Palestinians tried repeatedly to live in peace with foreign Jews

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3618992

Zionists want everybody to believe that anti‐Jewish sentiment is totally out of control among Palestinians, perhaps so much so that any attempt to address the situation is doomed to failure, and that the best approach available is separatism. (This latter conclusion, funnily enough, echoes the consensus of premodern Zionists who saw antisemitism as natural and inevitable.) In reality, Palestinian gentiles’ relationship with Jews is more complex than that.

Quoting Ilan Pappé’s Ten Myths about Israel, pages 47–8:

The official [Zionist] narrative or foundational mythology refuses to allow the Palestinians even a modicum of moral right to resist the Jewish colonization of their homeland that began in 1882. From the very beginning, Palestinian resistance was depicted as motivated by hate for Jews. It was accused of promoting a protean anti‐Semitic campaign of terror that began when the first settlers arrived and continued until [1948].

The diaries of the early Zionists tell a different story. They are full of anecdotes revealing how the settlers were well received by the Palestinians, who offered them shelter and in many cases taught them how to cultivate the land.^4^ Only when it became clear that the settlers had not come to live alongside the native population, but in place of it, did the Palestinian resistance begin. And when that resistance started, it quickly took the form of every other anticolonialist struggle.

This initial hospitality is, sadly, a trope throughout colonialism’s history. For example, the Taíno and the Aztecs were, at first, in awe of their new arrivals and the strange technologies and creatures that they brought with them. They offered gifts to their new guests and displayed a willingness to accommodate them, but this innocent hospitality was short‐lived once it was time for colonialism to expand.

In the Palestinian gentiles’ case, many of them were likely aware of their Jewish roots, and it’s probable that many of them frequented Mosques that reminded them to respect strangers in their lands, or taught them that Jews, like Christians, are ‘people of the book’. The intellectuals were surely aware of Judaism’s influence on Christianity and Islam, too, so in any case, anti‐Jewish sentiment would have been not only illogical, it wouldn’t have served a purpose either.

Nevertheless, despite Palestinians’ hospitality, the Zionists were dead‐set on realizing their ethnonationalist and neocolonial project. Pages 48–9:

The idea that impoverished Jews were entitled to a safe haven was not objected to by the Palestinians and those supporting them. However, this was not reciprocated by the Zionist leaders. While Palestinians offered shelter and employment to the early settlers, and did not object to working should to shoulder with them under whatever ownership, the Zionist ideologues were very clear about the need both to push the Palestinians out of the country’s labor market and to sanction those settlers who were still employing Palestinians or who worked alongside them.

This was the idea of avoda [ivr]it, (Hebrew Labor), which meant mainly the need to bring an end to avoda aravit, (Arab Labor). Gershon Shar, in his seminal work on the Second Aliyah, the second wave of Zionist immigration (1904–14), explains well how this ideology developed and was practiced.^5^

The leader of that wave, David Ben‐Gurion (who became the leader of the community and then prime minister of [his neocolony]), constantly referred to Arab labor as an illness for which the only cure was Jewish labor. In his and other settlers’ letters, Hebrew workers are characterized as the healthy blood that will immunize the nation from rottenness and death. Ben‐Gurion also remarked that employing “Arabs” reminded him of the old Jewish story of a stupid man who resuscitated a dead lion that then devoured him.^6^

The initial positive Palestinian reaction confused some of the settlers themselves throughout the period of British rule (1918–48). The colonialist impulse was to ignore the native population and create gated communities. However, life offered different opportunities. There is extensive evidence of coexistence and cooperation between the newly arrived Jews and the native population almost everywhere.

[Zionist] settlers, particularly in the urban centers, could not survive without engaging, at least economically, with the Palestinians. Despite numerous attempts by the Zionist leadership to disrupt these interactions, hundreds of joint businesses were formed throughout those years, alongside trade‐union cooperation and agricultural collaboration. But without political support from above this could not open the way for a different reality in Palestine.^7^

A good example of Zionists opposing Palestinian hospitality is looking at the rôle of Palestinian volunteers during World War II:

With regard to the internal relationship between the Arab and Jewish volunteers in the mixed units before they were separated, we do not have much information. However, from a few of the letters and documents that dealt with the subject, it appears that the relationship was generally good and instances of open hostility were very few in number.

For example, from one of the documents we learn about a quarrel about radio broadcasts. The Jewish soldiers complained that their Arab colleagues wished to listen to broadcasts in Arabic, while the time given to them to listen to broadcasts in Hebrew was brief. This developed into a squabble which ended in the jailing of soldiers from both sides. In another instance a dispute broke out over the question of cleaning the rooms and the kitchen.^68^

[…]

In contrast with the leadership of the [Zionist] Yishuv, the research shows that those Palestinian leaders who had worked so hard for the sake of volunteering did not have any clear national agenda. They did not demand setting up separate Arab Palestinian units similar to those of the [Zionists], in spite of British encouragement.

