Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth-Century Palestine (64 page)

^98.
Kayali, “Elections and the Electoral Process in the Ottoman Empire,” 267.

^99.
For more information, see Manna‘,
A‘lam Filastin.
For further details on al-Khammash, see Darwaza,
Mudhakkirat
, 186.

^100.
Kayali, “Elections and the Electoral Process in the Ottoman Empire,” 269. For example, another letter from Levi to Ruppin stated that he planned to enter into agreement with Husayn al-Husayni, “who has a great deal of influence with his villagers.” Levi to Ruppin, October 6, 1908. CZA L2/43. Within a week, Levi notified Ruppin that Husayni did not want to combine votes, which he considered pointless in a two-tier system, but recommended that the electors agree on two Muslims and one Christian candidate. Levi to Ruppin, October 12, 1908. CZA L2/43.

^101.
Friman went on to criticize the native Ottoman Jewish communities and accuse them of assimilation, of “trying to be more Turkish than the Turks themselves.”
Ha-
vi
, September 30, 1908. This intra-Jewish political tension will be discussed in Chapter Six.

^102.
New York Times
, December 20, 1908. And yet, the work of Vangelis Kechriotis shows us that many Greeks were invested in the Ottoman parliamentary and citizenship project. Kechriotis, “Greeks of Izmir at the End of the Empire.”

^103.
Aflalo,
Regilding the Crescent
, 157; and
Al-Hilāl
, January 1, 1909.

^104.
Denais,
La Turquie nouvelle
, 61.

^105.
Kayali, “Elections and the Electoral Process in the Ottoman Empire,” 266.

^106.
Al-Quds
, November 17, 1908.

^107.
Ibid.

^108.
Levi and Yellin to Ruppin, October 18, 1908. CZA L2/43.

^109.
Levi to Ruppin, October 11, 1908. CZA L2/43.

^110.
Ha-
vi
, November 1 and November 17, 1908.

^111.
See for example, letter from the Society of Ottoman Jews (SOJ) to the Jewish members of parliament (“Monsieur le Depute”), June 14, 1909, CAHJP, HM2/8640; “Address to Nissim Mazliach,”
Ha-
vi
, November 20, 1908; letter from Eli‘ezer Ben-Yehuda to the Jewish members of parliament,
Ha-
vi
, January 5, 1909.

^112.
For discussion of this notion, see Beinin,
Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry.

^113.
Sabato, “On Political Citizenship in Nineteenth-Century Latin America,” 1304.

^114.
Al-Quds
, November 16, 1908.

^115.
Al-Quds
, November 17, 1908.

^116.
See R. Khalidi,
Palestinian Identity
, 76.

^117.
Al-Quds
, November 17, 1908.

^118.
Al-Hilāl
, November 1, 1908. The December 1 issue of
Al-Hilāl
included a list of all the members of parliament, as well as a photo of the opening session.

^119.
Al-Quds al-Sharīf
, December 22, 1908. Description of the Jerusalem and Jaffa events are in:
Al-Quds
, December 18, 1908;
ava
elet
, December 18 and 21, 1908;
Ha-
vi
, December 18, 1908;
Ha-‘Olam
, December 22, 1908 and January 12, 1909; and
Al-Quds al-Sharīf
, December 22, 1908. Newspapers also covered the reactions in Istanbul and Salonica to the opening of the parliament. See
Al-Quds
, December 18, 1908;
Ha-‘Olam
, December 29, 1908;
Ha-
vi
, December 31, 1908.

^120.
Al-Quds
, December 18, 1908.

^121.
Ibid.

^122.
Al-Quds al-Sharīf
, December 22, 1908.

^123.
Ravndal, opening of Ottoman parliament, December 26, 1908 (file 10044/124); NARA, National Archives microfilm publication M862, roll 717, Jerusalem, numerical file, 1906–10, central files of the Department of State, record group 59.

^124.
Al-Manār
, “The Opening of the Parliament,” v. 11, n. 11.

