this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2024
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The first migrations of jews had already occured at this time, mainly refugees from Russia fleeing pogroms against jews under the Tsarist regime.
This had been enabled by the abolishment of the old Dhimmi system in the 1850s which had reigned for more than a millenium. The Dhimmi system marked Christians and Jews as "protected" second class citizens. Unlike most non-muslims, they were allowed to keep their faith (rather than be subjected to a choice between conversion or being killed), but were forced into ghettos, required to mark their clothes, levied extra taxes and forbidden from building or maintaining churches or synagogues.
The abolishment of the system of Dhimmi discrimination combined with refugee migration and imports of antisemitic literature from Europe all contributed to rising tensions up until the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, particularly with harsh treatments of jews and deportations during WW1.
The english encourage the Arab revolt with promises of independence with certain caveats. These are lost in translation and will be important later.
The French and English make the Sykes-Pikot agreement, which will further complicate things.
At this point (1917) the OETA takes control, the Balfour declaration is made in close conjunction.
*Interesting side note. The 1912 Ottoman census puts the Arab population of the empire at 13 million, and the jewish at 400k, important to consider is that these people are not all in the Vilayet of Beirut (which modern day Israel/Palestine was part of at the time). The OETA performed a census of what amounts to modern day Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, Jordan and western Syria, finding 2365k muslims, 588k christians, 110k jews and 40k "others".
1920 becomes a mess. The Arab king (Faisal) refuses to sign the treaty of Versailles due to the previously mentioned caveats that were lost in translation. The GSC along with Faisal declares the kingdom of Syria, claiming large parts of modern day Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Israel/Palestine and the Franco-Syrian war breaks out.
A few days prior to this image, Arab militias, hunting french soldiers end up in a clash with a jewish village where several people are killed. March 7th, the independence declaration is made, and this demonstration was on march 8th (similar ones were held in several other cities in the mandate).
Roughly a month later, the first documented occurence of serious civil violence under British rule occurs, a riot where several people are killed and hundreds injured.
After the ottoman empire fell and British began administering the region the tension towards the British was justified since the arabs that revolted were promised their independent. But at the time of this protest I don't believe the anti jewish sentiment was justified. There was very little migration and there had not been any noteable violence. In the years after this protest things began to kick off and migration and violent clashes ramped up. Which is why I stand by my original statement.
Also i couldnt find what ottoman census you are looking at but the one i found which was the 1914 census puts total jews in the empire at 187,000 not 400,000. They were a tiny minority in a huge arab population the first wave of jewish migration didnt even put a dent in the demographic stats.
Anti-Jewish sentiment was and is never justified, but anti-zionist sentiment certainly was and still is. I don't doubt that xenophobia played a role in this protest, but it is inappropriate to say that it was purely motivated by xenophobia.
I referred to the 1912 data here as I couldn't find any ethnographic data from the 1914 census there. However given the Ottoman involvement in the balkan wars and the territorial changes from that combined with large scale deportations of many minorities during the time period it is unsurprising that there would be rapid changes.