1917 Jaffa deportation

Tel Aviv and Jaffa deportation was the evacuation on April 6, 1917, of 10,000 people from Jaffa, including Tel Aviv, by the authorities of the Ottoman Empire in Palestine.^[1][2] Two-thirds of the evacuees were Muslim and Christian, and one third were Jewish.^[3] Neither Jaffa-Tel Aviv, nor its Jewish population, had been singled out – the evacuation followed a similar event in Gaza a few months prior ahead of the advance of British forces. However, pro-Zionist propaganda subsequently turned the event into "a cause célèbre".^[3]

Ahmed Jamal Pasha, who ordered the expulsion

The population affected by the deportation was able to return to their homes in the summer of 1918.

Prior events

 

Notice by the Ottoman Empire's Ministry of Palestine in 1915 requiring Jews to arrange Ottoman citizenship before 15 May 1915.

In November 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered World War I on the side of the Central Powers. Many people who were citizens of opposing Allied countries lived in Palestine, and its Turkish officials considered them a threat to military security.^[4]

Shortly after entering the war, the Ottomans abolished the Capitulations which allowed foreigners to live within the empire without taking citizenship.^[4] The Ottoman governor made public statements against various foreign citizens throughout the empire considered to be potential spies. In December they expelled up to 6,000 Russian citizens who resided in Jaffa (all were Jewish).^[5] They were resettled in Alexandria, Egypt.^[6] The Ottoman Empire issued forcible draft of its population into the army, demanding non-citizens (including Jews) to either take Ottoman citizenship before 15 May 1915 or be expelled from the region. Following the devastating effect of the Lebanese famine, situation worsened.^[7] Aaron Aaronsohn described the situation,

"Meanwhile, people are literally starving. Horrified sights have seen our eyes: old women and children wandering, hunger and nightmare-madness in their dying eyes, no food falling under them and dying."

An unnamed eyewitness stated,

"Even wealthy people in Jerusalem are becoming recipients (of alms) and even courting the remaining."^[8]

The evacuations

 

Graves of unknown victims of the Tel Aviv and Jaffa deportation

By January 1917, British forces had crossed the Sinai Desert and were about to invade Palestine, which alarmed the Turkish authorities. The Ottoman Empire began to become skeptical of the residents in the region, mostly Jews, as the Ottomans disdained them for alleged collaboration with the British.

At the start of March, all the inhabitants of Gaza were expelled, a town of 35,000–40,000 people, mostly Arabs.^[9][10] They had 48 hours to leave "even if crawling on their knees".^[9] Many of the men were conscripted and the rest scattered around Palestine and Syria, first to nearby villages and then further afield as those villages were also evacuated.^[9] Death from exposure or starvation was widespread.^[9] Gaza did not recover its pre-war population until the 1940s.^[9]

On 28 March 1917, Djemal Pasha ordered the evacuation of the inhabitants of Jaffa.^[11][10] They could go wherever they liked except Jerusalem or Haifa.^[11] Farmers with crops in their fields, the workers of the winery in Rishon Lezion, and the teachers and students of the Mikveh Israel school and the Latrun estate were excluded.^[11] Djemal Pasha, who was in charge of the Greater Syrian Theatre of the war, was forced to provide explanations.^[12]

Isaiah Friedman holds that the treatment of Jews was worse than for non-Jews, because Djemal Pasha was against the Zionist project in Palestine.^[13] Sheffy regards that it is more reflective of cultural and behavioral differences: the Arabs had no central organization, and with their experience of how government decrees were enforced, just remained nearby until the storm had passed, whereas the Jews obeyed the evacuation decree as a group.^[10] In any case, when New Zealand troops entered Jaffa in November 1917, only an estimated 8,000 of the previous population of 40,000 was present.^[10]

Jewish population

Response

 

The procession to return the exiled Torah scrolls back to Tel Aviv and Jaffa in 1918.

