to preserve their nationality among the streams of nations that flowed as they grabbed the reins of the government generation after generation.”45 Having “preserved their nationality” for so long, Moyal implied, the Sephardim could hardly be accused of being “assimilationists.” Rather, a Zionist-edited Arabic newspaper would simply be like the Arabic newspapers of the Ottoman Empire’s other ethnic and religious communities: “We find a Sunni Muslim Arabic newspaper, a Shiite Muslim Arabic newspaper, a Coptic Christian Arabic newspaper, a Catholic Christian Arabic newspaper, an Orthodox Christian one and a Maronite Christian one. But we do not have even one Jewish Arabic newspaper!”46 These other newspapers adv
anced the interests of their respective communities, Moyal explained, and this was precisely what the Jewish community lacked. Because Jews had thus far failed to establish their own Arabic paper after the extension of press freedoms following the Young Turk Revolution, Muslim Arab public opinion in Palestine was left in the hands of the Christian newspapers. These Christian-edited papers, such as Nassar’s al-Karmil, introduced “hatred between us and the Muslims,” contends Moyal, “through lies, cowardly complaints, and faulty information.”47
That Moyal’s chief antagonist in this debate was Abraham Ludvipol is surprising. A Volhynian-born journalist (who wrote in French and Yiddish as well as Hebrew), Ludvipol had been living in Palestine since 1907.48 In late 1911, at the very time at which he was engaged in his polemic with Moyal, Ludvipol was hired to direct the Palestine Office’s Press Bureau, which, as noted, was charged with, among other duties, monitoring the Arabic press and responding to unsympathetic articles. Ludvipol himself was responsible for following the French press and Malul, Moyal’s young protégé, was soon working under him, tracking the Arabic press.49 Ludvipol presided over a meeting of the “Committee on the Arabic Press” in January 1912 in which he reported on Malul’s recent articles in several Arabic newspapers and discussed the topics of the next set of articles the committee wished Malul to submit for publication.50 Ludvipol apparently believed that the proper way for Zionists to influence Arab public opinion through the press was to write articles for already-existing Arabic newspapers—a project he oversaw—whereas the creation of a new Zionist-edited Arabic newspaper was thoroughly objectionable. In Europe, he explained, Jews created newspapers in non-Jewish languages, but no Gentiles ever read them.51 Similarly, if a Zionist Arabic newspaper aimed to influence the opinion of non-Jewish Arabic-readers, it would necessarily fail. One wonders whether this was less a debate over principle than a turf battle.52 After all, were Zionists to establish their own Arabic newspaper, Ludvipol may have feared losing control over his office to the editors of the new paper.
Defining Neighbors Page 29