Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth-Century Palestine (20 page)

Members of these new provincial CUP branches most certainly had various motivations—ranging from revolutionary euphoria, to sincere ideological affinity, to naked political opportunism. Many branches probably started like the one in Nablus, where local postal clerks swept up in revolutionary excitement simply declared the post office as the Nablus chapter of the CUP.
¹⁹
The branch in nearby Safad was founded by the youth of the town of all three religions explicitly to “defend the laws and rights granted by the constitution.”
²⁰
Further east in Mesopotamia, however, CUP branches belonging to rival notable families in Mosul betrayed more Machiavellian motives—the CUP was a rising power in a changing empire, and it is reasonable to believe that a not insignificant percentage of its new members were simply jumping on the bandwagon.
²¹

A closer look at two Palestinian CUP branches, those of Jerusalem and Jaffa, reveals that the membership was religiously diverse and drew largely from the younger members of traditional notable families as well as the white-collar middle class, many of whom had a real ideological commitment to both the liberal revolution and Ottoman patriotism. The Jerusalem branch, reportedly numbering 140 members, elected a ten-member leadership committee which consisted of five Muslims, four Christians, and one Jew.
²²
The Muslim members of the leadership included one Turkish-speaking army officer stationed in Jerusalem, Celal, as well as younger members of the influential al-Husayni, Jarallah, and al-Nashashibi families. Other Muslim members of the branch included Shaykh ‘Ali al-Rimawi, the Arabic-language editor of the official provincial government newspaper
Noble Jerusalem (Al-Quds al-Sharīf/ Kudüs-ü Şerif)
, and Is'af al-Nashashibi, the well-known young poet and public speaker from a notable family.
²³

The Christian members of the leadership council included men such as Jurji Habib Hanania, editor of the newspaper
Jerusalem
, and schoolteachers Eftim Mushabbak and Jurji Zakaria; the educational reformer Khalil al-Sakakini was also briefly a member of the branch. Albert Antébi, the sole Jewish member of the leadership, was a French-educated powerbroker between the local communities, Ottoman administration, and foreign Jewish organizations; in fact he tied for the highest number of votes in internal elections for chairman. Other Jewish members of the branch included the Hebraist schoolteacher David Yellin, the lawyer Malchiel Mani from Hebron, the young journalist Gad Frumkin, and Gad's brother Zalman Frumkin. The presence of Jewish members in the CUP was not without controversy, however; at least two other Jewish candidates were denied membership in the local branch because they refused to renounce their ties to the Zionist movement.
²⁴

The Jaffa CUP was larger and more active than the Jerusalem branch, reportedly twice its size in May 1909. Its leadership committee consisted of three army officers; the customs director Ali Riza Bey; members of large Muslim land-owning families like Yusuf ‘Ashur; the Christian railroad employee Yusuf al-'Issa; white-collar Christian clerks like Anton Jellat and Nasri Talamas; and the Jewish entrepreneur and land speculator Musa (Moshe) Matalon.
²⁵
In Gaza, a primarily Muslim city, members of the local CUP branch included leading notables and landowners, current and former government officials, and religious scholars.
²⁶

In their demographic makeup, the provincial CUP branches were very similar to branches of Freemasonry lodges, and indeed, there is a heavily documented relationship between the two institutions in the late Ottoman Empire, explored further in
Chapter Five
. Similar to the Freemasons, the CUP branches combined elements of a secret society and a cultural club: members had to be recommended by two existing members in order to be considered; they underwent secret initiation rites; and once initiated, they carried around a membership card. As well, CUP branch dues worked on a sliding scale similar to the Freemasons: workers paid 2 percent of their monthly salary, whereas the upper classes paid 2 percent of their annual income.
²⁷

The Christian schoolteacher Khalil al-Sakakini provided us with an account of his initiation into the Jerusalem CUP branch, further underscoring the influence of Masonry on the CUP. As he recorded in his diaries, soon after his return to Jerusalem from New York he was invited to join the Jerusalem branch, a rare honor since reportedly men were being turned away at the branch headquarters every day. As part of his initiation, al-Sakakini was led by members Hanna Yasmina, Shaykh
Tawfiq al-Tanbaqqa, and Jurji Jid'un to a secret location where he was greeted by CUP members. There they blindfolded him, placed his right hand on the New Testament (since he was Christian) and his left hand on a pistol, and said to him: “By this [the Bible] swear and by this [the pistol] defend.” They read the CUP pledge to him, which he repeated. In his words, he swore “to protect the constitution, to work for the advancement of the homeland, to do what the society requested of him and to protect its secrets, and to defend the homeland and constitution until death.”
²⁸

This dramatic initiation was meant to underscore that the association was a closed brotherhood. However, the CUP was also involved in more open activities involving the broader population. Soon after its establishment, the Jerusalem CUP branch rented out a large building with a garden for its activities and the use of its members, hinting at the central role that sociability must have played in branch life. For example, to support its activities, the Jaffa CUP put on several fundraising plays open to the wider populace. The CUP urged the city's better classes to come “purify [their] morals” and welcome a spirit of “exertive patriotism [
al-wa
aniyya al-
amāsa],”
while supporting the CUP. By 1910, a “sister” society, the Society of Ottoman Women for the Greatness of the Homeland, was founded in Salonica, reportedly to support the navy and publish a women's journal, and affiliated branches of the religious scholars
(ulama)
and trades were established as well. In July 1909 a Society for the Protection of Animals was established in Jerusalem under the patronage of the local CUP.
²⁹

