Posted on 04/26/2024 8:43:18 AM PDT by Freeleesy
The Hamas 7 October massacre echoes previous pogroms in Palestine – notably the Safed pogrom of 1834. In this masterful analysis, published by the Fondation pour l’Innovation Politique, Georges Bensoussan identifies the rejection of moves to reform the dhimmi status and introduce equality between Muslims and non-Muslims as one of the primary causes of Arab hostility towards Jews.
The conflict became islamised in the 1920s, and Arab anti-Zionism then drew on the antisemitic themes contained in the notorious Russian forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Pen and ink sketch by Samuel Manning in 1873, showing Jews praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem.
In the 19th century, under the Ottoman Empire, Jews in Palestine resided mainly in Jerusalem, Safed and Tiberias. Haifa and Acre had smaller communities. In Jerusalem, as is often the case in the Arab-Muslim world, the Jewish condition was marked by a climate of humiliation and widespread fear, as witnessed in the 19th century by the Jewish traveler Abraham Yaari in his book Travels in Eretz Israel :
“The Arabs are violently hostile to the Jews, and persecute the children of Israel in the streets of the city. If a notable or even low-class people lay hands on Jews, we do not have the right to lay hands on them in response, whether they are Arabs or Turks, because they are of the same religion. If a Jew is beaten, he must assume the attitude of a supplicant and not retaliate with unkind words, for fear of receiving even more blows, because, in their eyes, we are worthless people. Sephardim behave like this because they are already used to it. But the Ashkenazim are not yet used to being beaten by the Arabs, and they respond with insults if they can speak their language. Otherwise, they gesticulate in anger, and then they receive even more beatings. […] It is the same for the uncircumcised (i.e. Christians) who are in exile [ sic ] like the Jews, except that the uncircumcised have a lot of money, because they receive kingdoms of it from Europe, and with this money they can bribe the Turks. The Jews don’t have enough money to do the same, so they are a little more “in exile.”
In 1831, “Southern Syria” (this is how the province that Westerners refer to as the “Holy Land” or Palestine is called in Arab lands), of which Safed is a part, was annexed by Mehmet Ali, the viceroy from Egypt. The Jewish community of Safed, one of the largest in the country, had long had a Jewish majority. The evidence comes in 1625 from the Italian orientalist Franciscus Quaresmius who wrote of Safed that it is “inhabited mainly by the Hebrews, where they have their synagogues and their schools.” The community grew stronger with the arrival of Russian Jews (1776-1781) then Jews from Lithuania (1809-1816).
Safed was part of the vilayet ( wilaya in Arabic) of Sidon, and the Jews of the vilayet lived mainly in Safed and Tiberias. From 1831, the Egyptian governance of “Palestine”, delegated by Mehmet Ali to Ibrahim Pasha, led to modernization which upset the traditional social balance between the communities, and, ultimately, caused an uprising of the rural Arab population which focused its violence on Jews.
One of the main decisions taken by Mehmet Ali was actually to favor the Jews and Christians. Until then the management and administration of his provinces lagged behind, including the Nile valley and “Palestine”. He also sought to surround himself with numerous Westerners to carry out important reforms and large-scale projects.
It was therefore under his reign that the Ashkenazi Jews obtained the annulment of the Ottoman decree which prohibited them from settling in Jerusalem. It created anger among the major notables, both Islamic religious dignitaries and local rural leaders who, from Nablus to Hebron, and from Jerusalem to Jaffa, saw their power now strictly controlled by the administration of Mehmet Ali of Egypt and not through Istanbul. Moreover, Governor Ibrahim Pasha, sent over by Mehmet Ali, brought in a capital tax reform which introduced equality in taxation: this was enough to sicken the privileged class, who had to revert to common law, and upset the social balance: the latter would no longer be able to live, as in the past, from taxes paid by non-Muslims. On top of this new taxes were introduced on harvests, in particular on olive harvests, which remained the major production in the region.
