Good reminder of the Ottoman Empire. Most Americans have no idea what it was or what happened to it. Had the empire not chosen sides poorly in WWI, the world, Turkey and Palestine would likely be very different.
Nov 8, 2023·edited Nov 8, 2023Liked by Lorenzo Warby
And if the Holocaust was critical to the Zionization of the wider global Jewish community (as our author seems to be implying with "After the Holocaust proved the fundamental claim of Zionism — that Jews were not safe in Europe — to be catastrophically true") was that not also very much of a historical contingency?
The Nazism that perpetrated the Holocaust wasn't just a continuation of traditional European antisemitism, but a fundamentalist Social Darwinist belief system that saw genocidal race war as a positive moral good, and hated the Jews primarily because they were seen as getting in the way of this race war.
Jews had begun moving to Judea by the late 1800s to avoid persecution in Russia and surrounding countries. Interestingly, Germany was a popular destination as well under Bismark. The movement advanced steadily through the final days of the Ottoman Empire and under the British Mandate. WWII certainly was the catalyst for rapid change as was the ongoing Arab expulsions but I suspect the movement would have continued without Hitler, albeit at a slower pace.
Counterfactual history is in a sense analytically necessary for, as Geoffrey Blainey says, you have to have a sense of the historical alternatives. But I am not sure the Zionist movement would have been able to create a state without the combination of a large wave of refugees with widespread moral support, post Holocaust.
Excellent question. The plan for Saudis, via the India Middle East Economic Corridor (IMEEC), to bribe Israel and Palestinians into a two state solution was by far the most hopeful possibility. Has Hamas destroyed that possibility by provoking the Israeli reaction they were after (at least up to a point)? Will not be clear for some time, methinks.
You mention that British colonial rule in Palestine was (presumably due to Zionist influence) much more intense than in other Middle Eastern lands under British domination. Was this not also true of French colonial rule in Algeria (but not Morocco or Tunisia) and Italian colonial rule (especially under Fascism) in Libya?
The point I was making is there was no intermediate Muslim political authority in Mandatory Palestine. This was also true in Algeria, Libya, Syria and Lebanon. Zionism led to there being a ethno-religious contention in Palestine.
I wasn't clued up on how the French governed in Syria and Lebanon: just knew that they considered Algeria as integral French territory and attempted to colonize it with Europeans (the Pieds-Noirs)
Nov 9, 2023·edited Nov 9, 2023Liked by Lorenzo Warby
Wasn't the Yishuv in Mandate Palestine a kind of settler entity created by Zionism, even if it was one without any allegiance to an overseas metropole?
In that respect Israel is reminiscent of Liberia, in that both were settler colonies in which the settlers (Jews in Israel, or black Americans in Liberia) were members of an oppressed minority group in the countries they came from.
Not all were refugees. Many voluntarily moved to live back in the land of their ancestors. All had some degree of choice in their country of destination. Some had been on the land since antiquity.
Another thought: does the way in which cousin marriage and reverence for the Sharia impeded state-building in the Muslim Middle East, also explain why the Arab world is still linguistically medieval?
By that, I'm referring to the way in which medieval civilizations typically had one civilization-wide language for written communication (eg Latin for western Christendom, Church Slavonic for eastern Slavdom, fusHa for the Muslim world, classical Chinese for the Far East), while speaking in dialects that had no officially-sanctioned standardized form.
In most of the world, rising states would grant official status to a specific dialect (eg Parisian French, or Tuscan Italian) and seek to impose it at the expense of other dialects, but Arabs to this day typically speak dialects that have roughly the same relation to fusHa (the official standard Arabic language) as the Romance languages do to Latin.
Cousin marriage has genetic effects, its main social effect is to reinforce kin groups. But Sharia plus kin groups does likely explain the linguistic medievalism (lovely phrase) of the Arab world. In the rest of the Muslim world, language follows ethnicity but states haven’t been stable enough over time to differentiate out linguistically, as far as I am aware.
I am reminded of the quip by an Egyptian diplomat: "Egypt is the only nation-state in the Arab world; the rest are just tribes with flags."
