Our Fathers’ Children

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bism on the part of the Arabs of the Land of Israel. In that year bseveral hundred Arab notables from Jerusalem and Jaffa sent a bpetition to the court at Constantinople asking that the sultan put ban end to both Jewish immigration and land purchase. Neither bHerzl nor any of the other political Zionists understood the sig- bnificance of such a move. The Arab was simply a person whose bpresence was irrelevant to the future of the country. It was the bOttoman Empire, the Turkish “sick man of Europe,” that ruled bthe land and was the partner with whom the Jews had to deal. bEither the Turks would agree to a Jewish homeland within the bcontext of their empire, or such a state would come into being as bthe result of the collapse of the Ottomans and the dismember- bment of their territory by the European powers. What would bemerge would depend upon how clever the Zionists were in their bdealings with the nations. But the term nation most emphatically bdid not apply to the Arabs of the Land of Israel.

bOne hardly knows what to make of Herzl’s naiveté. On bthe one hand he apparently believed that one bought a home- bland in much the same manner as one bought a house or a fac- btory. In a letter to Herzl, the sociologist L. von Gumplowicz basked, “You want to found a state without bloodshed? Where bdid you ever see that? Without violence and without guile, simply bby selling and buying shares?” Herzl did, indeed think so, be- bcause the Arab question played no part in his grasp of the prob- blem. To him, how could the Arabs, such as they were, con- bceivably object to a Jewish state in the land they occupied if they bbecame rich through Jewish development? Herzl may sincerely bnot have meant it, but it was a crude, contemptuous rejection of bArab national pride.

bThus, in a letter to the former mayor of Jerusalem, Yusef bZiah Al-Haldi, Herzl wrote: “Do you believe that the Arab in bthe land whose house or land is worth three or four thousand bfrancs will be unhappy if his property rises by five or ten times? bAnd that is what will inevitably happen when the Jews barrive. . . .”

bAnd in his book Altenuland, Herzl has the Arab Reshid Bey bsay, concerning the Jewish arrival: “It was a blessing for all of bus and first of course for the property owner. . . . Is a person who btakes nothing from you but only comes to give to you to be con- bsidered a thief in your eyes? The Jews made us wealthy; why b