Finally, continuing in the same reforming vein, Ibrahim Pasha established compulsory conscription by drawing lots for the entire population. This is another reason for discontent where the peasantry were the great majority. This policy of openness towards Christian and Jewish minorities provoked the wrath of both conservative and popular circles. They were suddenly forced to recognise that the Jews no longer submitted to the discriminated condition which until then constituted the only marker of presumed Muslim superiority.
They then fomented and led an insurrection to get rid of the taxes by targeting non-Muslims and, in particular, Jews who would pay a high price. It is in this context that in May 1834, a revolt broke out in Nablus, Hebron, Bethlehem and Safed. The furious peasants were probably incited by a local preacher named Muhammad Damoor who proclaimed himself an “Islamic prophet”, attacked the Jews, destroyed their homes and stirred up all kinds of violence.
The pogrom itself began on June 15, 1834. It lasted thirty-three days. Utter carnage. The Arab and Bedouin villagers as well as the armed inhabitants of Safed (including Turks) massacred the Jews and raped their women. There were probably more than five hundred dead. Synagogues were looted before being set on fire, precious objects stolen or destroyed.
In his book The Events of Time (Korot Ha Itim) , Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kamenitz testifies to this violence: “On Sunday Sivan 18, looters coming from neighboring villages (from Safed) went on a rampage. Residents of other localities joined them. With swords and deadly tools, they attacked the Jews, crushed them to the ground, tore off their clothes, both men and women, chased them naked from the city and ransacked their possessions. Nothing remained of it. They even tore the Torah scrolls and talettim and tefillin.”
From his hiding place, Rabbi Israel of Shaklov sent several letters to the consuls of foreign states stationed in Beirut. He informed them in detail of the ordeals endured by several of their nationals – Jewish subjects “protected” by foreign powers. In response, the consuls encouraged Ibrahim Pasha to go to Safed to put down the rebellion there. He charged the Emir of the Druze with this mission: Emir Bashir descended into Galilee from his home in Lebanon.. By mid-July 1834, the riot subsided and most of the rioters fled. Several arrested ring-leaders were executed in the street. The Jews of Safed returned home to recover what had escaped plunder and destruction. Despite the aid provided by the consuls to their poorest subjects, most of them faced financial ruin, having saved less than 10% of the value of their assets. The only Hebrew printing press in the entire province of Syria/Palestine, which had been set up three years earlier by an Ashkenazi Jew (Israel Bak, 1797-1834), was destroyed.
The violence quickly spilled over from Safed to Judea, further south. Ibrahim Pasha gathered a few thousand Egyptian soldiers and marched towards Jerusalem. The journey was extremely difficult, hampered by the insurgents who controlled the villages overlooking the road. Arriving in the holy city, Ibrahim Pasha freed six hundred Egyptian soldiers who had locked themselves in the citadel. He puts down the revolt. The Ottoman authorities had let the rioters do their thing.
The pogrom of 1834 brought forth a response in August 1838. For three days, the Druze descended from the heights of Hauran and Lebanon, assisted by the Arabs. They in turn revolted against Egyptian power and once again pillaged the Jewish community of Safed.
We are witnessing the same desolation as in 1834. Jews had their throats slit, houses were pillaged, synagogues were desecrated, women were raped. Many Jews fled to Acre or Jerusalem, leaving fewer than a thousand families in the city.
The future secretary of the great English Jewish philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore, Louis Loewe, was then in Palestine. He gives his testimony: “In addition to everything they plundered, the Druze demanded from the Jews a sum equivalent to 2,500 English pounds which, of course, the Jews were not able to pay. The Druze then seized the rabbi who headed the Ashkenazi community, an old man. They tied his hands and feet and placed the blade of a naked sword on his neck. They threatened to cut off his head if the money was not paid to them immediately. He did not ask to be spared his life which he was ready to sacrifice it to save his community. All he asked for was little clean water for his hands so he could say a prayer and proclaim God to be righteous in all his ways. Then, everyone present uttered a heart-rending cry, and the Druze themselves seemed to have been affected. They removed the sword and ended by agreeing to an arrangement with the community, giving it time to find a way to borrow the required sum.”