Nov 6, 2023·edited Nov 6, 2023Liked by Lorenzo Warby
Come to think of it again, perhaps it wasn't just underdeveloped state institutions (in turn a result of Sharia + kin groups) that were the problem, but the fact that in the West it was the rise of the printing press that facilitated linguistic homogenization, and that the nature of Arabic script (cursive-only, with characters changing shape depending on their position within the word) makes it a nightmare to print, to the point that even today's computers have difficulty with it?
The Ottoman Empire banned the printing press for Muslims. There was one printing press licensed in the C18th. The Arabic script problem was soluble, but the ulema wanted printing banned.
Would religious opposition to printing be anything to do with the fact that Islamic iconoclasm resulted in calligraphy becoming one of the most prized artforms in Muslim cultures?
Nov 4, 2023·edited Nov 4, 2023Liked by Lorenzo Warby
I wonder why (if scrapping fusHa for a standardized local dialect is too controversial because fusHa is the language of Qur'an and hadith) why no Arab government (either Islamist or secular) has attempted to impose fusHa itself thru the education system?
That may depend on how salient the local dialects are and whether rulers fear it might cause unnecessary social tension. Also, there may be some educated/masses differentiation going on.
Were Amin al-Husseini and other Palestinian landowners afraid that Jewish and Arab immigrants to Palestine would form an anti-landowner alliance, in the same way that (as you described in one of your other articles) the antebellum US Southern plantation elite was afraid that the "masterless men" and the slaves would gang up on them?
Interesting thought. Possibly. I am confident of the Antebellum case because Merritt documents it her ‘Masterless Men’. I don’t have a comparable source for Palestine. My guess would be that, whether or not they feared a hostile coalition, they feared simply becoming increasingly irrelevant.
"So, when the 1948 Israeli War of Independence was over, Egypt grabbed Gaza and Jordan the West Bank. Neither sought to integrate Palestinians into their own political orders, keeping Palestinians defined as — it turned out, hereditary — refugees in dead-end camps so as to be stateless sticks to beat Israel with."
Correct about Gaza but wrong about the West Bank: West Bank Palestinians did become Jordanian citizens.
Fascinating and very insightful - the long view is helpful. The conclusion that Israel might of necessity look to expel its Arab population might need another nuanced article. Does this mean that a two-state solution cannot work? Or Arabs need to choose between living under their Jewish overlords, or moving elsewhere? And which Arabs are you referring to? Those in Israel itself who are Israeli citizens or those in the statelets who cannot find an accommodation with their new neighbours?
I was explaining the logic rather than endorsing it. It would be the currently stateless Palestinians who would be vulnerable. Israeli Arabs are citizens of Israel.
I really want to thank Lorenzo for his deep dives into history and political systems. It’s tremendously helpful in understanding where we are and how we got here.
Our American educational system and media are very heavily US centered, and I’m always amazed when I travel to other countries to see the news broadcasts that cover international affairs in depth. Despite having as many degrees as limbs, I marvel at my ignorance of virtually all matters of world history and international affairs.
As an aside, I would like to support your work. What is the difference for the readers (and the best way of offering support) in subscribing to this Substack or to Helen Dales Substack, since many of Lorenzo’s articles are published there? Also I would like to humbly suggest that other fence sitters such as myself make that commitment as they are able, and I simultaneously apologize for presuming to make suggestions for others.
Both Substacks have every post/essay free. Only paid subscribers get access to the Zoom meetups. Supporting my Substack goes to me. Supporting Helen Dales goes mostly to me, but she does pay other guest writers when she has them.
A corollary to this piece might include how the Deep States function and are funded 'off the books' eg through international aid skimming and kickbacks, military contracts, war expenditure and organised crime
Good reminder of the Ottoman Empire. Most Americans have no idea what it was or what happened to it. Had the empire not chosen sides poorly in WWI, the world, Turkey and Palestine would likely be very different.
And if the Holocaust was critical to the Zionization of the wider global Jewish community (as our author seems to be implying with "After the Holocaust proved the fundamental claim of Zionism — that Jews were not safe in Europe — to be catastrophically true") was that not also very much of a historical contingency?
