Inter communal (Muslim/Christian/Jewish)
relations in pre-1948 Palestine.
Inter communal
relations in historic Palestine have been the subject of much speculation. The
purpose of this paper is to briefly try and dispel some of the inaccuracies surrounding
the subject. It is shared in the hope that it might help members of the historic churches in Palestine to better understand, confess and repent.
In 1923, Dr Alexander Paterson reflected in general upon the inter-communal relations within Palestine; "It was this age-long incompatibility, this irreconcilable enmity, that was more potent for evil than any other single factor, and harder to be dealt with than any other obstacle to mission work. The Moslem and Christian hated the Jew for denying and slaying the Messiah, the Christ. The Moslem and Jew hated the Christian for worshiping three gods. The Jew and the Christian hated the Moslem for his arrogance and fanaticism and oppression, from which they were never safe. Of course, they commonly existed in an armed truce; life otherwise were impossible. But an anniversary or an indiscreet word, an unequal deal in business,or a false report, and their passions were in full cry, too often the cry for blood."
Muslim Discrimination against Christians
Christians
in Palestine were routinely humiliated, beaten and robbed by the Muslim
community. For example, in 1823, after an elderly Christian peasant from Beit
Jalla was shot and beheaded, his head was stuck on a pike in Jerusalem and the
local Muslim boys spat and threw rubbish at it for three days while the local
Christians were unable to rescue it or show any grief. In 1828, in Nazareth, a
Christian girl who refused the advances of a Muslim was killed by being dragged
through the streets behind a horse. Indeed, prior to 1845, James Finn wrote
that Christian women were “dishonoured with impunity.” In 1853 in Nablus, the
sight of a Syrian Christian official sitting in a chair (!!) roused a Muslim
mob to shout; “kill him, kill him. Did you ever see a Christian like
that before?” In 1856, Muslim riots in Nablus left a number of Christians dead,
and forced the expulsion of the entire Protestant community. In 1858 the two
villages of Zebabdeh and Likfair (where the inhabitants were all Christian) “were
utterly sacked, men and women stripped even to their shirts and turned adrift.”
“whereas many villages in the district of Nablus have a few Christian families
located in each, such families were subjected in every direction to plunder and
insults.” In 1858, James Finn wrote from Jerusalem; “daily accounts are given
me of insults in the streets offered to Christians and Jews, accompanied by
acts of violence. ... there is no clear case yet known of a Christian’s
evidence being accepted in a court of justice, or in a civil tribunal against a
Moslem.”
Christians
were forbidden from either building new churches or repairing old ones. “it is
against the honour of the Moslem religion to permit Christian Churches to be
erected.”
Christians
were forbidden from entering or praying at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, or
Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron.
Ottoman
reforms in the nineteenth century granting equal civil rights to Christians and
Jews “had kindled [among the Muslims] fires of
fanatical hatred." This led to massacres of minorities,
especially Christians, across the Ottoman Empire.
2. Muslim
discrimination against Jews
The
local Jewish community suffered greatly from the Muslim community.
1700,
“[Muslims] are very hostile towards Jews and inflict upon
them vexations in the streets of the city. ... the common folk persecute the
Jews for we are forbidden to defend ourselves.” 1816, “these persecuted people.” 1836, “the
persecuted and despised Israelites. … My Jewish friends conducted me around
their miserable quarter.” 1839 “the
melancholy aspect of the Jews in Jerusalem. The meanness of their dress, their
pale faces, and timid expression, all seem to betoken great wretchedness.” 1852
“This
Jewish population is poor beyond any adequate word; it is degraded in its social
and political condition, to a state of misery, so great, that it possesses no
rights. … he is spiritless from oppression, … a creature
less than a dog, and below the oppressed Christian beggar.” 1854 “Nothing equals the misery and
the suffering of the Jews of Jerusalem.” 1856 “the Jews are humiliated.” The
town cesspit was situated in the midst of the Jewish quarter. “It was
distressing to behold the timidity which long ages of oppression had
engendered.” 1879 “Likewise it is impossible for Jewish women to
venture into the streets because of the lewdness of the Muslims. There are many
more such sufferings that the pen would weary to describe. These occur
particularly when we go to visit the cemetery [on the Mount of Olives] and when
we pray at the Wall of lamentations, when stones are thrown at us and we are
jeered at.”
There
were anti-Jewish pogroms in Jaffa (in 1876), and three times in Jerusalem (in
1847, 1870 and 1895).
Throughout
this time, Jews were forbidden to pray on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and the
Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron. In Hebron, (as a sign of their degradation) they
were permitted to go up to the seventh step of the entrance outside it. As they
went up these steps, Muslim boys were encouraged by their elders to hit and
throw stones at them, to remind them of their proper place.
Zionism
swept away these humiliations, and consequently provoked the rage of the
Muslims. “Your restless, impassioned spirit brushed aside twenty centuries with
a flip of the mind … you had enough of living under a boot.”
3 Christian discrimination against
Jews
A wide range of sources all state
that the local Christians treated the local Jewish community with hatred. 1836;
“of all the Christians and other sects in Syria [are] against them.” 1852; “if
he [a Jew in Palestine] turns to his neighbour Christian, he encounters
prejudice and spite.” 1854; Jews are “insulted by the Greeks, persecuted by the
Latins.” 1862; “The Oriental Christians are unhappily very bitter in their
hatred of the Jews. They generally treat them with great contempt” … Muslim and
Christian children rarely played with one another and would "only unite to
persecute the poor little Jews." 1887; Jerusalem’s Muslims were more
tolerant of its Jews than were its Christians.
Attempts to provoke mass murder
While largely powerless under the
Muslim rule, nevertheless, twice at least the Christian community attempted to
initiate a massacre of the local Jewish community. This was done using the
specifically Christian charge of “blood libel.” These charges were also made by
Christian communities in Damascus, Rhodes, and Beirut (twice). In 1847, the
Greek Orthodox clergy of Jerusalem threw their full ecclesiastical and social weight behind
such a claim. In open court before the Ottoman ruler they demanded, on the
basis of their ancient books that ‘the Jews were addicted to non-Jewish blood.’
“The Greek ecclesiastical party came down in great force and read out of Church
historians and controversial writings of old time direct and frequent
accusations levelled against the Jews for using Christian blood in Passover ceremonies.”
“In the meanwhile, “Greeks and Armenians [Christians] went about the
streets insulting and menacing the Jews, both men and women,
sometimes drawing their hands across the throat, sometimes showing the knives
they generally carry with them,’” This then was not simply a mob action, but
rather one championed by the highest Christian religious authorities in
Jerusalem, all for the purpose of gaining official sanction for mass murder!
The second recorded case occurred
in 1931. Here, six weeks before Passover, the Greek
Orthodox paper Filastin published a “blood libel” against the Jaffa
Jewish community! It concerned the alleged kidnapping of two Arab children, was
described by Frederick Kisch at the time as “terrifying.” “Intense
excitement spread throughout the country and a massacre seemed imminent.” It
led to the temporary suspension by the British authorities of the Filastin.
Given that Jews had been massacred in Hebron, Jerusalem, Safed and elsewhere
just two years earlier, this attempt by the Christian community to try and stir
up a new massacre of Jews, using traditional Christian anti-Semitism, is utterly
horrific! Large numbers of innocent people could have been murdered.
The right to kill
The traditional Christian communities
also fought to affirm their right to beat up, and even kill any Jew who walked
past or into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Instances of this are recorded
in 1846, and also in 1927 (by a group of monks). In the first instance again,
the Greek Orthodox religious establishment went to the Muslim governor to argue
for and demand their right to beat and even kill Jews. “The Greek ecclesiastics
… sen[t] me word that they were in possession of an ancient Firman which
fixed the ‘Deeyeh,’ or blood-fine, to be paid by them if, in beating a Jew in
that vicinity for trespass, they happened to kill him, at the sum of ten paras,
about one halfpenny English. … the incident shows the disposition of the high
convent authorities towards the Jews. … Greeks, Latins and Armenians, all believed
that a Jew might be killed with impunity under such circumstances.”
