1913: SEEDS OF CONFLICT PREMIERES TUESDAY, JUNE 30 ON PBS

- How the Seeds of Today’s Middle East Conflict Were Sown in Palestine During The Ottoman Empire -

Once Arabs and Jews lived together relatively peacefully in Palestine. How and why that changed.

Breaking new ground and laying bare old myths, 1913: Seeds of Conflict, directed by award-winning filmmaker Ben Loeterman, explores the little-known history of Palestine during the latter part of the Ottoman Empire, a time of relative harmony between Arabs and Jews. Living

side by side in the multi-lingual, cosmopolitan city of Jerusalem, Jews, Christians and Muslims

intermingled with a cultural fluidity enjoyed by all. How did this land of milk

and honey, so diverse and rich in culture, become the site of today’s bitter and seemingly intractable struggle? Was there a turning point when things could have been different? Weaving the raveled threads of Arab and Jewish narratives back together, 1913: Seeds of Conflict provides new and fascinating insights into events that took place in Palestine which presaged a century

of unrest.

1913: Seeds of Conflict premieres Tuesday, June 30, 9:00-10:00 p.m. ET (check local

listings) on PBS.

The film examines the divergent social forces growing in Palestine before World War I that fueled the rise of Jewish and Arab nationalism. Combining the perspectives of Arab, Israeli and American scholars, the film includes information

Top: Albert Antebi at a Muslim Red Crescent Society event. Credit: Library of Congress. Bottom: Member of Hashomer, the first Zionist paramilitary organization. Credit: Central Zionist Archives.

previously unavailable from the Turkish Ottoman archives and largely untouched by historians. Shot on location in Israel and the West Bank, dramatized scenes bring many key figures of the era to life, with dialogue in five languages taken directly from the historical record — personal letters, government documents, and newspaper accounts. 1913: Seeds of Conflict offers a fresh look at the complex circumstances that transformed this once relatively peaceful outpost of the Ottoman Empire into a land perpetually torn by violence.

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“What good is it to arouse the bitterness of our fellow citizens? I predict an inextricable situation of Ottoman anti-Semitism if we do not change our methods.” — Albert Antebi

“If we lose our homeland, what’s the point of living?” — Najib Nassar, editor of Al Karmil

By the mid-1800s half a million Ottoman subjects — over 400,000 Muslims, 60,000 Christians, and 20,000 Jews — call Palestine home. Sharing a homeland, they find commonality in their identity as Ottomans, gathering in the coffeehouses of Jerusalem to listen to music performed by mixed groups of Arabs, Christians, and Jews. Many Jews in Palestine are Sephardic, of Mediterranean origin, and as Ottoman citizens, become integrated in the existing political framework. In an empire dominated by Islamic culture, they speak Arabic and, like Christians, accept their secondary status.

But this soon changes with the arrival of the Ashkenazi — Jewish migrants from Eastern Europe, fleeing anti-Semitic violence. Jerusalem’s representative to the Parliament in Istanbul, Ruhi al-Khalidi, voices growing concerns about what he sees as the Jews’ secret agenda to build a state. The influx of foreign Jews is undermining the delicate cultural balance carefully nurtured by prominent Ottoman Jews such as Albert Antebi. He embraces the idea of economic and cultural Zionism but fears that a land grab will lead to bitterness and arouse anti-Semitism. As large tracts of land are purchased from mostly absentee landowners for the new arrivals, the Arabs who had lived on and cultivated the land for generations grow ever more resentful.

In 1903, a second wave of Russian Jews — many bringing a determined socialist agenda and no intent to assimilate into the local culture — heightens tensions. Flush with cash raised in Europe and America, Arthur Ruppin arrives from Germany to be the Zionist’s land agent while rising Arab leader Khalil Sakakini speaks out against the displacement of local farmers and calls for a new Palestinian Arab identity.

A decade later, tensions erupt between neighboring Arabs and Jews in a vineyard of Rehovot, just outside present-day Tel Aviv. A scuffle over a bunch of grapes turns into a shootout, leaving one Arab farmer and one Jewish guardsman dead. Within days, the dispute fuels an uproar about the future of each group’s claim to the same homeland. It marks a turning point in the history of the Arabs and Jews. Then, the outbreak of World War I prevents a resolution to the conflict and years of peaceful coexistence come to an end. More than a century of painful conflict would ensue.

“History is something that you can't control,” said Amy Dockser Marcus. “If the war hadn’t broken out could things have gone in a different direction? We’ll never know. But I think it’s important to remember that there was a moment when different groups shared a city, shared a land, and for a moment in time, shared history.”

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1913: Seeds of Conflict is a production of Ben Loeterman Productions, Inc. Director/Producer/Writer: Ben Loeterman. Associate Producer: Elisha Baskin. Principal Consultant: Amy Dockser Marcus. Editor: Rachel Clark. Cinematography: Itai Neeman. Music: Kareem Roustom.

Funding is provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Bridging Cultures Through Film. Additional funding is provided by PBS and Public Television Viewers. Fiscal Sponsor: International Documentary Association.

