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home. Nonetheless, if al- Khalidi was wondering, given the small scale
of actual Jewish immigration to Palestine over the centuries, just how
meaningful were those frequent expressions of the dream of returning
to Zion, he did not explicitly express this doubt in his manuscript.
“Mendelssohn’s Theory”To the extent that we may discern al- Khalidi’s position on Zionism from
this ostensibly objective, academic text, however, it is not any insincer-
ity in the historic wish of the Jews to return to Palestine that ultimately
delegitimizes the modern Zionist movement. Nor, for that matter, does
al- Khalidi even mention objections along the lines of those that his
uncle, Yusuf diyaʾ, had sent to Zadoc Kahn and Herzl more than a
decade earlier. In the same letter discussed above, Yusuf diyaʾ had con-
cluded that “the reality is that Palestine now is an integral part of the
Turkish empire, and, what is more important, it is inhabited by others
than the Jews.” Yusuf diyaʾ, we see, articulated his argument against
Zionism in pragmatic, political, and demographic terms.
For Ruhi al- Khalidi, the argument seems to be on another plane
entirely— one internal to Judaism, Jewish discourse, and Jewish his-
tory. While the vast majority of Jews may not have chosen to return
to Palestine in the many centuries following the Roman conquest and
exile (just as was the case, al- Khalidi does not fail to observe, with the
meager return from the Babylonian exile),^55 al- Khalidi still does not
impute any illegitimacy to the Jewish will to return. Rather, he respect-
fully presents the history of this ancient and long- lasting hope.
The Jewish relationship to Palestine changed, however, in the mod-
ern period, according to al- Khalidi, and the transition is linked to one
man: the eighteenth- century German Jewish political and religious phi-
losopher Moses Mendelssohn (1729– 1786). In al- Khalidi’s rendering,
with the advent of what he calls “Mendelssohn’s theory” (naẓariyyat
Māndilsūn), Jewish identity underwent a radical transformation that
indicted any manifestation of Jewish nationalism thereafter as a clear
violation of its principles. Mendelssohn is a key figure in al- Khalidi’s
narrative of Jewish history, and one finds various formulations of
“Mendelssohn’s theory” at several points within the text, beginning
on the second page of the manuscript. “Mendelssohn’s theory,” writes
al- Khalidi,
(^55) al- Khālidī, “as- Sayūnizm, ay al- masʾala aṣ- ṣahyūniyya” [copyist version], 28.