Actual violence, as opposed to humiliations, of Jews by Christians continued into
the British Mandate. C. Martin reported on the Arab riots in Jaffa in 1921; “A
large number of the Jews are terror stricken … Unfortunately for the work,
Arabs, who call themselves Christians, united with the Moslems in their
endeavours to shed Jewish blood, so we have the unpleasant task of explaining and
apologising for the falseness of this un-Christlike Christianity.” Forty-three
Jews died that day, women and girls were raped and many others were wounded or
died later on from their injuries.”
Muslim Discrimination
against Christians
Traditionally the Christians were a protected but
discriminated against minority. They were a distinct subset of the Palestinian
population, with little interaction or political agreement with the majority
Muslim community. The Muslim community, or umma,
was totally dominant. Christians could not hold the highest administrative
posts, had to pay a special tax. Disputes with Muslims came under the
jurisdiction of the Muslim courts, where Christians were not allowed to give
evidence. Christians might also be barred from riding horses or wearing
colourful clothing, be forced to provide food and lodging if a Muslim official
demanded it, or even be forced off the road to give Muslims right of way.[2]
The Ottoman court system punished Christians if they
tried to reject or minimize the obligations of dhimmitude. In 1876 for but one
example, Armenians were punished for resisting Muslim raiders, or for trying to
obtain payment when forced to lodge Muslims.[3] Such
actions were indeed seen as violations of the natural order. To resist Muslim
oppression, either passively or actively, was a violation of sharia law.
General
descriptions
Gedaliah of Siemiatyc,
Jews and Christians in Jerusalem, 1700.
“No Jew or Christian
is permitted to ride a horse, for [in the eyes of Muslims] Christians and Jews
are inferior beings.” “The Muslims do not allow entry to the Temple area to any
member of another faith” “The Christians are not allowed to wear a turban, but
they wear a hat instead. .. No one can use green, for this colour is used
solely by Muslims. The latter are very hostile towards Jews and inflict upon
them vexations in the streets of the city. .. the common folk persecute the
Jews for we are forbidden to defend ourselves. If an Arab strikes a Jew, he
[the Jew] must appease him but must not rebuke him, for fear that he may be
struck even harder, which they [the Arabs] do without the slightest scruple.
This is the way the Oriental Jews react, for they are accustomed to this
treatment. Even the Christians are subjected to these vexations. If a Jew
offends a Muslim, the latter strikes him a brutal blow with his shoe in order
to demean him, without anyone’s being able to prevent him .. the Christians
fall victim to the same treatment and they suffer as much as the Jews.”
Constantin de Volney;
1785 “Faithful to the spirit of the Koran, it [the government] treats the
Christians with a severity which displays itself in varied forms. .. All kinds
of public worship is prohibited the Christians, … The cannot build any new
churches; and if the old ones fall into decay, they are not allowed to repair
them, unless by a permission which costs them very dear. A Christian cannot
strike a Mahometan without risk of his life, but if a Mahometan kill a Christian,
he escapes for a stipulated price. Christians must not mount on horseback in
the towns; they are prohibited from the use of yellow slippers, white shawls,
and every sort of green colour. .. when
they travel, they are perpetually stopped at different places to pay tolls,
from which the Mahometans are exempt: … in judicial proceedings, the oath of
two Christians is only reckoned for one, and such is the partiality of the
Cadis, that it is almost impossible for a Christian to gain a suit. .. These distinctions,
so proper to ferment hatred and divisions, are disseminated among the people,
and manifest themselves in all the intercourse of life. The meanest Mahometan
will neither accept from a Christian nor return the salute of Salam-alai-ki
.. the usual salutation is only good morning or good evening, and it is well
too, if it be not accompanied with a Djaour, Kafer, Keleb i.e. impious,
infidel, dog, expressions to which the Christians are familiarized.”
Mansour recalls a ‘pogrom’ against Christians in 1821
and 1823 due to the outbreak of the Greek war of independence.
James Finn (British
consul in Jerusalem, 1846-63), related several events from 1823; I that year
the president of the Greek Orthodox Convent of Mar Elias was bastinadoed “to a
fearful extent” in an attempt to discover hidden treasure. In the same year,
some Christian villagers refused to pay “the excessive and arbitrary” taxation
laid upon them (but not the Muslims). The soldiers then “caught hold of an
infirm old peasant of the Christian village of Beit Jalla, shot him, cut off
his head, and stuck it up inside the Jaffa gate of Jerusalem, where it was pelted
and spit upon by boys of the street for three days. Christians passing by were
melted into tears, but dared not give expression to their feelings.”
J.L.
Stephens, Concerning Visit to the Jews of Hebron
(1836). Muslim
violence against local Christians was commonplace, and they were forbidden to
visit many holy places. “[concerning the Tomb of the Patriarchs] The
Jews and the Christians are not permitted to enter.”
Colonel P. Campbell, A Visit to
Israel's Holy Places (1839) “The Mussulmans [of Syria-Palestine], …
deeply deplore the loss of that sort of superiority which they all and
individually exercised over and against the other sects. … from the bottom of
his heart he believes and maintains that a Christian, and still more so a Jew,
is an inferior being to himself.”
From the 1850s onwards, news of
large scale, continuing massacres of Christians in other parts of the Ottoman empire
made the Palestinian Christians increasingly nervous. The American Protestant
missionary, Henry H. Jessup, wrote that; "the new liberties granted to
the Christian sects, their growth in wealth, the appointment of their
prominent men to foreign consular offices... all these and other causes had
kindled [among the Muslims] fires of fanatical hatred."[11] Disturbances in Aleppo in 1850 targeting Christians and Mosul in
1854, targeting Christians and Jews, were seen as attempts by the traditional
Muslim community to restore their old position. It was this same desire which
contributed to massacres of the Maronite Christians in Lebanon in 1860 (20,000
killed, 380 Christian villages and 560 churches destroyed), the Christian
communities in Damascus (also in 1860, 25,000 killed), and the Armenian
Christians (1894-1896, 1915-1916 – over 1.5 million killed). Concerning the
Maronite massacres; “Bitter conflicts between Christians and Druzes, which had
been simmering under Ibrahim Pasha’s rule (mostly centred on the firmans of
1839 and later more decisively, of 1856, which equalized the status of
Muslim and non-Muslim subjects, the former resenting the implied loss of
superiority) resurfaced under the new emir.” Even closer to home, “the establishment of European consulates in
Jerusalem in the middle of the nineteenth century was greatly resented by local
Muslims.”[13]
Nablus.
On the 3rd of November 1853, the local Greek Orthodox beat the local
Protestants in their schoolhouse, “and drove them out of the premises.” At a
general meeting called by the Governor, the Mufti signalled to the crowd
outside who thought the meeting was to oppose the Greek Orthodox. They
therefore shouted “as to the necessity of destroying Christian Churches, or at
least of diminishing their privileges and lowering their doors and windows. They
shouted ‘look at the Dragoman sitting on a chair – kill him, kill him. Did
you ever see a Christian like that before?’ (The Dragoman was a Protestant
from Syria) The Mufti then drew up a fatwa that; “it is against the honour
of the Moslem religion to permit Christian Churches to be erected, but only
to tolerate such as were found in the country at the time of the Mohammedan
Conquest.” He continued that Protestants should not be allowed to worship in
any place of general meeting, and even in their own homes not above three
together, and in a subdued voice. Advised of the situation, the local governor,
was ordered by the Pasha in Jerusalem that they were not to meet again for
prayer in the school room, and were forbidden a special room for worship.(Bat
Ye’or, 1985; 244-5.)
