Did the Jews of the Yishuv Live in Harmony With Their Neighbors Until the Zionist “Invasion”?
The Palestinian Arabs claim that Zionism is the root cause for the failure of the Arabs and Jews to find a solution to their mutual conflict. In a speech to the UN General Assembly on November 13, 1974, Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, declared the enmity against the Jews originated after they began immigrating to Palestine in 1881. “Before the first large wave of immigrants started arriving,” he asserted, “every segment of the population enjoyed the religious tolerance characteristic of our civilization.”
Arafat alleged that Arabs “were engaged in farming and building, spreading culture throughout the land for thousands of years, setting an example in the practice of freedom of worship, acting as faithful guardians of the holy places of all religions.”
He treasured the “beautiful memories and vivid images of the religious brotherhood that was the hallmark of our Holy City before it succumbed to catastrophe. Our people continued to pursue this enlightened policy until the establishment of the state of Israel and their dispersion.”
Arafat’s idyllic description of life before the Zionist “invasion” is significant because his account has become part of the Arab narrative. Having been indoctrinated from childhood to the notion that Jews stole their land and threaten the sanctity of their holy sites, one can understand how young Palestinian Arabs easily become hostile to a perceived alien occupying force that has thrust itself into the midst of the Islamic world.
Is Arafat’s Description Correct?
To what extent is Arafat’s portrayal of life before 1881 accurate? The answer is unequivocal—it is a total fabrication.
Historian Moshe Ma’oz points out that in the Muslim-Ottoman state, Jews lived in an insecure environment. Viewed as inferior citizens due to the Muslim belief in Islam’s religious superiority, Jews were regarded as “state protégés” (dhimmis) who were “inferior before the law of the state and its institutions.” They could not testify in Muslim courts, bear arms, build synagogues higher than mosques, and were forced to pay a special poll tax (jizya) for protection and as a sign of their subservient status.
While paying the jizya, the dhimmi was subjected to a very demeaning process designed to belittle and humiliate the individual, explains historian Bernard Lewis.
Historian Arie Morgenstern notes that in 1834 when Arab farm workers revolted against the regime of Muhammad Ali, Jews were attacked in the major cities. In Safed, they stole Jewish property, destroyed homes and defiled synagogues. Some Jewish women were raped, beaten and murdered.
Morgenstern quotes a report by Rabbi Shmuel Heller of Safed, who assessed the tragedy that ensued:
“For forty days, day after day, from the Sunday following Shavuot, all of the people of our holy city, men, women and children have been like refuse upon the field. Hungry, thirsty, naked, barefoot, wandering to and fro in fear and confusion like lambs led to the slaughter…They [the Arab marauders] removed all the Torah scrolls and thrust them contemptuously to ground, and they ravished the daughters of Israel—woe to the ears that hear it—and the great study house they burned to its foundations…And the entire city was destroyed and laid ruin, they did not leave a single wall whole; they dug and sought treasures, and the city stood ruined and desolate, without a single person.”
