Jewish on Sidechat | If you could turn the clock back to 1916, right after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and before the Balfour declaration was signed, and had full control over the situation how would you figure out land, statehood, and Jewish refugees?

Sidechat

Download

Join communities on Sidechat Download

Jewish 4w

If you could turn the clock back to 1916, right after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and before the Balfour declaration was signed, and had full control over the situation how would you figure out land, statehood, and Jewish refugees?

Anonymous 4w

Well first off definitely no “mandate” governments by the British and France I’d probably set up a more egalitarian system loosely inspired by the Millet system of the Ottoman Empire (variants of which are in Israel and Lebanon now) but more community based than strictly religion based where each community has a certain level of self governance and then there’s like an overarching secular democratic government with like strong religious and minority protections and stuff

Anonymous 4w

I’d love to hear other’s answers on this! It’s an interesting question

Anonymous

#1 4w

Ideally the community Millets would be more democratically government by those communities than strictly religiously governed but I’d have an option for using religious law for like family stuff like Morocco, Israel, Greece, and many other countries have to various degrees (but also have civil law for all those things including marriage, unlike Israel) Ideally the system would be set up so people would have their own languages and also know Arabic as a lingua franca (in the mostly Arab areas)

Anonymous

#1 4w

Love this answer!

Anonymous

#1 4w

I do not know if in this question I have control of what happens with the full former Ottoman territory or just what became the British Mandate of Palestine, but I’m gonna talk about it as if the latter just bc I know that area better

Anonymous

#1 4w

I think building a country with a national identity around being a multi-religious democracy with community autonomy and a shared holy land for the Abrahamic religions could be a good way to unite people, and ideally could create a nice balance between the visions of the early Palestinian nationalists and the early Zionists (or at least the ones who liked the Ottoman system) in an inclusive society

Anonymous

#1 4w

In terms of how to handle Jewish immigration, by the Zionists in particular that’s a god question. For refugees I’d say 100% take them and be a home for those facing persecution, for settlers I think it really depends on how they’d respond to this new state. I know the Zionists in the Old Yishuv often wanted to build on the sovereignty within the Ottoman system but idk how the New Yishuv would feel about that

Anonymous

OP 4w

Thank you! I also hope this kind of system would allow the diversity of languages that was found there to be preserved. There was already a big mix amongst the Jews there and even more would come from the refugees and it makes me so sad how much of that has been lost, imo one of the best things about the Ottomans was how well there system preserved community languages, like it says a lot how Turkish isn’t even the main language in the former empire