“CONCerNING Our ARAb QuESTIOn”? • 95linked to the ways in which they imagined and defined their neighbors
(hence the double meaning of this book’s title, DefiningNeighbors, as
groups both define and are defined by their neighbors). Through my
analysis of the three newspapers, I will suggest that while Ottoman
Sephardic Zionists and First Aliyah Ashkenazim often conceived of
their neighbors in religious terms, the socialist nationalist ideologues
of the Second aliyah were apparently less comfortable doing so. In the
minds of those Second aliyah Zionist ideologues, they were engaged
in a national- class encounter; as in their own self- conception, religion
for these materialist- secularists could not be a “real,” defining feature.
these terminological variations have important implications for our
understanding of the early years of the Zionists’ encounter with the na-
tives of palestine. Knowing whom the Zionists believed they had met in
Palestine— rather than taking one particular categorization of this pop-
ulation for granted— is critical for comprehending how Zionists related
to palestine’s natives, then and later. to begin to understand the ways
in which the editors, authors, and, ultimately, readers of these three
newspapers conceived of palestine’s native non- Jews, it is valuable to
look carefully at the specific terminology the newspapers use in refer-
ring to them. As George Lakoff and Mark Johnson have argued, “a cate-
gorization is a natural way of identifying a kind of object or experience
by highlighting certain properties, downplaying others, and hiding still
others.” this means that “when we give everyday descriptions, for ex-
ample, we are using categories to focus on certain properties that fit
our purposes.”^5 If asked whether an individual was “an Arab,” a Zionist
may have answered affirmatively, but we learn something about how
the Zionist views his or her world if, unprompted, he or she identifies
that individual as “a Muslim,” for instance, or as “a Christian.”^6 Indeed,
though I make use here of a wide variety of types of articles— including
explicitly politically oriented pieces— I draw extensively from daily re-
portage and other nonprogrammatic accounts. I take these relatively
unguarded descriptions of quotidian events as key windows into how
their authors viewed their world (rather than how they may have
wanted others, for more self- consciously political reasons, to view this
world). While I would caution against presuming a precise equivalence
(^5) Lakoff and Johnson, MetaphorsWeLiveBy, 163.
(^6) Lakoff and Johnson demonstrate how descriptions “highlight, downplay, and hide”
with this list of statements: “I’ve invited a sexy blonde to our dinner party”; “I’ve invited
a renowned cellist to our dinner party”; “I’ve invited a Marxist to our dinner party”; “I’ve
invited a lesbian to our dinner party.” They write: “Though the same person may fit all
of these descriptions, each description highlights different aspects of the person. . . . In
making a statement, we make a choice of categories because we have some reason for
focusing on certain properties and downplaying others.” Ibid., 163.