At
the 1856 peace conference which ended the Crimean War, the Ottomans were forced
to confirm the equality of all citizens under the law and guarantee full
freedom of worship. While this equality “was not carried out in practice”[15] the “Muslims of Jerusalem in 1856
accused the Sultan of treachery for his being submissive to the dictates of
foreigners, and for not applying Muslim law strictly on Christians and Jews.”16]
Local
Christians were viewed as being disloyal, and as being a serious weak link,
which aggressive foreign powers could exploit for their own advantage. This in
turn provoked further attacks on the local Christians. For example, following
sectarian violence in Lebanon in 1860, the French sent in troops and forced the
Ottoman Sultan to grant the Maronites self-autonomy.[17] It was outrage at this which led to
the massacre of Christians in Damascus.
At
a result of the 1860 conflict in Lebanon, “tensions were also raised in other
coastal cities such Jaffa, Haifa, Acre, Tripoli, Sidon and Tyre, but
their proximity to European warships in the Mediterranean helped maintain calm.
Nonetheless, Tyre and Sidon were at the brink of civil war due to violence
raging between Sunni and Shia residents and Christian refugees fleeing the war.
Hundreds of Christians opted to leave Syria altogether, boarding ships to
Malta or Alexandria. In the Galilee, peace was maintained by
local Bedouin chieftains, who assured Christians in Nazareth and
Acre of his protection. However, in the village of Kfar Bir’im near
Safed, three Christians were killed by Druze and Shia Muslim raiders, while the
mixed village of al-Bassa was also plundered. A violent incident
occurred between a Muslim and Christian man in Bethlehem, ending with
the latter being beaten and imprisoned.” The authorities maintained calm
in Jerusalem and Nablus “by introducing additional security measures.”
In Nablus, the Ottoman governor was keen to maintain order, but his garrison
was too small to ensure security in the city. Instead, “many Christians pooled
money together to pay for protection by local Muslims, who formed an ad hoc
police force. [to protect them from the Muslim majority in the city]”[18]
Following
a later episode of sectarian violence in Crete, Muslims in Damascus again
threatened the local Christians, who, according to one missionary account,
began fleeing "by the hundreds to the mountains and Beirut, fearing a
repetition of the massacre of 1860.[19] Interestingly, in 1838, the British
representative in Jaffa put forward the case that Britain should guarantee the
rights of Protestants and Jews in Palestine. “Britain is the natural trustee
for both of them.”[20] Lord Palmerston likewise thought
that Britain could assume the role of protector of the Jews in Palestine, and that
would grant them similar rights as those exercised already by France and
Russia.
Ottoman
Muslims continued to view the world through a religious lens. News of the
1875-78 Balkan Wars was “relayed to the Muslim population throughout the empire
as a sign of yet another Christian onslaught against Islam. The intensified
draft of soldiers into the ranks of the Turkish army and the pressure of added
taxation to pay for the wars, carried out with great cruelty, caused the
population to blame all Christians, including Christian Arabs, for their
suffering.”[21] Note that taxation and drafting of
soldiers were also prime causes of the 1834 rebellion.
Historical
memory of the Crusades and more recent events informed this resentment on
behalf of the local Muslims. “The visit of a French consul almost a hundred and
fifty years earlier, in 1701, had produced similar outrage. Then, the local
notables had responded with a petition stating that, "our city is the
focus of attention of the infidels" and that "this holy land [could
be] occupied as a result of this, as has happened repeatedly in earlier
times."[22]
Jews
and Christians were also not allowed under Ottoman rule to build houses of
worship, a ruling upheld in Jerusalem as late as 1838.[23]
Christians
in Jerusalem, 1858. “In
continuing to report concerning the apprehensions of Christians from revival of
fanaticism on the part of the Mahometans, I have the honour to state that daily
accounts are given me of insults in the streets offered to Christians and Jews,
accompanied by acts of violence. ... there is no clear case yet known of a Christian’s
evidence being accepted in a court of justice, or in a civil tribunal against a
Moslem. … only a few days ago, his Beatitude, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch was
returning through the streets from the Cadi’s court of judgement … but had to
pass through a gauntlet of curses hurled at his religion, his prayers, his
fathers etc.,"24]
In
1858 the two villages of Zebabdeh and Likfair (where the inhabitants are
Christian) “were utterly sacked, men and women stripped even to their shirts
and turned adrift. This was done by the people of Tubas and Kabatieh ... and no
redress or punishment has yet been given by the military force. I need not say
that none is afforded by the civil authority, himself a factious leader.”[25]
In
general, Muslims were unwilling to accept Christians in positions of authority. For example, James Finn noted that
the body-guards employed by consulates needed to be Muslims, as these might
"safely strike or lay hands on an unruly Moslem, or arrest him if a thief,
which a Christian could not [do] without provoking a riot if not worse."[26] Palestinian (Muslims) resisted the
edict establishing religious equality so strongly it had to be put in place
very slowly, over a number of years. Outbreaks of intercommunal violence often
followed its implementation.[27] “Muslim-Christian riots are found
to have occurred every decade or so and disturbances between the communities
were common.”[28]
In
the 1890s, Ottoman soldiers closed down Anglican church schools in Jaffa (for
an unknown period of time), and the governor announced that he would not be
responsible if Muslims attacked Christians.[29]
The
Muslim and Christian communities also often differed over politics and foreign affairs.
A British report from 1904 about the Sino-Russian war stated; "the
Christians with very few exceptions [were] fervently praying for the success of
Russia. … by contrast, the sympathies of most Muslims, were with Japan.”[30] In 1911, Christians of Haifa were
accused of disloyalty re the Italian occupation of Tripoli.
Within
Ottoman Palestine, Muslims and Christians were not the same, and their
relationships prior to Zionism were not perfect. In reality, the different
elements in the community were separated in their social relations by
unbridgeable gulfs.
Interestingly,
in 1995 CPT leader Arthur Gish records going to St Georges in Jerusalem and
meeting with “Palestinians who identified themselves as Christians.” “When they
heard we are living in Hebron, they couldn’t believe it. They informed us that
Hebron is Muslim, and no Christian can live with Muslims.”
The
example of Nazareth
As
everywhere else, Christians were not allowed to repair or renovate their
churches. In 1636, Catholic priests “were incarcerated by Muslims, who insisted
that the church must remain the same as in ancient times.” In 1696, the Christian community of
Nazareth fled “In the face of persecution” but returned the next year.
Standing
up to Muslim violence guaranteed a pogrom. In 1708, there “was a brawl between
the Christians and the Muslims of Nazareth; the covenant was pillaged again,
and abandoned for a year.” After better relations in the
mid-1700s, relations again deteriorated; [after 1775] “it was especially bad on
Fridays after prayer when Muslims, often villagers in town for the Friday
sermon, would riot and attack Christians.” The early Anglican priest, Michael
Kawar mentioned in his autobiography that anti-Christian riots in Nazareth had
forced his father to flee to Lebanon in the 1820s.[36] Relations were again reported to be
better in the mid- 1820s. Note however that even in the good times, things
could go suddenly bad, as when the Muslims in 1828 entered the church on Easter
Sunday and robbed the Christian women of their jewelry.
