This week we've read about Jews purchasing lands from Arabs in Palestine. Now let's discuss the moral implications of such acts, when there's a clear long-term goal of changing political realities - indeed what the early Zionists had done in Palestine from the 1880s.
Below you'll find links to a few stories (most from last year, some more recent) about purchasing property to affect demography. Nowadays, most Israelis reject the purchasing of land or real estate in Palestinian-dominated areas or neighborhoods, whether they are in Arab cities within Israel's borders, the West Bank, or East Jerusalem. However, a small group of ultra-right wing (and usually religious) Israelis who believe the entire country (Eretz Yisrael) belongs to the Jews, has been for quite some time intentionally looking for and buying property within Palestinian/Arab/Muslim areas.
Recently, the main area of dispute has been East Jerusalem, whether within the old city walls, or in the Arab parts of the city. In a few incidents, religious extremists have infiltrated Palestinian property, arguing that they have documents from the Ottoman period that prove their ownership of the land or houses. In some cases, they even forcefully evacuated the current residents of these houses. The police cannot intervene in most cases, because of a court order that permits the settlers to take possession of their property (Israeli law recognizes legal contracts from the Ottoman period).
Such stories have been in the news quite a lot recently, and engendered a lot of opposition from the sane parts of Israeli society. Leaders of the Israeli left even organized demonstrations in East Jerusalem in support of the Palestinians. Among the demonstrators were the famous Israeli authors Amos Oz and David Grossman, as well as Israel's former minister of education, Yossi Sarid.
Below you'll find links to a few stories (most from last year, some more recent) about purchasing property to affect demography. Nowadays, most Israelis reject the purchasing of land or real estate in Palestinian-dominated areas or neighborhoods, whether they are in Arab cities within Israel's borders, the West Bank, or East Jerusalem. However, a small group of ultra-right wing (and usually religious) Israelis who believe the entire country (Eretz Yisrael) belongs to the Jews, has been for quite some time intentionally looking for and buying property within Palestinian/Arab/Muslim areas.
Recently, the main area of dispute has been East Jerusalem, whether within the old city walls, or in the Arab parts of the city. In a few incidents, religious extremists have infiltrated Palestinian property, arguing that they have documents from the Ottoman period that prove their ownership of the land or houses. In some cases, they even forcefully evacuated the current residents of these houses. The police cannot intervene in most cases, because of a court order that permits the settlers to take possession of their property (Israeli law recognizes legal contracts from the Ottoman period).
Such stories have been in the news quite a lot recently, and engendered a lot of opposition from the sane parts of Israeli society. Leaders of the Israeli left even organized demonstrations in East Jerusalem in support of the Palestinians. Among the demonstrators were the famous Israeli authors Amos Oz and David Grossman, as well as Israel's former minister of education, Yossi Sarid.
These last developments bring us back to the historical question:
Was the Jewish practice of purchasing lands in Palestine from Arab landlords and driving away the farmers who used to work those lands for decades morally problematic? And, did the Jews have another way of achieving their goals of establishing a state in Eretz Yisrael?
Note: if you are taking this course for credit, your response must relate to the weekly assigned readings in some way.
To read more about this, visit the links below:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1117288.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/02/world/middleeast/02mideast.html
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1145875.html
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1143284.html
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1146191.html
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1144646.html
More recent news items:
This practice was morally problematic by both parties. First, the purchase and selling of land in Palestine was illegal by the Ottoman government during the Taznimat era, which means that Arab landlords and Jews were participating in illegal affairs; however, land, as well as landownership, was not clearly documented or recorded in the Ottoman Empire which complicated issues dealing with territory. Secondly, the European donors of these Jewish settlements, like Baron Rothschild, requested that the settlements only have Jewish labor. These requests left Jewish settlers with few options: they lose their funding and keep the Arab labor or they oblige and expel all Arabs from the area. This predicament led to some Jews exploiting Arab labor and agricultural knowledge to achieve a successful crop and then forcing them to leave. I believe this conscience act of exploitation was morally wrong, but how else were the Jewish settlers going to establish their settlements? Was there another way? Perhaps. In an ideal world, the Jews, including the donors, and Arab farmers could have tried to understand each other’s side and worked towards a compromise. However, I believe statehood could have been achieved without the exploitation of Arab farmers through more Jewish labor.
