This book discusses the way in which Jewish and Arab (both Christian and Muslim) intellectuals in late Ottoman Palestine perceived the mutual collectives of their neighbors at the time. The book's main argument is that instead of describing the early Zionist-Arab encounter in nationalistic terms or as the first step in an unavoidable binational conflict in the Holy Land—the result of later influences and the ensuing conflict—much more importance should be given to the place of religion and ethnic/racial considerations. As Gribetz shows throughout the book, these issues dominated intellectual discussions of both Jews and Arabs at the time. This perspective thus provides a much more complex and multidimensional picture of the early Zionist-Arab encounter than what is usually described in the literature. In addition, he reveals very surprising outlooks and perceptions in that period, which today, given the current political situation in the Middle East, seem stranger than fiction.
One very interesting finding is that the Jewish national revival in Palestine at the end of the nineteenth century was not perceived by many contemporary Arab intellectuals as a foreign colonial activity—as future generations of Arab intellectuals to this day have tended to describe it—but rather as a revival of an ancient nation that had strong roots in Palestine in the past and was racially close to the Arabs. Some even discussed the benefits for the people of the region from a Jewish national revival in Palestine, although others opposed it vehemently from the beginning because they feared the consequences for the local Arab population. At any rate, what is really fascinating about this period is the extensive exchanges between Jewish and Arab intellectuals, the dialogue they engaged in, their tangled theological debates, and their reciprocal influences. The violent conflict that arose later has eliminated many of the avenues for intellectual dialogue and exchange between the two sides, thus limiting present-day exchanges mainly to political slogans, although some themes broached in the early encounters, such as religious ones, clearly remained sore points and contributed to turning the national conflict into one that resists resolution as it is playing out today.
The book is divided into five chapters. Chapter 1 is an overview that accurately presents the different communities in late Ottoman Palestine and contextualizes the debate on race and religion. It presents some of the difficulties involved in circumscribing and defining Palestine's various communities and explains why these two markers of identity were so important to perceptions of one another. The fact that Palestine, and particularly Jerusalem, was the meeting place of several layers of influence and identity (Ottoman, European, regional “Middle Eastern”) significantly contributed to the importance of race and religion.
Chapter 2 examines a fascinating 120-page unpublished manuscript in Arabic called Zionism, or the Zionist Question, which Gribetz located at the Khalidiyya library in Jerusalem. It was written in the final years of Ottoman rule by Muhammad Ruhi al-Khalidi, a member of one of Palestine's notable families, who served in the Ottoman parliament. His aim was to explain the modern national phenomenon of Zionism to his Arabic readers, but in fact the presentation is to a large extent about Judaism and Jewish history, which al-Khalidi analyzed using classical Islamic religious and political terminology.
Chapter 3 examines three Zionist newspapers published in Palestine at the end of the Ottoman era that represented different segments of the tiny Yishuv, and probes for differences in the ways they described the Arab population and perceived its attitude to the Zionists. Gribetz shows that these newspapers often referred to religion and race when they discussed Arab attitudes toward the Zionist movement. Interestingly, it was widely believed by writers in these newspapers that the Christian Arabs were much more hostile to the Zionists, owing to religious (and at times also racial) considerations, and that they were the ones behind the agitation against the Zionist movement that was gaining ground among Palestine's Arab population. The Muslim Arabs of Palestine, on the contrary, were thought to be much more tolerant and moderate in their approach, which stemmed from both the nature of their religious orientation as well as from their close racial affinity to the Jews.
Chapter 4 expands the analysis beyond the borders of Palestine, and focuses on three journals in Arabic that were published in Cairo at the time (although one of their editors was from Beirut). The rationale Gribetz provides for this choice is the fact that Palestine's Arab elite read these newspapers and actively participated in the exchanges appearing in them. Gribetz shows the extent to which race was crucial to discussions about the Jews and their national movement in Palestine at the time, alongside other considerations and discourses, such as religion.
Chapter 5 discusses the influence and activity of Palestine's small Sephardic Arabic-speaking intelligentsia, which strove to explain Zionist activity to the Arab intelligentsia with whom it was in dialogue, in an attempt to reduce its hostility to the Jewish national project. Some of its aims were to publish positive articles on Zionist activity in the Arabic press; to translate hostile articles that appeared in the Arabic press into Hebrew in order to alert the audience in the Yishuv to the discourse in the Arabic press on the Zionist movement; and (a short-lived attempt) to publish a newspaper in Arabic supporting the Zionist cause, which sought to change Arab attitudes toward the Zionists. Another fascinating episode that is extensively discussed in this chapter is the publication of two books on Judaism and the Jews by members of the Sephardic intelligentsia, Shimon Moyal's At-Talmud, and Nissim Malul's Asrar al-Yahud. These two apologetic books, which focused on various aspects of Jewish history and religion, were aimed at diminishing hostility to the Zionist movement among Arabic readers, but had to walk a very fine line to avoid antagonizing Muslim or Christian Arabs.
What is perhaps missing in this book is actual references to events on the ground during this period, and how they influenced the thinking of Jewish and Arab intellectuals, if at all. For instance, it would have been useful to reference the daily clashes during the First and Second Aliyot between the Jewish colonies and the rural Arab population, which occasionally led to considerable violence. Future research could also incorporate the imperial viewpoint of Ottoman intellectuals in the imperial center into the picture, to examine the possible influences on Jewish and Arab writers in Palestine. Race and religious considerations were definitely discussed at the time among Ottoman intellectuals in Istanbul when they envisioned the future of the empire and possible common ground among its subjects. Another line of research, which hopefully will be pursued, perhaps by Gribetz himself as outlined in the conclusion, is to examine the role of race and religion in Zionist-Arab relationships during the Mandate period.
Overall, Gribetz's fascinating book makes a major contribution to the literature on early Zionist-Arab encounters, in particular, and to the intellectual history of late Ottoman Palestine and the Levant, more generally. It is a very solid, well-written piece of work that should be read by anyone interested in these topics.
