To What Extent Did the Jewish Brigade Contribute to the Establishment of the Jewish State?

Whilst the desperation of key international Zionist leaders, such as Chaim Weizmann, to field a fighting force against the Nazis consisting entirely of Palestinian Jews is evident in their correspondence, it is difficult to ascertain just how significant the practical contribution of the Jewish Brigade was to the Zionist project. The political effect of activities such as facilitating illegal immigration and, post-war, quietly training Jewish underground forces in Palestine cannot by their very nature be evaluated. Yet perhaps the Brigade's most important contribution to the embryonic state of Israel was the huge leap in political and cultural strength that boasting such a force represented.     

The Jewish–Arab Conflict and the Disintegration of the Ancient Jewish Community in the Village of Peqi‘in

The fate of the last community of Arabized Jews in Palestine, in the Galilee village of Peqi’in is surveyed. Peqi’in (al-Baqi’a in Arabic) is still known as the “Village of the Four Religions,” because of its unique mix of Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Druze, who lived together for centuries in good neighborly relations. Although the Arab-Jewish conflict might not have seemed relevant to the Peqi’in Jews, who had lived there for centuries, they were ultimately pushed out of the village. This pioneering study describes how the Peqi’in Jews, who had became a symbol for the Zionist enterprise, were forced from their home, although senior Zionist leaders strove to protect them and even made them a test of the alliance between the Zionists and the Druze. The sequence of events is recounted, from the start of the Mandate through the stillborn attempt to return the Peqi’in Jews to the village after the establishment of Israel.     

The arithmetic of rights: Zionist intellectuals imagining the Arab minority May–July 1938

ABSTRACT

This article examines Zionist debates regarding the status of the Arab minority in the Jewish State following the Royal Commission's recommendation to partition Palestine. Three conclusions arise from the debates: first, that the Zionist leadership regarded the civil and political rights of the Arab minority to be dependent on the power equilibrium between Jews and Arabs in all of Palestine. Second, the Zionist leaders imagined the Jewish State as a parliamentary democracy, but argued that a democratic regime should be created only after a Jewish majority had been achieved. Finally, because democracy in the Jewish State – including minority rights – was dependent on the creation of a Jewish majority, Zionist plans to transfer Arabs out of the Jewish State were not considered by them to be undemocratic, but rather a precondition to the creation of a Jewish and democratic state.     

The Second World War as a turning point in Arab–Jewish relations: the case of Jaffa and Tel Aviv

One of the gravest outcomes of the period of the Arab revolt was the heavy economic damage caused to the Arab community. Jaffa, which suffered greatly in the years 1936–1939, sought to rebuild and restore the city to its status as a leading economic center in Palestine. This need intensified still more with the outbreak of the Second World War. Hence, it was in Jaffa's evident interest to bring about an improvement in relations with Tel Aviv and with Jews generally. Problems regarding the proper management of economic life in wartime exercised the Jewish settlement also; therefore, Jewish–Arab cooperation steadily grew in this period. The article gauges the measure of this cooperation and the nature of the ties that consolidated between Arabs and Jews during the war. The situation of Jaffa and Tel Aviv serves as a test case well exemplifying the force of the subsequent change in relations between Jews and Arabs in Palestine.     

Hasan Bey Shukri and His Contribution to the Integration of Jews in the Haifa Municipality at the Time of the British Mandate

The relations established between the Jews and the Haifa mayor Hasan Bey Shukri were undoubtedly one of the special and fascinating features in the history of the Jewish–Arab conflict at the time of the Mandate. Shukri's ability to create a common language with the Jews made the Municipality an institution graced with cooperation whose like did not exist in other mixed cities in Mandatory Palestine. It was particularly evident in the setting of the escalation in the Jewish–Arab conflict generally. Shukri believed this conflict could be settled, and that the foundation for Jews and Arabs living together lay in the sides talking to each other as a basis for making peace. Now, for the first time in Palestine, the Jewish side had the opportunity to cooperate in a municipality controlled by Arabs by participating in its management. This situation accorded with the assumption prevalent among some of the leadership of the Jewish Yishuv that understanding could be reached with the other side in mixed municipalities. This article sets out to analyze the relations that formed between Shukri and the Jews. It shows that the cooperation that materialized between them was based on mutual trust, stemming from an identical approach by both sides to municipal activity.     