The Safed pogroms in 1834 and 1838 were of a religious nature, as were the massacres of Christians on Mount Lebanon in 1860 perpetrated by Druze. Between 9 and 17 July 1860, in parts of Lebanon and the Golan Heights, riots spread to Damascus where nearly six thousand Christians were massacred. Nearly a third of the city’s Christian population were abandoned to their assassins by the Ottoman governor, Ahmed Pasha. This massacre ewas to precipitate the exodus of Christians towards Europe, Africa and the Americas, but also towards Egypt, where many Christian families of Syrian and Lebanese origin settled at the end of the 19th century.
When the Ottoman Empire, allied with the central European powers in the Great War, collapsed at the end of 1918, its Arab possessions came under the sovereignty of the United Kingdom and France. The territories were parcelled out in 1916 in the secret Franco-British agreements (known as Sykes-Picot), and validated by the San Remo conference (April 1920). In July 1922, the result was the granting via the League of Nations of two mandates to France (Syria and Lebanon) and two more to the United Kingdom (Palestine and Mesopotamia).
In Palestine, through the Balfour Declaration (November 1917), London promised the building of a “national home for the Jewish people”. Framed by the Zionist movement born at the end of the 19th century, this “National Home” was immediately confronted with an Arab refusal. The rejection was of a political nature before 1914 but took on Islamic form from 1920, espousing and doubling down on the ancient rejection of the Jew in traditional Muslim society. In this case it was a re-affirmation of the dhimmi status ( the centuries-old submission of non-Muslim minorities) and a rejection of equality with Muslims.
Before 1914, the Arab protest against Zionism, particularly among the Christian Arab elite of Palestine, more educated than the Sunni Muslim majority, distinguished between Jews and Zionists. This distinction disappeared after the Great War with the Islamization of anti-Zionism. This is how during the first massacres perpetrated in 1920 in Jerusalem and in 1921 in Jaffa (Tel Aviv), we heard “The Jews are our dogs”, “We will drink the blood of the Jews” and not “Death to the Zionists!” A year earlier, in 1919, leaflets distributed in Jerusalem and Jaffa compared “Jews,” not Zionists, to “poisonous snakes.” That same year, blatantly anti-Jewish slogans called for a bloodbath: “The Yarmouk will flow with blood, but Palestine will not belong to the Jews.”
This “unequivocal rejection of Zionism” soon reproduced the oldest themes of Western anti-Semitism familiar to Christian Arabs. While in the immediate aftermath of the Great War, a powerful wave of anti-Semitism swept Europe and made the Protocols of the Elders of Zion a success in Palestine, the rejection of Zionism made this forgery of Russian origin with its anti-Semitic objectives a cornerstone of discourse.
Appointed Secretary of State for the Colonies in March 1921, Winston Churchill went to Cairo where he received the Palestinian delegates. In the memorandum they gave him, they took up the main anti-Semitic themes conveyed by this false document. They will do this several times again during the interwar period... From now on, Arab anti-Zionism openly drew on the sources of European anti-Semitism.
Le Point:
Georges Bensoussan : « Les massacres de 1948 font partie de la mémoire collective des Israéliens » ENTRETIEN. En rappelant les pogroms des années 1830, 1920-1930 et de 1948, l'historien Georges Bensoussan met en lumière les soubassements historiques et anthropologiques de la tragédie du 7 octobre 2023. 16 Apr 2024
https://www.lepoint.fr/histoire/georges-bensoussan-les-massacres-de-1948-font-partie-de-la-memoire-collective-des-israeliens-16-04-2024-2557783_1615.php
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