The leaders of the Yishuv succeeded through continuous pressure to break away from mixed units already in 1942, and in some of the units even earlier. Slowly they advanced in the direction of setting up a Jewish fighting division that in the future would fulfil an important rôle as the basis for a [Zionist] army by the end of the Mandate period.

From the protocols of the Jewish Agency Directorate, it may be learnt that already at an early stage the leaders of the [Zionist] Yishuv had reservations and even opposed the idea of mixed units, and did all they could to keep separate from the Arabs.^103^

From all of this information here, it feels like the Palestinians loved Jews more than the Zionists themselves!

It is true that the Palestinians did not want to live in a Jewish state, but not because of its Jewishness per se; they simply did not want to live in an ethnostate, which would have inevitably relegated them to the status of second‐class citizens (if allowed at all). It wouldn’t have made a difference to them if the ethnostate were Jewish or gentile.

One premodern example that Zionists use to ‘prove’ that Palestinians are bigoted is the Hebron massacre of 1929. There are quite a few details to this incident, but for brevity’s sake, Pappé summarizes the causes on page 50:

In 1928, the Palestinian leadership, notwithstanding the wishes of the overall majority of their people, consented to allow the Jewish settlers equal representation in the future bodies of the state. The Zionist leadership was in favor of the idea only for as long as it suspected the Palestinians would reject it. Shared representation stood against everything Zionism was supposed to be.

So, when the proposal was accepted by the Palestinian party, it was rejected by the Zionists. This led to the riots of 1929, which included the massacre of Jews in Hebron and a much higher death toll among the Palestinian community.^10^

But there were also other reasons for the wave of violence, the most serious since the beginning of the Mandate. It was triggered by the dispossession of Palestinian tenants from land owned by absentee landlords and local notables, which had been bought by the Jewish National Fund. The tenants had lived for centuries on the land but they were now forced into slums in the towns.

(Emphasis added in all cases.)

There are, of course, moderner concerns to address, like the claim that Hamas massacred over one thousand Jews on October 7 (it didn’t), that Hamas hates Jews (it doesn’t), but this thread is getting lengthy enough as it is, so I’ll trust you to do your own research. I would, nevertheless, like to add one of these anecdotes:

There was also also a good ama post on the Israel sub from a dude who converted to Islam that was raised orthodox and spent a considerable time in the WB [West Bank]. Dude told at least a few Palestinians he was Jewish and they were intrigued, excited and even protective of him, which is the opposite of chopping off his head like everyone assumes.

None of this is to say that there is no Judeophobia among Palestinians. Indeed, when their oppressors repeatedly emphasize their Jewish identity and claim that they are somehow committing their atrocities for the good of Jewry, it would be very surprising if no Palestinians conflated their oppressors with, for example, unarmed Jewish proletarians.

That being said, Palestinian Judeophobia cannot and should not be treated the same way as neofascist antisemitism, for the main reason being that the causes are very different. Palestinian Judeophobia is the sad but inevitable consequence of an underpowered and largely helpless minority—Palestinians—knowing little else what to do but to express their frustrations against their privileged oppressors—Zionists—in a crude manner.

Neofascist antisemitism, in contrast, is more complex. It is, to quote Bordiga, ‘the petit bourgeois reaction to the pressures of big capital.’ Neofascist antisemitism is not only colonialist, but seeks to forcibly crush economic competition (from any class) and to channel capitalism’s consequences on one segment in society. Resisting neofascism is inevitable until we abolish its cause: capitalism.

The two have differing causes and neither can nor should be addressed the same way. My suggestion to addressing Palestinian Judeophobia is not resistance, but compassion. This may sound difficult to do, but if you recognize how much less power they have in the situation, so should you see a Palestinian making a remark like this:

It is baffling how Jews (among all people) are not anti-Zionists hundreds of times more than Palestinians and Arabs! Are Jews this ignorant? or have they been dumbed down to this degree? Are Jews terrified of being canceled from within the community? Or are Jews willing accomplices in propagating the Big Lies? Do you understand now why German Jews consider those imposters the enemy from within?

…my advice: calm down. Responding with vitriol isn’t going to fix anything, and even lecturing them is unlikely to make somebody feel better. Try what I do whenever somebody takes a potshot at whites: smile, forgive, or forget. Better yet, do everything in your power to end Zionism, because that is the only surefire way to prevent more sentiments like that one.