|
bposedly be friendly, thanks to Jewish progress and benefits. bThis was the Zionist conventional wisdom of the time. Rup- bpin and Levontin on February 16, 1911, sent the following mem- borandum to the Zionist Organization’s central office in Cologne: b“The only source of hatred of Jews . . . is the Christian Estab- blishment, the wealthy Christians and those educated in Jesuit bschools. . . .” bFor a look at what the “moderate” Muslims thought about bZionism, it is interesting to note the statements made by two bJerusalem rivals for election to the Turkish Parliament. The bNashashibi and Al-Husseini Jerusalem clans were longtime bMuslim rivals for power in Jerusalem. Each put up a candidate bfor Parliament in 1914. Said Rajib Nashashibi: “If elected I will bdedicate my efforts, night and day, to eliminate the damage and bdanger of the Zionists and Zionism.” Said his rival, Sa’ad Al- bHusseini: “We must, especially, support the fellah [“peasant”] b. . . to make sure that the Zionist hand does not acquire even one binch of their land.” bSo much for “moderate Muslims.” bThis ludicrous attempt to paint the Muslim Arabs as bpotential allies of Zionism would offer us some minor historical bcomfort if we at least learned from its delusion. Instead, today, bwe have reached the absurdity at the opposite end of the pole. bWe now maintain that it is the Muslims who are the source of banti-Zionist evil, whereas the Christians have now become the bsource of moderation and coexistence. bJust as early Zionism’s delusion was punctured early—the bworst inciters against Zionism in the Turkish Parliament were bthe Muslims—so do today’s expert “Arabists” scratch their bheads over the “puzzle” of the largest Christian town in Israel, bNazareth, which is the center of PLO agitation under its anti- bZionist Communist mayor, Tewfik Zayad, or George Habash, bthe extremist [sic] in the PLO, who is a Christian. bRuppin, Levontin, Ben Zvi, and all the rest could build btheir world of pleasant illusions. Truth suffers fools for a while band then rudely returns them to reality. In the words of bMordechai Eliav, an expert on early Jewish settlements which bwere then Palestine: “There is no doubt that Ruppin was con- bvinced that in the days to come the Arabs would be grateful for bthe economic benefits that the Jewish community had brought b
|
|