Palestinian Jew
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A Palestinian Jew can refer to a Jewish inhabitant of Palestine at various points in the region's history. Jews in Palestine prior to the establishment of the State of Israel are referred to in Hebrew as "HaYishuv HaYehudi Be'Eretz Yisra'el (The Jewish Community in the Land of Israel). A distinction is drawn between the "Old Yishuv," that is, the pre-existing Jews in the land of Israel, and the "New Yishuv," that is, the newly-arrived Jewish immigrants into Mandate Palestine.
Under the rule of the Ottoman Empire in the mid-16th century, there were no more than 10,000 Jews in all of Palestine.[1] Prior to the Empire's dismemberment, the population of the area comprising modern Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza Strip was not exclusively Muslim. About 20% of the Arabic-speaking population was Christian, and about 11% Jewish.[2][page needed][verification needed] After the modern State of Israel was born, all but a few native Palestinian Jews became citizens of Israel, and the term "Palestinian Jews" largely fell into disuse. The preferred term today in Israel is the abovementioned "Old Yishuv" (in Hebrew היישוב הישן, HaYishuv HaYashan or "The Old Settlement").
Among Arabic-speaking Palestinians there are/were, most numerously, Sunni and Shia Muslims, Druze, Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant Christians, Bahá'ís, Samaritans, and Jews.
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[edit] Overview
The situation of the Jewish community in Palestine was more complicated than in neighbouring Arab countries.[3] Whereas in Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, communities were largely homogeneous in ethnic and confessional terms, in Palestine in the nineteenth century, Jewish pilgrims and European Christian colonial projects attracted large numbers of Ashkenazi immigrants from Eastern Europe and Sephardic groups from Bulgaria, Turkey and North Africa.[3] The 'native' Jews of Palestine were not exclusively of Iberian origins, and included substantial Yiddish speaking communities who had established themselves in Palestine centuries earlier.[3]
Towards the end of the Ottoman era in Palestine, native Jewish communities lived primarily in the four 'holy cities' of Safed, Tiberias, Hebron and Jerusalem.[3] The Jewish population consisted of Ashkenazim (Judeo-German speakers) and Sephardim, the latter of which could be further subdivided as Sephardim proper (Judeo-Spanish speakers) and Moghrabim (Arabic speakers). The majority of Jews in the four holy cities, with the exception of Jerusalem, were Arabic and Judaeo-Spanish (Judeo-Spanish) speakers.[3] The dominant language among Jews in Jerusalem was Yiddish, due to the large migration of pious Ashkenazi Jews from Russia and Eastern Europe. Still, in 1882, there were 7,620 Sephardim in Jerusalem, of whom 1,290 were Moghrabim, from the Maghreb or North Africa. Natives of the city, they were Turkish subjects, and fluent in Arabic.[3] Arabic also served as the lingua franca between the Sephradim, Moghrabim, and Ashkenazism and their non-Jewish Arab counterparts in mixed cities like Safed and Hebron.[3]
In the narrative works of Arabs in Palestine in the late Ottoman period, as evidenced in the autobiographies and diaries of Khalil Sakakini and Wasif Jawhariyyeh, "native" Jews were often referred to and described as abnaa al-balad (sons of the country), 'compatriots', or Yahud awlad Arab (Jews, sons of Arabs).[3] When the First Palestinian Congress of February 1919 issued its anti-Zionist manifesto rejecting Zionist immigration, it extended a welcome to those Jews "among us who have been Arabicized, who have been living in our province since before the war; they are as we are, and their loyalties are our own."[3]
[edit] Reference to European Jews as "Palestinians" prior to 1948
European Jews were commonly considered an "Oriental" people in many of their host countries. Thus figures such as Immanuel Kant (18th-century Prussian philosopher) referred to European Jews as "Palestinians living among us."[4] The British Mandate referred to Arab Palestinians and Jewish settlers from Europe alike as "Palestinians," consistent with an Orientalist view of all Jews as Eastern people.[5]
[edit] PLO definition
The Palestinian National Charter, as amended by the PLO's Palestine National Council in July 1968, defined "Palestinians" as "those Arab nationals who, until 1947, normally resided in Palestine regardless of whether they were evicted from it or stayed there. Anyone born, after that date, of a Palestinian father — whether in Palestine or outside it — is also a Palestinian."[6] Palestinian Jews are defined as "the [Arabic-speaking] Jews who had normally resided in Palestine until the beginning of the [pre-state] Zionist invasion."
[edit] Contemporary usage examples
Uri Davis, an Israeli citizen, academic, activist and observer-member in the Palestine National Council living in the Arab town of Sakhnin, identifies himself as an "anti-Zionist Palestinian Jew".[7][8] Davis's explains, "I don’t describe myself as a Palestinian Jew, I actually happen to be a Palestinian Jew, I was born in Jerusalem in 1943 in a country called Palestine and the title of my birth certificate is 'Government of Palestine'. That is neither here nor there, though. It is significant only in a political context in which I am situated, and the political context that is relevant to my work, my advocacy of a critique of Zionism. I'm an anti-Zionist Jew."[8] He has since converted to Islam in 2008 to marry a Palestinian Muslim woman Miyassar Abu Ali whom he met in 2006.[9][10][11]
[edit] See also
- Yishuv haYashan
- History of the Jews in the Land of Israel
- Palestinian people
- Arab citizens of Israel
- Definitions of Palestine and Palestinian
- Mizrahi Jews
- Palestinian Jewish Parachutists
- Category:Jews in Ottoman and British Palestine
[edit] References
- ^ Peters (2005). The Monotheists: Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Conflict and Competition, Volume II: The Words and Will of Godfirst1=Francis E.. Princeton University Press. p. p. 287. ISBN 069112373X, 9780691123738. http://books.google.ca/books?id=5-Q1h2hONGMC&pg=PA287&dq=mustarabim&lr=&as_brr=0#v=onepage&q=mustarabim&f=false.
- ^ J. McCarthy (1995). The population of Palestine: population history and statistics of the late Ottoman period and the Mandate. Princeton, N.J.: Darwin Press
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Salim Tamari. "Ishaq al-Shami and the Predicament of the Arab Jew in Palestine" (PDF). Jerusalem Quarterly. http://www.jerusalemquarterly.org/pdfs/predicament.pdf. Retrieved 2007-08-23.
- ^ Kant, Immanuel (1974): Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Translated by Mary J. Gregor. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, cited in Chad Alan Goldberg, Politicide Revisited. University of Wisconsin-Madison
- ^ Kalmar, Ivan Davidson & Derek Penslar. Orientalism and the Jews; Brandeis 2005
- ^ "The Palestinian National Charter". Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine to the United Nations. http://www.un.int/palestine/PLO/PNAcharter.html.
- ^ Uri Davis. (1995.). Crossing the Border: an autobiography of an anti-Zionist Palestinian Jew.. ISBN 1-86102-002-3.
- ^ a b Kevin Spurgaitis (2004). "Palestinian Jew Speaks Out Against ‘Apartheid State’". Catholic New Times. http://lists.portside.org/cgi-bin/listserv/wa?A2=ind0411c&L=portside&T=0&P=1486.
- ^ Freedman, Seth (2009-09-01). "The lonely struggle of Uri Davis". The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/sep/01/uri-davis-fatah-israel. Retrieved 2010-05-21.
- ^ http://www.uridavis.info/
- ^ http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/127310
