Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses ethnic cleansing, war crimes, the Holocaust, and anti-Muslim and anti-Arab racism and xenophobia.

Khalidi begins The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine by discussing his great-great-great uncle, Yusuf Diya al-Din Pasha al-Khalidi. Yusuf Diya was an Ottoman government official, accomplished scholar, and mayor of Jerusalem. As mayor, he witnessed the beginning of friction between Palestinians and European Jewish settlers (who were members of the proto-Zionist movement) beginning in the late 1870s and 1880s. This friction worried Yusuf Diya. On March 1, 1899, Yusuf Diya wrote a seven-page letter to Theodor Herzl, the founder of the Zionist movement. Yusuf Diya opens the letter by expressing admiration for Herzl, his respect for Judaism and Jewish people, and condemnation of the persecution Jewish people faced in Europe. He then tells Herzl that he believes that the Zionist movement, particularly its goal to create a sovereign Jewish state in Palestine, would cause unrest and conflict.

Yusuf Diya, who deeply respected Judaism, writes “who could contest the rights of the Jews in Palestine? My God, historically it is your country” (5). Khalidi notes that people use this sentence in isolation from the rest of the letter to argue that Yusuf Diya accepted the Zionist movement’s goals for Palestine.