# Israel between East and West *Exported from [Holy-Writings.com](https://www.holy-writings.com/) on 2026-06-20 — 1 clipping.* --- > Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Raphael Patai, Israel between East and West, Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1953/1970, bahai-library.com. > ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── > > ISRAEL BETWEEN > EAST AND WEST > A STUDY IN HUMAN RELATIONS > > BY RAPHAEL PATAI > Second edition with > Supplementary Notes and a New Postscript > by the Author > > "From the East will I bring thy seed > And from the West will I gather thee." > Isaiah 43.5 > > GREENWOOD PUBLISHING CORPORATION > WESTPORT, CONNECTICUT > Contents > > Preface to the Second Edition ix > From the Preface to the First Edition xi > Illustrations xiv > Introduction 3 > > 1. Chronicles of the People > 1. Origins 2. The Oriental Environment 3. Dis- > persion and Assimilation 4. The Great Migration > Original edition copyright, 1953, by 5. Race and Language 9 > The Jewish Publication Society of America 2. Eastern and Western Culture > Second edition > 1. "Fellah"-Peoples? 2. Cultural Foci 3. The > Copyright© 1970 by Dr. Raphael Patai Western Pattern 4. Religion 5. Oriental Weltan- > schauung 6. What the East Must Leam 7. East- > All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be ern Social Structure 21 > reproduced, by any process or technique, with~ut the 3. Currents of Immigration > express written consent of the author and publisher. > 1. From Halukka to Bilu 2. The Second Aliya > Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 70-98711 3. The Third and Fourth Aliyot 4. Oriental Influ- > ences 5. The Fifth Aliya: Westernization 6. The > SBN: 8371-3719-5 Oriental Aliya 7. New Settlement Forms 8. The > Changing Ethnic Composition 9. Capital and > Labor 56 > > Greenwood Publishing Corporation 4. Demographic Highlights > 51 Riverside Avenue, Westport, Conn. 06880 1. The Growth of Jerusalem 2. Vital Statistics > Greenwood Publishers Ltd. > 3. Occupational Structure 4. Residential Segrega- > 42 Hanway Street, London, W.l., England tion 5. "Mixed" Marriages 6. Juvenile Delin- > quency 7. General Criminality 79 > Printed in the United States of America > 234 235 > bites constitute a backward group even in relation to the Moslem- > Arab fellahin. Their villages are neglected, their architecture poor, > The eventual absorption of these two groups into the Jewish com- > munity can be foreseen. > * > their clothing mostly dilapidated, their agriculture primitive. S~­ > 7. The Bedouin > cially and culturally their status is low. They are regarded by ~err > neighbors as lazy, and th~re is a tend~ncy a~ong. the Palestinian The Moslem Arabs of Israel are either bedouin, nomadic herds- > Arabs not to intermarry with them. This relationship of ~e _Pales- men, or fellahin, settled agriculturists, or townspeople. The life- > tinian Arabs to the Moghrebites is especially noteworthy m VIew of form of the bedouin is wandering within their traditional tribal > the very similar attitude displayed by many among the Jews of territory, mostly in the Negev, and leading a precarious existence > Israel towards the present Moghrebite Jewish immigration. (Cf. on the subsistence level. Notwithstanding their poverty in material > pages 294 ff.) . . goods, the bedouin are possessed of a great pride coupled with a > The remaining small minority groups can be dealt with m a deep contempt for sedentary people, especially for the fellahin. "The > sentence or two. There were in Palestine (i? Haif~ and Acre) s~!?e Bedu is the king of the world, the Fellah is the ass of the world," > 300 Bahais Persian followers of a sect which split off from Shi 1te says one of their proverbs. In 1947 the bedouin in Palestine num- > Islam. Abo~t 100 of these returned to Haifa in the summer of 1949. bered about 50,000; their number today in Israel is estimated at > A few Ahmadiyyas, followers of a heretical Shi'ite sect, co~tinue to 17,000. > live in the village of Al-Kababir on Mt. Carmel and publish a re- The Israeli bedouin are not real nomads like the great camel- > ligious monthly called Al-Bushra, "The Message.'' In addition to herding tribes of Saudi-Arabia, Transjordan, Syria and Iraq, whose > these, there were in Palestine a num?er. of groups who were. ~e tribal territory stretches across political boundaries and who roam > descendents of immigrants once constituting separate comrr.1W:ities, with their rich camel herds over hundreds of miles of desert and > but who in the course of time have almost completely assinill~ted steppe. The bedouin of the Negev are semi-nomads; their livestock > to the Moslem Arab majority of the country. These are the Egyptians, consists mostly of sheep and goats; and they are tied to fixed camp- > the Sudanese, the Negroes, the Ghawarna, the Kurds, ~e Syrians, ing-places for a considerable part of the year, wandering during the > the Lebanese, the Persians, the Afghans and the Gypsies. These rest of the year within a much smaller tribal territory, nearer to the > minority groups, each in itself of no great consequence,_ accounted settled and cultivated land. Tribal structure and other traditions of > together for the mosaic-like appearance of the ~on-Je~s~ popula- the proud full-nomads are declining. Together with tribal disintegra- > tion of Mandatory Palestine. As the overwhelming ma1onty of all tion goes a trend toward sedentarization, that is, a settling down > these groups lived in Galilee, which today is fart of the S_tate of permanently within the tribal territory, on a stretch of land capable > Israel those of them who did not abandon therr homes dunng the of being cultivated and of yielding some crop. This trend makes it > 'ti"c~l months of fighting automatically became citizens of Israel. imperative to divide the land, which previously was held in common > enSpecial mention must be made here of two quasi- . Jewi~ > · h gro~ps, by the whole tribe, into individual holdings to be owned either by > the Samaritans and the Karaites. The Samaritans have lived, smce a family or a private person. The division of the land occurs usually > the days of the Second Temple, in Nablus (Sichem). During the last in the form of "occupation," this means that a family occupies a > fifty years their numbers have slowly dwindled and it began_ to look piece of land de facto, cultivates it all the year round, and thus > as though they were doomed to extinction. After the establishment becomes its sole owner also de jure. Usually the sheikhs, the tribal > of the Jewish State, however, they began to infiltrate into Israel, a~d chieftains, who are the most powerful members of the tribe, succeed > today (spring, 1952) they constitute a community of 60 persons m in occupying considerable tracts of relatively good land and become > in time feudal lords and big landowners. Other strong members of > Jaffa-Tel Aviv. . . the tribe also prevail when it comes to dividing the tribal lands > The Karaites, stemming mainly from Egypt, have arnved m Isra~l > and occupying tracts, so that the weaker and poorer tribesmen > after the establishment of the State. There are now about 2?0 fami- remain altogether left out and inevitably become tenants. In this > lies in Israel, half of whom live in a workers settlement ~hich they manner the social classes which are characteristic of the Arab > founded and called Matzliah, after a 10th century Karaite author. village develop at the very moment when the semi-nomadic tribe > The rest are dispersed in various places throughout the country. become a settled community. > > — *Israel between East and West (Used by permission of the curator)*