יְהוּדִים פָלַסְטִינִים اليهود الفلسطينيون | |
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_-_2009.128.1_-_Yale_University_Art_Gallery.jpg) Painting of Palestinian rabbiRaphael Hayyim Isaac Carregal by American artistSamuel King, 1782 | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Palestine (Land of Israel) | |
| Languages | |
| Religion | |
| Judaism | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Samaritans andIsraeli Jews |
Palestinian Jews orJewish Palestinians (Hebrew:יְהוּדִים פָלַסְטִינִים;Arabic:اليهود الفلسطينيون) were theJews who inhabitedPalestine (alternatively theLand of Israel) prior to theDeclaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel on 14 May 1948.
Beginning in the 19th century,[1] the collective Jewish communities ofOttoman Syria and then ofMandatory Palestine were commonly referred to as theYishuv (ישוב,lit. 'settlement'). A distinction is drawn between the New Yishuv and theOld Yishuv: the New Yishuv was largely composed of and descended from Jews who had immigrated to theLevant during theFirst Aliyah (1881–1903); while the Old Yishuv comprised the Palestinian Jewish community that had already existed in the region before the consolidation ofZionism and the First Aliyah.
In addition to applying to Jews who lived in Palestine during theBritish Mandate, the term "Palestinian Jew" has been applied to the Jewish residents of Palestine under theOttoman Empire. There are also historical scholarly instances in which the Jewish populations ofPalaestina Prima andPalaestina Secunda in theByzantine Empire are referred to as Palestinian Jews.[2]
Following the declaration of the State of Israel in 1948, the entire Palestinian Jewish populace was absorbed byIsraeli citizenship law. Since then, the term "Palestinian Jew" has largely fallen into disuse, though someIsraeli Jews may refer to themselves as Palestinians in historical or political contexts.
Prior to dismemberment of theOttoman Empire, the population of the area comprising modern Israel, theWest Bank, andGaza Strip was not exclusively Muslim. Under the empire's rule in the mid-16th century, there were no more than 10,000 Jews in Palestine,[3] making up around 5% of the population. By the mid-19th century, Turkish sources recorded that 80% of the population of 600,000 was identified as Muslim, 10% as Christian Arab and 5–7% as Jewish.[4]
The situation of the Jewish community in Palestine was more complicated than in neighbouringArab countries.[5] Whereas inYemen,Iraq,Syria andLebanon, communities were largely homogeneous in ethnic and confessional terms, in Palestine in the 19th century, Jewish pilgrims and European Christian colonial projects attracted large numbers of Ashkenazi immigrants from Eastern Europe and Sephardic groups fromBulgaria,Turkey andNorth Africa.[5] The Jews of Palestine were not exclusively ofIberian origins, and included substantial Yiddish speaking communities who had established themselves in Palestine centuries earlier.[5]
Towards the end of theOttoman era inPalestine, native Jewish communities lived primarily in the four 'holy cities' ofSafed,Tiberias,Hebron andJerusalem.[5] The Jewish population consisted of Ashkenazim (Yiddish speakers), Sephardim (Judeo-Spanish speakers), and Maghrebim (North African Arabic speakers) or Mizrahim (Middle Eastern Jews, comparable to the Arabic termMashriqiyyun, or 'Easterners'). The majority of Jews in the four holy cities, with the exception of Jerusalem, wereArabic andJudaeo-Spanish speakers.[5] The dominant language among Jews in Jerusalem wasYiddish, due to the large migration of pious Ashkenazi Jews fromRussia andEastern Europe. Still, in 1882, there were registered 7,620 Sephardim/Mizrahim/Maghrebim, in Jerusalem, of whom 1,290 were Maghrebim, from theMaghreb or North Africa. Natives of the city, they were Turkish subjects, and fluent in Arabic.[5] Arabic also served as thelingua franca between the Sephardim/Mizrahim/Maghrebim and Ashkenazim and their non-Jewish Arab counterparts in mixed cities like Safed and Hebron.[5] However, during the Greek and Roman period, the primary language of Palestinian Jews wasAramaic, a Semitic language closely related to Hebrew.[6]
