“CONCerNING Our ARAb QuESTIOn”? • 107there is something peculiar, and noteworthy, in this editorial’s ra-
cial reasoning. Christian arabs hate Jews religiously and racially, ha-
Ḥerut explains, whereas Muslims view Jews amiably because Jews and
Arabs are thought to be racially linked.^48 there is no systematic racial
theory articulated in this article (though, as we shall see, such theories
were being developed by certain Zionist ideologues at the time), but
one wonders whether ha-Ḥerut considered the Christian arabs to be
not “fully Arab” in racial terms. It is not clear what sort of definition
ha-Ḥerut’s editors had in mind when they used the term “arab” for
Christian arabs. Is it, in the Christian case, merely a linguistic quality
as opposed to Muslim arabs, who are “racially” arab? there is in fact
some evidence suggesting that, at least in the minds of some of ha-
Ḥerut’s contributors, Christian arabs were not seen as being “authen-
tically” arab. In one article, for instance, a new orphanage in egypt is
described as being designed as a shelter for “abandoned arab, Jewish,
and Christian children.”^49
this occasional distinction between arabs and Christians was not
unique to ha-Ḥerut. In a front- page essay in his ha-Ẓevi newspaper in
november 1908, Eliezer Ben- Yehuda discusses the new policy of mil-
itary conscription for non- Muslims. As “heavy and difficult” a burden
conscription is for Muslims and Christians, Ben- Yehuda writes, it is all
the more so for Jews. after all, “nearly all the Christian natives of the
land here,” he explains,
are similar in their way of life to the Arabs. nearly all speak Ar-
abic, and they are all accustomed to the arabs. and there is no
doubt that every Christian among the people of the army feels
himself almost as though among people of his own age and his
own nation (beneiʿamo). As for the Jews, they are so distant, at
least for now, from the life of the natives of the land. they do
not even know the Arabic language nor the Turkish [language].
Certainly, a Jewish man would feel himself to be totally strange
among his fellow Christian and Muslim members of the army.^50Ben- Yehuda’s essay presumes that palestine’s Christians are not quite
Arabs. Though he is not perfectly explicit, Ben- Yehuda seems to take
(^48) Cf. Gad Frumkin, who retrospectively wrote that in this period “the Muslims among
the Arabs saw themselves as close to the religion and race [la- dat ve- la- geza‘] of the
Jews.” Frumkin, Derekhshofetbi-rushalayim, 218. Cited in Bartal, “Du- kiyum nikhsaf,” 10.
(^49) ha-Ḥerut 3:13 (november 21, 1910), 3. It is also possible, of course, that the term
Christians here refers to non- Arab Christians, such as British Christians who were then in
control of the region, but this is left ambiguous.
(^50) ha-Ẓevi 25:30 (november 13, 1908), 1– 2.