120 • CHAPTER 3
ha-Ḥerut often dubs it, antisemitism— has taken root specifically within
the Christian arabic press.^101
Though the claim that essential religious differences between Islam
and Christianity largely accounted for the respective communities’
attitudes toward Zionism is found most prominently in ha-Ḥerut, Je-
rusalem’s Sephardic- edited newspaper, it was not only Sephardim
who held this view. In fact, as we have seen, Ashkenazim— such as
Mendel Kremer— perceived the same distinction between palestine’s
Muslims and Christians and also attributed this disparity to their re-
spective religions.^102 and this, too, is understandable, for, perhaps no
less than Sephardic natives of the Ottoman lands, Ashkenazic Zionists
from europe who had recently arrived in palestine were well aware
that they themselves had sought refuge from persecution in countries
ruled by Christians in a land governed by Muslims. For those Zionists
who imagined that their non- Jewish counterparts in palestine acted in
accordance with their respective religions, it was only reasonable to
link Christian opposition to Zionism to the Christian faith and Muslim
goodwill to Islam.
Socialist Zionists and Arab DifferencesNot all Zionists in palestine attributed the divergent treatment of Jews
under Christendom and Islam to the greater tolerance supposedly in-
herent in the Islamic faith. In the newly founded ha-Aḥdut (unity)
workers’ newspaper, David Ben- Gurion, a recent immigrant to Pales-
tine and a leader of the Second Aliyah socialist Zionist group Poʿalei
Ẓiyon (Workers of Zion), wrote:
among all of the lands of the Diaspora to which members of our
nation were dispersed, Turkey was the only one in which a “Jew-
ish Question” did not arise. In all of the lands of europe, the Jews
were imprisoned in the narrow and suffocating ghetto, lacking(^101) In her discussion of the distinction these papers drew between Christians and Mus-
lims, Abigail Jacobson highlights another important context: the Balkan wars (1912–
1913). In the course of these wars, Muslims suffered greatly, and, Jacobson argues, Ot-
toman Sephardim “may have been influenced by the anti- Christian feelings throughout
the empire and developed hostile feelings toward the Christians as well.” Jacobson, From
Empire to Empire, 110. While this perceived distinction between Christians and Muslims
preceded the Balkan wars, the earlier tensions between Christians and Muslims in the Ot-
toman empire’s european territories surely informed Ottoman subjects’ views of religious
differences, and the Balkan wars certainly exacerbated these tensions across the empire.
(^102) ha-Ḥerut 3:43 (January 30, 1911), 3– 4.