In terms of their main activities, the branches carried out administrative and political functions. The provincial lodges played active roles in purging the local administration of corrupt and repressive officials, even in some cases directly taking over the local government; they reported on local affairs to the central CUP in Salonica; and monitored the parliamentary elections.
³⁰
In addition, the Palestinian branches distinguished themselves in particular ways. The Jerusalem CUP branch served as a high court for complaints from other lodges. The CUP in Gaza reportedly opened an agricultural school along the lines of the AIU's Mikveh Israel school, hired a Jewish teacher from Be'er Tuvia, and began importing seeds from France; the local committee in Gaza reportedly wanted to open a factory as well. In addition, the northern Palestinian and Beirut branches played a growing role in organizing local opposition to the Zionist movement in the country.
³¹
The most visible political accomplishment of the Palestinian CUP branches, however, was the successful mobilization of a massive, months-long boycott of a major European power.

BOYCOTT 1908: OTTOMANISM AND ITS CONFRONTATION WITH THE WEST

In early October 1908, two announcements from southeastern Europe shook the Ottoman Empire to its core: first, Bulgaria's declaration of independence on October 5, and on the following day, the Austro-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Both Bulgaria and Bosnia-Herzegovina were former Ottoman provinces, and both had been pawns in the European grab for Ottoman territories which resulted in the 1878 Treaty of Berlin. Although the European powers—and especially Russia, as the self-proclaimed protector of Orthodox Christianshad—pressed for autonomy on behalf of the region's Christians, in the aftermath of the treaty conflict continued between the Ottoman army and nationalist militias on both sides of the empire's borders.

The announcement of Bulgarian independence came on the heels of months of rising tensions between Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire, but the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina came as a complete surprise. In the aftermath of the annexation news, the Ottoman government appealed to the “family of nations” to come to its defense, but Germany supported the Austro-Hungarian move, Russia quietly acquiesced, and France and Britain refused to get involved.
³²
News of the annexation hit the Ottoman populace especially hard; it was a reminder of the humiliations and territorial losses the empire had suffered throughout the nineteenth century and a crushing blow to the revolutionary dream of standing as equals with the European powers. In the aftermath, public boycotts against Austrian goods, ships, and commerce quickly spread throughout the Ottoman Empire, a grassroots expression of Ottoman patriotism and mass political mobilization.

The Ottoman boycott drew on two legacies in the developing world: first, as an expression of nationalism and anticolonialism, and second, as a “weapon of the weak” to protest against the unequal fortunes of the nonindustrial, peripheral East and the industrial, colonizing West. Similar boycotts in protest against European economic and political penetration had been carried out in China, Japan, and Qajar Iran in the two decades prior. As in these other countries, the Ottoman boycott was a mass social movement, carried out by tens of thousands of participants, pushed forward by dozens of boycott committees and organizations, and sustained by the Ottoman press.
³³
A closer look at the boycott in Jaffa illustrates ways in which the Ottoman public became politically mobilized, but also reveals interesting insights into a local Ottoman nationalism that drew on elements of Ottoman patriotism, Islamism, and the legacy of conflict with Europe.

The spark which ignited the boycott came from two newspaper articles published in Istanbul in
Servet-i Funun
and
Tanin
, both pro-CUP organs, which called on the Ottoman public to boycott Austria-Hungary.
Tanin's
article urged citizens to boycott Austrian goods based “on…love of country, calling on Ottoman patriots to avenge constitutional Turkey [sic], betrayed at the very moment it needed Western ‘sympathy and encouragement.'”
³⁴
The next day, mass demonstrations of several thousand strong protesting the annexation took place in Istanbul in front of the Ministry of War and in Salonica's main square. Within days, merchants had canceled orders of Austrian goods, consumers were being harassed outside of Austrian shops, and placards urged people not to shop at the listed stores.

A brief telegram from the Beirut Ottoman Commercial Committee informed Jaffa merchants of the outbreak of the boycott and called for their participation. In the committee's narration, the merchants led the boycott with the unanimous consent of the local population.
³⁵
A meeting was held at the residence of the Jerusalem governor together in attendance with the mufti and his son, the head scribe and translator of the Greek Orthodox monastery, and the chief rabbi, to discuss the immanent boycott declaration.
³⁶
By October 12, leaders from Jaffa and Jerusalem decided to boycott Austrian ships arriving in Palestine. The decision was not without significant risk: Jaffa at the time was the second largest port on the Ottoman Syrian coast, after Beirut, and as such was the province's economic center of foreign trade. In 1908 alone, 14.5 million francs in imports entered Jaffa port, with 12.5 million francs leaving as exports. Furthermore, Austria-Hungary was Jaffa's fourth largest trading partner and held a sizeable trading surplus with the port city.
³⁷
The economic costs of cutting ties with Austria-Hungary were potentially enormous, especially given the recent economic troubles of 1907-8.