In the narrative works of Arabs in Palestine in the late Ottoman period, as evidenced in the autobiographies and diaries ofKhalil al-Sakakini andWasif Jawhariyyeh, "native" Jews were often referred to and described asabnaa al-balad (sons of the country), 'compatriots', orYahud awlad Arab (Jews, sons of Arabs).[5] When the First Palestinian Congress of February 1919 issued itsanti-Zionist manifesto rejectingZionist immigration, it extended a welcome to those Jews "among us who have beenArabicized, who have been living in our province since before the war; they are as we are, and their loyalties are our own."[5] In practice, however, Jews asdhimmi were second-class citizens throughout the Ottoman empire until its collapse.[7]
Despite the overtures by Palestinian Arabs by 1914 the local Arab population, which was uniting under a new concept of Palestinianism was becoming increasingly detached from the Arabic-speaking Jews over Zionism. Even though many Jews who spoke Arabic, identified as "Arab" and maintained intellectual networks in Cairo, Beirut, and Istanbul many of them were also supporters of Zionism and the Jewish colonization of Palestine. Jewish newspapers such as the HaHerut which dealt with Sephardic issues were Pro-Zionist and Pro-Ottoman and in many ways, similar to HaTzvi which was published by newly arrived Ashkenazi Jews. Attempts to ease the tensions were made by Arab-speaking Jews establishing societies such asHaMagen to counter Anti-Zionism in the Arab press, translate Arabic articles so newly settled Jews could understand Arabs and suppress anti-semitic publications but this was becoming challenging due to the rising wave of nationalist publications.[8]
In 1920 the Arab newspaperal-Quds al-Sharif called Palestinian Jews to live alongside Arabs and reject Zionism and recent arrivals, appealing to the long history of Sepherdic Jews had with Arabs. In 1921, the Palestinian delegation in London claimed to the British negotiation team that the local Sephardim opposed Zionism and the Palestinian press began reaching out to Sephardim calling but this time the pleas were met with stiff opposition from the local Palestinian Sephardic leadership.[8] The1929 Anti-Jewish riots resulted in the final breakdown of relations between Palestinian Jews and Arabs with even Jewish communities that were opposed to Zionism joining together for protection creating a unified Yishuv.[9]
Official documents released in April 2013 by theState Archive of Israel show that days before the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948, Jewish officials were still debating about what the new country would be called in Arabic: Palestine (Filastin), Zion (Sahyoun) or Israel (Isra’il). Two assumptions were made: "That an Arab state was about to be established alongside the Jewish one in keeping with the UN's partition resolution the year before, and that the Jewish state would include a large Arab minority whose feelings needed to be taken into account." In the end, the officials rejected the name Palestine because they thought that would be the name of the new Arab state and could cause confusion so they opted for the most straightforward option: Israel.[10]
European Jews were commonly considered an "Oriental" people in many of their host countries, usually as reference to their ancestraloriginsin the Middle East. A prominent example of this was the 18th-centuryPrussian philosopherImmanuel Kant, who referred to European Jews as "Palestinians living among us."[11][12]
Ben-Zion Meir Hai Uziel (born in 1880 in Jerusalem) was the Sephardi chief rabbi of Mandatory Palestine from 1939 to 1948, and of Israel from 1948 to 1954. He served as aMizrachi delegate to the Zionist Congress from 1925–46. As areligious Zionist, he strongly believed in the redemption of Israel and bringing the Jewish exiles back to the land to create a religious Jewish state of Israel. As a strong supporter of Israeli nationalism, in his writingThe Redemption of Israel he wrote: "We all desire that the in gathering of the exiles should take place from all areas where they have been scattered; and that our holy language will be upon our lips and upon the lips of our children, in building the Land and its flowering through the hands and work of Israel; and we will all strive to see the flag of freedom and redemption waving in glory and strength upon the walls of Jerusalem."[13]
