“CONCerNING Our ARAb QuESTIOn”? • 97though I have chosen these particular papers as a cross- section of
the prewar Zionist community, we should not assume that the Zionist
subgroup that led the editorial board was representative of the ele-
ments of the Zionist community that participated in writing the paper
or, all the more so, of the population that read the paper. Consider, for
example, ha-Ḥerut, which scholars often regard as a “Sephardic news-
paper.”^8 though ha-Ḥerutwas run by Sephardic Zionists and on occa-
sion the Sephardic identity of the newspaper’s leadership was proudly
displayed,^9 as scholar Yitzhak Bezalel has noted, labeling ha-Ḥerut a
“Sephardic newspaper” is a complicated matter and cannot be done
without qualification. First of all, in its self- definition the paper was
not explicitly Sephardic. In the paper’s mission statement, published
in its first issue in May 1909, the editor, Avraham Elmaleh, declared
that the paper would be a “hebrew and general paper.” as a hebrew
paper, he explained, ha-Ḥerut would try to “give voice to the feelings
and hopes of our people and, with a powerful hand, to raise the Zi-
onist flag.” Moreover, ha-Ḥerut would “devote large space to matters
concerning Jerusalem, the four holy cities [i.e., Jerusalem, hebron,
tiberias, and Safed] and the colonies, the development of trade, in-
dustry, and agriculture in the Land of Israel, the cradle of our ances-
tors.” as a “general paper,” ha-Ḥerutwould strive to provide news
from around the world with a particular focus on issues concerning
“Turkey” (i.e., the Ottoman Empire) at “the historic moment in which
we live.”^10 the paper would be “free,” that is, independent, and would
be bound to “no person or party,” only to “the truth.” Of course, part
of this “truth,” for the editors of ha-Ḥerut, was the righteousness of
the Zionist movement (or their particular interpretation thereof), but
it is worth noting here that the words “Sephardic” and “Ashkenazic”^11
(^8) See, e.g., “Ha-Herut as a Sephardi National Newspaper” in Jacobson, From Empire
to Empire, 87– 89. Jacobson acknowledges that “ha-Ḥerut did not view itself as targeting
exclusively the Sephardic community,” but she argues that “from its content it was clear
that the Sephardi community was its main target population, and that it served as an
opposition to the traditional Sephardi leadership.”
(^9) Consider, for instance, the notice issued in ha-Ḥeruton March 1, 1912, upon the
paper’s conversion to a daily, that referred to the paper as “the hebrew national newspa-
per” but also declared that, “as is well- known, it is the first Hebrew paper to be published
by Sephardim.” that notice further highlighted the fact that “its editor is Sephardic and
the majority of its authors are Sephardim. and this is the glory of the community of the
Sephardic Jews.” See Beẓalʾel, “ʿAl yiḥudo shel ‘ha-Ḥerut’ (1909– 1917) ve- ʿal Ḥayim
Ben- ʿAtar ke- ʿorkho,” 127.
(^10) Literally: “at this hour of the birth of the world in which we live.”
(^11) the one possible reference to these internal Jewish divisions is the claim that “our
entire purpose, we repeat, is only to benefit our readers, our communities [ʿedoteinu],
our land, and our language.”