“CONCerNING Our ARAb QuESTIOn”? • 121rights, ceaselessly pressed and persecuted^103 by the governments
and nations among which they lived. at the same time, the Jews
in Turkey enjoyed complete freedom and knew nothing of special
limitations and oppression. the entire land, in all directions, was
open to them, and they were permitted to settle and work as they
chose. and when the Jews of Spain were expelled from their land,
they found in the Ottoman kingdom a place of refuge and per-
sonal treatment that they did not find anywhere else. The Turkish
nation did not only open the gates of its land to the hebrew ex-
iles; it also offered them all civil rights. Aside from military ser-
vice, which was reserved [mukdash] for the “believers,” the Jews
were able to attain all of the government and public positions,
from the lowest level to the very highest.^104In this opening paragraph to his article “Clarifying Our political Situ-
ation,” Ben- Gurion points to the same discrepancy ha-Ḥerut noted be-
tween the treatment of Jews in europe, on the one hand, and in the
Ottoman Empire, on the other. But there are key differences between
the ways in which these two articles identify and account for this diver-
gence. In ha-Ḥerut, “Christian countries” are juxtaposed with “the Mus-
lim world.” In other words, the societies were labeled by their domi-
nant religious affiliations. The explanation for the difference between
the Jewish condition across the two societies is, correspondingly, tied
to religion: Jews were respected in the “Muslim world” “because Islam
recognizes all monotheistic religions,” whereas in “Christian countries”
they were hated “with the deepest religious hatred.” In contrast, Ben-
Gurion presents the distinction as one between “the lands of europe”
and “Turkey” or “the Ottoman kingdom,” geographic and political
designations. that europe was a predominantly Christian society and
Turkey and the Ottoman Empire were ruled by Muslims was not rele-
vant to Ben- Gurion in his assessment of the political situation. Indeed,
religion is almost completely absent from his discussion, except in one
instance. In the (prereform) Ottoman Empire, Ben- Gurion explains, the
Jews were not deemed proper “believers” (maʾaminim, a term he places
(^103) the phrase Ben- Gurion uses here, nirdafimbliḥasakh(“ceaselessly persecuted”), is
likely borrowed from Isaiah 14:6. The prophet writes of the punishment that is suffered
by the “wicked” and “tyrants” “that belabored nations in fury, in relentless pursuit (mur-
dafbliḥasakh).” Though I am arguing here that Ben- Gurion, like his fellow Second Aliyah
socialist Zionists, did not tend to use religion as an interpretative tool for understanding
his non- Jewish neighbors in palestine, he was nonetheless famously interested in the
Bible. For some of his addresses to his Bible study group, see Ben- Gurion, Ben-Gurion
LooksattheBible.
(^104) ha-Aḥdut 1:3, 87.