PHILADELPHIA – June 12, 2024 – The Summer 2024 issue of Middle East Quarterly features a presentation and assessment of evidence that large-scale Muslim immigration to Ottoman and then Mandatory Palestine took place alongside the better-known immigration of Jews. Other articles deal with Iranian foreign policy, a historic Jewish community in northern Syria, and Iranian influence building in Syria.
In “A Muslim Aliyah Paralleled the Jewish Aliyah: Part 1, to 1948,” Middle East Forum President Daniel Pipes shows that large-scale immigration of Muslims to the area west of the Jordan River took place alongside the immigration or Aliyah of Zionist Jews from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries.
Pipes suggests that the descendants of these immigrants “probably make up a majority of the population now called Palestinian.” He identifies a number of factors that triggered this immigration. Firstly, the development of modern infrastructure in the country by its Ottoman rulers from the 1840s onwards created a need for labor and rendered the country a potential destination for immigrants from within the Ottoman Empire. Secondly, from the 1870s, Zionist Jews “applied scientific agricultural methods, improved sanitation, opened factories, built infrastructure, and engaged in international trade.” This both increased the need for labor and further transformed the area into an attractive destination for immigrants.
Why is the history of this immigration not better known? Pipes notes that “the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Palestinian Authority, and their related organizations” have achieved a “propaganda triumph” in asserting a claim that the Palestinians are the descendants of an “aboriginal, autochthonous, first, indigenous, or native people.” The mainstreaming of this claim has resulted in the burying or obscuring of the ample evidence indicating otherwise.
Part II of the study will look at Muslim immigration to Israel.
In “No ‘One Size Fits All': Iranian Influence Building in Syria,” Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, a researcher of Syria, Iraq, and Islamist movements, looks into Iran’s efforts to apply its methods of influence building and use of proxy political and military organizations to the specific context of Assad’s Syria. Tamimi finds that Tehran’s approach in Syria differs notably from the better-known examples. “In Syria (unlike in Iraq and Lebanon), there are no real established power centers outside of the regime structure, and no parliament with any meaningful power.”
At the same time, the Assad regime is both partially dependent on Iran for its survival and has been in an alliance with Iran since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. This “impacts on the Iranian approach in Syria, which ... is to work within the regime and in cooperation with it, and to avoid building up Syrian centers of power which might act as an alternative to it. At the same time, Tehran maintains the presence of non-Syrian proxy militias on Syrian soil, which it operates in a command structure independent of, though in cooperation with, the Syrian official authorities. In addition, on a secondary level, Tehran seeks to expand its religious and cultural influence within the country.”
The evidence related to Syria in this context shows that “there is not a one-size-fits-all approach for the Iranian government in preserving, consolidating, and expanding its influence in the various Middle Eastern theatres of conflict where its forces operate.”
In “The Iran-Israel War and the Clash of Civilizations,” Shaul Bartal, lecturer on Palestinian Affairs at Bar-Ilan University, contends that “the Gaza war following October 7 confirms the Hamas role as part of Iran’s long-term proxy war.” Bartal notes that “the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has loomed large over the Middle East for a century, but the present marks the first time that multiple non-state organizations operating in several arenas have attacked Israel on behalf of a regional power with the avowed goal of destroying Israel and murdering its inhabitants.” He locates the October 7 attacks and the subsequent war against the background of the diplomatic process between Israel and Saudi Arabia. “Iranian leaders expected another normalization agreement, this time between Israel and Saudi Arabia, isolating Iran in the Persian Gulf and therefore, in their view, threatening its national security.”
Bartal’s conclusion? The war reveals that “Iran is capable of torpedoing any normalization or peace agreement in the region and has taken the Palestinian issue hostage to its own interest.” Or, more bluntly, “Iran is the winner of the Gaza War.”
In “The Jews of Qamishli: Short History, Lasting Legacy,” Washington-based Syrian Kurdish journalist Sirwan Kajjo travels back to his home region of northeast Syria to look into the short but significant history of the Jewish communities of the Qamishli area. Interviewing Yazi Nahum, one of the two last remaining Jewish inhabitants of the city of Qamishli, other residents of Qamishli with memories of the Jewish population there, and Jewish individuals hailing from the area, Kajjo builds a portrait of the now-vanished community. He notes that “in many ways, the Jewish experience in Qamishli follows the familiar trajectory of Jewish communities elsewhere in the Middle East – namely, that the community ceased to exist after a few decades of local Arab independence, with almost all of its members migrating either to Israel or to North America.”
At the close of his journey, Kajjo concludes that “The dreadful abuses carried out against the Jews by governments in Syria and across the Middle East were compounded when it came to the Jews of the Kurdish regions. In many aspects, this was a double suffering for the Jewish communities. On the one hand, the anti-Jewish practices against them were part of a wider trend in the region, particularly in Iraq and Syria. On the other hand, they were viewed with extra suspicion by successive governments in those countries for the mere fact that they coexisted with Muslim Kurds, themselves historically persecuted for their ethnic identity.”
In reviewing “The History of Turkey: Grandeur and Grievance” by Maurus Reinkowski, Daniel Pipes observes that the author “interestingly views ‘The road that Turkish politics has taken since the early 2010s [as leading] into a new Republic,’ a successor to the one founded by Atatürk. He sees the final collapse of the first one lying in the ‘wholesome exchange of elites in administration, military, judiciary, and even the university.’ He argues for 2013 as the decisive turning point, being the year of the Gezi Park protests and their suppression, the falling out between the Gülen movement and the ruling AK party, and the demise of hopes for the ‘Arab Spring.’”
Pipes concludes that “History contains many insights. Here are two: ‘fundamental for the self-understanding of today’s Turkey is that it was and is a place of refuge for millions of Muslim and Turkic refugees and migrants.’ ‘Turkey ultimately stands for only itself. It is conspicuous that no other country offers an immediate comparison.’ Reinkowski’s history of Türkiye over the past century deserves to become the standard account.”
Finally, book reviews by Judith Friedman-Rosen, Sam Westrop, Alex Selsky, and Martin Sherman critically examine new works on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Muslim communities of the United Kingdom, and the life of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir.
The Middle East Forum, a non-profit organization, promotes American interests in the Middle East and protects Western civilization from Islamism. It does so through a combination of original ideas, focused activism, and funding allies. For more information, visit www.meforum.org.
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