ReplyDeleteBefore I answer the question directly, I have to disagree with Amy when she said the purchase/selling of land was illegal. Due to the Land Reform of 1858, which aimed to systematize transactions involving state land, uncultivated land could be bought without having to eventually show that it had been cultivated. This allowed some to acquire land without having to visit it and lead to absentee (but still Ottoman) individuals buying large, newly-demarcated pieces of land. When non-Ottomans were allowed to acquire land along with the taxes associated with it in 1867, many foreign Jews seized the opportunity to buy from some of the new land owners. So the land purchases were legal.
ReplyDeleteHaving said that, I think that the way the Jews drove the original farmers away was morally problematic. The farmers were used to the land belonging to different "owners" because their day-to-day life remained largely unchanged; hour upon hour of toiling, paying heavy taxes, etc. This was not so when the Jews started buying land there. Not only did they divide the land according to their will and build new structures, but they pushed the local Arabs who had lived there for many years out without giving them very much compensation. Even in the cases where the Jews did hire Arab labor, they paid them less and had them work more than their Jewish counterparts.
I think there was another way that the Jews could have formed Eretz Yisrael, by allowing the farmers to remain or trying to integrate them into the new society. However, the Jewish settlers, philanthropists, and Zionists would have complained that this would detract from the vision of a pure Jewish state.
I agree with Tiegan about the issue of selling or purchasing land as legal, but that applies to only uncultivated land.Which had a very clear loophole of not having to prove that it had been previously cultivated. At least that's my understanding. Now to answer the question, I believe that Jewish practice of purchasing lands in Palestine from Arab landlords and driving away the farmers who used to work those lands for decades morally problematic. I think this because of the fact that they destroyed their livelihood. They had a very difficult time of providing for their families and raising their children. America did the same thing to the Native Americans years ago when they came here. But at least they had somewhere to go, and eventually compensated and some over their land returned. Could this have been done differently? I believe so like Tiegan said they could have just lived together and integrated each other in each other societies like many other groups but, that wouldn't be a pure Jewish state.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Samer and everyone before me. I would like to add the the Palestinian Arabs and the Jews have been fighting over this piece of land called "Eretz Yisrael, Israel, or Palestine" for THOUSANDS of years.
ReplyDeleteThis conflict only worsened for the Arabs living their and Jews when affluent Jews in Europe, like the Rotschild family, began buying up land (belonging to Arabs per se or not) in the mid-19th century.
As to if this practice of buying up previously Arab land and driving them away was morally problematic, the answer is yes. Furthermore, it was not only problematic but also plain wrong. But at the same time Jews in Europe did not have any other feasible means of acquiring the land from the Arabs; land that they believed was promised to them by God and NOT the Arabs whom were currently living there.
According to the Kramer book, this was just about the means in which the European Jews in 19th century Europe thought they could return to "the Promised Land" after thousands of years of living in the "Diaspora." Of course there were ALWAYS other means of acquiring in land, and in more moral means. The truth of the matter is, the Jews thought it to be the most feasible and plausible way at the given time. Back to what Samer stated, that the founders of the USA did the same exact things that the Jews did to the Arabs and most likely worse things. Truth is: EVERY culture and/or people have done unjust and immoral things to each other; such is the history of the world. Apologies for typing so much! I had to put a historian's perspective on this :)
As Khalidi pointed out in his work Palestinian Identity, Herzl and other Zionist movement leaders spread around the idea that Palestine was an empty land waiting for the Jewish population to cultivate it. The Zionist slogan "A land without a people for a people without a land" makes this quite clear. Clever use of propaganda with this phrase and others rooted the idea in the minds of Jews that they had rights to claim the land of Palestine. When they were to purchase the land of the local Arab population they may have felt that they were morally justified in doing so and evicting the Arabs. Of course it is hard today to argue that driving locals off their land is in any way morally correct, but at the time maybe they did not feel so. And how else were the Jews to gain land in Palestine from the Arabs? Fighting them for it was not a feasible option.
