Defining Neighbors. Religion, Race, and the Early Zionist-Arab Encounter - Jonathan Marc Gribetz

IMAGInInG ThE “ISrAElITES” • 147

rights to others, as is clear in France, austria, and america, and as is
obvious as well in egypt,^53 since security has been strengthened and
the rights of foreigners preserved.”^54 to use european Jewry as proof
of the potential for Easterners to excel even beyond Europeans— so as
to encourage his fellow Easterners and to rebuff the condescension of
Europeans— the author must assert the fundamental “Eastern- ness” of
Jews, including and especially the Jews of europe.
this was a theme to which al-­Muqtaṭaf returned in greater detail in
1913, in an article on “the Jews of France”:

Our purpose in publishing these lines is for easterners to see

that a group of them, i.e., the Israelites who immigrated to eu-

rope and settled France— the mother of the sciences and arts and

civilization— matched or even surpassed the French in every pur-

suit. Given this, we do not know how the europeans can claim

that the eastern mind is inferior to the Western mind and that

if an easterner were to compete with a Westerner with equal

means, the Westerner would prevail.^55

For evidence of Jewish success in France, al-­Muqtaṭaf relies on an ar-
ticle by the French author eugene tavernier.^56 the article describes
the spread of Jews throughout the various parts of French public life,
from the military to the government to the police to the press. tavern-
ier’s article, it seems, caught the eye of al-­Muqtaṭaf’s editors because it
showed that “the Israelites, who are a pure eastern nation,” are able to
excel in France to a degree far disproportionate to their small numbers,
with Jews holding positions of prominence in “the sciences, literature,
politics, and finance.” And this success came “despite the fact that
their history in France is one of continuing oppression,” from medie-
val slaughters to ritual murder accusations to economic discrimination
to, most recently, the Dreyfus Affair.^57 If the Jews, “a pure eastern
nation,” could achieve such feats of success even while suffering perse-
cution and deprivation, other easterners (especially, for al-­Muqtaṭaf’s
purposes, Arabs) could have confidence that they too have the ability
to excel in the modern world.

(^53) Literally: “in this region.” Al-­quṭr, in the egyptian context, though, generally refers
exclusively to egypt.
(^54) al-­Muqtaṭaf 31:5 (May 1906), 361.
(^55) al-­Muqtaṭaf 43:6 (December 1913), 561.
(^56) tavernier’s 1913 article “the Jews of France in the XIXth Century,” 393– 407, is
mentioned in philipp, Die­Juden­und­das­Wirtschaftsleben, 120. On tavernier’s view of
France as “the daughter of the Grand Orient,” see Kedourie, “Young turks, Freemasons
and Jews,” 98.
(^57) al-­Muqtaṭaf 43:6 (December 1913), 563.