The star of David in a cedar tree: Jewish students and Zionism at the American University of Beirut (1908–1948)

The American University of Beirut's emergence as a hub of Arab national and cultural identity in the first half of the twentieth century has been well documented by historians. The simultaneous Zionist presence on campus has been largely overlooked. Zionist ideas were predominantly promoted by Palestinian Jewish students who formed a small but vocal minority at AUB prior to 1948. Faculty and non-Jewish students also regularly collaborated with and traveled to Zionist institutions in Palestine for academic, athletic, and leisure purposes. For Arab students on campus, therefore, Zionism was not an abstract concept, but rather a national identity embodied by fellow classmates and friends on campus. As the conflict in Palestine increased in the 1930s and 1940s, so too did political activism and tensions on campus between Zionist and Arab nationalist students. This article analyzes this unique period of exchange, collaboration, and friction at AUB, which came to a swift end with the outbreak of the 1948 War. By focusing on the interactions between Arab and Zionist Jewish students at AUB, I seek to extend the ‘relational’ approach towards Jewish-Arab contact beyond Palestine's borders.     

The Balfour Declaration and the Palestine Mandate, 1917–1923: British Imperialist Imperatives

The article sets the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the final confirmation of Britain's Palestine Mandate in 1923 within the context of national imperial concerns: in particular, anxieties over the security of the Suez Canal and the country's sea-route to its economic and military power-base in India. In 1917 strategic issues were paramount in the progressive annexation of Palestine by the Lloyd George coalition, this the essential territorial precondition for the pursuit of the Zionist project. In 1923 these global considerations were again to the fore when the new Conservative administration, less Zionist than its predecessor, decided finally to accept and implement the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine and the obligation therein to advance the cause of a Jewish national home. And throughout this period there was a widespread sense in official circles that Zionist settlers might perform as direct agents of Empire, acting as grateful, loyal, and developmental servants of the British imperial interest. Paradoxically, however – and largely on account of the ill-informed and reflexive manner in which plans were formulated in London – the entire exercise was, in the long-term, to prove a source of profound weakness to Britain's strategic authority in the East. Palestine policy, like so much imperial reasoning in the twentieth century, was to prove intrinsically delusional.     

Building the country or rescuing the people: Ben-Gurion's attitude towards mass Jewish immigration to Israel in the mid-1950s

In mainstream scholarship, David Ben-Gurion is described as one of the main supporters and primary advocates of the policy of encouraging mass Jewish immigration to Israel (aliya) in the 1950s. The Zionist movement had two different motives for supporting aliya: Diaspora Jews’ need for a safe haven (which would require mass aliya), and the need to build a solid and stable Jewish society in mandatory Palestine/Israel (which would require selective aliya).

When Ben-Gurion, in the 1940s, came to favour mass aliya, he did so because of the immigrants’ potential contribution to the attainment of statehood and then the independent state.

In the first years after independence, when entire communities immigrated to Israel, they included old and infirm people who did not fit the image of the pioneers of pre-state aliya. Nevertheless, for Ben-Gurion, their demographic contribution outweighed the burden of their absorption. By 1952, he had changed his mind and became one of the strongest supporters of selective immigration. He continued to support selectivity even when, in 1955, the safety of Moroccan Jews and their freedom to emigrate was in jeopardy. Ben-Gurion's attitude to aliya from Morocco, in the shadow of the Czech-Egyptian arms deal, reflected his priority – a strong and secure Israel.     

Soldiers and civilians: the dilemma of Turkish democracy

This historical analysis of Mahatma Gandhi's views on the Jewish–Arab conflict in Palestine at the time of the British Mandate distinguishes four phases. The initial involvement is Gandhi's intervention in support of the Caliph's temporal rule in Palestine. The second deals with a secret offer of mediation addressed to the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem. The third is his highly controversial letter to ‘The Jews‘. In the last phase, Gandhi chose to remain silent, but is alleged to have stated that the Jews had a good case and a prior claim, a statement that seems at variance with previous attitudes. The question is raised as to how far Gandhi's views were consistent. They are explained by the evolving political context in India, as well as in Palestine, the two being intertwined in an ever tightening knot. Gandhi's commitments are revisited and clarified in the light of new research.     