ReplyDeleteI fully agree with Dawnbreaker1989's last claim that every culture has done something as morally problematic.
I do not think that the Land Purchase in and of itself was morally wrong. I agree with what Sara said about how Zionist leaders made it seem as though there was nobody living in the area, however, I also think that there was and continues to be a miscommunication over the definition of land ownership by Arabs and Jews, which Kramer and Khalidi subtly point out. Simply put, I think that the greatest difference was that Jews felt that by owning the land, that it belong to them and nobody else, while Arabs did not feel that ownership of the land should affect those living and cultivating the land.
ReplyDeleteAlso, in theory, the Jews could have allowed Arabs to remain on the land and cultivate it; however, I think that doing so would still eventually cause conflicts for several reasons. First, many of the Jews immigrated to Palestine in order to get away from the pattern of persecution that they faced—whenever a large number of Jews moved to a new place, they eventually became hated because of their ability to prosper and do well in almost any society. Following this pattern, it would have been just a matter of time before the Arabs began to hate and persecute the Jews as well. Furthermore, allowing Arabs to stay would defeat the purpose of the Jews for immigrating to Palestine in order to create a Jewish state. Secondly, as was evidenced by the initial practices of some communities—Khalidi mentions that some of the Jewish communities leased land to Arabs or allowed Arabs to remain and cultivate the land until more Jews entered the communities—if Jews had allowed Arabs to remain and continue working, other issues such as the ill-treatment and payment of workers would have caused conflicts.
The other option that the Jews had—to move to a different location—would have still born similar consequences in my opinion. Anywhere they would have moved, they would have disrupted the lives of natives in order to fulfill their purpose, and this would have caused conflicts between the natives and the Jews.
Although I feel that the Arabs should not have been displaced, I also feel that the Jews should not have been persecuted. While I am not saying that the fact that Jews were persecuted justifies their treatment of the Arabs, the situation makes it difficult to judge whether the Jewish land purchase was morally problematic.
Although the Jews settling rural areas of Israel were working towards a common goal, as outlined by Herzl in “The Jewish State,” the land they purchased was privately acquired. Any moral obligations can only be reflected on the individual. It was each purchaser that made the decision to either oust or employ the prior Arab inhabitants. As for another means of establishing a state in Eretz Israel, there are options. First that comes to mind is by use of force, which is arguably less moral than the option for which the Jews vied. I will agree with a common theme in most of the responses thus far – all people groups have committed some moral injustice against their own or others at some point in time, but what blame is ever placed on a populace acting out of self-preservation and within a means that they believed to be the least obtrusive and most beneficial to the outsiders that they may affect?
ReplyDeleteThe contemporary practices of destroying Arabs’ homes and utilizing documents that predate the founding of their state as justification for doing so, is immoral; many outside observers and even many Israelis acknowledge this. These modern issues have evolved out of the original means by which Jews settled Palestine, but the means by which they acquired the territory was arguable the most moral approach.
To start off, I have to say I disagree with Siera's argument. I don't believe that anyone was condoning the persecution of the Jews following the purchase of land, but taking the land of the Arabs in the past (and looking for loopholes and contracts dating back to the Ottoman Empire) is morally wrong. Legally justifiable it may be, but I do not believe that depriving a people of their livelihood for the concept of Zionism is a good idea. In Herzl's writing, it shows that he did not think that either. Natalie brings up that it was up to the purchaser of the land to decide the fate of the Arabs who worked on the land, and though this is true, many people who were part of the Zionist movement were looking to employ and draw more Jews into Palestine, and the major theme was to employ them and help the cause.
ReplyDeleteI think that state-building, especially the nation-state, is an inherently violent enterprise because the concept of a nation inevitably excludes another group of people. According to the logic of nationalism it eventually becomes necessary for one people to dominate the other economically, politically, or socially. Is it moral? No, but that is the cost of nation building.
