In 1899, Yusuf Diya al-Din Pasha al-Khalidi, heir to a long line of Jerusalemite Islamic scholars, wrote to the chief rabbi of France, Zadoc Kahn.

The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonial Conquest and Resistance
RASHID KHALIDI
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In 1899, Yusuf Diya al-Din Pasha al-Khalidi, heir to a long line of Jerusalemite Islamic scholars, wrote to the chief rabbi of France, Zadoc Kahn. He requested that the letter be passed to Theodor Herzl, the founder of the Zionist movement. Three years earlier, at the First Zionist Congress, Jewish nationalists had declared their intention to promote “the settlement in Eretz Israel of Jewish farmers, artisans, and manufacturers”. They wished to establish a national home in the Land of Israel – or Ottoman Palestine – and Yusuf Diya was writing to protest.

Addressing Herzl respectfully as a “true Jewish patriot”, Yusuf Diya acknowledged that Zionism was a legitimate national movement which was in principle “natural, beautiful and just”. “Who could contest the rights of the Jews in Palestine?” he declared. “My God, historically it is your country!” He warned, however, that it was “pure folly” to attempt to establish a sovereign Jewish country in a predominantly Arab land because it would inevitably come up against the “brutal force of circumstances”, the most crucial of which was that the Ottoman territory of Palestine was “inhabited by others”.

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