Ottoman-era Jewish-Arab distinctions hardened only after Israel’s founding displaced Palestinians

Evidence

Judge O’Sullivan is careful to make a distinction between those within the Asiatic Barred Zone and those outside it. Almost all Muslims were in the Asiatic Barred Zone, stretching from the Arabian Peninsula to the Indonesian archipelago. People from the U.S. colony of the Philippines were exempted because of the need for cheap labor in Hawaii. … Also, this case was decided before the establishment of the State of Israel in the British mandate of Palestine. After the establishment of that state and the influx of Europeans and displacement of Palestinians, the distinctions between Jews and Arabs in Ottoman lands—which were not so pronounced before—began to harden. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 170

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Aziz’s Racial Muslim historical argument about how legal categories around Muslims and the Middle East crystallized, and to the broader literature on racialization of religion — connects to: The Jew-Arab enmity is structured by a history longer than its colonial phase — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab: A History of the…, 34; Ottoman society was relatively tolerant toward Jews and Christians; Jewish-Arab enmity is fundamentally a European-imposed historical construction (+1 more)
• DEFINE: Illustrates how a legal geographic category (Asiatic Barred Zone) functioned as a proxy for race before the modern hardening of Arab-Jewish ethnoreligious lines
• QUESTION: The claim that Jewish-Arab distinctions were not pronounced in Ottoman lands before 1948 is historically contested — worth chasing the Glass historiography citation.

Broader Connections

• The Jew-Arab enmity is structured by a history longer than its colonial phase #complicates (0.78) — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 34
• Ottoman society was relatively tolerant toward Jews and Christians #corroborates (0.75)
• Jewish-Arab enmity is fundamentally a European-imposed historical construction #complicates (0.75)
• Palestine’s pre-Zionist Jews identified as Arab Jews #qualifies (0.72) — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized, 460