The
unproved accusation of blasphemy was always (and to this day) a frightening threat. In 1828 a
Christian girl was accused by a Muslim boy she had rebuffed of insulting
Mohammad. She was killed by tying her to a horse and dragging her through the
streets. Also in 1828, according to the
Palestinian Rafiq Farah (an Archdeacon Emeritus of the Jerusalem Diocese of the
Anglican Church); “The Arab Christians suffered a great deal under the rule of
Abdullah Pasha, the governor of the Acre district of Galilee (1819-1831). He
pulled down the Carmelite monastery on Mt Carmel, incited the Muslims of
Nazareth to attack the Christians in 1828 and forced Christian and Jewish women
not to dress like Muslim women.”[38] In the Peasants Revolt of 1834, the
Christians of Nazareth sided with the Egyptians. In 1864, relations were again
described by Tobler as generally good, but added; “from time to time there were
always occasional dark spots.”
Writing
in 1876, P.J. Newman noted that Christians comprised three quarters of the
population of Nazareth, and that as a consequence; “the Christians assert and defend
their rights. In nearly all other parts of Palestine, the Christians are
cringing and fearful.” In 1881, some Muslim notables of
Nazareth demanded the slaughter of the Christians, but this was rejected by the
local sheikh.
The
expulsion of Protestants from Nablus, 1856
In
1856, in Nablus riots a Greek church, Protestant missionary house and school
were all attacked. Also in 1858, a Greek Orthodox construction and renovation
was destroyed in Gaza.[43] R. Farah comments on the Nablus
riots; “On the 4th of April, 1856, a fanatic Muslim mob at Nablus, who
were incited by their leaders after the Sultan gave all Ottomans equality
before the law … attacked the Christians in Nablus, especially the
Protestants. They had to flee the town; their homes were ransacked and at least
two were killed. The persecutions stopped after 1865.”[44]
In
1858 James Finn reported; “the house of the Christian priest (Greek) was taken
in his absence and his stores of grain and oil for his household during the
winter were taken, not to be consumed by the soldiers (for that would entitle
the owner to a claim on the Government) but were mixed into one heap .. by the
Muslims of the city and thrown into the street. I feel myself more and more to
be warranted in attributing the riots of Nablus in 1856 to an anti-Christian
feeling. In conclusion, I have the honour to quote the perpetual expression of
the Christians in Palestine, that their lot has become far worse since the
termination of the Russian war than it was before that period extending back to
1831.[45]
The Nablus Protestants sent their own petition
(“The humble Petition of the Protestants of Nablous”) to the Sultan. In it,
they spoke of “their afflicted and calamitous state … the injuries inflicted on
them, the loss of their freedom, the insecurities of their lives, property and
families, all of which they presently endure (and for the previous 5 months). Since
the issue of the Firman (Feb 1856) declaring religious liberty, the Mohammedans
of Nablus have been filled with rage against the Christians, insulting his
majesty the Sultan and crying; ‘No obedience to a creature who causes
disobedience to the creator.’” On Friday, April 4th, most of the
Ulamahs of Nablus assembled in one of the Mosques … after this the call was
given by one of them going through the streets; “Oh religion of Mohammad,
attack the Christians.” At the same time, all the Mohammedans being
assembled for prayer, the Ulamahs stopped the Muazzins and made them come down
from the Minarets, saying there shall be no prayers for the religion of
Muhammad is dead.” They aroused the populace “to fury, that they might fall
upon the Christians.” They destroyed the school of bishop Gobat, and the
attached chapel. They also killed a number of Christians, burying one boy in
lime. The shouts of the mob were “frightful, together with those of the females
who shrieked on the terraces to excite and encourage them.” The Greek Orthodox
“from fear, have appeared outwardly satisfied with the Mohammedans …”
“They have continued to regard the Protestants
with an evil eye,” forcing them to flee Nablus. “The Mohammedans make no
distinction between the Christian nations, in their general hatred and enmity
against that religion.” “The injury done is not to your humble servants alone …
your humble petitioners have become a proverb and a taunt to all who are
round about, everywhere now if a Christian disagrees with a Mohammedan, the
later say to him we will do to you as it has been done in Nablus, and therefore
in numerous places Christians have been maltreated since this disturbance.”
Likewise; “the fury of the rioters was
indiscriminately directed against all Christians without distinction … the
Greeks church together with the house of the Greek priest were … ransacked.” Speaking
on behalf of “the Protestant communities in Palestine and Syria” they continued
“We are fully sensible of the necessity of the greatest caution, forbearance
and prudence on our part towards the Moslems in avoiding every demonstration
that would needlessly irritate their pride, prejudice and jealousy.”
“Most
Muslims were having difficulties coming to terms with the idea of non-Muslims
as political equals.”[47] That is not to say friendly
relations were absent, or areas of commonality did not exist, but the relations
between the two communities remained difficult, as both tried to adapt to the
changing situations. Small village inter-faith relations were paradoxically
more personal and more traditional. Local Christians were not particularly
supportive of Western missionary activity.
“Whereas
many villages in the district of Nablus have a few Christian families located
in each, such families were subjected in every direction to plunder and
insults.”
Obstacles to Dhimmi Emancipation in
Palestine
“A great change had passed over the land, as well as
Jerusalem, with respect to toleration of religion in the existing generation,
not only caused by (the Ottoman reforms of 1838) but also by the surviving
effects of previous Egyptian dominion between 1832 and 1840, which had swept
away much of the bigotry and tyranny of former ages. There has been since 1845 a
profession of equality for all religions in the administration of local
government, and certainly less of
insult and injury from the Moslem populace to the Christians. Their functionaries
were no longer endured as intruders into Christian houses for food, lodging and
money, remaining there till their demands were satisfied. Christian women were
not now dishonoured with impunity of the offenders. Levies of money at any
irregular time or place without reason assigned, were no more suffered.
Christians were not now pushed into the gutters of the streets by every Moslem
taking up the best part of the pavement and with a scowl crying out, “Shemmel-ni
ya keleb” neither were Christians debarred from riding horses or wearing
cheerful colours. … Christians had felt in 1852 much more secure in life and
goods than their fathers had been.” James Finn.[49] "(As a specimen of the old times, see Journal of Rev.
P. Fisk who was in Jerusalem in 1823. He was seated with two friends on the
Mount of Olives and while singing a hymn an armed Moslem came up and commanded
they be silent, threatening Mr Fisk to strike him with his gun.).”[50]
When fears of a new
war with Russia surfaced, Finn recorded that the Muslim street believed that “every Moslem was to consider as his enemy every native Christian,
or at least those who had any relations with Russia (Greeks and even
Armenians). The timorous and panic-stricken Christians helped forward this idea
by the very excess of their fears. They had not the sense to conceal their dread
of a probable approaching massacre in which scenes of horror and bloodshed were
to be enacted, such as their fathers had endured in consequence of the war of
Greek independence about thirty years before.
… Fear had been suckled with their mothers milk, in days gone by, and
now it overpowered them. If this was the case in Jerusalem, … it was tenfold
worse in all distant towns and villages.”
Muslim Discrimination
against Jews
Muslim/Jewish
relations were historically appalling. Within the Ottoman
Empire, Jews, like Christians, were classified as Dhimmis, and forced to live a
life of miserable subservience. As with the Christian communities, it was when
they rejected this, and demanded equal rights that the Muslim community
responded with genocidal rage. A major difference between the Christian and
Jewish communities, is that while the Christians lost their battles with the
Muslim majority, the Jewish community won theirs, and thereby avoided
annihilation.
Elsewhere
in the Arab world
As part
of the Muslim, Arab world, Jews in Palestine were treated in a similar manner
to Jews elsewhere in the same conditions.
