LeBor - City of oranges: an intimate history of Arabs and Jews in Jaffa

Acclaim for City of Oranges

The curious reader with no ideological axe to grind, but an interest in the people and their fate, could do no better than start here.... Only by hearing the others story can there be any hope of human reconciliation. It is in the stories that the future lies, and Adam LeBor has magnificently, and sympathetically, told them.

The Independent

Outstanding.... A clear-eyed study of one of the great cities of the eastern Mediterranean.... LeBor easily sustains what might have been a rather fragmented tale, intercutting with great skill the numerous voices that recount his narrative.... An excellent and courageous book.

The Guardian

We have heard the story from politicians and generals, heard the last words of suicide bombers and the howls of their victims. But City of Oranges brings us something quite different: the sound of ordinary people trying to get on with their lives in the middle of interminable conflict.

The Sunday Times (London)

LeBor delivers a strong tale that leads us through the winding streets of Jaffa. It becomes so evocative that one can almost see the bakeries, smell the souks, see the seaside cafs, the Italianate apartments and the buzzing piazza known as Clock Tower Square.... If one cant get to Palestine today, then the next best thing is to read City of Oranges.... This book is for anyone who loves the Middle East, but also for those who do not yet know it and have been too timid to take on a weighty and more political book. LeBor succeeds in telling the story of ordinary people living in extraordinary times, and by doing that, tells us the painful story of Palestine itself.

The Independent on Sunday

An astute and balanced history.

The Times (London)

Happily, and unusually, this book approaches the conflict from a far more even-handed perspective. In tracing the story of the bitter division of Israeli and Palestinian territories... Adam LeBor not only avoids academic dryness, but also manages to tell each of their stories without condemnation.

The Observer

LeBor is an unusually skillful collector of tales, an abundantly empathetic listener. Like a good saga, City of Oranges draws the reader in to know the fate of each of the families.

Esther Solomon, Haaretz

This is an enjoyable and useful book for everyone browsing through the hitherto unknown pages of the life of Jaffas Arab society.

Asharq Alawsat

Engrossing.... LeBor uses the deeply moving experience of individuals as a lens through which to explore the complex history of Israel and Palestine in the twentieth century.

Financial Times, Summer Reads 2006

Honest, direct narrative, based on scrupulous reporting with real historical depth.

Prospect magazine, Books of the Year, 2006

Some writers have a way with words, others an unerring nose for research. LeBor has bothplus compassion for the sufferings on all sides.

The Jewish Chronicle

A LSO BY A DAM L E B OR

NONFICTION

A Heart Turned East: Among the Muslims of Europe and America

Hitlers Secret Bankers: The Myth of Swiss Neutrality During the Holocaust

Seduced by Hitler: The Choices of a Nation and the Ethics of Survival ( with Roger Boyes )

Milosevic: A Biography

Complicity with Evil: The United Nations in the Age of Modern Genocide

FICTION

Night Hotel

Copyright 2007, 2006 by Adam LeBor

First American edition 2007

First published in Great Britain 2006 by Bloomsbury under the title City of Oranges: Arabs and Jews in Jaffa

Maps by Reginald Piggott, 2006

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to
Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110

Manufacturing by Courier Westford

Book design by Chris Welch

Production manager: Anna Oler

Ebook conversion by Erin Campbell, TIPS Technical Publishing, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

LeBor, Adam.

City of oranges: an intimate history of Arabs and Jews in Jaffa / Adam LeBor.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-393-32984-1 (pbk.)

1. JewsIsraelTel AvivSocial life and customs. 2. ArabsIsraelTel AvivSocial life and customs. 3. Jaffa (Tel Aviv, Israel)Social life and customs. 4. Jaffa (Tel Aviv, Israel)History. 5. Tel Aviv (Israel)Social life and customs. I. Title.

DS110.T357L415 2007

956.948dc22

2007002389

W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110

www.wwnorton.com

W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT

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For my mother, Brenda LeBor

Two important phenomena, of the same nature but opposed, are emerging at this moment in Asiatic Turkey. They are the awakening of the Arab nation and the latent efforts of the Jews to reconstitute on a very large scale the ancient kingdom of Israel. These movements are destined to fight each other continually until one of them wins.

Arab writer Najib Azouri,
L E R EVEIL DE LA N ATION A RABE, 1905

Contents

Illustrations

J AFFA AND T EL A VIV T HEN

The port of Old Jaffa and the house of Simon the Tanner in 1921. ( Postcard: Jamal Bros., Jerusalem )

The new Jewish city of Tel Aviv, 1909. ( Postcard: Zoltan Kluger, Bauhaus Centre, Tel Aviv )

T HE F AMILIES T HEN

The Aharoni family in Pazardjik, Bulgaria, c . 1930. ( Aharoni family collection )

Yoram Aharoni as a member of the Jewish youth group Maccabi. ( Aharoni family collection )

Hanneh Andraus, wife of Amin. ( Andraus family collection )

The Andraus family socialising. ( Andraus family collection )

Frank Meisler with his mother, Meta. ( Meisler family collection )

Frank Meisler and his father, Misha. ( Meisler family collection )

The Hammami family in 1947. ( Hammami family collection )

Two of the Hammami brothers with friends. ( Hammami family collection )

T HE F AMILIES T HEN

Aharon Chelouche, the great family patriarch, and his wife, Sarah. ( Chelouche family collection )

Avraham Haim Chelouche, his wife, Sarina, and their family. ( Chelouche family collection )

Julia Chelouche ( ne Bohbout), wife of David Chelouche. ( Chelouche family collection )

Zaki Chelouche. ( Chelouche family collection )

Yosef Pomrock and his wife, Simha, daughter of Avraham Haim Chelouche. ( Pomrock family collection )

T HE M ANDATE B EGINS TO C RACK

Arab demonstrators in Jaffas Central Square, October 1933. ( Palestine Remembered )

British military engineers blow up a large swath of Old Jaffa during the Arab Revolt in 1936. ( Palestine Remembered: picture 1215 )

Amin Andraus leans against a pillar of his former car showroom, the morning after the British blew it up as a punishment. ( Andraus family collection )