Dear Billy
I appreciate your most recent comment on the Grand Mufti and the kneejerk reaction of most of the Left (should we call it the New New Left) that prefers to be deaf, dumb and blind regarding Islam in general and the specific history of the “Palestinian” cause). Who among them, totally ignorant about the Mufti, are familiar with the many Palestinian Arab victims of the Mufti’s policies ? It was the Palestinian Higher Arab Committee (HAC) which willfully misguided, misinformed, and inflamed a large section of public opinion among the Arab community that there could not be any compromise and all who spoke or acted on its behalf were “traitors.” These traitors who all worked for Jewish-Arab cooperation and understanding include such luminaries as the Arab mayor of Haifa, Hassan Shukri (targeted by assassins numerous times), Labor leader Sami Taha and many lesser Arab officials and politicians as well as village chieftains (all assassinated) who worked closely with the Histadrut and refused to cooperate with the many strikes called by the reactionary and extremist leadership within HAC headed by Haj-Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. Efraim Karsh, author of Palestine Betrayed (Yale University Press, New Haven, 2010 ISBN 13: 978-0300127270 342 pages, 30 photos, 5 maps, appendices and notes) is a brilliant scholar with the appropriate linguistic tools including fluent Arabic, Hebrew, and English. The evidence marshaled is indeed impressive inasmuch as a good deal of it comes from British Mandatory officials hostile to the Zionist enterprise and the HAC immediately after the “nakba” in the period 1948-1955 before the concerted campaign to rewrite history and turn it upside down. Karsh’s Palestine Betrayed follows shortly after the magnificent work of Hillel Cohen, whose book Army of Shadows; Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism 1917-1948 surveyed the entire period of the Mandate from 1920 onwards (reviewed in the February 2009 edition of New English Review, "Arab Support for Zionism, 1917-1948"). Prof. Karsh has uncovered much evidence that many Palestinian Arabs had a sense of betrayal of their cause by their own leadership which he found in the candid admissions made among Palestinian refugees in Gaza. This view is confirmed by Sir John Troutbeck, head of the British Middle East Office of Middle East Affairs in Cairo and a long-time opponent of Zionism who was sent on a fact-finding mission and unequivocally found little or no bitterness toward the Jews, the British, or the Americans and was told, time and again, by refugees that their Arab brothers in HAC persuaded them unnecessarily to abandon their homes. Karsh quotes Troutbeck from his interviews with Arab refugees in Gaza: “I have even heard it said that many of the refugees would give a welcome to the Israelis if they were to come in and take the district over.” (page 2) Such views regarding the HAC were corroborated early on by the Syrian historian Qustantin Zuraiq and the Palestinian leader and spokesman Musa Alami that it had become clear even after the invasion of the country by the armies of the surrounding Arab states that the masses who had placed trust in their leadership were thoroughly demoralized by its ineffectiveness, disorganization, self-interest, and corruption. Today, we are told by eminent spokespersons of the Palestinian Arabs cause such as Hanan Ashrawi and the head of the Palestinian Authority, President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), himself a historian—of sorts—whose research has led him to deny the Holocaust, who are listened to keenly by Western journalists, that we should believe their claims. These claims all rely on the standard narrative so easily accepted as gospel by many so-called journalists of Jewish treachery, evil intentions, cunning and the almost unlimited power of Jewish interests abroad funneling resources to the Zionists in America, Britain and Russia (in the spirit of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion). The Palestinian Arab narrative eagerly swallowed today by so many naïve pundits and instant experts totally ignores the history of the Arabs in Palestine since Ottoman time. It obscures the complete lack of any wider identity than identification with the native tribe, clan, religion, and village that prevailed in Ottoman Palestine among the Arab population. This absence of a wider sense of destiny was more than sufficient for the Ottoman authorities to win the continued loyalty of the Palestinian Muslim population and most Christian Arabs, the so-called Great Arab Revolt notwithstanding. The Lawrence of Arabia myth and Lawrence’s alliance with the acknowledged leader at the Paris Peace Conference in Versailles, the Emir Faisal Ibn Hussein of Mecca, made the Arab revolt a factor in Arab affairs and British interests. It quickly diminished when Faisal was expelled from Mecca and was compensated by the British with his desert kingdom in Transjordan (in spite of the fact that the land both east and west of the Jordan River were promised as a Jewish National Home) and his clan was given a major role to play in Iraq and in Palestine. No Palestinian Arab spokes-person today is ready to admit that the same first prestigious Arab national leader with a recognized international stature befriended the Zionist movement, welcomed Jewish settlement in Palestine, and insisted that there was no irreconcilable barrier to future friendship and cooperation between the two peoples. Faisal proclaimed: “We Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement…and we regard the Zionist demands as moderate and proper. We will do our best, insofar as we are concerned to help them….we will wish the Jews a most hearty welcome home.” The enormous gap between such a statement from the most prominent Arab nationalist leader in 1920 to the subsequent extremist leadership of the HAC under the ultra-reactionary Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al-Husseini is the true narrative of the betrayal of Palestine and the promise of becoming the most developed and prosperous country in the turbulent Middle East. What is novel for the reader today is the revelation that it was largely among traditional, rural, and conservative Muslims and of course, among the Bedouin that the Balfour Declaration and Jewish settlement were initially welcomed. The Arabs took advantage of the new considerable opportunities to sell marginal land to the Jews and take advantage of improvements in trade, transportation, administration, industry, health, education, and welfare. Karsh documents the expansion of Arab industry and agriculture, especially related to the cultivation of citrus, olives, cereals, and grapes, and traces how the conservative but moderate religious leadership of the effendi class was displaced by the extremist Muslim forces of the Husseinis and the jockeying for power with the growth of Pan-Arab nationalism. An especially revealing and fascinating chapter of the book, “The Most Important Arab Quisling,” traces the role of the Mufti in undercutting the Nashashibi clan. The latter had cooperated with the British Mandatory government and their Jewish neighbors in the 1936-39 “Arab Uprising.” Ironically, the Nashashibi efforts at demonstrating loyalty and moderation were constantly rebuffed by the British, intent on mollifying the most extreme nationalist and Muslim religious voices within the Arab community. Important information from first-hand sources follows the actual fighting between irregular Arab forces before the U.N. Partition Resolution in November 1947, the proclamation of the State of Israel in May 1948, the invasion of the country by the regular Arab armies immediately afterwards, until the cessation of hostilities in January 1949. The picture that emerges differs completely from the contemporary nakba view that dominates Arab thinking. To: [email protected] Subject: Hitler and the Grand Mufti -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