Writing
about their experiences in Egypt, from 1825-1835, Edward Lane and Poole
described the conditions of the Jews there; “They are held in the utmost
contempt and abhorrence by the Muslims in general, … the Jews are detested by
the Muslims far more than are the Christians. … Not long ago,[52] they used often to be jostled in the streets of Cairo, and sometimes beaten
merely for passing on the right hand of a Muslim. At present, they are less
oppressed; but still they scarcely ever dare to utter a word of abuse when
reviled or beaten unjustly by the meanest Arab or Turk; for many a Jew has been
put to death upon a false and malicious accusation of uttering disrespectful
words against the Kur-an or the Prophet. It is common to hear an Arab abuse his
jaded ass, and, after applying to him various opprobrious epithets, end by
calling the beast a Jew…[53]
There were pogroms in Lebanon and Jerusalem in
1847 and Syria in 1848 and in 1850 (the same year as attacks were also carried
out against the Jews of Morocco). Writing in 1835, the
British diplomat Percival Barton Lord recorded how Jews in North Africa still
had to walk barefoot when passing a Mosque, while in some cities such as Fez,
they were forced to go barefoot at all times. In 1877, Jews were still
prohibited from wearing shoes outside their own homes. “it is impossible to
imagine the suffering of these wretches who, amid the jeers of the Muslim
population along the road, jump and cringe with pain, their feet torn and their
nails crushed by the stone.” In Yemen in 1910, Jews were still forbidden from
walking publicly in shoes.
In Palestine
Isaac ben Samuel of
Acre (1270-1350) “they strike upon the head the children of Israel who dwell in
their lands and they thus extort money from them by force. For they say in
their tongue, mal al-yahudi mubah, “it is lawful to take the money of
the Jews.” For, in the eyes of the Muslims, the children of Israel are as open
to abuse as an unprotected field. Even in their law and statutes they rule that
the testimony of a Muslim is always to be believed against that of a Jew. For
this reason … Rather be beneath the yoke of Edom than of Ishmael.” When Acre
was taken by the Mamelukes in 1291, he fled to Italy and thence to Christian
Spain.
Samuel b. Ishaq Uceda
16th century; “The nations humiliate us to such an extent that we
are not allowed to walk in the streets. The Jew is obliged to step aside in
order to let the Gentile [Muslim] pass first. And if the Jew does not turn
aside of his own will, he is forced to do so. This law is particularly enforced
in Jerusalem.”
Gedaliah of Siemiatyc,
1700. “We [Jews] were obliged to give a large sum of money to the Muslim
authorities in Jerusalem to be allowed to build a new synagogue. Although the
old synagogue was small and we only wanted to enlarge it very slightly, it was
forbidden under Islamic law to modify the least part” No Jew or Christian is
permitted to ride a horse, for [in the eyes of Muslims] Christians and Jews are
inferior beings.” “The Muslims do not allow entry to the Temple area to any
member of another faith.” “No one can use green, for this colour is used solely
by Muslims. The latter are very hostile towards Jews and inflict upon them
vexations in the streets of the city. .. the common folk persecute the Jews for
we are forbidden to defend ourselves. If an Arab strikes a Jew, he [the Jew]
must appease him but must not rebuke him, for fear that he may be struck even
harder, which they [the Arabs] do without the slightest scruple. This is the
way the Oriental Jews react, for they are accustomed to this treatment.” Even
the Christians are subjected to these vexations. If a Jew offends a Muslim, the
latter strikes him a brutal blow with his shoe in order to demean him, without
anyone’s being able to prevent him .. the Christians fall victim to the same treatment
and they suffer as much as the Jews.”
J.S. Buckingham, 1816.
“these persecuted people [the Jews] are held in such opprobrium here, that it
is forbidden to them to pass a mussulman mounted, while Christians are suffered
to do so either on mules or asses, though to them it is also forbidden to ride
on horseback”[60]
The Egyptian Government [1831-1840], with its rigour and rough justice, afforded much relief to all non-Moslem inhabitants of Jerusalem; and the institution of consulates in the Holy City a further blessing to non-Turkish subjects of all religions, but especially to the poor, oppressed Israelites.”
The
Peasants Revolt, 1834
As
previously noted, one significant cause of the revolt was the granting by
Egyptian authorities of equal civil rights to the Christian and Jewish
communities. Within this context, much of the revolt became simply an enormous
pogrom against the Jewish communities of Palestine. “Within Galilee, the main The most severe
events took place in Galilee, climaxing with the 1834 looting of Safed which
was mostly an attack against the Jewish community of Safed.” Indeed,
the “1834 looting of Safed was prolonged attack against the
Jewish community during the 1834 Peasants Revolt… It began on Sunday June 15 and
lasted for the next 33 days. Most contemporary accounts suggest it was a
spontaneous attack which took advantage of a defenceless population in the
midst of the armed uprising against Egyptian rule. ... The event took place
during a power vacuum, whilst Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt was fighting to quell
the wider revolt in Jerusalem. The 1850 account of Rabbi Joseph Schwartz stated
that ‘Everything was carried off which could possibly be removed, even articles
of no value; boxes, chests, packages, without even opening them, were dragged
away; and the fury with which this crowd attacked their defenceless victims was
boundless...’ Accounts of the month-long event tell of large scale
looting, as well as killing and raping of Jews and the destruction of
homes and synagogues by local Druze. Many Torah scrolls were desecrated, and
many Jews were left severely wounded. These pogroms/massacres directed at
Jewish communities spread to Ramla, Lydda, Jaffa, Acre and Tiberias, where
Christian members of the local clergy noted that the perpetrators ‘robbed
the Jews, who lived in these towns, of immense property.’”
According
to Avraham Yaari; “Revolt broke out on the 15th June, 1834. The Arab villagers,
together with the townspeople, armed themselves and attacked the Jews, raping
their women and destroying their synagogues. The riots in Safed went on for 33
days, but in Jerusalem, Hebron and Tiberias they ended sooner.”
“However, the
insurrection soon lost its original purpose and turned into bloody rioting and
excesses directed against the Jewish population. Arab villagers joined with the
townspeople to attack the Jews, raping, looting and destroying synagogues. The
rioting was most severe in Safed, where assaults and vandalism forced many Jews
to flee to safety amount the friendly Arabs of the nearby village of Ein Zetim.”
Conditions
did not improve after the revolt.
Martin
Sicker (1999). Reshaping
Palestine: from Muhammad Ali to the British Mandate, 1831-1922.
Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 13. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1834_looting_of_Safed
J.L. Stephens, Concerning Visit to the Jews of Hebron (1836). “I was among the unhappy remnant of a fallen people, the persecuted and despised Israelites. … My Jewish friends conducted me around their miserable quarter … [concerning the Tomb of the Patriarchs] The Jews and the Christians are not permitted to enter.” Contrast this to the facile words of one of the early leaders of CPT; “For centuries Jews and Muslims lived together peacefully in Hebron. … relationships between Palestinian Arabs and Jews were generally positive.”
As already noted, Jews and Christians were not allowed under Ottoman rule to build houses of worship, a ruling upheld in Jerusalem as late as 1838.
1839. A.A. Bonar and R.M. M’Cheyne “We were much impressed with the melancholy aspect of the Jews in Jerusalem. The meanness of their dress, their pale faces, and timid expression, all seem to betoken great wretchedness.” Re Hebron, “the Jews are permitted only to look through a hole near the entrance.”[65]
Ottoman rule was
re-established in 1840. Rav Moshe Reischer wrote
of the time before 1847, when the Tanzimat reforms were confirmed and
somewhat enacted; “I shall
recount some of the suffering of our brethren in Hebron, Jerusalem, Safed and
Tiberius, which my ancestors have related to me or which I have seen with my
own eyes … It was a great danger for Jews to venture even a few yards outside
the gates of Jerusalem because of the Arab brigands. They were accustomed to
say ‘strip yourself, Jew’ and any Jew caught in such a predicament … would
strip while they divided the spoil between them and sent him away naked and
barefoot. They call this kasb Allah, that is, Allah’s reward. … If a Jew
encounters a Muslim in the street and passes on the latter’s right, the Muslim
says ishmal, that is, ‘pass on my left side.’ If he touches him or bumps
into him… then the Muslim attacks him and strikes him cruelly and finds
witnesses to the effect that the Jew insulted him, his religion, and his
prophet Muhammad, with the result that a numerous crowd of Muslims descend upon
him and leave the Jew practically unconscious. Then they carry him off to jail
where he is subjected to terrible chastisement. When a Jew passes through the
market, stones are thrown at him, his beard and ear-locks are pulled, he is
spat upon and jeered at, and his hat is thrown to the ground. The poor Jew is
so in fear of his life that he dares not question their conduct lest they
murder him … [he] thanks God that at least his soul is saved, and all these
tribulations he is ready to suffer for love of the Holy Land.”
