About Uncles and Arabs

ABOUT UNCLES AND ARABS* S. Yizhar† When the pioneers entered the Land, what did they know about it? Well, there were ancestral graves, it was the land of our hopes, it was very hot, it was a backward Asiatic land, there were gnats in it, there was desolation, and there were Arabs too. Now the Arabs were part of the ancient scene, part of the eastern reality, part of the native culture, and part of the depraved Turkish empire. Nothing that had to be considered seriously, nothing that could be helpful or harmful , just part of an ancient and backward scene. After some years, when they knew a little more, they learned that there were all kinds of Arabs, that they were surrounded by village Arabs, primitives who worked well during the day and thieved well during the night; that there were Christian Arabs in the cities who were more European, polyglot merchants who also sold land. They knew too about the Bedouin who came directly from the tents of Abraham our father, who galloped on noble steeds just as in the tales of Indians or Tatars and other noble savages of literary lore. The sum total of Arabs at the end of the previous century was no more than half a million, located in several small cities, in mountain villages, in the plain and in the Galilee. The pioneers were part of a nearly unchanging scene, a neglected section of a desolate empire, part of a corrupt and lazy regime, part of a culture alien to them, part of the backwardness and the desolation forlorn of change, and, more to the point, they were far away from their homes in the heart of the forests of Russia, and in a place so very different from the dreams of their youth alongside her shaded rivers. Very quickly the Arabs entered the web of daily life in the settlements of that time: as workers, as experienced farmers, as watchmen, and as a component of the daily scene, which during the day was congested in both directions with traffic and light, and at night was divided between two darkshrouded enclaves, a threatened darkness here, and a threatening darkness there. The former ensconced in their houses in the face of the ocean of * This essay was originally presented as a talk at a conference in memory of Martin Buber and published in Nmzh Njbmb rbwb Nyfrm ykdrm, ed. K. Yaron and P. Mendes Flohr (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1993), pp. 11–15. Translated by Steven Bowman, New York City, 17 Tammuz 2006. † Hebrew Studies notes with great regret the passing of S. Yizhar (Yizhar Smilansky) on August 21, 2006. May his memory be a blessing. Editor. Hebrew Studies 47 (2006) 322 Yizhar: About Uncles and Arabs darkness and the encompassing alienation, the latter far away in their villages beyond the ocean of darkness. And so the new tiny perimeter of the settlement was shrouded in the vast gigantic ancient surroundings; and so each of them blossomed according to its rhythm as two differing seeds of two nations. If you permit me a personal note here, I will tell you about my two uncles , one on my father’s side named Mosheh Smilansky and the other on my mother’s side named Yoseph Weitz. Each one of them was involved through his business with the Arab reality and active in the history of the budding relations between Arabs and Jews. Mosheh Smilansky of the First Aliyah was a farmer, a writer, and a rightist according to our contemporary categories, and Yoseph Weitz was a laborer of the Second Aliyah, a writer and later among the leaders of the Keren Kayemeth, a leftist according to the same categories. Mosheh Smilansky employed Jewish and Arab workers in his orchard according to the principle that two peoples would always live here, and both should have equal opportunity for work and an equal basis for co-existence. He spoke Arabic, intermingled with them, and wrote stories and romances under the pseudonym “Hawaja Musa.” He bought land from them and planted orchards, and at the end of his life he was also a member of Brith Shalom, along with Buber...