134 • ChAPTEr 4
author defined himself was often intimately connected to the way in
which he defined the Jew. To the extent that we may distill a general
sense of the Jews from the wide variety of texts studied below, we
might conclude that Jews and, not least, Zionists were viewed with a
striking combination of respect and fear, sympathy and resentment.^9
regional Journals and Their reach in PalestineFirst, a word about the journals and editors I have chosen to analyze.
Al-Muqtaṭaf was founded in 1876 in Beirut but was restarted in Cairo
in 1884; al-Hilāl, which began in 1892, and al-Manār, the first issue
of which appeared in 1898, were also based in Cairo. At first glance
these three journals may seem a peculiar source for a book primar-
ily concerned with the mutual perceptions and intellectual encounters
among Zionists and arabs. Not only were they all published outside
of palestine, the presumed center of the Zionist- arab encounter, but
their founders and editors were themselves not from palestine. rather,
they were all Syrian- born (originating from areas in current- day Leba-
non); al-Hilāl’s Jurji Zaydan and al-Muqtaṭaf’s founders Yaʿqub Sarruf,
Faris Nimr, and Shahin Makaryus were Christians from around Beirut,
while al-Manār’s editor rashid rida was a Muslim from a village near
(^9) the pioneering study of the image of the Jew in the arabic press is Sehayik, “Demut
ha- yehudi bi- reʾi ʿitonut ʿarvit beyn ha- shanim 1858– 1908,” which reviews tens of Ara-
bic journals from the half- century preceding the Young turk revolution. Sehayik seeks
to portray this period as “ ‘a golden age’ in relations between Jews and Arabs in the Mid-
dle east.” In so doing, he overlooks or minimizes evidence to the contrary. Moreover, to
explain what he perceives to be a marked and abrupt deterioration in attitude toward the
Jews after 1908, he points to the rise of Zionism. however, 1908 was a transformational
year not for Zionism but rather for the Ottoman empire, as it was the year of the Young
turk revolution. In other words, any dramatic change in attitude, if there had been one,
would more reasonably be attributed to changes that came with the revolution, including
(and most important in this context) the liberalization of the Ottoman censorship regime.
even the opposition to Zionism that was expressed in the arabic press, Sehayik contends,
was limited exclusively to the political realm. he asserts that “even this opposition did
not, at that time, stem from a religious or racist background, but rather from a fear of
creating a political problem in a period of the weakening of the Ottoman empire, which
symbolized arab- Islamic pride. In addition, the local Christian zealots feared that the
Zionist movement would harm them and their economic and political position in the
region.” Sehayik is unwilling to see in early arab opposition to Zionism anything other
than the expression of political or economic interests, notwithstanding his characteri-
zation of the post- 1948 Arab- Israeli conflict as “the war of annihilation that the Arabs
declared against the state of Israel that is accompanied by an extreme, uncompromising
Islamic- religious, anti- Jewish flavor” (221).