The Jews of Jaffa and Tel Aviv organized a migration committee, headed by Meir Dizengoff and Rabbi Menachem Itzhak Kelioner. The committee arranged the transportation of the Jewish deportees to safety, with the assistance of Jews from the Galilee, who arrived in Tel Aviv with carts. The exiles were driven to Jerusalem, to cities in central Palestine (such as Petah Tikva and Kfar Saba) and to the north of Palestine, where they were scattered among the different Jewish settlements in the Lower Galilee, in Zichron Yaacov, Tiberias, and Safed. Up to 16,000 deportees were evacuated from Tel Aviv, which was left with almost no residents.^[14]

The homes and property of the Jews of Jaffa and Tel Aviv were kept in the possession of the Ottoman authorities, and they were guarded by a handful of Jewish guards. Djemal Pasha also released two Jewish doctors to join the deportees. Nonetheless, many deportees had perished during the harsh winter of 1917–1918 from hunger and contagious diseases due to negligence by the Ottoman authorities: 224 deportees are buried in Kfar Saba, 15 in Haifa, 321 in Tiberias, 104 in Safed, and 75 in Damascus.^[15][14]

Destination

Many Jewish deportees ended up in Zichron Yaacov, Hadera, Petah Tikva and Kfar Saba, with few choosing to go to Jerusalem despite being forbidden by the Ottoman authorities. Sympathizing with the situation, some members of the population decided to provide needed medical and financial support. But when winter 1917–1918 arrived, the situation worsened for many deportees and many died by hunger, famine, starvation and maltreatment, as several Yishuvs didn't receive them and thought they could be Ottoman spies.^[16] Deterioration of condition had prompted many Jews to flee and several of them had migrated to Egypt, or Europe and the United States.^[17][14]

Aftermath and memorials

 

Gravestones of the deportees in Kinneret cemetery.

 

The sign placed in the victims' compound of the Tel Aviv deportation in Kfar Saba.

The deportation and subsequent deaths of so many Jewish deportees were not properly documented.^[15]

After Shragai's address, the Kfar Saba City Council voted to change the name "Pilots Street" in the city to "Tel Aviv-Jaffa" Street in October 2009 to commemorate the victims of the deportation. The Tel Aviv Founders' Families Association has been working for years with a burial society to establish a gilad in the Trumpeldor Cemetery in Tel Aviv in memory of those who perished among the deportees from Tel Aviv.^[18]

In literature

Deborah Barun's book, "The Exiles", published in 1970 after her death, centered around the deportation.^[19]

Two of Nahum Guttman's books mentioned the deportation, both when it began and after the deportation.^[20][21]

Israeli writer Yosef Chaim Brenner, who was deported and survived, wrote "The Origin" about the deportation which he experienced.^[22]

See also

• Nili
• Israel–Turkey relations
• Armenian genocide
• Assyrian genocide
• Greek genocide
• Great Famine of Mount Lebanon
• Deportations of Kurds (1916–1934)
• Aliyah and Yishuv during World War I
• Antisemitism in Turkey
• Racism in Turkey

