“CONCerNING Our ARAb QuESTIOn”? • 99reported on a young man who drowned off the coast of Jaffa. The Jaffa
correspondent refers to the victim not as an arab but as “a Christian
lad.”^17 In these examples, the matters discussed are not in any apparent
way related to religion (whether theology or practice). Rather, they
would seem to be “secular,” worldly matters: levels of emigration to
the americas, conscription rates, and an accidental death. that the in-
dividuals discussed were Christian, that they prayed in churches rather
than mosques, might seem inconsequential. But in the minds of the
authors, being Christian was relevant far beyond the narrow domain
twenty- first- century Westerners might impute to religion. For these au-
thors, that is, Christianity was a primary mark of distinction, not a
modifier of some other, supposedly more fundamental characteristic.
the same is often the case in Ben- Yehuda’s papers from this period.
For instance, in a report in a November 1910 issue of ha- Or, we read of
the beating of an elderly Jew by “a rash gentile” in Jerusalem in broad
daylight. hearing the screams of the victim, many came to the aid of
the old man, “but the Christians who were there stood from afar and
watched how the seventy- year- old man was beaten by the wild youth.”
(the author does not limit the accusations to the Christian bystanders;
the article immediately notes that “to our shame, there were also two
Jews who, out of fear, did not dare to protect their brother.”^18 ) Simi-
larly, a letter to the editor in an earlier issue (when the newspaper was
called ha-Ẓevi) reports on “Hebrew among the Christians.” The writer
requests that Ben- Yehuda, who was already renowned for devising ne-
ologisms in his attempt to modernize the Hebrew language, “create a
fitting Hebrew word for the French word Papeterie,^19 as we have been
asked here by misters SayeghetSelim,^20 who would like to use it for the
‘stamp of their business’ and are not satisfied with only the French and
Arabic. The Jews should know that the Christians consider Hebrew a
living language more so than do the hebrews themselves.”^21
this example is particularly informative as it reveals that, in this
newspaper, “Christian” is not a code word for European. When indi-
viduals are described simply as Christians, after all, there is at least
the possibility that european Christian residents of palestine are the
referents; as discussed in chapter 1, in the Late Ottoman period there
were small populations of european Christian missionaries and other
(^17) ha-Ḥerut 1:44 (September 8, 1909), 3. The author is listed as Ben- Avraham.
(^18) ha- Or 2:14:189 (november 4, 1910), 3.
(^19) French for “stationery,” the word is recorded in Latin script.
(^20) The names are written first in Hebrew script (including et for “and”) and then in
Latin.
(^21) ha-Ẓevi 25:103 (February 12, 1909), 3.