ReplyDeleteAs to the Jewish purchase of land in Palestine, I don't think that there is anything inherently wrong about it from a legal or moral standpoint. But I think that the problem with it is the nationalist, Zionist ideology that accompanied some of the land purchases especially during the Second Aliyah. Slogans such as the "conquest of labor" were the means that Zionists used to establish the economic basis of the future state which inevitably entailed the economic exclusion and domination of Palestinians (I think that Khalidi is correct in pointing to the Second Aliyah period and the expulsion of Arab workers as the beginning of the modern Palestinian-Israeli conflict). Simply put, I don't think that the purchasing of land in Palestine was wrong, but I do think that the driving away of Arab tenant farmers was wrong, especially because of its nationalistic motivations.
Because the land purchase resulted in Palestinian farmers losing their land and livelihoods the land purchase was of course morally problematic. Zionist leaders portrayed this land to be uninhabited, as Kramer points out this was incorrect. However, rising anti-Semitism in Europe (especially Central and Eastern Europe) made living conditions for Jews extremely difficult. Yes, the Jews had other options of where they could establish a Jewish state, however, these options were hardly feasibly or practical. While Uganda was considered, the problem of land encroachment would still present itself, as well as with Argentina. Also, in Herzl's pamphlet, he points out how wherever the Jews settle they cannot simply trickle in, because that would result in hostility from the native population and the Jews would once again face persecution.
ReplyDeleteToday the expansion of Jewish settlements into areas previously inhabited by Palestinians and the forced eviction of Palestinians from their home is clearly immoral and unjustifiable. The initial settling of the Jewish state, however, occurred under very different circumstances and was while immoral, it was at least more justifiable given the circumstances.
Undoubtedly the Jewish practice of purchasing lands in Palestine via Arab landlords was problematic. As Khalidi mentioned in his publication The Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness, dissension over land in Palestine was perhaps the very point from which the conflict originated. It is possible that the disagreements over land between the two factions may not have escalated as they did had the Palestinians been fully aware of the fact that while they lived on the land, they were not the landowners.
ReplyDeleteKhalidi also suggested that the conflict over land might not have intensified as it did if the incoming Jewish landowners would not have made the decision to replace Arab workers with other Jewish immigrants. One must note that the majority of the Arab population working on rural land in Palestine made up the peasantry; therefore, it was not as though after losing their jobs they could simply start up a new family business or move to the city. While it is always easy to look back in hindsight, it would have been wise for the Jewish landowners to draw up agreements with Palestinian workers in order to prevent conflict from ensuing further.
Was this morally problematic? Yes, for both sides. While I'm sure this is a large point of contention, subjugation is subjugation. Because the Jewish community in Europe had been facing subjugation from overarching governments throughout Europe, they sought to make a state where they would be free to flourish. In choosing Palestine as that land, however, many Palestinians were then the faction facing subjugation as many were displaced from their lands and livelihoods. The reality is, no matter what land the Jews would have chosen as their place of refuge, issues such as these would have occurred.
Unfortunately, however, new Zionist ideology at the time suggested Eretz Yisrael would be a land in which Jews would have the opportunity to become self-sufficient, self-employed individuals. Unless this ideal had been altered, I’m not sure that there would have been another route by which Jews could have established the state they envisioned, as outlined by Herzl in The Jewish State.
I agree with Parker, that the purchasing of land in Palestine was not morally wrong, but driving out the Arab tenant farmers was. As Kramer point out, the Jews were in no position to take the land by force, but could buy it where available by the authorities or locals. While the Jews made great efforts to acquire and sustain this land, it was not done so illegally, even if the land was in fact inhabited. However, the Jewish strategy of “bifurcating” the economy proved to be problematic because it established purely Jewish entities in this Arab area. Their establishment threatened the Arab laborers livelihoods, since the area and employment they have known for years was being taken from them. However, as several others have pointed out, I agree that the Jewish efforts would be seen as “morally problematic” in any region that they chose to establish a state, having similar effects such as putting people out of business and thus threatening their livelihoods.