The Nazism that perpetrated the Holocaust wasn't just a continuation of traditional European antisemitism, but a fundamentalist Social Darwinist belief system that saw genocidal race war as a positive moral good, and hated the Jews primarily because they were seen as getting in the way of this race war.
https://utopiaordystopia.com/2015/12/31/was-nazi-evil-unique/
More Jews were murdered in just 3 days at Babyn Yar than in all of Imperial Russia's pogroms combined.
Very much a matter of historical contingency. I doubt that what became Israel would have hit critical mass without the post-Holocaust refugee flows.
Jews had begun moving to Judea by the late 1800s to avoid persecution in Russia and surrounding countries. Interestingly, Germany was a popular destination as well under Bismark. The movement advanced steadily through the final days of the Ottoman Empire and under the British Mandate. WWII certainly was the catalyst for rapid change as was the ongoing Arab expulsions but I suspect the movement would have continued without Hitler, albeit at a slower pace.
Counterfactual history is in a sense analytically necessary for, as Geoffrey Blainey says, you have to have a sense of the historical alternatives. But I am not sure the Zionist movement would have been able to create a state without the combination of a large wave of refugees with widespread moral support, post Holocaust.
In any case, Israel exists. What now?
Excellent question. The plan for Saudis, via the India Middle East Economic Corridor (IMEEC), to bribe Israel and Palestinians into a two state solution was by far the most hopeful possibility. Has Hamas destroyed that possibility by provoking the Israeli reaction they were after (at least up to a point)? Will not be clear for some time, methinks.
Israel also got a huge demographic boost when Arab regimes stupidly expelled their own Jewish populations in the wake of 1948.
I found this essay to be very enlightening. Thank you.
All I know is, every time I hear "settler" and "colonialism", I care less about Palestinians.
I hear you brother.
You mention that British colonial rule in Palestine was (presumably due to Zionist influence) much more intense than in other Middle Eastern lands under British domination. Was this not also true of French colonial rule in Algeria (but not Morocco or Tunisia) and Italian colonial rule (especially under Fascism) in Libya?
The point I was making is there was no intermediate Muslim political authority in Mandatory Palestine. This was also true in Algeria, Libya, Syria and Lebanon. Zionism led to there being a ethno-religious contention in Palestine.
I wasn't clued up on how the French governed in Syria and Lebanon: just knew that they considered Algeria as integral French territory and attempted to colonize it with Europeans (the Pieds-Noirs)
Algeria was an actual settler colony, in a way nowhere else in Islam was.
Wasn't the Yishuv in Mandate Palestine a kind of settler entity created by Zionism, even if it was one without any allegiance to an overseas metropole?
In that respect Israel is reminiscent of Liberia, in that both were settler colonies in which the settlers (Jews in Israel, or black Americans in Liberia) were members of an oppressed minority group in the countries they came from.
Yes, but Israel rapidly became a country of refugees.
On reflection, the settler element did also occur in Mandatory Palestine, but that the inflow were refugees made a crucial difference.
Not all were refugees. Many voluntarily moved to live back in the land of their ancestors. All had some degree of choice in their country of destination. Some had been on the land since antiquity.
Another thought: does the way in which cousin marriage and reverence for the Sharia impeded state-building in the Muslim Middle East, also explain why the Arab world is still linguistically medieval?
By that, I'm referring to the way in which medieval civilizations typically had one civilization-wide language for written communication (eg Latin for western Christendom, Church Slavonic for eastern Slavdom, fusHa for the Muslim world, classical Chinese for the Far East), while speaking in dialects that had no officially-sanctioned standardized form.
In most of the world, rising states would grant official status to a specific dialect (eg Parisian French, or Tuscan Italian) and seek to impose it at the expense of other dialects, but Arabs to this day typically speak dialects that have roughly the same relation to fusHa (the official standard Arabic language) as the Romance languages do to Latin.
Cousin marriage has genetic effects, its main social effect is to reinforce kin groups. But Sharia plus kin groups does likely explain the linguistic medievalism (lovely phrase) of the Arab world. In the rest of the Muslim world, language follows ethnicity but states haven’t been stable enough over time to differentiate out linguistically, as far as I am aware.
I am reminded of the quip by an Egyptian diplomat: "Egypt is the only nation-state in the Arab world; the rest are just tribes with flags."
