“CONCerNING Our ARAb QuESTIOn”? • 101Jew. “One hour later,” however, “the rumors had changed.” In fact,
the victim was not a Jew. “Then who was he?” asks the author rhetori-
cally. he was actually “a Muslim!”^26 a report from hebron in December
1908 proudly tells of the happiness shared “by all” in the celebration
of “the holiday of freedom” (ḥagha-ḥerut) that followed the Young
Turk Revolution. In Hebron, the correspondent relates, “Jews and Mus-
lims walked together arm- in- arm, in brotherhood.” The correspondent,
listed simply as “r,” notes that this scene was all the more exceptional
given the fact that an anti- Jewish boycott was ongoing in Hebron. “We
hope,” he concludes, that “beginning today, after the celebration, they
will cancel it. this boycott has deprived several of our brothers of a
livelihood.”^27
the term Ishmaelite also appeared in Ben- Yehuda’s papers. For in-
stance, in the “Jerusalem Daily” section of a late 1910 issue of ha- Or,
the author describes a piece of prime Jerusalem real estate (including
the Carmel Hotel) that was owned by “more than thirty Ishmaelite
families.”^28 Later that same month, also in the “Jerusalem Daily” fea-
ture, an article reported on “the Sale of a house from a Jew to Ish-
mael [sic].”^29 this article also comments on the unfairness of the land-
purchasing system, pointing to “the speed and swiftness” with which
the transaction was completed in the court (“in three hours”), while “in
cases of transactions between Jews, and all the more so from an Ish-
maelite to a Jew . . . many days are wasted running back and forth to
court and much money spent unnecessarily.” Interestingly, the author
does not object, on principle, to the sale of land by a Jew to a non- Jew;
the article does not mention this issue.^30
Intriguingly, in the Second aliyah paper ha-Aḥdut, such singularly
religious categorizations— neither qualifying nor qualified by any
other terms— are much less prominent in the paper’s descriptions of
the non- Jewish natives of palestine. the relative absence of such cat-
egorization is particularly remarkable when seen in the context of
their regularity in ha-Ḥerut and ha-Ẓevi/ha-Or. I shall return to ha-
Aḥdut below. For now, let us simply note that to the extent that we
can gauge perceptions by terminological usage, at least at times, this
is how the authors of ha-Ḥerut and ha-Ẓevi/ha-Or authors perceived
their world: the Jews of palestine were living among Christians and
(^26) ha-Ẓevi 25:40 (november 25, 1908), 2.
(^27) ha-Ẓevi 25:57 (December 20, 1908), 2.
(^28) ha- Or 2:27:202 (november 20, 1910), 2.
(^29) the article title indeed reads yishmaʾel (Ishmael) not yishmaʾeli (an Ishmaelite),
though in the article itself the author uses the term Ishmaelite. I presume that the missing
yud was the result of a typographical error.
(^30) ha- Or 2:27:209 (november 29, 1910), 3.