ReplyDeleteThe Jews had a right to purchase land just as much as anyone else. All someone needed was money and the land could be theirs. The most problematic part of this, as Kramer describes, is the fact that most Arab landlords did not even live close to the land they owned, therefore they had no connection to the land. If someone offered the owner a good price, then the landlord would surely sell the land they had rarely seen. While it may have been immoral to kick the Arab farmers off of the land, once the Jews owned it they could do what they wanted. The goal was to purchase enough land and let Jewish immigrants have room to settle. To Herzl and the other Zionists, this was the only way. Part of the blame can be put on the Arab landlords who originally sold the land to the Jews. Even early into the 20th century, Arabs who sold their land to Jewish immigrants were declared traitors against their own fight. In the end though, it was not the actual purchasing of the land that was problematic, but that the Arab landlords sold the land their people had worked on for decades. Yet, could both sides have acted a bit differently to perhaps cause less conflict? The answer is definitely yes.
ReplyDeleteCommenting on Natalie’s post, I am unsure that the Jewish community could have resorted to the use of force to obtain the land at the beginning of the immigrations to Palestine. When Jews began to immigrate around the 1880s, the Jewish community, at this point in time, did not have a centralized military unit, a paramilitary unit, or even a communal defense unit that could carry out forceful advances on Arabs to acquire their land. Without the support of a unified defense force, the individual Jewish immigrant’s attempts to force out Arabs would have been an uphill battle. The Arabs already had residences and resources on the land therefore had an advantage over a traveling, defenseless Jewish immigrant.
ReplyDeleteIn response to Susan, I was not saying that the persecution of Jews was being condoned, but that their persecution motivated Zionist rhetoric and actions. Since the Jews were persecuted, they felt the need to create their own land, even if it was at the expense of the Arabs.
ReplyDeleteWhat I feel was morally problematic, however, was that many of the Arabs involved in the land transactions were Arabs that were not living on the land, and sometimes not even living in the same state. While this is partially due to the lack of communication between the Arab landlords and their tenants, I feel that they are still more responsible for the outcome.
Similar to the way that Corporate America has no loyalty to factory/mill/plant towns - that exist solely off blue-collar laborers arduous efforts to ensure productivity in the workplace and thus keep themselves and their community afloat – through the trend of outsourcing, the Zionist had absolutely no regard for the Arabs’ laborious efforts in the land of Palestine.
ReplyDeleteWhile it was perhaps noble that the vision for the “new Jew” meant maintaining a stance of independence from donors and such, any good is entirely undermined by their failure to recognize Palestine as a pre-inhabited land.
Herzl approaches the situation in “The Jewish State” as if the Palestinian (Arab) population does not exist. As Kramer mentions, he (Herzl) even asserts that the Jews will be able to regulate the economy of Turkey through the acquisition of Palestine. He calls it “a new country which has yet to be acquired and cultivated”. (Herzl, 13)
While the Jews may have been seizing an important opportunity for their people, their failure to recognize their neighbors was not a decision made justly.
In response to what Dawnbreaker 1989 said, I do not believe the Arabs and the Jews have been fighting over “Palestine” or “Eretz Yisrael” for thousands of years. The problem maybe began with the First Aliyah in 1881 (130 years ago), but that is a stretch. The major issues began during the Second Aliyah in 1904 (107 years ago).
ReplyDeleteAs Khalidi explains in “Palestinian Identity”, many Zionist movement leaders, such as Herzl, spread the idea that Palestine was an empty land that was “waiting” for the Jewish people. This is evident in their slogan “a land without a people for a people without a land”. This however, was a false idea and Palestine was anything but empty.
The Jews purchased the land from Arab landowners, this is a fact. Purchasing the land was not wrong, the ideology behind purchasing the land was wrong. Jews wanted to create a nation for themselves which in reality excluded every other race or religion. This idea was very problematic but was it moral? I suppose it was the most moral, nonviolent way to ethnically cleanse the Arab population from Palestine, but to subjugate the Arabs was morally wrong. Jewish communities faced the same problem in Europe, and in turn decided that it was okay to give the Arabs the same unjustified fate they had themselves.