1852. Arthur
George Harper Hollingsworth, “This Jewish
population is poor beyond any adequate word; it is degraded in its social and
political condition, to a state of misery, so great, that it possesses no
rights. It can shew no wealth even if possessed of it, because to
display riches would secure robbery from the Mahometan population, the
Turkish officials, or the Bedouin Arab. … No advancement is made by the Jew of Palestine, in
trafficking, in commerce, in farming, in the possession of settled houses or lands.
… where in all other countries a Jew thrives and increases in wealth, in that
one he is spiritless from oppression, and without energy, because
without hope of Protection. He creeps along that soil, where his forefathers
proudly strode in the fulness of a wonderful prosperity, as an alien, an
outcast, a creature less than a dog, and below the oppressed Christian
beggar in his own ancestral plains and cities. No harvest ripens for his
hand, for he cannot tell whether he will be permitted to gather it. Land
occupied by a Jew is exposed to robbery and waste. A most peevish
jealousy exists against the landed prosperity, or commercial wealth, or trading
advancement of the Jew. Hindrances exist to the settlement of a British
Christian in that country, but a thousand petty obstructions are
created to prevent the establishment of a Jew on waste land, or to the purchase
and rental of land by a Jew. … If he appeals for redress to the nearest
Pasha, the taint of his Jewish blood fills the air, and darkens the brows of
his oppressors; if he turns to his neighbour Christian, he encounters prejudice
and spite ; if he claims a Turkish guard, he is insolently repulsed and
scorned. …Now, how is this poor, despised, and powerless child of Abraham to
obtain redress, or make his voice heard at the Sublime Porte? The more numerous
the cases of oppression, (and they are many), the more clamorous their appeals
for justice, the more unwillingly will the government of the Sultan, partly
from inherent and increasing weakness, partly from disinclination,—act on the
side of the Jew. They despise them as an execrated race; they hate
them as the literal descendants of the original possessors of the country. ”
1854 Jerusalem. Because
the Crimean War started with a religious dispute centred on the Church of the
Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, Karl Marx wrote about the city and its population.
He stated that its; “sedentary population numbers about 15,500 souls, of whom
4,000 are Mussulmans [Muslims] and 8,000 Jews. … the Mussulmans, forming about
a quarter of the whole, consisting of Turks, Arabs, and Moors, are, of course, the
masters in every respect.” He then continued:
“Nothing equals the misery and the suffering of the
Jews of Jerusalem, inhabiting the most filthy quarter of the town, called hareth-el-yahoud
. . . between the Zion and the Moriah . . . [They are] the constant objects of
Mussulman oppression and intolerance, insulted by the Greeks, persecuted by the
Latins [Catholics], and living only on the scanty alms transmitted by their
European brethren.” Marx concluded by quoting from a French author: “Attending
their death, they suffer and pray. Their regards turned to that mountain of
Moriah where once stood the temple of Lebanon, and which they dare not
approach; they shed tears on the misfortune of Zion, and their dispersion
over the world.”67]
July 18, 1855, A Jewish crowd greeting Sir Moses
Montefiore outside the gates of Jerusalem “Never before in modern times had
there been a Jewish demonstration publicly made, for in former days of
oppression and sorrow, it would have been as impolitic as impossible.”
1856. “the Jews are humiliated” by numerous forced
payments to stop Muslims desecrating their graves, for not damaging the
Sepulchre of Rachel near Bethlehem, for not molesting Jews on the road to Jaffa
etc. The town cesspit was also situated in the midst of the Jewish quarter. “it
was distressing to behold the timidity which long ages of oppression had
engendered. Many times a poor Jew would come for redress against a native (Moslem)
and when he had substantiated his case and it had been brought by the Consulate
before the Turkish authorities, he would, in mere terror of future possible vengeance,
withdraw from the prosecution, and even deny that any harm had been done him.”[69]
1879. Writing of an
aristocratic Muslim family, “They are wicked haters of Jews. When they need to
have something carried from the market to their house they wait around until by
chance they see a Jew, even an elderly man. … they strike him to their merriment
until he is forced to carry the burden on his shoulders to their house. … If
they see a Jew dressed in green they take hold of him violently and strip him
of his garments and have him imprisoned. ... Likewise it is impossible for
Jewish women to venture into the streets because of the lewdness of the
Muslims. There are many more such sufferings that the pen would weary to
describe. These occur particularly when we go to visit the cemetery [on the
Mount of Olives] and when we pray at the Wall of lamentations, when stones are
thrown at us and we are jeered at.
Anti-Jewish pogroms, initially sparked by the 1840
Damascus Blood Libel, were widespread across the Ottoman empire and north Africa.
In Palestine, they occurred in Jaffa (in 1876), and three times in Jerusalem
(in 1847, 1870 and 1895).[71]
1880 Hebron and
Jerusalem: Severe restrictions still in place over when and where Jewish people
could pray.
Hebron and the Seventh Step
For an example of inter-communal relations prior to
Zionism, within Hebron Jews were banned from entering into the Cave of the
Patriarchs, and only (as a sign of their degradation) permitted to go up to the
seventh step of the entrance outside it. As they went up these steps, Muslim
boys were encouraged by their elders to hit and throw stones at them, to remind
them of their proper place.[72]
The prohibition was entirely religious, as was the ban from 1266 on Jews
entering the Temple Mount.[73]
Both were designed to show the religious supremacy of Islam over the Jewish
religion, and that Islam was the true heir to the biblical account. The true
children of Abraham these exclusions proclaimed, are the Muslims. Mandel
likewise notes that traditionally, Muslims regarded Jews as “distinctly
inferior,” and under obligation to “deport themselves as held appropriate by
people tolerated by the true believers.”[74]
The impact of Zionism
A significant portion of the personal antagonisms
between Muslims and Jews during the 1900s can be traced to the overthrow of
this stereotype. Emboldened by Zionism, many Jews simply ceased being victims,
ceased acting as dhimmis. This profoundly offended many Muslims, who felt it an
offence against God and his order. In 1902, the prominent Muslim reformer,
Muhammad Rida wrote that Jews were no longer the submissive people they had
been, and Arabs had to wake up to this.[75] In
1905, a prominent member of the Husseni family objected when turned down for a
loan by David Levontin, a Jew, in Jaffa. When al-Husseni objected angrily,
Levontin replied; “you are an educated man, yet you deal with us like a fellah
[peasant] from the village.”[76]
Writing in the 1930s, French author A. Londres also
noted the drastic change in personal and inter communal relations, as
[addressed to the Palestinian Jewish community] “your restless, impassioned
spirit brushed aside twenty centuries with a flip of the mind … you had enough
of living under a boot.”[77]
"The main insight of Jews from Islamic lands was that inverting the
pyramid in the Arab world so that Jews no longer submitted to Muslims was going
to create a permanent source of conflict."[78]
For much of the 1890s, land sales to Jews, both
expatriate and subjects of the Ottoman Empire, were blocked by the then Mufti,
Muhammad Tahir al-Husayni. Described in 1893 by the German consul in
Constantinople as “one of the leading representatives of the fanatic faction
among the local Mohammedans,”[79] his ban on selling to local Jews went against Ottoman laws (the ban on land
sales to Jews had been struck down by the Tanzamit reforms decades
earlier). While his banning of land sales to foreign Jews could be seen as a
very early anti-Zionist measure, that the ban also applied to local Jews shows
that it was also motivated at least in part by base anti-Semitism. The two are
usually inseparable in practical terms anyway. It is mentioned here because of
its religious aspect (“the fanatic faction among the local Mohammedans.”)
al-Husayni was offended by Jews experiencing new liberties. He wanted then to
remain incapable of buying land, stuck in their ghetto. The same attitude as
was seen concerning Muslim/Christian relations after the Tanzamit
reforms.