1913: Seeds of Conflict will be available on DVD and Blu-ray on June 30, 2015 from PBS Distribution.

About the Participants, in alphabetical order:

Gur Alroey is Director of the Israel Studies and 20th century Jewish Histories (ISJH) Program and Chair of the School of History at the University of Haifa. He is the author of Immigrants: Jewish Immigration to Palestine in the Early Twentieth Century; The Quiet Revolution: the Jewish Emigration from the Russian Empire in the Early Twentieth Century; and Seeking a Homeland: the Jewish Territorial Organization and its Struggle with the Zionist Movement, 1905-1925.

Yuval Ben-Bassat is Lecturer in the Department of Middle Eastern History at the University of Haifa, with a PhD from the University of Chicago. His interests include Middle East Studies, Ottoman history and Rule of Law. He is author of Petitioning the Sultan: Protests and Justice in Late Ottoman Palestine.

Etan Bloom received his PhD from Tel Aviv University School of Cultural Studies. His areas of interest include Jewish history and cultural studies. He is author of the biography Arthur Ruppin and the Production of Pre-Israeli Culture.

Michele Campos is Associate Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at the University of Florida with a PhD from Stanford University. She has lived in Israel/Palestine, Egypt, Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon, with interests in late Ottoman Empire, the social history of Palestine, and Muslim/Non-Muslim relations. She is the author of Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth-Century Palestine.

Amy Dockser-Marcus is a Boston-based staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal. Formerly in the Journal’s Tel Aviv bureau, she covered Israel and the Middle East during the 1990s. Her latest book is Jerusalem 1913: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (Viking, 2007). Previously, she won a Pulitzer Prize for her reporting on the physical, monetary and emotional costs of cancer.

Beshara Doumani is Director of Middle East Studies at Brown University, where he works on the social, economic, and legal history of Eastern Mediterranean. He holds a PhD from Georgetown University and recently led a team to produce a strategic plan for the

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establishment of a Palestinian museum. He is the author of Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900.

Yaakov Gross is an Israeli documentary filmmaker and archivist. He has directed and produced over 30 documentaries for organizations such as the KKL-JNF and Israel Television. Gross is widely considered a key figure in the preservation and restoration of films by early Israeli filmmakers.

Abigail Jacobson is a lecturer in history at MIT with a PhD from the University of Chicago. Her research focuses on the social history of mixed urban communities in Palestine and the Eastern Mediterranean in the late Ottoman period and the British mandate. She is the author of From Empire to Empire: Jerusalem between Ottoman and British Rule.

Issam Nassar is Associate Professor of History at Illinois State University and a research fellow at the Institute of Jerusalem Studies in Jerusalem. He is a historian of photography and the Middle East, associate editor of Jerusalem Quarterly and author of Different Snapshots: The History of Early Local Photography in Palestine.

Arieh Saposnik is Associate Professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and was the founding director of UCLA’s Nazarian Center for Israel; With a PhD from NYU, his research focuses on the history of Zionism and Israel and on the varieties of Jewish nationalism. He is the author of Becoming Hebrew: The Creation of a Jewish National Culture in Ottoman Palestine.

Gershon Shafir is Professor of Sociology at UC San Diego and Director of its Institution for International, Comparative, and Area Studies. He is the author of Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, 1882-1914 and the chapter Revolutionary Pioneer, Manya Shochat and Her Commune in Struggle and Survival in Palestine/Israel, which he co-edited.

Salim Tamari is Director of the Institute of Palestine Studies, Professor of Sociology at Birzeit University and Adjunct Professor at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. He is editor of Jerusalem Quarterly and is co-author, with Issam Nassar of The Storyteller of Jerusalem: The Life and Times of Wasif Jawhariyyeh.

About the Filmmaker

Ben Loeterman is an award-winning writer, director, and producer of current affairs and historical documentaries, often with an emphasis on social justice. After a 12-city screening tour, his independent film The People v. Leo Frank was broadcast nationally on PBS and received extraordinary reviews from The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post. Before that, his work appeared on the first eighteen seasons of the PBS series FRONTLINE and three seasons of AMERICAN EXPERIENCE (Golden Gate Bridge, Public Enemy #1, Rescue at Sea). In addition, Loeterman produced episodes of the PBS series The War that Made America and The Prize, based on Daniel Yergin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the oil industry; God Fights Back, for the PBS/BBC series People’s Century; and an adventure film in Iryan Jaya for the

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Discovery Channel. His most recent film, John Portman: A Life in Building, appeared at architecture film festivals in Rotterdam, Tribeca, Toronto and Singapore and on public television.

He founded Ben Loeterman Productions, Inc. (BLPI) in 1996. Loeterman has won national Emmy awards for outstanding achievement in directing and investigative journalism, the Amnesty International’s Media Spotlight Award, and two duPont-Columbia Awards.

###CONTACT:

CaraMar, Inc.Mary Lugo 770-623-8190 lugo@negia.netCara White 843-881-1480 cara@caramar.netAbbe Harris 908-244-5516 abbe@caramar.net

For downloadable images, visit pbs.org/pressroom.

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