Second Zionist War (Napoleon's World)

The Second Zionist War refers to a 10-month period in 1948-49, in which the powerful Zionist factions of the Turkish Empire's Palistinean region rose up in arms to try to create an independent Zionist state in the religious homeland of the Jewish faith. While not a contiguous war, the Second Zionist War was marked by two major uprisings and the intermittent conflict in between - the October Uprising in the fall of 1948, and the Jerusalem Riots in the summer of 1949.

The October Uprising was quickly crushed by Turkish forces, who came into conflict with the powerful Arab-speaking emirs when they declared an "occupation" of the region for further security. There was just as much conflict between Arabs and Turkish soldiers as there were between Turkish soldiers and Zionists or Arabs and Zionists. The Jerusalem Riots ten months later destroyed nearly half the city and left over 20,000 dead across the region as another mass uprising was quelled. The conflict is infamous for the massacre of Arab civilians at Nazareth by a Zionist militia that left 2,500 dead over the course of one day, as well as the violent battles in and around Beirut in the days following the Jerusalem Riot, when Turkish soldiers slaughtered a Zionist militia of nearly 1,500 men who allegedly had already surrendered.

The conflict was significant in that while there had been numerous religious conflicts in the Middle East prior to 1948, this was the first time the Zionist movement had international backing, in this case from the French, something the Zionist leaders had failed to do while lobbying for French aid in the 1919-1922 conflict. The support for the Zionists from Imperial Jews angered Turkish leaders and was seen as the first major step towards the Black Sea War - for this reason, the Second Zionist War is sometimes referred to as one of the earliest Cold War events, and those historians that argue the 1944 Canadian Crisis was the beginning of the Cold War typically include the Second Zionist War as a First Era event.