104 • CHAPTER 3
Mendel Kremer and the “Ishmaelites”a curious fact in this regard is that the author of many of the re-
ports concerning palestine’s natives in ha-Ḥerut (the newspaper often
characterized simply as “Sephardic”) was a journalist named Mendel
Kremer, an unambiguously Ashkenazic name. Though he wrote fre-
quently for ha-Ḥerut and occasionally for other Zionist papers in pal-
estine, little is known about Kremer.^37 One source we do have about
Kremer is Theodor Herzl’s diary entries from his visit to Palestine
in 1898. During the trip Herzl met Kremer. Just after Herzl’s much-
anticipated audience with the German kaiser, who was also visiting
Jerusalem, Herzl records that “outside stood the secret- service agent
and supposed Zionist Mendel Kremer, who has been accompanying us
since Jaffa— by order of the Turkish government, it seems to me.”^38
Later, in Jaffa, Herzl explained his preference to remain on a ship so
as to stay “out of reach of the Mendel Kremers, Mazies,^39 and all those
people who, with good intentions or bad, might have got me into
trouble with the Turkish misgovernment— whether in order to save
imperiled Jewry, earn their thirty pieces of silver, or get into the good
graces of rothschild or some pasha.”^40 Herzl perceived Kremer as an
Ottoman spy in Zionist guise, a claim that may reveal more about
Herzl’s paranoia or ignorance of the realities of Ottoman Palestine
than it does about Mendel Kremer himself.^41 Herzl’s suspicions about
Kremer do, however, suggest that Kremer was highly familiar with Ot-
toman culture and presumably spoke Ottoman Turkish, if not Arabic
(^37) he sent a letter to Ben- Yehuda’s ha-Ẓevi concerning the decree that Muslim women
boycott Jewish- owned stores in hebron (ha-Ẓevi, november 23, 1908) and another con-
cerning the devastating December 28, 1908, earthquake in Italy and Italy’s benevolent
treatment of its Jewish population (ha-Ẓevi, January 19, 1909). At the close of the latter
letter, Kremer’s name is signed in Latin script, so I have chosen here to spell his name
accordingly. Yoseph Lang writes that Kremer was ha-Ẓevi’s Jerusalem correspondent and
became an editor of Hashkafah. Lang, Daberʿivrit!, 405, 513. At various points, Campos
identifies Kremer as “the Jaffa- based correspondent for the Hebrew paper ha- Hashkafa,”
“an Ottomanized Jew,” and “a mukhtar of Ashkenazi Jews in Jerusalem.” Campos, Otto-
man brothers, 77, 155.
(^38) Herzl, CompleteDiaries, 757. Herzl spells the name Krämer.
(^39) The reference here is to the physician Aaron Meir Masie (1858– 1930). Born in
eastern europe, he studied in Mir, Zurich, and paris before immigrating to palestine in
- He was appointed chief medical officer for the Rothschild settlements. See Joseph
Gedaliah Klausner, “Masie, aaron Meir,” eJ^2.
(^40) Ibid., 762.
(^41) Herzl’s accusation is, as far as I have been able to tell, nowhere corroborated nor
repeated.