Jewish "Genius"
I often stumble across fascinating tidbits that have nothing to do with my research, but I wish they did. In this post in the "Social History Blog", historian Omri Eilat responds to readers complaints regarding an earlier piece he posted about Ottoman military governor Jamal Pasha, where he acknowledged that Jamal Pasha aspired to establish a modern society on a rational and scientific basis.
When accused of whitewashing Jamal's crimes against humanity, Eilat replied that modernity and rationality are loaded terms with contradictory meanings that confuse more than clarify. Liberalism, socialism, fascism, and Islamic fundamentalism are all modern phenomena. Describing Jamal Pasha's aspirations for a rational, scientific society carries no moral judgment—it's simply using his own language.
The second thing that drew readers' attention was information about Gedalia Wilbushevich, who oversaw Damascus city planning under Jamal Pasha during World War I.
Israelis don't need a historian for that explanation. They know he was chosen for his superior European education and Jewish brilliance—obvious proof that Jews naturally outclass local Arabs intellectually. The notion of Jewish supremacy runs so deep in Israeli and Jewish consciousness that I barely noticed it until I read some of the comments.
Eilat quickly deflates this fantasy. Like anyone who finished high school will tell you, the Ottoman Empire had been modernizing for decades through the Tanzimat reforms of 1839-1876, which overhauled administration, law, military, and society while establishing equal citizenship regardless of faith or ethnicity. By 1917, European-educated professionals filled the empire's ranks. Arabs, Turks, and Armenians studied at European universities or learned from European professors in Istanbul. Even David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first PM, studied law in Thessaloniki and, as a big fan of Atatürk, aspired to become an Ottoman before switching sides.
Educated Eastern European Jews like Wilbushevich were actually the exception—and disadvantaged. Russia's numerus clausus severely limited Jewish university and high school access, forcing ambitious students to flee to Switzerland, Germany, or Austria. Ottoman subjects enjoyed direct access to imperial universities and European education. Eastern European Jews were educational refugees. The Haskalah movement's modern schools in the Pale of Settlement weren't universities—they were desperate workarounds for educational apartheid.
So what's the real explanation? Jamal Pasha's game was power politics through "ethnic engineering"—dismantling Damascus's established networks by importing outsiders with zero local ties. Aaron Aaronsohn, a more famous expert he hired, later spied for the British. This pattern echoes throughout history: rulers consistently recruited Jews precisely because their outsider status seemed to guarantee loyalty to the sovereign rather than local networks.
Acknowledging that Ottoman Arabs matched Jewish qualifications means abandoning cherished myths about innate Jewish "genius." A hard pill to swallow (but don't worry, we have full statistics of Nobel Prize winners).
Hebrew https://www.haaretz.co.il/blogs/sadna/2016-03-17/ty-article/0000017f-f897-d044-adff-fbffc4070000
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