traNSLatioN aND coNqueSt • 187“conquest of land.”^7 the former denotes the effort to have Jewish-
owned farms and places of employment exclusively employ “hebrew”
(that is, Jewish, as opposed to arab) laborers; the latter refers to the
attempt by Jews and Zionist organizations to purchase as much of pal-
estine’s territory as possible. there was, however, another project of Zi-
onist “conquest” during this period, one that aimed to “conquer the ar-
abic press.”^8 this third conquest had a number of different versions and
permutations and generated passionate discussion and debate among
palestine’s Zionists. translation, as we shall see, was at the center of
this discourse.
after the 1908 Young turk revolution, arabic- reading Zionists in
palestine began to notice a disturbing trend. With the liberalization
(though not cessation) of the ottoman press censorship regime, there
was an explosion of new arabic newspapers throughout the empire.
Some of these new papers openly challenged Ottoman government
policies and criticized other populations within the empire, acts that
were generally proscribed before the revolution.^9 the newly voiced
criticism included among its targets the mass Jewish immigration to
and settlement of palestine and the imperial government’s inability or
unwillingness effectively to oppose Zionism.^10
an articulate arab opposition to Zionism evoked significant anxiety
among many of palestine’s Zionists. First among those to express alarm
about this phenomenon were those Zionists, like Shimon Moyal, who
actually read the arabic press articles about Zionism. to identify who
these first readers were, we must consider the state of arabic literacy
among Late Ottoman Zionists. as late as January 1914, Moshe Smilan-
sky wrote of his fellow Zionists in palestine:
in the course of thirty years [since the first wave of Jewish na-
tionalist immigration to palestine], we have not learned the lan-
guage of the land. In the entire new hebrew yishuv, there are
not even ten people [a minyan] who know how to read and write
arabic. this may seem absurd to the reader, but it is a fact, to
our shame. Many of us know how to speak arabic. But even(^7) See, e.g., “From ‘Conquest of Labor’ to ‘Conquest of Land’: the Identity of Soldier
and Settler, 1907– 1914,” in Shafir, Land, Labor, and the Origins of the Israeli- Palestinian
Conflict, 1882– 1914 , 135– 45; Gelvin, The Israel- Palestine Conflict, 65– 66.
(^8) Shimon Moyal uses the phrase “conquest of the arabic press” in his argument
against abraham Ludvipol, ha- Ḥerut (october 25, 1911). See below.
(^9) on the flourishing of the arabic press in this period, see ayalon, The Press in the
Arab Middle East.
(^10) For a detailed analysis of the various positions on Zionism articulated in the ara-
bic press, see the chapter “elements of Identity II: the Debate on Zionism in the arabic
press,” in Khalidi, Palestinian Identity, 119– 44.