References

1. When Tel Aviv was a wilderness 2019-06-24 at the Wayback Machine, Haaretz
2. Alroey, Gur (2016-09-06). "The Expulsion of the Jews from Tel Aviv-Jaffa to the Lower Galilee, 1917-1918". Orient XXI. from the original on 2021-09-14. Retrieved 2021-09-14.
3. McMeekin, Sean (2015). The Ottoman Endgame: War, Revolution and the Making of the Modern Middle East, 1908-1923. Penguin Books Limited. ISBN 978-0-7181-9972-2. After the first British assault on Gaza had been-barely-repulsed on March 28, 1917, Djemal Pasha ordered the evacuation of Jaffa, forty miles north along the coast, for security reasons. There was nothing unusual about this decision in and of itself: Gaza too had been evacuated back in February prior to the British assault on it, as indeed commanders have always done with population centers located near active military fronts to clear a line of retreat for the defending army in case a breakthrough occurs. The trouble in Jaffa began with the timing, during Passover, which inevitably raised the hackles of the city's large Jewish population, concentrated in the northern district known as Tel Aviv. Jews were not singled out in Djemal's evacuation order: most of the city's Arabs (Muslims and Christians alike) were deported too. In fact, protests from local Jewish leaders were strong enough that Djemal actually gave Jews an extra week to get their affairs in order before leaving on April 6- the same day, as it turned out, that the United States entered the First World War. In the event, some ten thousand Ottoman subjects were deported from Jaffa into inland, desert Syria in April 1917, of which about one-third were Jewish. It was not the finest hour for Djemal or the Ottomans, but in the context of deportations in the empire or elsewhere during the war, it was rather a minor affair. This is not, however, what the world would be told about Jaffa. Little noticed or reported at the time, Djemal's deportations from this small yet strategic town on the coast of Palestine were transformed, in the course of May 1917, into a cause célèbre of the world Zionist cause. The key figure in the transformation was Sir Mark Sykes…
4. Abramson, Glenda (2022-08-19). "The 1914 deportation of the Jaffa Jews: 'a little footnote of war'?". Israel Affairs. Informa UK Limited. 28 (5): 706–723. doi:10.1080/13537121.2022.2112388. ISSN 1353-7121. S2CID 251708940.
5. Mary McCune (July 2005). The Whole Wide World, Without Limits: International relief, gender politics, and American Jewish women, 1893–1930. Wayne State University Press. p. 46. ISBN 978-0-8143-3229-0. from the original on May 13, 2020. Retrieved November 26, 2010.
6. Jonathan R. Adelman (2008). The Rise of Israel: A history of a revolutionary state. Routledge. pp. 58–59. ISBN 978-0-415-77510-6. from the original on May 2, 2014. Retrieved November 26, 2010.
7. "Israeli history photo of the week: The locusts of 1915". The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com. from the original on 2020-10-29. Retrieved 2020-10-26.
8. מרדכי בן הלל הכהן, "גיוס בני הארץ לצבא הטורקי", בתוך: במצור ובמצוק, עורך: מ. אליאב, ירושלים, 1991, עמ' 444
9. Doton Halevy (2015). "The rear side of the front: Gaza and its people in World War I". Journal of Levantine Studies. 5 (1): 35–57.
10. Yigal Sheffy (2009). "?גירוש יהודי תל אביב 1917: התעמרות פוליטית או כורח צבאי (Deportation of the Jews of Tel Aviv 1917: Political abuse or military necessity?)". Fighting at the entrances of Jaffa and the Yarkon victory : 8th Annual conference of the WW1 Heritage Association in Israel. pp. 22–30.
11. Gur Alroey (2006). "גולים באתם? פרשת מגורשי תל־אביב ויפו בגליל התחתון, 1918-1917 (Exiles in their country? The Case of the Deportees of Tel Aviv and Jaffa in the Lower Galilee, 1917–1918)" (PDF). Cathedra (120): 135–160. (PDF) from the original on 2020-10-29. Retrieved 2020-10-26.
12. Hasson, Nir. "The 1917 Expulsion of Tel Aviv's Jews, Seen Through Turkish Eyes". Haaretz. from the original on December 24, 2016. Retrieved December 25, 2016.(subscription required)
13. Friedman, Isaiah (1971). "German Intervention on Behalf of the Yishuv, 1917". Jewish Social Studies. Indiana University Press. 33 (1): 23–43. eISSN 1527-2028. ISSN 0021-6704. JSTOR 4466625. Retrieved 2023-02-19.
14. "A Beginning Expulsion of Jews from Tel Aviv by the Turks in 1917 | Institute on the Holocaust & Genocide in Jerusalem". from the original on 2021-07-10. Retrieved 2021-07-10.
15. Nadav Shragai (September 12, 2007). מדוע לא מנציחה עיריית תל אביב את נספי גירוש 1917? [Why doesn't the municipality commemorate the deportation victims of 1917?]. Haaretz (in Hebrew). from the original on October 28, 2020. Retrieved August 14, 2014.
16. Bar-El, Dan; Greenberg, Zalman, חולי וכולרה בטבריה במלחמת העולם הראשונה
17. זה את הפרק "היישוב הישן וההתיישבות החדשה" בתוך יהושע קניאל, המשך ותמורה: היישוב הישן והיישוב החדש בתקופת העלייה הראשונה והשנייה, עמודים 102 – 128
18. "Archived copy". from the original on 2020-10-29. Retrieved 2020-10-26.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
19. "חנות הספרים של איתמר". from the original on 2021-05-16. Retrieved 2020-10-26.
20. . Archived from the original on 2020-10-29. Retrieved 2020-10-26.
21. "שביל קליפות התפוזים". from the original on 2021-07-10. Retrieved 2021-07-10.
22. The origin, from the original on 2018-01-28, retrieved 2020-10-26

External links

• A tale of two cities and one telegram: The Ottoman military regime and the population of Greater Syria during WWI (BJMES 2018) Yuval Ben-Bassat and Dotan Halevy
• Tom Segev (October 5, 2009). . Haaretz. Archived from the original on May 23, 2009. Retrieved August 14, 2014.
• Tel Aviv and Jaffa deportation on the Tel Aviv municipality website (in Hebrew)