Even pro-Zionist British officials saw Jew-Arab unity as requiring deliberate construction, not natural affinity.

Evidence

Sykes considered the differences between the contemporary Jew and Arab to be so marked that persuasion and stage management were central to his effort to construct the political Semite. To Arabs, he stressed the political benefits of gaining international Zionism as a friend, and to Jews, he spoke of the strength and authenticity of the ‘Arab revival’. Sykes pleaded for ‘co-operation and goodwill’, or, he warned, ultimate disaster would overtake both Jew and Arab’. Even for its chief proponent, therefore, the creation of the political Semite required tremendous work and faced many challenges; Sykes did not consider it to be the inevitable outcome of a simple racial connection and similarity. — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 682

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the ‘political Semite’ as a manufactured political category requiring stage management, not an assumed natural kinship.