Come to think of it again, perhaps it wasn't just underdeveloped state institutions (in turn a result of Sharia + kin groups) that were the problem, but the fact that in the West it was the rise of the printing press that facilitated linguistic homogenization, and that the nature of Arabic script (cursive-only, with characters changing shape depending on their position within the word) makes it a nightmare to print, to the point that even today's computers have difficulty with it?
The Ottoman Empire banned the printing press for Muslims. There was one printing press licensed in the C18th. The Arabic script problem was soluble, but the ulema wanted printing banned.
Would religious opposition to printing be anything to do with the fact that Islamic iconoclasm resulted in calligraphy becoming one of the most prized artforms in Muslim cultures?
That might have been a justification, but mainly seemed to be about maintaining their dominance of distribution of ideas.
I wonder why (if scrapping fusHa for a standardized local dialect is too controversial because fusHa is the language of Qur'an and hadith) why no Arab government (either Islamist or secular) has attempted to impose fusHa itself thru the education system?
That may depend on how salient the local dialects are and whether rulers fear it might cause unnecessary social tension. Also, there may be some educated/masses differentiation going on.
Were Amin al-Husseini and other Palestinian landowners afraid that Jewish and Arab immigrants to Palestine would form an anti-landowner alliance, in the same way that (as you described in one of your other articles) the antebellum US Southern plantation elite was afraid that the "masterless men" and the slaves would gang up on them?
Interesting thought. Possibly. I am confident of the Antebellum case because Merritt documents it her ‘Masterless Men’. I don’t have a comparable source for Palestine. My guess would be that, whether or not they feared a hostile coalition, they feared simply becoming increasingly irrelevant.
"So, when the 1948 Israeli War of Independence was over, Egypt grabbed Gaza and Jordan the West Bank. Neither sought to integrate Palestinians into their own political orders, keeping Palestinians defined as — it turned out, hereditary — refugees in dead-end camps so as to be stateless sticks to beat Israel with."
Correct about Gaza but wrong about the West Bank: West Bank Palestinians did become Jordanian citizens.
Thanks for the correction, I have corrected the text.
Wonderful historical primer to contextualize what we are seeing.
Fascinating and very insightful - the long view is helpful. The conclusion that Israel might of necessity look to expel its Arab population might need another nuanced article. Does this mean that a two-state solution cannot work? Or Arabs need to choose between living under their Jewish overlords, or moving elsewhere? And which Arabs are you referring to? Those in Israel itself who are Israeli citizens or those in the statelets who cannot find an accommodation with their new neighbours?
I was explaining the logic rather than endorsing it. It would be the currently stateless Palestinians who would be vulnerable. Israeli Arabs are citizens of Israel.
I really want to thank Lorenzo for his deep dives into history and political systems. It’s tremendously helpful in understanding where we are and how we got here.
Our American educational system and media are very heavily US centered, and I’m always amazed when I travel to other countries to see the news broadcasts that cover international affairs in depth. Despite having as many degrees as limbs, I marvel at my ignorance of virtually all matters of world history and international affairs.
As an aside, I would like to support your work. What is the difference for the readers (and the best way of offering support) in subscribing to this Substack or to Helen Dales Substack, since many of Lorenzo’s articles are published there? Also I would like to humbly suggest that other fence sitters such as myself make that commitment as they are able, and I simultaneously apologize for presuming to make suggestions for others.
Both Substacks have every post/essay free. Only paid subscribers get access to the Zoom meetups. Supporting my Substack goes to me. Supporting Helen Dales goes mostly to me, but she does pay other guest writers when she has them.
A corollary to this piece might include how the Deep States function and are funded 'off the books' eg through international aid skimming and kickbacks, military contracts, war expenditure and organised crime
That is a larger research project than I currently have time for. Something to keep in mind when thinking about states, though.
China is welcome to MENA and Africa too !
I’ve been there and we don’t need any of those resources.
Although mind you;
Africa;
Our bases 🇺🇸 in AFRICOM might be called The Nile Cross;
N>S: Nile > Khartoum
E> W: Dar al Salaam+Kinshasha > Khartoum > Libreville
As it happens those are the major “resource Corridors” for REE and “Green” energy “Transformation minerals.
Personally I think Green = mobile and IC Chips not Solar, certainly not an end to petroleum 🤣.
But experience breeds ...
Cynicism.