Chapter 5

translation and Conquest:

transforming perceptions through

the press and apologetics

And now, the known Christian enemy, owner of al- Karmil, published

a pamphlet that he claims is drawn from the English Jewish Encyclo-

pedia. He is spreading it among the masses and sending it to the offi-

cers of the government and the representatives so that they deal with

it in the upcoming meeting of parliament!

I would like to translate this book into Hebrew and print it in He-

brew periodicals so that our brethren will see the extent of our Arab

enemies’ hatred. I am also ready to accept responses from anyone who

wishes to answer it and to assemble all of the ideas along with my own

and to make from the material one forceful answer.^1

O

ne could hardly fathom a more evocative example of the complex

role of language and translation in the encounter between Zionists

and arabs in Late Ottoman palestine: an urgent call in hebrew by a

palestine- born, arabic- speaking Sephardic Zionist for a hebrew transla-

tion of an arabic translation prepared by a palestine- born Christian arab

of an english text by a British- born ashkenazic american Zionist. the

three individuals involved in this 1911 affair are already familiar to us

from previous chapters. the original, english text in question was rich-

ard Gottheil’s 1906 entry on “Zionism” in the Jewish Encyclopedia, one of

the main sources for ruhi al- Khalidi’s manuscript analyzed in chapter 2.

“the known Christian enemy” referred to here was Najib Nassar, whose

1911 arabic pamphlet entitled Zionism: Its History, Purpose, and Impor-

tance (Excerpted from the Jewish Encyclopedia) served as a point of com-

parison in our analysis of al- Khalidi’s text and whose al- Karmil newspa-

per sparked ha- Ḥerut’s “Great Danger” campaign, studied in chapter 3.^2

(^1) ha- Ḥerut 3:157 (September 22, 1911), 2.
(^2) Naṣṣār, aṣ- Ṣahyūniyya.