Mordechai Eliyahu (born in 1929 in Jerusalem) was a prominentrabbi,posek and spiritual leader. He served as the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel from 1983 to 1993. Because Eliyahu was one of the spiritual leaders of the Religious Zionist movement he refused to use the termPalestinian and believed all Jews should refrain from using the term. He was an outspoken opponent of the Gaza Disengagement of 2005 and supported Jewish settlements in Gaza and the West Bank. He was considered somewhat controversial for his decades-long support of the radical right of the Religious Zionist movement. Eliyahu was a friend of RabbiMeir Kahane and his family.[14]
Uri Davis, anIsraeli citizen, academic, activist and observer-member in thePalestinian National Council living in the Arab town ofSakhnin, identified himself as an "anti-Zionist Palestinian Hebrew". Davis explained, "I don’t describe myself as a Palestinian Hebrew, but I actually happen to be a Palestinian Hebrew, I was born inJerusalem 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 ofZionism. I'm ananti-Zionist."[15] He has since converted to Islam in 2008 to marry a Palestinian Muslim woman, Miyassar Abu Ali, whom he met in 2006.[16] Since then he no longer considers himself Jewish.
Tali Fahima, an Israeli pro-Palestinian activist, describes her nationality as Palestinian. Fahima was born inKiryat Gat, a development town in the south of Israel, to a family ofAlgerian Jewish origin. Fahima lives in the Arab villageAr'ara in northern Israel, and works as aHebrew teacher. In June 2010, it was reported that she converted toIslam at a mosque inUmm al-Fahm.
Actor, director and activistJuliano Mer-Khamis, the son of an Israeli Jewish mother and aPalestinian father, described himself in a 2009 interview withIsrael Army Radio as "100 percent Palestinian Arab and 100 percent Jewish".[17]
ThePalestinian National Charter, as amended by the PLO'sPalestinian National Council in July 1968, definedPalestinians 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. The Jews who had normally resided in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion[18] will be considered Palestinians."[19][20]
The term "Jewish Palestinians" can also refer to Palestinian Arab families with Jewish ancestry.[21] Throughout the years several reports documenting traditions of Jewish descent, as well as customs associated with Judaism, were recorded in what is today theWest Bank.
One notable instance involves theMakhamra family, based in Yatta and surrounding areas in theHebron Hills, who claims ancestry from a Jewish tribe expelled fromKhaybar.[22] According to their tradition, their ancestor, Muheimar, a Jew, conquered the village centuries ago. Additionally, there are reports of the clan observing Jewish customs such as lighting candles duringHanukkah and refraining from consumingcamel meat, which is common in the region. They also reportedly avoid intermarriage with other clans. Some scholars support their origin story, while others suggest they represent remnants of an ancient Jewish community in the area. Additionally, one theory proposes that their name, Makhamra, meaning "winemakers" in Arabic, reflects a professionforbidden in Islam.[23][24][25][26]
Traditions of Jewish ancestry were also documented in other areas of the Hebron Hills, including among the Sawarah and Shatrit clans ofHalhul,[27][28] as well as the Rajoub clan ofDura.[29] Similarly, during the 1920s, several Palestinian families residing inBeit Hanina (Dar Abu-Zuheir) and the now-depopulatedLifta (Abu Aaukal), situated nearJerusalem, as well as families inBeit Ummar and the now-depopulatedBayt Nattif in the Hebron Hills, were recorded to have upheld traditions of Jewish ancestry.[30]
Khaybar's Jews appear in Arab folklore as well. [...] The Muḥamara family of the Arab village of Yutta, near Hebron, trace their descent to the Jews of Khaybar. Families in other nearby villages tell of similar lineages.
Media related toJewish people of Palestine at Wikimedia CommonsHistory of the Jews in Asia | |
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