^125.
See Abdulhamid's speech to the new parliament, reprinted in
Al-Manār
, and the dinner he held at Yildiz Palace for the new parliamentarians, discussed in Aflalo,
Regilding the Crescent
, 114–15, and Buxton,
Turkey in Revolution
, 163.

^126.
Al-Quds
, December 18, 1908.

^127.
El Liberal
, May 28, 1909.

^128.
“Qasida,” by Niqula Rizk Allah,
Al-Hilāl
, December 1, 1908.

^129.
“The Disturbances in Turkey [sic] and the Victory of the Constitution,” by Sh.
., in
Ha-‘Olam
, April 27, 1909.

^130.
Arthur Ruppin (Jaffa) to the Zionist Actions Committee, April 22, 1909, CZA, Z2/633; “This Week in the Land of Israel,” in
Ha-‘Olam
, May 4, 1909;
Ha-
erut
, May 21, 1909;
Al-Quds
, May 11 and 14, 1909.

^131.
Supplement: “The Impression in Jerusalem,”
El Liberal
, April 27, 1909;
Al-Quds
, May 14, 1909.

^132.
For discussion of the “March events” see Kuran,
Inkilap tarihimiz ve Jön Türkler
, 337–46.

^133.
Quoted in Khuri,
Modern Arab Thought
, 40.

^134.
Translation in Pears,
Forty Years in Constantinople.

^135.
Quoted in McCullagh,
Fall of Abd-ul-hamid
, 185.

^136.
Al-Quds
, May 14, 1909.

^137.
Ibid.

^138.
Quoted in Abbott,
Turkey in Transition
, 52–53.

Chapter Four: The Mouthpiece of the People

Chapter Four has been adapted from and expands on “The ‘Voice of the People' (Lisan al-Sha‘b): The Press and the Public Sphere in Revolutionary Palestine,” in
Publics, Politics, and Participation: Locating the Public Sphere in the Middle East and North Africa
, ed. Seteney Shami (New York: SSRC Books and Columbia University Press, 2010).

^1.
Edib,
House with Wisteria.
A week earlier the opposition newspaper editor Hassan Fehmi had been assassinated, and public rumors in the capital attributed the crime to the CUP itself.

^2.
“What Is Required of Us After the Constitution,”
Al-Itti
ād al-‘Uthmānī
, vol. 1, no. 37.

^3.
And yet, many of the existing histories of this period ignore the Ottomanist aims of the multilingual press and instead privilege any evidence of Arab “protonationalism.” For example, R. Khalidi, “Press as a Source for Modern Arab Political History”; Seikaly, “Damascene Intellectual Life”; Tauber, “Press and the Journalist as a Vehicle.” The nationalist reading of the press is dominant in the history of the Zionist-Palestinian conflict as well. See R. Khalidi,
Palestinian Identity
; Mandel,
Arabs and Zionism
; Yehoshu‘a, “Tel Aviv in the Image of the Arab Press”; Yehoshu‘a, “Yehasam shel ha-'itonaim ve-ha-sofrim he-'Aravim”; Roi, “Nisyonoteihem shel ha-mosdot ha-
iyonim”; and Alsberg, “Ha-she'ela he-'Aravit.” Beyond the nationalist frame, scholars in recent years have increasingly turned to the press as a rich source for Middle Eastern cultural, gender, and communal history. See, for example: Seikaly, “Christian Contributions to the Nahda”; Frierson, “State, Press, and Gender in the Hamidian Era”; Stein,
Making Jews Modern
; and Sorek,
Arab Soccer in a Jewish State.

^4.
See Kirli, “Coffeehouses”; and Hoexter, Eisenstadt, and Levtzion, eds.,
Public Sphere in Muslim Societies.

^5.
See Kechriotis, “The Greeks of Izmir at the End of the Empire”; Mardin, “Some Consideration”; Ozbeck, “Philanthropic Activity, Ottoman Patriotism, and the Hamidian Regime”; and Frierson, “Gender, Consumption and Patriotism.”

^6.
Emin,
Development of Modern Turkey
, 41. The two Hebrew newspapers the author counted were probably in Judeo-Spanish.