1913: Seeds of Conflict

Tonight (June 30, 2015) PBS broadcasts what I think will be a very interesting documentary.

From the PBS webpage: "Most observers consider the Balfour Declaration and Mandate period of the 1920s as the origin of today’s Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Breaking new ground, 1913: SEEDS OF CONFLICT, a one-hour documentary directed by filmmaker Ben Loeterman, explores the divergent social forces growing in Palestine before World War I, when Arabs and Jews co-existed in harmony as Ottomans, each yearning for a land to call their own."

CLICK HERE to go to the PBS web page.

View the trailer.

More from the website:

"Government documents, newspaper accounts, and personal letters in five languages from the Turkish state archives provide new and fascinating insights into dramatic events that took place in Palestine just before the outbreak of World War I.

1913 Palestine is a multi-lingual, multi-cultural society. Muslims, Jews and Christians coexist in relative harmony and often gather together in the coffeehouses of Jerusalem. It is a time before Jerusalem’s Old City is segregated into separate ‘quarters’ for various groups. But after European Jewish migrants arrive, Ruhi al-Khalidi, Jerusalem’s representative to the Ottoman Parliament in

Istanbul, voices growing concerns about what he sees as their secret agenda to build a state. So does Albert Antebi, an Arab-speaking Sephardic Jew known as the Jewish “pasha,” who embraces economic and cultural Zionism, but fears the consequences of a Zionist land grab.

Meanwhile, Arthur Ruppin arrives from Germany to be the Zionist’s land agent and Khalil Sakakini returns from a trip to America filled with pride and optimism of a new Palestinian Arab identity. In 1913, growing tensions erupt into violence in the vineyard just outside Rehovot, leaving an Arab and Jew dead, and sowing the seeds for a century of conflict.

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