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bshall we complain about them?” bNot all were blind. The Zionist philosopher Ahad Ha’am bvisited the land in 1891. He came; he saw; he perceived. And bthat perception led him to write: “We are wrong to believe that bthe Arabs are savages of the desert . . . who neither observe nor bunderstand what transpires around them. . . . The Arabs, espe- bcially the town dwellers, see and understand our work and am- bbitions. But they feign ignorance since at present they do not see bin our activities a danger to their future.” bAhad Ha’am realized, too, that this momentary lack of bdanger coincided with economic benefits for the Arabs which badded to the temporary lack of tension. “But,” he added, “when bthe time comes when the life of our people develops to such an bextent that it may encroach in however small a measure upon bthe Arabs, they will not readily give in. . . .” bBut as perceptive as he was, even that one clarion call was bnot really raised to signal danger. Ishmael, however, was begin- bning to stir. The winds of nineteeth-century nationalism were blate arriving in the Middle East, but the breezes could not forev- ber be blocked. bIn 1905 a Christian Arab named Neguib Azoury published ba book that may well be regarded as the first cogent expression bof the Arab nationalism that Jews insisted was nonexistent. bFrom his exile in Paris, Azoury issued an anti-Turkish, anti- bJewish work called Le Réveil de la Nation Arabe. In it he not only bcalled for an Arab state from the Nile to the Euphrates; he also bcalled Zionism a danger to Arab aspirations and declared that b“it was clear” that the two nationalist movements could not ex- bist in the same land. bOne of the few to be disturbed by rising Arab nationalism band anti-Zionism (Christian Arabs in Jaffa had organized an banti-Jewish gang under Anton Kassar) was the educator bYitzhak Epstein, who during the Seventh Zionist Congress bwarned, “Let us not anger a sleeping lion. . . . We must solve the bquestion of our relations with the Arabs before a Jewish question barises among them.” What did Epstein suggest? Among other bthings, to raise the Arab standard of living in the fields of educa- btion, health, and economy. . . . bReaction to the warning was typified by Moshe Smilansky, bwho, in an article in Ha’Olam, mocked Epstein and wrote that b
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