The end of innocence
Some 100 years after the 1920 riots, which signified the opening shot in the Israeli-Arab conflict, what has changed? A great deal – and very little.
By Nadav Shragai
Published on 05-01-2020 11:33
Last modified: 05-11-2020 12:52
April 19, 1920, on a train on his way to the San Remo Conference, Chaim Weizmann wrote to his wife, Vera, who was living in London: "My dear, the most terrible, awful thing has happened to us: A pogrom in Jerusalem, with all the accompanying signs of a pogrom… I am tired and shattered and exhausted and nauseated by it all. If the bayonets of the English had not stopped us, we would have overcome the Arabs on the first day, but the English dismantled the weapon of our self-defense and imprisoned our people, including Vladimir Yevgenyvich (Jabotinsky)."
Two weeks earlier, on the first day of the week of Passover, 1920, the riots broke out in Jerusalem and its environs. Today, they would be considered not much more than midsize terrorist attacks. "Only" seven people were killed and 200 injured. Still, it was the start of a new era; the opening shot of the Israeli-Arab conflict, and the first major non-criminal incident of an ethnoreligious nature.
A month earlier, Yosef Trumpeldor and five of his comrades had been killed at Tel Hai, but that battle had more to do with the Arabs' desire to fight against how Britain and France were splitting up the region and less to do with Jewish-Arab relations.
It's not that budding nationalism and fears of Zionism and aliyah hadn't been simmering among the Arabs already, but in 1920 they came into focus and took on clear political and religious angles. That same year saw the foundations for the religious aspect of the national conflict, especially on the Arab side under the leadership of the Grand Mufti Hajj Amin al-Husseini.
Husseini elevated the status of the mosques on the Temple Mount, using them for his political purposes and inventing the blood libel "Al-Aqsa is in danger," which even then falsely accused the Jews of intending to demolish the mosques on the Mount. The riots and the libel spurred the growth of the Palestinian national movement. In 1920 the seeds of the modern-day Palestinian outlook, which does not recognize Israel as the national state of the Jewish people, were sown. This worldview is willing to accept Judaism only as a dhimmi, a protected subservient religion, and not as a sovereign entity in an independent state.
Illusions smashed
The events opened the eyes of many Jews who had made the mistake of believing that the dispute between Arabs and Jews over the land would be limited to the "new" Jews, the ones who were arrived from abroad, whereas the veteran residents who had lived among Arabs for years would be spared any evil.
Historian Joseph Klausner noted that "Among the casualties and wounded were Jews of every ethnic background, of all classes, of all parties, Sephardim and Ashkenazim … devout rabbis and educated freethinkers. The enemy did not differentiate. Let us, therefore, stop differentiating between ourselves…."
The illusion that a foreign power could be trusted to defend us was also smashed. "We were told by the government that nothing bad would befall the Hebrew public, because the government would keep order and peace in the Land, and we believed it," Ha'aretz stated in an editorial that threw off the naiveté in the face of the new reality.
What happened in those days came as a complete and utter shock. They brought an end to innocence and, much more importantly, a start to the formation of an orderly military force and the realization that the organization HaShomer would no longer be enough. Eliyahu Golomb faced off with HaShomer and convinced David Ben-Gurion that it was time to build a much more extensive and orderly defensive force.
As a result, after 1920, defense forces in various towns and communities organized and formed the Haganah. It was still a small, scattered, and weak organization, and would become effective only a decade later. But 1920 marked the beginning.
The terminology changed, too. The writer Moshe Smilansky, for example, believed that the conflict was one "between two peoples." He and his friends in the Jewish Peace Alliance erred in thinking that it would be possible to establish a bi-national state in the Land of Israel that would be based on what the cultures had in common. Reality came knocking. In 1920, Jerusalem saw the first calls of "Itbah al-Yahoud" (Slaughter the Jews) or "Palestine is our country – the Jews our dogs" – calls that are still used.
The Arabs of the land began to call themselves "Palestinians," and the weapons the rioters used 100 years ago haven't changed, either: knives, iron pipes, rocks, and sticks.
It is worth noting that in 1920 no use was made of guns. A report by a British committee of inquiry set up to probe the riots described one of the characteristics of Palestinian terrorism, which would remain in the years to come: "All the evidence indicates that these attacks were of a cowardly and traitorous nature. Most of them were against the elderly, women, and children. Most were attacked from the back."
The creation of 'interests'
So what, if anything, has changed in the 100 years since then? Two days after Israel's 72nd Independence Day, Palestinian terrorism is not the existential threat it used to be, but it can still disrupt our lives. The terrorist organizations and many of those who carry out terrorism have not changed their goal: The eradication of the state of Israel. And that goal still rests on the worldview that Jews are not among the groups entitled to self-determination because Judaism is a religion, not a nationality.
Most of the expressions of reconciliation from the Arabs, including the peace treaties, were not the result of any recognition of our rights, but rather recognition of our power. At their base, they are the result of interests and the understanding that what the Jews built here will not be erased, that it's too late to turn the ship around and that it is better to have peaceful relations and cooperation with Israel than be an enemy.
That is what happened with Egypt and Jordan as well as with Saudi Arabia and various African countries and Persian Gulf states. There's no love story here, rather a story of mutual interests. Will it be different in the future?
In most cases, relations between peoples that are based on a combination of interests and proximity will stand the tests of time and history. But we shouldn't count on that combination.
The 100 years that have passed have taught us, sadly, that over time, the ethnoreligious conflict has pushed aside personal ties between Jews and Arabs. However, economic, military, intelligence or health interests have overcome the conflict itself. These are what have laid the basis for something else, which might someday lead to peace – and not peace because of shared interests. A hundred years after the start of the conflict and 72 years after the state was founded, we need to make do with that. It's not nothing, and it's not something to be taken for granted.