The Jewish Arabic Press and German Jews: 1933-1939

• In Event: Holocaust Refugees in Global Perspective

Abstract

This paper explores the reportage in two Arabic language newspapers, al-Shams (‘the Sun’) based in Cairo and Al-‘Alam al-Isra’ili (‘The Jewish World’) based in Beirut, about the Nazi regime and its treatment of Jews in the 1930s. It will examine to what extent the Arabic-speaking Jews who were central in the production of these publications expressed a sense of affiliation or implication with the increasingly dire situation of European Jews through their writing about the treatment of Jews in Germany and in Europe more broadly during the rise and expansion of the Nazi regime. In addition to considering how the Jewish Arabic press publicized the plight of European Jews, this paper will consider the broader place of the Nazi regime in Middle Eastern Jewish intellectual production and how Middle Eastern Jewish intellectuals processed their own political position through the prism of the condition of Jews in Europe.

In this way the paper addresses ongoing questions about how Middle Eastern Jews thought about the national movements forming around them and the relation of those movements to their political position at a time of transition towards provisional independence from European powers. In addition to expressing sympathy for European Jews’ suffering, the Middle Eastern Jewish reporters involved expressed a clear sense that their own communities would be impacted by the events in Europe and by the decisions made by the Great Powers. Beirut and Cairo saw the arrival of European Jewish refugees, whose circumstances of arrival and ability to remain in the region was a pressing matter of local politics. The coverage in Arabic newspapers about European Jews was therefore connected to local developments in the cities that had already or were expecting to receive refugees.

Finally, the Zionist orientation of these newspapers further complicated their political standing, as they often strove simultaneously to declare intra-Jewish solidarity and promote the resettlement of refugees in Palestine or locally as well as to declare local national loyalty. Thus, the material examined in this paper further develops an understanding of interwar Middle Eastern Jewish politics and how it developed in response to global events.

Author

• Maytal Mark, New York University