There could have been other ways for Jews to create Eretz Yisrael, but the option they chose worked in their favor. In my opinion, regardless of the persecution they faced in Europe, the Jews should have set their focuses on living in peace with their neighbors in Europe and in other areas of the world. Many people have faced subjugation and have successfully worked their way to equality among their neighbors such as the Native Americans and African Americans. To do so would have taken time and work, but overall the present day conflict would not exist.
I don’t feel the Jewish practice of purchasing land was morally problematic. Being raised in a capitalist society makes buying land make sense. However, there is a lot of gray area around how the land that was sold to the Jews was handled. Land ownership in Palestine at the time was not as concrete of a concept as it is today. Land registration and taxation laws and mandates were not the same everywhere or enforced consistently across the board. Kramer’s book describes peasants and Bedouins signing over their properties to local leaders so the local leaders’ names would appear on the registries instead of their own, because they were afraid of taxation or being conscripted into the military. It seemed that many didn’t know this “signing over” documented the person they signed the property over to as the legal owner, which is a little shady.
ReplyDeleteThe practice of driving away the people who resided on the land was definitely morally problematic. From what we talked about in class and covered in the readings, the strategy of cleaning the land of its former inhabitants violated basic human rights (although the UN Declaration of Human Rights had not been written until much, much later). The Palestinian narrative declares this as one of the many times Jews (and later Israelis) forcefully took what was not theirs.
In response to Shelbi’s post, while she makes some relevant points, there are a few statements that I would disagree with. To begin with, when is ethnic cleansing ever moral? “Ethnic cleansing” has a negative connotation not only due to the methods or intent most commonly associated with ethnic cleansing, but also due to the results. I would further argue that as we have seen throughout this semester, the results of the “ethnic cleansing” of Palestine were indeed violent. Not only did it led to Arabs been forcefully removed from the land or intimidated so as to leave the land purchased by the Jews, but this led to the initial clashes between Arabs and Jews.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Shelbi says that other ethnic groups such as Native Americans and African Americans who faced subjugation were able to work towards equality as an argument for Jews to have remained in Europe rather than establish Israel. Native Americans and African Americans both greatly suffered for the equality they enjoy today and obtaining equality was not without violence; however, there are still a number of situations in which they continue to be treated unequally. While there is no perfect solution for race relations, particularly those in which there was or continues to be contention between the races, the Jews were obviously seeking a place to get away from the subjugation rather than continue to suffer. I am not condoning the land purchases or the treatment of the Arabs as a result, but, I don’t agree that the Jews should have just continued to allow the Europeans to suppress them with or even without the hope of future peace and equality.
The Jewish practice of purchasing lands in Palestine was not morally problematic because the agreement came from both parts. The landowners were not forced to sell their lands but choose to do so. However, the subsequent driving away of the farmers who used to work those lands for decades is morally problematic. Indeed, as Khalidi points out in Palestinian Identity, Herzl, Bialik, and Mandelstamm spread the ideology that Palestine “was empty and sparsely cultivated”. I think that Herzl used it as a legitimate condition to settle and build a Jewish State in Palestine. Herzl, in his work untitled the Jewish State, did not even mention the presence of the Arabs in Palestine in his agenda of establishing a Jewish State, which means that he did not take into consideration the good of the local population in his project, hence the current never-ending conflict. The Zionist with the help of the Rothchilds mainly bought the fertile areas of Palestine leading first “the conquest of labor” which evolved in “the conquest of the soil” that became problematic. Therefore, I believe that the Jewish practice of purchasing lands in Palestine from Arab landlords was not problematic itself but the motivation of the Zionist to chase the Arabs from their territory and build a Jewish State buying them off, was morally problematic. I agree with Sameer that the Jews could have just integrate themselves within the Arab society as a refuge from persecution rather than wanting to establish a purely Jewish State with their own structures and laws.
