What Rabinovich Could Have Said

Back on February 1, 2024, Emily Bazelon moderated at the New York Times a conversation with six participants.  Entitled "The Road to 1948", it was to discuss "how the decisions that led to the founding of Israel left the region in a state of eternal conflict."

Participating were Salim Tamari, sociologist at Birzeit University in the West Bank, Abigail Jacobson, history professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Leena Dallasheh, historian working on a book about the city of Nazareth, Derek Penslar, history professor at Harvard University, Nadim Bawalsa, historian and associate editor for The Journal of Palestine Studies and Itamar Rabinovich, history professor at Tel Aviv University.

It is very instructive not only as regards the historical facts (and non-facts) included but how too many fudge issues and spin them.

One particular statement caught my eye, that of Rabinovich, at the very end. It is illustrative of how an Israeli, with a trump card in his hand, lets it drop from his fingers and, moreover, uses it in a way that is detrimental to Zionism. 

Here he is:

I want to speak about the destructive power of nationalism. What we have here is the collision between two national movements that were born at about the same time. In 1905, the Lebanese [Maronite Christian] intellectual Najib Azoury published a book in which he said these two national movements would have a destructive effect on the whole region. At the end of World War I, three multinational empires collapsed, the Ottoman, the Austro-Hungarian and the Russian. None of them was great at that point. But look at what they were replaced by — mostly ethnic conflicts and the collision between national movements in Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the Levant.

Rabinovich is quite familiar with Azoury's book, Le réveil de la nation arabe 

(and see here), is, indeed important, as it refers to a Palestine as a country:

La Palestine était donc ouverte de partout aux invasions étrangères 

And, more importantly, it refers to the Zionists:

Les Juifs de nos jours ont parfaitement compris les fautes de leurs ancêtres ; aussi cherchentils soigneusement à les éviter dans la reconstitu¬ tion de ce qu’ils appellent leur ancienne patrie, en acquérant la partie de la Palestine que leurs aïeux n’avaient pu posséder, et en occupant avant tout les frontières naturelles du pays ; voilà deux points des plus importants dans le plan d’action des Sionistes. [The Jews of our day have perfectly understood the faults of their ancestors; they also carefully seek to avoid them in the reconstitution of what they call their ancient homeland, by acquiring the part of Palestine that their ancestors could not have possessed, and by occupying above all the natural borders of the country; These are two of the most important points in the Zionist action plan.]

Azoury also wrote:

"Zionist and Arab nationalist aspirations were likely to come seriously into conflict...two important phenomena are emerging at this moment in Asiatic Turkey. They are the awakening of the Arab Nation and the latent effort by Jews to reconstitute on a very large scale the ancient Kingdom of Israel... They are destined to fight each other continually until one of them wins."

Rabinovich could have used the quotation to indicate that even the Arabs were aware, at the beginning ocf the 20th century, that the Jews were an ancient people in the country and had a Kingdom and additional elements of history, a narrative contemporary Arabs refuse to recognize, denounce and deny.

He could have quoted Azoury regarding demographic figures, page 22:

If we only count the rural population, the West Bank is no more inhabited than the other part of Palestine, despite its larger surface area...From Léontès to the Bir-Sabeh plateau, the rural population hardly exceeds 100,000 inhabitants. By adding the urban population of Hebron, Gaza, Jaffa, Jerusalem, Nablus, Caiffa, Saint-Jean-Acre, Tyre, Nazareth, Tiberias and Safed, we arrive at 170,000 souls. To this must be added the 30,000 nomadic Bedouins of the Bir-Sabeh Plateau, which gives us a total of 200,000 inhabitants. In this number we do not count the Jews who also number 200,000; because we are only considering, for the moment, the population that lives off the ground.

I cannot confirm his data but that is a remarkable accounting.

Azoury possessed a negative view of Jewish aspiration, writing on page 46 of a Jewish "encroachment" (l’envahissement). On page 48, he refers positively to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion ("L’étude approfondie que nous faisons...servira aussi à montrer à ceux qui liront Le Péril juif universel, combien les circonstances présentes sont favorables aux projets des Sionistes dans le pays qui fût le rêve de leurs ancêtres et qui, au¬ jourd’hui encore, excite tant leurs convoitises" - "The in-depth study we make...will also serve to show those who read The Universal Jewish Peril how present circumstances are favorable to the projects of the Zionists in the country which was the dream of their ancestors and which, even today, excites their desires so much").

In other words, given an opportunity to make a firm, uncompromising Zionist statement based on an Arab's writing, and there is much he could have said based on Azoury, Rabinovich 'drops the ball'.

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