130 • CHAPTER 3
critical tone, it would seem, not the alleged facts (which, the author
presumably recognized, were true), that constituted the “vulgar lie.”
Ha-Ḥerutviewed any sign of opposition to Zionism as a “Great Danger”
(the catch- phrase consistently attached to its reports on the anti- Zionist
Arabic press) that demanded a strong, countervailing response.
While ha-Ḥerut’s editors may have desired peaceful relations with
their non- Jewish neighbors in palestine, they appear to have desired
such relations only on their own terms, leaving no room for critical
attitudes toward Zionism, its methods, or its goals. In this sense I differ
from Jacobson, who contends that this position represents “an interest-
ing alternative to the more dominant approach of the european Zionist
leadership” and “an alternative way of living with the arabs.”^132 If the
non- Jewish residents of palestine were willing uncritically to accept Zi-
onist immigration to the country and the prevalence of Jewish national
symbols in their developing culture and institutions, only then, it would
seem, would ha-Ḥerut advocate cooperation. the supposed Sephardic-
Ashkenazic divide vis- à- vis Palestine’s native non- Jews seems to be far
less pronounced on closer inspection.
ConclusionPalestine’s Hebrew newspapers offer critical insight into Zionist percep-
tions of the Zionists’ neighbors in Palestine. Whether in the simple termi-
nology the authors and editors employed in describing palestine’s natives
as they narrated events or in more explicit discussions of the nature of
and distinctions between these communities, these journalistic texts re-
veal that Zionists in Late Ottoman palestine perceived their neighbors
through a variety of lenses. For these Zionists, palestine’s non- Jews were
not merely some generic, nondescript indigenous population wrongfully
living in the Jews’ rightful homeland. rather, these populations were
communities with which Jews had long and complex histories, as mem-
bers of interconnected religious civilizations or as members of the same
race. there is also a sense of uncertainty that emerges from some of
these newspaper pages— an uncertainty about (if not a conscious desire
to challenge) the boundaries of identity that were forming during this
period. there is no doubt that there was already a clear sense of political
danger in the Zionists’ encounter with palestine’s non- Jews. however, if
we retrospectively identify in this period a simple Jewish/Zionist- arab/
palestinian encounter, or nothing more than seeds of “arab- Israeli con-
flict,” we miss the intriguing complexity and fluidity of this moment.
(^132) Jacobson, “The Sephardi Community in Pre– World War I Palestine,” 31.