It is often claimed that early Zionist settlers into Palestine in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, were indifferent to or would ignore Arab, Muslim and Palestinian culture. Mostafa Hussein challenges this view in his new book Hebrew Orientalism: Jewish Engagement with Arabo-Islamic Culture in Late Ottoman and British Palestine. The book grapples with the emergence of orientalist scholarship that emerged among Jewish settlers and Palestinian Jews during this period. Far from ignoring the Arab world, these Zionist thinkers sought to engage with it and use it to develop a new Jewish identity. Most of the writers examined by Hussein produced their works outside institutions such as universities and were thus less motivated by the incentives and views espoused […]
