Someone can correct me on this but I believe at the point in time there was no Jewish violence or mass migration so these protests were purely motivated by xenophobia.
There has been Zionist on semite violence in the region since the early 1900s. These protests were against the planned/proposed settling of the region after Zionist terror organizations had been attacking the local Jewish and Muslim populations.
This was 3 years after the Balfour Declaration. By 1920 figures like Ben-Gurion had already settled in Palestine. And the paramilitary predecessor to the IDF was in operation.
Zionist terror, violence, and colonialism was well under way by 1920.
Its true that Ben Gurion was in palestine at this time but its not true that any Zionist military groups were operating at this time. Its not true that violence and colonialism were underway. Migration to a country and living there is not colonialism. You are welcome to provide sources that disprove this but from what I could find there was nothing that would justify barring Jewish migration at this time.
No, the migration at this time was tiny. There were only a few thousand jews sometimes less migrating per year and they were at this point a single digit percentage of the population. Most of the jews fleeing russia and austia-hungry went to America. I believe 30-40,000 went to Palestine and 800,000 went to america. A bit after 1920 the migration would become insane with hundreds of thousands of jews arriving legally and illegally.
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.
The first migrations of jews had already occured at this time, mainly refugees from Russia fleeing pogroms against jews under the Tsarist regime. Yes jewish migration had begun but at this point majority of the migration was to america and only 30-40,000 went to palestine which was a tiny fraction of the population and the jews remained a single digit percentage of the population.
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.
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.
B-but it started on October 7!
Nice find!
A pre-emptive warning to anyone who feels the urge to bring modern politics into this comment thread - modern politics aren’t against the rules, but genocide and atrocity denial are. :)
In other words you are instant banning those who deny the genocidal anti-Semitic progroms in the Levant which began in no later than the 1880’s? Fascism and supremacism should be fought in all its forms, whether Germanic, White American or Arab.
Those weren’t the first. The first modern attempt at organized expulsion of Jews were in the 1880’s. And it was quite gruesome.