The map as an official symbol and the ‘Greater Israel’ ideology

This article examines the combined use of maps and symbols as an official symbol of political organization. Used in combination, a map and an emblem push the geographical component to the forefront of cultural–political discourse as an element of myth, drawing attention to an aspect that is not a conscious part of daily life. The article explores how the map of the Land of Israel was used as an official symbol by Zionist organizations, and attempts to decipher the political–cultural significance of the symbolic geography they employed. A symbolic map of Eretz Yisrael was adopted by three Zionist organizations: the Jewish National Fund (JNF); HaMahanot HaOlim Socialist–Zionist youth movement and the Revisionist movement. Aside from their differences in mission and raisons d’être, the organizations in this study represent different models of map and symbol usage. The main distinguishing feature was in their use of outlines and borders.     

Between Homeland and Exile: Iranian Jewry in Zionist/Israeli Political Thought*

This article explores the contingent nature of Zionist/Israeli understandings of Iranian Jewry, a particularly important “Oriental” (Mizrahi) group that has not yet received the attention it deserves in critical scholarship. Central to the Zionist project has been a juxtaposition of the opposition between East and West, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, between Exile and Land of Israel. These oppositions can be read as extreme expressions of the desire to assimiliate the Jews into the Western narrative of enlightenment and redemption. When applied to Iranian Jews, however, these oppositions become replete with tensions and ambiguities. First I show how, during the first three decades of the state of Israel, Israelis situated the Shah's modernization programs as part of the “West”, thereby removing Iranian Jewry from an “exilic” space. I then explore how the 1979 Iranian revolution further challenged these axiomatic oppositions. Iranian Jews living in Israel posed a serious challenge to Zionism's axiomatic assumptions. Nurturing a distinct ethnic (Mizrahi) identity within the Jewish state, they resisted the majoritarian and homogenizing tendencies of Israeli hegemony and demonstrated the fractured nature of Jewish identities.     

Chinese policy towards Kaifeng Jews

China is the only country in Far East in which Jews have continually lived for over 1,000 years. The best-known Jewish community in China is the Kaifeng Jewry. What, if any, has been official policy of China towards Jews and their religious practices? This article seeks to explain the issue from a historical perspective with a focus on the Kaifeng Jews, who have lived in China for many hundred years but are not considered as official ethnic group. It does so by exploring official attitudes (based on available documents) towards the Jews of Kaifeng over the past five decades.     

The Zionist–Arab incident of Zarnuqa 1913: a chronicle and several methodological remarks

The article deals with the Zarnuqa incident which took place on 23 July 1913 between the colonists and guards of Rehovot, and the Arab rural population in their vicinity, an incident which is considered by historians as a milestone in Zionist–Arab relations in late Ottoman Palestine. The aim of the article is to present the various narratives available to researchers today, starting with the various Jewish sources, then examining the Arabic sources and, finally, external ones. We analyse each of the sources and draw general conclusions about the sources historians can use today when studying this formative period of Zionist–Arab early encounters. The decision to examine several different narratives provides a multidimensional perspective on the event. Our aim is not to determine whose narrative is closer to historical reality (which would certainly be elusive), or to find out who started the fight and who is to be blamed but rather to present the different narratives, how each side described the event, and what the narrators chose to emphasize and what to omit. The article illustrates the difficult task facing historians dealing with late Ottoman Palestine, the period of the early Zionist–Arab encounter and conflict.     

Guizot's Absence of a Plan for Jerusalem

Historians have speculated over the existence of an 1841 plan by the French foreign minister François Guizot to internationalize Jerusalem as a Christian city, a plan holding major implications for the eventual emergence of a Jewish state and for European–Ottoman relations. This article aims, based on fresh archival and other sources, to provide a definitive evaluation of Guizot's plan, its scope, and its motivations. It broadens the field to encompass other great power plans mooted in 1841, including plans of a Protestant yet Zionist flavour, and it reassesses the political weight of early nineteenth-century European religious impulses with regard to Palestine.     

A Jew in Cairo: the defiance of Chehata Haroun

This article is the first to expound on Chehata Haroun's personality, his beliefs, and the implications thereof, all of which will be scrutinized within the context of the national and political transformations that convulsed the Land of the Nile, especially its Jewish community, from the late 1940s onwards. For the most part, the emphasis will be on three strands of the activist's critical views of the Middle East. The first is his claim that the Zionist movement and the Arab leadership are jointly responsible for the asphyxiation of Egyptian Jewry. This argument was promulgated in a letter that he addressed to President Gamal ?Abd al-Nasser in February 1967. The second strand is that Haroun's Jewishness does not contradict his Egyptian national identity, his uncompromising devotion to communism and humanism, ardent opposition to imperialism, or his identification with the Palestinian cause. The third contention is that the Jewish community and its heritage constitute an indivisible part of the Egyptian social and cultural fabric.     