Christian Discrimination
against Jews
Note also
that the Jewish community existed at an even lower level than the Christian
community and could therefore also be discriminated against by them. While also
under the Muslim yoke, and therefore not free to act simply according to their
own desires, the Christian community in Palestine humiliated, persecuted and at
times sought to murder either individual Jews, or to incite massacres of the
Jewish community. It should also be noted that while they themselves were also
shamed and persecuted by the Muslim majority, still they found time in their
misery and humiliation to inflict their own torments on their Jewish
neighbours. Their own suffering at the hands of the Muslim majority did not
make their hearts tender towards others also suffering the same humiliations. “Do
not oppress a stranger for you know what it feels like to be a stranger.” Exodus
23:9. Indeed, it appears that as well as initiating their own persecutions,
they would also join in Muslim persecution of Jews, finding in such
persecutions a moment of bonding, not with the persecuted but with the
persecutors, a habit that has continued. They likewise did not make the Jewish
people envious of the riches they had in Christ, nor did they help them to
receive God’s mercy, “as a result of God's mercy to you.”
(Romans 11:31)
General
descriptions – constant humiliations
1836 Colonel
P. Campbell, A Visit to Israel's Holy Places (1839) “The
Mussulmans [of Syria-Palestine], … deeply deplore the loss of that sort of
superiority which they all and individually exercised over and against the
other sects. … from the bottom of his heart he believes and maintains that a
Christian, and still more so a Jew, is an inferior being to himself. … the
conditions of the Jews “cannot be said to have improved … due to the feelings
“of all the Christians and other sects in Syria against them.”
1852. Arthur
George Harper Hollingsworth, “if he [a Jew in Palestine] turns to his neighbour
Christian, he encounters prejudice and spite.”
Marx,
1854. [They are] the constant objects of Mussulman oppression and
intolerance, insulted by the Greeks, persecuted by the Latins
[Catholics].
Mary
Rogers, the sister of the British vice-Consul, wrote in 1862; “I mingled at the
same time with European and native Christians, and especially with the Sakhali
family, and with devout Jews, who kindly helped me to understand all the laws
and the fasts and the feasts which they observed. The Oriental Christians
are unhappily very bitter in their hatred of the Jews. They generally treat
them with great contempt, and make a merit of avoiding association with them,
but they agree with the Moslems in admitting that the Jews throughout the East
are, as a body, remarkable for the purity of their lives, the simplicity of
their manners, and the strictness with which they observe their religious
services.” She
also wrote that, during her stay in Palestine in the mid- nineteenth century, Muslim
and Christian children rarely played with one another, and would "only
unite to persecute the poor little Jews."
In 1887,
Laurence Oliphant concluded that Jerusalem’s Muslims were more tolerant of its
Jews than were its Christians.[84]
In the 1880s “most Muslim and Christian Arabs” treated
Jews “with distain because both Islam and Eastern Christianity predisposed
their respective adherents in that way.”[88]
Blood
libels – lying to murder Jews
In 1840
members of the Christian community, trying to avoid a Muslim backlash against
their recently improved status, started the 1840 Blood Libel against the Jewish
community in Damascus.[89] To
quote from the Jews of Damascus at the time;
“Truly
this is a time of great trouble and distress; for every Israelite dwelling in
Damascus is in great dread lest he should be falsely accused: for there is none
to say unto the Christians, Why do ye thus? It has been openly declared
by some of them that they will grant Israel neither peace nor rest. Even
already they have begun to conspire against the best, the most honourable, and
esteemed of our community.”[90] “We
know not what is to become of the people of Israel when the Christians
see there is no hope for them, but their false accusations are listened to from
the judgement seat; but to the voice of Israel there is none to give ear, to
reply-none to pity.[91]
It is
generally believed that it was Catholics under the protection of France who
introduced this European anti-Semitic charge into the Muslim world.[92]
In 1862
and in 1890 blood libels resulted in Christian attacks on the Jewish quarter of
Beirut. In 1890 order was restored by the Turkish authorities and the rioters
were arrested.[93]
Turning
specifically to Palestine, in 1847 it seemed probable that the Christian
pilgrims, instigated by the Greek ecclesiastics, were about to reproduce the
horrors enacted at Rhodes and Damascus in 1840 [against the Jews].
It started when a Greek Orthodox boy, on pilgrimage in Jerusalem, threw a
stone at a Jewish boy. As the British Consul, James Finn wrote at the time; “Strange
to say, the latter had the courage to retaliate by throwing one in return,
which, unfortunately hit its mark, and a bleeding ankle was the consequence.”
“Direst vengeance was denounced against all Jews indiscriminately for having
stabbed (as they said) an innocent Christian child with a knife in order
to get his blood for mixing in their Passover biscuits.” (Passover, which
was taking place at the same time.) The police took both parties to the
Seraglio (court) and the case was discharged as too trivial for notice.
Dissatisfied with this peaceful end of the incident, the clergy stirred the
matter up again, proving from their ancient books to the Pasha (Ottoman ruler)
that the Jews were addicted to non-Jewish blood. The Pasha commanded the
Jews to give a response the following day. “The Greek ecclesiastical party
came down in great force and read out of Church historians and controversial
writings of old time direct and frequent accusations leveled against the Jews
for using Christian blood in Passover ceremonies.”
“In the
meanwhile,” continued Finn, “Greeks and Armenians went about the streets
insulting and menacing the Jews, both men and women, sometimes drawing
their hands across the throat, sometimes showing the knives they generally
carry with them, and, among other instances brought to my notice was that of a
party of six catching hold of the son of the late Chief Rabbi of London
(Herschel) and shaking him, elderly man as he was, by the collar, crying out,
‘Ah! Jews, have you got the knives ready for our blood?!’”
The next
day, the rabbis, “pale and trembling, arguing from the Old Testament and all
their legal authorities the utter impossibility of the perpetration of such
acts by their people.” The rabbis concluded by appealing to the Sultan’s Firman
(Edict) of 5601/1841, which declares that after investigating the matter after
the Damascus Blood Libel, the Jews were found innocent of the crime
attributed to them. Since the next day was Friday, the Moslem day of rest, the
Jews were instructed to bring the Firman to court on Shabbos.
“I then
arranged with the Pasha that I should be present at the meeting and early on
Saturday went down to the Seraglio,” Finn recorded. “But earlier still, His
Excellency was happy (he said) to acquaint me that the Firman had been
produced, and on his asking the accusers and the Effendis in council if they
could venture to fly in the face of that document, they had, with all loyalty
pronounced it impossible. He therefore had disposed of the case by awarding a
trifling fine for the medical treatment of the wounded ankle.” Finn’s wife
affirmed in a footnote that it was chiefly her husband’s interest in the
incident that led to this swift conclusion. Had
the British Consul, James Finn, not intervened, matters could well have
resulted in just such a massacre. This did not end the matter as far as the
Orthodox were concerned.