ReplyDeleteI disagree with Zyna. First, it's a big moral problem at the point when landowners are selling land that doesn't belong to them. It seems as though this is where a lot of the conflict stems from. Khalidi, Herzl and their fellow authors may contend that the land was mostly empty, but, as we've learned in class, this simply wasn't the case. Maybe the lands weren't heavily populated, but that didn't warrant the landlords selling off pieces of land that didn't belong to them.
ReplyDeleteEven more of a moral issue is the use of violence by the Zionists. Parker notes that state building is inherently violent, but I can't agree with that. With the right tools and allies, state building can be a good process. However, it doesn't seem like Israel had allies or tools; furthermore, as Natalie points out, the constant use of violence on the Jewish side only perpetuated the hatred. Because the Jews were so focused on finding land and building a pure state, they missed an opportunity to find land and build a cohesive, peaceful state that functioned within its region.
I think Melody brought up a valid point. There were many circumstances when peasants would sign over their property to landowners to avoid high taxation that they could not afford or to escape the conscription into service. As Professor Ayalon points out in his book, a first look at literacy rates was surveyed and published by the British in 1931, which found 7 percent of sedentary Arabs literate. One can imagine that the literacy rates for peasants in rural areas during the Ottoman Empire where much lower than the rates of Arabs who had been exposed to an educational system during the British mandate. In my opinion, it seems morally wrong that Arab landowners exploited farmers’ lack of education and social conditions to gain the title to their property then sell it to incoming Jewish immigrants. As for the Jewish settlers, it could be considered morally wrong if they purchased the land knowing the context of the land they were acquiring. And to reiterate from my earlier posts, I still believe it was morally wrong for the Jews to expel the Arab farmers from the land.
ReplyDeleteThe Jewish history leading up to their mass immigration consists of many problems such as the eastern and central European Jews issues of poverty, marginalization and persecution. It is understandable how they would have wanted a land to preserve, renew, and redeem Judaism through an “ingathering” of the Jewish people in Eretz Israel.
ReplyDeleteAlthough one can empathize with their desire for new land, the manner in which the Jews obtained this land was morally questionable. Khalidi discusses a few incidents in the first and second aliya where conflict began to rise between the Arabs and Israelis due to Arab villagers feeling there land had been wrongfully sold to the local authorities. These were the first incidents where the Jewish “conquest of labor” was evident. The “conquest of labor” began to incite Arab workers to feel cheated out of their lands and labor by the Jewish immigrants.
Along with the “conquest of labor” another crucial part to the conflict over Palestinian land was the illusion that the land had not been cultivated and was empty. This illusion can be seen in the reference to Palestine in the Zionist slogan, “A land without a people for a people without a land.” Much propaganda circulated through Europe about the emptiness of the Palestinian land. However, as very well know, it was not empty. Purchasing land from Arab workers out of the way to make room for the Jewish immigrants may have been a way of acquiring land for Eretz Israel. However it also led to the suffrage of some Arabs, “having been driven away by the sale of their leased land, or deprived of the water and pasturage rights attached to it.” I do not agree that depriving people of their rights or driving them away from their land is morally sound.
The Jewish people were very adamant about the creation of a new Israeli state. I do not believe that assimilating to local society and continuing to live in an Orthodox way (Kramer, 103) would have resulted in the success of their creation of Eretz Israel due to the problems they had been experiencing prior to the migration.
The purchases of land were not morally problematic, assuming Jewish ignorance of the Arab landlords' lack of concern for their tenants. Regardless of the motivations the local farmers had for selling the properties, whether economic or to avoid being drafted, Jewish intentions were legitimate. The settlers cannot be expected to avoid taking advantage of an opportunity because of the immoral practices put forth on a third party. As regrettable as it is, the naive Arabs and their lack of self-sufficiency is irrelevant to Jewish affairs.
ReplyDeleteDespite that, the conquest of labor, Zionism, and disregard for Arab farmers' wellbeing, is inexcusable. The conscious choice to exclude native peoples from their lands and force dislocation, poverty, and harsh working conditions, is morally wrong.
It is important to remember, though, that these same practices were occurring all over the world as the Industrial Revolution was in full swing. The practices and methods used here were learned tactics of business brought from the West and not simply born of Jewish cruelty and greed.