CHAPTER 4
An old American movie depicting the early struggles of the American railways shows, in a memorable scene, how two trains manned by mercenaries of rival robber barons started to move from opposite directions on the same track, headed for eventual collision. Something like this was happening in Palestine. While the first prophets of Zionism were writing their books in Eastern Europe, Arab poets and young intellectuals were dreaming a dream of their own-the dream of the Arab nations' awakening and rising, throwing off the yoke of the Abominable Turk, restoring the glories of old.
A Jew named Moses Hess wrote a book called Rome and Jerusalem, a forerunner of Zionism, in 1862. Six years later, in 1868, the Arab poet Ibrahim Yazeji, at a secret meeting of the so-called Syrian Scientific Society, uttered the stirring cry, "Arise, ye Arabs, and awake!" In 1880 revolutionary posters appeared on the walls of Beirut demanding independence for Syria (including Palestine) and carrying the slogan, "by the sword may distant aims be attained, seek with it if you mean to succeed." In 1882 Leo Pinsker published his book Auto-Emancipation, another milestone on the road to Zionism.
While young Jewish intellectuals gathered in feverish meetings all over Central and Eastern Europe to plan for their adventurous new life in Palestine, Arab officers in the Turkish Army and Arab intellectuals in Beirut and Damascus were holding clandestine meetings, plotting against the Turks and looking for ways to achieve Arab 46