Defining Neighbors: Religion, Race, and the Early 'Zionist-Arab' Encounter
Defining Neighbors: Religion, Race, and the Early 'Zionist-Arab' Encounter
Bibliographic record
| Type | Thesis |
| Publication year | 2010 |
| Author | Gribetz, Jonathan Marc |
| Abstract Note | This dissertation examines the mutual perceptions of Zionists and Arabs in the early years of their encounter in Late Ottoman Palestine, before World War I, the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and the imposition of the British Mandate. The early encounter between Zionists and Arabs is generally viewed through the prism of the nationalist conflict that emerged subsequently. This dissertation argues, however, that many of the participants in the encounter perceived their counterparts not in nationalist but in religious or racial terms. Chapter 1 focuses on an unpublished manuscript written by one of the leaders of Late Ottoman Palestine's Muslim Arab community, Muhammad Ruhi al-Khalidi, and contends that al-Khalidi viewed Zionism as a religious, and religiously illegitimate, phenomenon, even as he borrows certain ideas about the Jews' racial characteristics from contemporary European race-thinking. Chapter 2 turns to the Zionist Hebrew press in Palestine and demonstrates that the non-Jewish natives of Palestine were often defined by Zionists in religious terms. Moreover, the differences Zionists sensed between the attitudes toward the Zionists held by Christian Arabs and Muslim Arabs were attributed to the respective religions. Chapter 3 studies three regional Arabic intellectual journals and other works by their editors as it investigates the various perspectives on the Jews and Zionism held by the most influential intellectuals in the fin-de-siècle Arab Middle East. In particular, this chapter considers the conclusions that Arab writers drew from the supposed racial relationship between themselves and the Jews, even and especially the Jews of Europe. Finally, Chapter 4 explores a number of Zionist efforts to influence and improve Arab perceptions of Jews and Zionism, including contributing pro-Zionist articles to the mainstream Arabic press, funding sympathetic Arabic newspapers, founding a Zionist-edited Arabic periodical, and publishing Arabic books on Judaism and the Talmud. Ultimately, this dissertation challenges the secularist orientation of Zionist and Palestinian nationalist historiography and, by carefully and critically examining the primary sources, it aims to diminish the blinding effects of the subsequent nationalist conflict on our understanding of this early encounter. |
| Number of pages | 386 |
| Publisher | Columbia University |
| Place | New York |
| Language | English |