In 1931,
six weeks before Passover, the Greek Orthodox paper Filastin published a
“blood libel” against the Jaffa Jewish community!![1] It concerned
the alleged kidnapping of two Arab children, was described by
Frederick Kisch at the time as “terrifying.” “Intense excitement spread
throughout the country and a massacre seemed imminent.”[2] It led to
the temporary suspension of the Filastin. The Palestine Bulletin (pre-curser to the Palestine Post and then the
Jerusalem Post) reported on March 06 that “the instigators felt that nothing
less than a religious libel would bring about a recurrence of the bloody events
of August 1929.”
That is,
two years after Jews had been massacred in Hebron, Jerusalem, Safed and
elsewhere, this was an attempt by the Christian community to try and stir up a
new massacre of Jews, using traditional Christian anti-Semitism! This is
utterly horrific! Large numbers of innocent people could have been murdered! See also the excellent editorial of the Palestine
Bulletin, August 11, 1930, predating this libel. On April 13, 1931, the Palestine
Bulletin editorial also mentioned the blood libel printed in the Falastin,
and also noted that during the recent Nebi Moussa festival, “the crowd shouted ‘Palestine
is our and the Zionists are our dogs. We have weapons enough, slaughter, be not
afraid.’ No one was arrested, Falastin praised the behaviour of the
crowd.”
Between 1847 and 1931, twice the Orthodox
community tried to provoke a massacre of the Jewish community in Palestine.
Death for
a Jew walking past a Christian Church
“but that Greeks, Latins and Armenians, all believed a
Jew might be killed with impunity under such conditions.”[98]
Unwritten
rules coded the ritual humiliation of the Jews. Because everyone knew them,
they are little recorded, and only brought to notice by the actions of visiting
Jews who did not know about them, and who therefore unwittingly transgressed
them. The British Consul, Finn, intervened and recorded such an occasion in
1847 (just after the blood libel case discussed above had been rejected). A Jew,
newly arrived from Europe, had not yet had time to learn the rules and did not
know that walking past the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was, for Jews,
forbidden. After he crossed the far side of the open square in front of the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre, without warning, he was attacked and almost
killed by a crowd of Christians. This site was strictly out of bounds to Jews
although not, of course, to Moslems. He appealed for justice to the
British Consulate. “I appealed to the Pasha,” Finn writes. “The Greek
ecclesiastics pleaded before him that the passage was not a public
thoroughfare but part of the Sanctuary of Christianity, and only used for
transit on sufferance. They even dared to send me word that they were in
possession of an ancient Firman which fixed the ‘Deeyeh,’ or blood-fine, to be
paid by them if, in beating a Jew in that vicinity for trespass, they happened
to kill him, at the sum of ten paras, about one halfpenny English.”
After an
inquiry was sent to Constantinople to ascertain whether this claim was true,
word came back that no such document existed. “Thus that mischievous untruth
was silenced,” Finn concluded. “But the incident shows the disposition of
the high convent authorities towards the Jews. It may be that they
themselves believed there was such a Firman: if so, what degree of pity of
liberality could one expect from the multitude of brutal pilgrims? The Pasha
said that he knew of no such Firman as that referred to, but that Greeks,
Latins and Armenians, all believed that a Jew might be killed with impunity
under such circumstances.”[99]
Even
during the Mandate, Christians still forbade Jews from entering the Holy
Sepulchre and the street leading to it. Indeed, Agustin Acre witnessed Greek
and Armenian monks attacking a Jew who entered it in 1927.[100]
Christian
ecclesiastical authorities were again prepared to fight legally for their
‘right’ to beat and even kill Jews who walked past the Church of the Holy Sepulcher! Their argument that the street outside formed part of the church
simply means that they believed in beating any Jew who entered their church –
this is Christian how??? We only know about the first instance because of the
presence of the British Consul. Had he not been there, there would be no record
of it, except perhaps buried in some forgotten Ottoman archive. Given the swiftness
of the Orthodox response to the Jewish ‘intrusion,’ and their readiness to
defend their rights to beat up any such Jew, one must wonder how often such
events occurred unrecorded.
Speaking
of Christians beating up Jews, C. Martin reported on the Arab riots in Jaffa in
1921; “A large number of the Jews are terror stricken … Unfortunately for the
work, Arabs, who call themselves Christians, united with the Moslems in their
endeavours to shed Jewish blood, so we have the unpleasant task of explaining and
apologising for the falseness of this un-Christlike Christianity.”
For a quick reminder of the events of that pogrom, “On May 1, 1921 . . .
hundreds of Arabs rampaged through the streets of Jaffa with clubs, knives,
metal bars, and pistols. With an unstoppable drive for murder, the rioters
stabbed helpless Jews to death, cruelly beat infants and the elderly, raped
women and girls, and burned and looted anything they could get their hands on.
Forty-three Jews died that day, and many others were wounded or died later on
from their injuries.”
Conclusion
The idea then that Muslims, Christians and Jews lived
together as one before the advent of Zionism is then a lie. While
inter-communal relationships both varied from place to place, and also
fluctuated within any given area, Christians and Jews in Palestine during the
Ottoman time experienced constant discrimination, and periodic persecution,
including murders, robbery, massacres and expulsions. Numerous contemporary
sources note the fury of the Muslim community over the very idea that the other
communities should have the same rights and protections as themselves. “In the
Palestinian historiography today the discrimination in past and present of the
Christian Palestinians and the periodical tensions among the Muslims and
Christians are regarded as taboo.”[103]
The Muslim community in general viewed, and still view
the days before the Tanzimat reforms as idyllic. After the massacre of
Armenians by Muslim Kurds in the Sason area of Turkey in 1894-96, a Kurdish
chieftain lamented the loss of “love and perfect confidence” that had prevailed
‘for hundreds of years between us and the Christians.’ In a petition to the
great powers, he wrote ‘peace and safety existed among us, so that each one
of us owned a Christian, and every year exacted a fixed amount for
protection afforded, yet we cared for them more than for our own children.” As
to the view of the persecuted of this same situation, a Sason Armenian wrote of
their lives as being; “persecuted in all sorts of ways.” On top of government
taxes, they; “had to pay tribute to some seven different Kurd[ish chieftains] …
and at the same time we were continually exposed to their plunder, rape and
murder.”[104] That is, contrary to the prevailing Muslim view, the situation prior to the
reforms was not idyllic. The non-Muslims lived a life of humiliations,
persecution and abuse. Robbery, rape and murder were all too common, and went
unpunished by the Muslim courts, where for example, a Christian or Jewish woman
would have had to find four Muslim men ready to testify for her and against a
fellow Muslim man if a charge of rape were to be upheld.
Shamefully, the false narrative of the oppressor has
been adopted by the Palestinian Christian community, one of the oppressed. See
for examples the recent comments by two professors from the Bethlehem Bible
College. Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac; “What distinguishes Palestine with its
history and present is religious and cultural pluralism, and we have stressed
in our first meeting that diversity is a source of wealth,” and Professor
Daniel Bannoura; “Historically, we have a very good relationship with Muslims,
but after ISIS, Christians have become ignorant and fearful of Muslims.”
Like an abusive husband and an abused wife both
swearing to the police that everything is fine, Palestinian Christians now
insist that, prior to Zionism, unlike the situation in the rest of the
Ottoman empire, everything was fine. They do this for a number of reasons;
they remain a tiny minority, still actively afraid of offending the Muslim
majority. Also, they have they have bet the farm on Arab nationalism and hope
that by agreeing with their oppressors about the past, they will be able to
steer them towards a less violent future. They continue to hope for a bonding
moment with their Muslim oppressors based on a mutual hatred of the Jews. Finally,
because as the son of a leading Palestinian Christian once told me, they would
rather be wiped out by the Muslim Arab population than thrive with the Jewish
population. And so they lie about their past, and heap blame on the community
which historically was the most persecuted, and most abused.
