Defining Neighbors. Religion, Race, and the Early Zionist-Arab Encounter - Jonathan Marc Gribetz

RUHI AL-KHALIdI’S “AS-SAYūNīZM” • 51

just. Who can contest the rights of the Jews on Palestine? My God, his-
torically it is your country!”^43
Like his uncle, Ruhi al- Khalidi never questions the basic historical
claims of the Hebrew Bible concerning the Israelite kingdoms in the
Holy Land, nor does he cast doubt on the direct link between his Jew-
ish contemporaries and the biblical Israelites. On the contrary, con-
sider these lines, in which al- Khalidi writes of the exiles to Babylo-
nia: “The captives in Babylonia demonstrated their abundant yearning
for Zion and Jerusalem. No nation among the nations reached their
height of grieving over their homelands and the degree of their longing
for it. They wandered along the banks of the euphrates crying over
Jerusalem and bewailing her in poems and psalms.”^44 al- Khalidi has
read these “poems and psalms”; he cites their “style,” “allegories,” and
“metaphors” as having served as models for such literary talents as Vic-
tor Hugo, the French writer about whom he was writing another book
at the same time.^45 Al- Khalidi proceeds to quote fifteen poetic lines
of Psalm 137, “By the rivers of Babylon,” followed by a “rhetorically
superior” passage from Lamentations, 2:11– 13. Next, in demonstrating
that “the hope to return to Jerusalem and for the restoration of the
ancient davidic kingdom remained alive in the hearts of the exiles,”
al- Khalidi quotes several verses from ezekiel 37, including 21– 22:

then say to them, Thus says the Lord God: I will take the people

of Israel from the nations among which they have gone, and will

gather them from every quarter, and bring them to their own

land. I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains

of Israel; and one king shall be king over them all.^46

Al- Khalidi continues for pages with this discussion, citing verse after
biblical verse exhibiting the ancient aspiration of the Israelite return
to Palestine. While the passages he cites sometimes overlap with those
listed by Gottheil in his Jewish­Encyclopedia article, as often as not
they appear to be of al- Khalidi’s own choosing, or perhaps drawn on

(^43) The original seven- page letter is held in the central Zionist Archives (cZA H197).
For references to it, see, e.g., Khalidi, Palestinian­Identity, 74– 75; dowty, Israel/Palestine,
63; Marcus, Jerusalem­ 1913 , 46– 47; La Guardia, War­without­End, 205.
(^44) al- Khālidī, “as- Sayūnīzm, ay al- masʾala aṣ- ṣahyūniyya” [copyist version], 15.
(^45) The book on Hugo was published the year before al- Khalidi’s death. al- Khālidī,
Tārīkh­ʿilm­al-­adab­ʿind­al-­ifranj­wa-­l-­ʿarab­wa-­Fīktūr­Hūgū.
(^46) al- Khālidī, “as- Sayūnīzm, ay al- masʾala aṣ- ṣahyūniyya” [copyist version], 15. Un-
less otherwise noted, I use the New­Revised­Standard­Version for translations of biblical
texts into english.