The Arab and Jewish Questions

Nineteenth-century Europe turned the political status of its Jewish communities into the “Jewish Question,” as both Christianity and rising forms of nationalism viewed Jews as the ultimate other. With the onset of Zionism, this “question” migrated to Palestine and intensified under British colonial rule and in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Zionism’s attempt to solve the “Jewish Question” created what came to be known as the “Arab Question,” which concerned the presence and rights of the Arab population in Palestine. For the most part, however, Jewish settlers denied or dismissed the question they created, to the detriment of both Arabs and Jews in Palestine and elsewhere.

This book brings together leading scholars to consider how these two questions are entangled historically and in the present day. It offers critical analyses of Arab engagements with the question of Jewish rights alongside Zionist and non-Zionist Jewish considerations of Palestinian identity and political rights. Together, the essays show that the Arab and Jewish questions, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in which they have become subsumed, belong to the same thorny history. Despite their major differences, the historical Jewish and Arab questions are about the political rights of oppressed groups and their inclusion within exclusionary political communities—a question that continues to foment tensions in the Middle East, Europe, and the United States. Shedding new light on the intricate relationships among Orientalism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, colonialism, and the impasse in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this book reveals the inseparability of Arab and Jewish struggles for self-determination and political equality.

Contributors include Gil Anidjar, Brian Klug, Amal Ghazal, Ella Shohat, Hakem Al-Rustom, Hillel Cohen, Yuval Evri, Derek Penslar, Jacqueline Rose, Moshe Behar, Maram Masarwi, and the editors, Bashir Bashir and Leila Farsakh.

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Three Questions That Make One, by Bashir Bashir and Leila Farsakh
Part I. Interrogating Europe: Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and Colonialism
1. Jackals and Arabs: Once More on the German-Jewish Dialogue, by Gil Anidjar
2. An Emblematic Embrace: New Europe, the Jewish State, and the Palestinian Question, by Brian Klug
3. Palestine in Algeria: The Emergence of an Arab-Islamic Question in the Interwar Period, by Amal Ghazal
Part II. Beyond the Binary Division Between “Jews” and “Arabs”: Revisiting National Constructs
4. On Orientalist Genealogies: The Split Arab/Jew Figure Revisited, by Ella Shohat
5. Returning to the Question of Europe: From the Standpoint of the Defeated, by Hakem Al-Rustom
6. Between Shared Homeland to National Home: The Balfour Declaration from a Native Sephardic Perspective, by Yuval Evri and Hillel Cohen
7. Toward a Field of Israel/Palestine Studies, by Derek Penslar
Part III. Stubborn Realities and Alternative Visions for Palestine/Israel
8. Apocalypse/Emnity/Dialogue: Negotiating the Depths, by Jacqueline Rose
9. Competing Marxisms, Cessation of (Settler) Colonialism, and the One-State Solution in Israel-Palestine, by Moshe Behar
10. Dialectic of the National Identities in Palestinian Society and Israeli Society: Nationalism and Binationalism, by Maram Masarwi
Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index