Lessons from the first Jewish immigrants to Palestine
Column
Jean-Pierre Filiu
Historian and professor at Sciences Po Paris
The leaders of the first wave of Jewish immigration to Palestine at the end of the 19th century were already in no doubt about the inevitability of conflict with the land's Arab population.
Published on November 11, 2024, at 4:30 am (Paris), updated on November 13, 2024, at 4:38 pm | 3 min read •Lire en français
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T
he gradual emergence of Zionism as a movement advocating the reunification of the Jewish people in the land of Israel was particularly complex. From the mid-19th century onward, the evangelical wave of Anglo-Saxon Protestantism advocated a form of Christian Zionism, according to which the fulfillment of the biblical prophecy depended on the "restoration" of the Jewish people to the holy land. It was not until 1882 that the "Lovers of Zion" and other militant Jewish groups in the Russian Empire organized the first wave of emigration to Ottoman Palestine, in response to the wave of anti-Semitic pogroms.
This "ascent" to Eretz Israel, the "land of Israel," is referred to by the Hebrew term aliyah. The Ottoman authorities estimated the population of Palestine at 465,000, including 405,000 Muslims, 45,000 Christians and 15,000 Jews. Drawn up for tax purposes, these statistics did not take into account the Bedouins or the 9,000 or so Jews of foreign nationality, or those enjoying the protection of a European consulate in Jerusalem.
Pioneers too little known
This first aliyah has too often been overlooked, as it came before the conceptualization of the term "Zionism" (in 1890, by Nathan Birnbaum) and the official founding of the Zionist movement (in 1897, in Basel, on the initiative of Theodor Herzl). It was also marked by the heterogeneous nature of the often competing movements that made it up: the "Lovers of Zion," led from Odesa, who attempted to divert to Palestine a portion – however limited – of the massive Jewish emigration flow to the US; the Bilu, led from Kharkiv and designated with the Hebrew acronym for "house of Jacob, go and we will go"; the "Sons of Moses," disciples of Asher Guinzburg, born near Kyiv, who chose to Hebraize his name as Ahad Haam, meaning "one of the people." The Ukrainian dimension of this first aliyah was fundamental, as was its determination to transform Hebrew from a religious to a national language.
Eliezer Ben-Yehuda's slogan from Jerusalem – "One people, one language, one land" – underlined the will to Hebraize. This triptych echoed various European nationalist approaches, establishing an indestructible link between the Jewish people, the Land of Israel and modern Hebrew. But the pioneers of this first aliyah, themselves divided, had to contend with the hostility of Jewish communities long established in Palestine and devoted to study and prayer in the rabbinical schools of Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed and Tiberias.
As early as 1885, a pamphlet was circulated in Palestine and the Jewish diaspora castigated "the idea, which is nothing but wind and sheer madness, of working the land and traveling the country sounding the trumpets of fame around the misleading expression 'settlement in the land of Israel'." A Jerusalem rabbi even declared himself "at war with the standard-bearers of nationalism without religion."
'Heading for a difficult war'
The ideological emphasis on redemption through working the land clashed with the reality of immigration largely from European cities, which tended to gravitate towards the urban centers of Jerusalem and Jaffa. The 1882 settlements in Rishon LeZion, Zikhron Ya'akov and Petah Tikva each attracted just a few hundred pioneers. In the space of 10 years, this first aliyah brought between 10,000 and 20,000 immigrants to Palestine, an estimate made all the more challenging by the fact that the overwhelming majority of these immigrants did not have Ottoman nationality, and therefore did not appear in official statistics.
What's more, disillusioned by the harsh reality in the "Land of Israel," a significant proportion chose to continue their migration to the US. Such was the case of Naftali Imber, who left Palestine in 1889, after seven years marked by the composition of the future national anthem of the State of Israel. Generally speaking, this first aliyah was already clashing with the difficulty of land access in the face of an Arab population nurturing an organic relationship with this same land.
Haam wrote his Truth from Eretz Israel on the boat from Jaffa to Odesa in 1891, drawing lessons from his Palestinian experience: "We who live abroad are accustomed to believe that almost all Eretz Israel is now uninhabited desert and whoever wishes can buy land there as he pleases. But this is not true. It is very difficult to find in the land cultivated fields that are not used for planting."
He added that "The Arabs, especially the urban elite, see and understand what we are doing and what we wish to do on the land, but they keep quiet and pretend not to notice anything. For now, they do not consider our actions as presenting a future danger to them." However, "if the time comes that our people’s life in Eretz Israel will develop to a point where we are taking their place, either slightly or significantly, the natives are not going to just step aside so easily." His conclusion was all the more severe: "If, truly and in good faith, we wish to achieve our ends in the land of our forefathers, we must not hide the fact that we are heading for a difficult war which requires careful preparation" and "good weapons." This was in 1891, six years before the founding congress of present-day Zionism.
Translation of an original article published in French on lemonde.fr; the publisher may only be liable for the French version.
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