IMAGInInG ThE “ISrAElITES” • 179Certainly by 1917, well into the Great War and on the eve of the Bal-
four Declaration and Britain’s conquest of palestine, al-Muqtaṭaf pre-
sented a firmer, though still hardly vehement, stance against Jewish
colonization of the holy Land. an article entitled “the Country of pal-
estine” relayed the conclusion of the secretary of the British palestine
Society, e.W.G. Masterman, that palestine in its current condition “is
not suitable for european colonization.” the article ends with a quo-
tation attributed to Masterman: “the country, in its current condition,
cannot sustain an increase in its population and therefore I consider the
gate of colonization there to be [closed] tight after the war if there is
a desire for extensive colonization.”^152 One cannot be certain whether
this was a view shared by all al-Muqtaṭaf’s editors or just certain con-
tributors; regardless, it was an assertion printed in al-Muqtaṭaf with-
out criticism and suggests that the writers and readers were concerned
about the prospect of mass Jewish immigration to palestine at the close
of the war. Makaryus’s praise of the fruits of Zionist colonization was
not a unanimously held attitude on the pages of his journal.
“Brothers Fighting Brothers”: Al-Hilāl
and the Jews in the Great WarI conclude this chapter by looking, once more, at the same article in
al-Hilāl with which we began: emile Zaydan’s “the Jews and the War.”
this intriguing piece ties together many of the disparate themes dis-
cussed throughout the chapter, including the presumed link between
ancient Jewish history and the contemporary Jewish experience, sym-
pathy for the plight of the Jews of europe, and, at the same time, in-
tense anxieties about Jews’ seemingly boundless power.
Zaydan points to a number of ways in which Jews are connected
to the Great War, but the first he notes is (like the ironic fact that
Palestine’s Jews have fled to Egypt during the war) also a historical
curiosity:
among the strangest of coincidences is that the fourth of au-
gust, namely, the day of the outbreak of the war, corresponds to
the memorial day of the destruction of the Jews’ Great temple(^152) al-Muqtaṭaf 51:3 (September 1917). Masterman’s article includes the line: “It is
useless for any to settle in palestine who are not prepared to be themselves practical ag-
riculturalists and also to face, especially in the immediate future, very many difficulties.
there will not be immediate openings on an extended scale after the war.” Masterman,
“palestine,” 26. On the concept of “absorptive capacity” in palestine, see also reichman,
Katz, and paz, “the absorptive Capacity of palestine, 1882– 1948.”