The Jewish neighbourhoods of Jaffa and the question of annexation to Tel Aviv at the end of the British Mandate

One of the most complex issues facing British rule on the local municipal level towards the end of the Mandate period was the problem of Jaffa's Jewish neighbourhoods. This question, which emerged with the outbreak of the 1936 disturbances, engaged the government thereafter until the end of the Mandate. The demand by the residents of Jaffa's Jewish neighbourhoods for annexation to Tel Aviv – actually for municipal detachment from Jaffa – constituted the root of the problem. In this setting of the sharpening of relations between the authorities and the Jews and Arabs in 1945–1947, all three involved parties found themselves deeply immersed in it in the attempt to bring about its resolution. The annexation problem ceaselessly preoccupied the institutions of the Jewish Yishuv as a Zionist–Yishuv struggle of the highest order. This period gave rise to a series of unprecedented moves by the Jewish side, which were intended to influence the British government toward solving the problem. The article examines its development of the problem from the viewpoint of the three sides concerned in the years 1945–1947, with the focus on the policy line adopted by the Jewish side, its implications and its results.     

Demographic engineering in the late Ottoman empire and the Armenians

An examination of the diverse Hebrew newspapers published in Palestine in the aftermath of the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 teaches us a great deal about the complexity of the term Ottomanism, which was interpreted differently by the Empire and the minorities remaining within its shrinking borders. Whereas the Empire officially perceived Ottomanism as a new form of hybrid identity which would substitute existing national identities, the yishuv's various sectors envisioned a decentralized empire under the house of Osman. In this sense, the Revolution encouraged the emergence of a shared national vision among many circles in the yishuv, although each group still strove to shape the character of the Zionist community in Palestine according to its own agenda.     

The Jewish community in nineteenth century Palestine: evidence from the Montefiore censuses

Initial findings from five recently transcribed censuses of the Jewish community in nineteenth century Palestine, commissioned by Sir Moses Montefiore. This article discusses each census and presents uncorrected population figures. It describes how the Jewish community was rapidly changing: the population increased almost fourfold between 1839 and 1875, primarily due to immigration from Ashkenazi countries. The Jewish community was majority Ashkenazi by 1875. Analysis of the census data gives us detailed information about the community, such as the fact that Ashkenazim were significantly more likely than Sephardim to be engaged in full-time Torah study, whereas individuals who had immigrated to the land of Israel were slightly less likely. It also suggests that immigrations occurred at all ages, although the average age of an immigrant when they came to Palestine was 36.     

美国基督教锡安主义及其对美以关系的影响

基督教锡安主义的发展适时地弥补了冷战后期及后冷战时期犹太院外集团对美国的以色列政策乃至整个中东政策游说能力的弱化。美国犹太群体对基督教锡安主义的态度经历了从排斥到逐渐接受的过程,这与美国犹太群体内部的分化及日渐保守化的趋向密不可分。基督教锡安主义者对美国的以色列政策的影响在小布什政府时期表现得最为突出。随着小布什政府后期新保守主义者的失势,基督教锡安主义对这一领域的影响也有所减弱。     

Bringing the British back in: Sephardim,Ashkenazi anti-Zionist Orthodox and the policy of Jewish unity

This article analyses the British role in establishing and maintaining a Jewish–Arab demarcation line by means of a policy of Jewish unity and by enabling Ashkenazi Zionist control of the Yishuv. In the first part, it analyses British policy towards the local Sephardi as well as the local Ashkenazi anti-Zionist Orthodox communities, both of which for different reasons did not neatly fit into the Jewish/Zionist–Arab binary. I argue that the British followed a policy of Jewish unity at the inception of the Mandate which they upheld repeatedly against Ashkenazi anti-Zionist Orthodox efforts and which by 1936 had created a truism enforcing a binary understanding of the conflict. In the second part, this article analyses the ways in which these communities presented themselves vis-à-vis the British. I argue that despite different strategies of maximizing their influence, both communities foundered on the existing power configurations.