Jews and Palestinians in the Late Ottoman Era, 1908-1914

Claiming the Homeland

Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, 255 Sullivan Street, New York, NY 10012

Join professor Louis Fishman for a talk about his new book Jews and Palestinians in the Late Ottoman Era, 1908-1914: Claiming the Homeland, which uncovers a history buried by different nationalist narratives (Jewish, Israeli, Arab and Palestinian). It looks at how the late Ottoman era set the stage for the on-going Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It presents an innovative analysis of the struggle in its first years, when Palestine was still an integral part of the Ottoman Empire. And it argues that in the late Ottoman era, Jews and Palestinians were already locked in conflict: the new freedoms introduced by the Young Turk Constitutional Revolution exacerbated divisions (rather than serving as a unifying factor). Offering an integrative approach, it considers both communities, together and separately, in order to provide a more sophisticated narrative of how the conflict unfolded in its first years.