Anti-Semitism and Islam

Conventional wisdom among many American citizens, as well as numerous journalists, politicians and media anchors, has it that anti-Semitism[1] in the Islamic world constitutes a not unreasonable reaction to the late 19^th c. Zionist movement which led to the creation of the state of Israel right after World War II. In this view, were Israel to totally withdraw from the West Bank (and other disputed Arab territories), enact the “right of return” and compensate displaced Palestinians, anti-Semitism in the Islamic world would dissipate like a mirage.

Unfortunately, hatred of Jews runs much longer than a century or so into the past. In fact, it originates not only in the actions of the founder of Islam himself, but also in the eschatological belief-system of the world’s second-largest religion.

In 622 CE the nascent Muslim community under Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, left Mecca in Arabia and headed north to the city of Yathrib. Part forced emigration, part prearranged political move, this hijrah not only marked the beginning of the Muslim calendar but the transition of the Muslims from oppressed minority to ruling majority. The newly-renamed Madinat al-Nabi, “city of the prophet,” became—in its shortened form, Madinah—the capital of an expanding religious, political and military movement that would encompass the entire Arabian peninsula, including Mecca itself, within eight years and then, of course, after another century conquer lands from Iberia to the borders of India.

In the process of the Islamization of Arabia, and a few years before Mecca fell to the Muslims in 630, a paradigm of Muslim-Jewish conflict was established.[2] Several of the tribes of Madinah were Jewish, and refused to accept the prophethood of Muhammad. In fact the leaders of one tribe, the Banu Qurayzah, were reported to have been plotting to have Muhammad killed. After some negotiations and inter-tribal machinations—which included, portentously, Muhammad branding the Qurayzah “brothers of monkeys”[3]—Muhammad allowed “one of [their] own number,” one Sa`d bin Mu’adh, to pronounce judgment on them. His verdict: “the men should be killed, the property divided, and the women and children taken as captives.” The narrative continues:

Then the apostle went out to the market of Medina…and dug trenches in it. Then he sent for them and struck off their heads in those trenches as they were brought out to him in batches….There were 600 or 700 in all, though some put the figure as high as 800 or 900….This went on until the apostle made an end of them.[…] Then the apostle divided the property, wives, and children of B. Qurayza among the Muslims….[4]

Now, this was a brutal time and a brutal society, in many ways. And in his treatment of “unbelievers” Muhammad is not unlike some of the divinely-sanctioned rulers in the Hebrew Scriptures, such as Joshua or David. (He is, however, most unlike the Jesus of the New Testament.) Nonetheless, there is no getting around the fact that the man whom Muslims believe to have been God’s last spokesman on Earth not only denigrated, but ordered the slaughter of, his fellow monotheists—and this long before Theodore Herzl, David Ben-Gurion or Ariel Sharon ever existed.

This pattern set by God’s prophet is particularly influential upon the jihadist wing of world Islam, for whom the example of the early Islamic community is supremely normative. However, there is a powerful eschatological motif in Islam which also contributes immensely to the acrimony that too many Muslims, even non-jihadist, feel towards the Jews: that of al-Dajjal.

The Dajjal, or “The Deceiver,” is one of five major end times actors according to Islamic teachings, and the chief embodiment of evil.[5] In the anti-God camp with him will be the rapacious hordes of Yajuj and Majuj,[6] as well as al-Dabbah, the “Beast.”[7] Opposing these will be the returned `Isa, or Jesus,[8] and al-Mahdi, the “rightly-guided one.” Jesus, Yajaj and Majuj, and the Dabbah have both Qur’anic and hadith sourcing (hadiths are extra-Qur’anic sayings attributed to Muhammad); however, the Dajjal and the Mahdi appear nowhere in the Qur’an, but only in hadiths—curious, considering that in many ways they are the two most important eschatological figures in Islam.[9]

What has this to do with anti-Semitism in Islam? The main role of the returned (Muslim) prophet Jesus and the Mahdi will be to defeat the evil forces of unbelief and usher in a global Islamic caliphate. And the forces that the Dajjal will lead forth to battle the Muslims will be…Jewish![10] The Dajjal himself is usually described, drawing upon relevant hadiths, as corpulent and/or tall, frizzy- (perhaps red-)haired, one-eyed, able to perform sham miracles, having the Arabic linguistic root for “unbelief”—K-F-R—tatooed on his forehead. And while he is actually not described as Jewish himself, the hadith accounts of his Jewish supporters have provided plenty of ammunition for Muslim exegetes to assume he, too, will be Jewish and—of course—linked to Israel. For example, the K-F-R on the Dajjal’s brow is said to be the same symbol used on the tail fins of Israeli fighter jets.[11] But the Jewish component is not the only one of the “Dajjal system,” for that system is truly the one of unbelief—a rubric under which both science and Christianity should be subsumed.[12] While the hadiths suggesting that the Dajjal will be Jewish go back, in some cases, to the 9^th century CE/3^rd century AH, the recent upsurge in eschatological anti-Semitism probably dates to about 20 years ago, when the Egyptian writer Sayyid Ayyub began publishing works in Arabic claiming that the Dajjal was already active on Earth and that he was Jewish.[13] And this view is not active only in the Arab Muslim world, in the “front-line” states bordering Israel. A recent Indian Muslim writer[14] is convinced that “the Jews are waiting impatiently for the coming of Dajjal, their beloved king,”[15] for:

Zionists in their bloodthirsty lust for power are not satisfied with Palestine. In their arrogance, they openly admit that they want all Syria…Lebanon…Jordan…Iraq…Iskenderun[16]…the Sinai…the Delta area of Egypt and the Upper Hejaz[17] and Najd[18]….They even want the holy Madinah [sic][19]….Their main aim is to exterminate Islam [emphasis added].[20]

This writer goes on to repeat the hadith that the Jews will get their comeuppance before the end, when in the final battles “they will not be able to hide behind any stone, wall, or animal or tree without it saying ‘O Muslim, servant of Allah, here is a Jew, come and kill him.”[21] The Dajjal will actually be killed by Jesus, and the Dajjal’s dispirited army of Jews, unbelievers and “Magians” will then be defeated by the Mahdi and his army of Muslims. Afterwards peace will reign under the global rule of the Mahdi and/or Jesus for some time (the hadiths are not harmonious on just who will be superior and who will live longer), before both great Muslim leaders die and unbelief again proliferates. Thereafter, at some point, will come the true end of time and the Judgment.

Islamic eschatology has seen a resurgence in recent years, owing to the turn of the (Christian) millennium, the inability of the Islamic world to deal effectively with modernity and the perception among many Muslims that the ummah, the Islamic “nation,” is not only in dire straits but is under attack from the West in general and the U.S. in particular. A powerful yearning for the Mahdi to come and deliver the ummah has grown among both Sunni and Shi`i Muslims, and the eschatological play cannot be acted out until the Dajjal comes, as well. Hugo Chavez may see President Bush as “El Diablo,” but for many in the Muslim world this figure of evil is “the Jew,” particularly in his armed-and-dangerous incarnation as “the Zionist entity”—Israel. If even a small percentage of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims are influenced by such a belief, as well as by the undeniable anti-Semitic example of their own founder—and all indications are that this is indeed the case—then it’s naïve at best and dangerous at worst to expect that any sort of political or territorial concessions on the part of the Israelis will enervate such rancor. Jimmy Carter and James Baker, among others, would do well to factor that into their future policy recommendations.

NOTES:

[1] While broadly-speaking “anti-Semitic” would refer to any ethnolinguistic group speaking a Semitic language—amongst whom Arabs are, ironically, the vast majority—I use the term here in its traditional, specific sense as meaning “anti-Jewish.”

[2] See `Abd al-Malik Ibn Hisham, Life of Muhammad. A Translation of Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah, Introduction and Notes by A. Guillaume (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955), pp. 459-466.

[3] Ibid., p. 461

[4] Ibid., p. 464, 466.

[5] See A. Abel, “al-Dadjdjal,” Encyclopedia of Islam, New Edition, pp. 76-77.

[6] Surah al-Kahf:92ff; Surah al-Anbiya’:96; and compare to the descriptions of Gog and Magog in the Bible at Ezekiel 38 and 39, as well as Revelation: 20.

[7] Surah al-Naml:82ff; also, compare this Beast to that of Christianity, Revelation 13 and 17

[8] Surah al-Ahzab:7ff; Surah al-Ma’idah:44ff, 75ff, 109ff; Surah al-Imran:46ff; Surah al-Nisa’:156ff; Surah al-Saff:15ff.

[9] And in fact even there the Dajjal is more legitimately sourced than his counterpart the Mahdi, because the former is mentioned not only in dozens of hadiths but in the two most authoritative collections—those of al-Bukhari and Muslim. The Mahdi—about whom I have written extensively in my book Holiest Wars: Islamic Mahdis, their Jihads and Osama bin Laden— shows up only in lesser collections, such as those of Abu Da’ud, al-Tirmidhi and Ibn Majah, a fact which has done very little to diminish belief in the Mahdi in any phase of history, including our own.

[10] For a complete list of relevant hadith cites, as well as exegesis thereof, see Usamah Yusuf Rahmah, Iqtarabat al-Sa`ah [The Approach of the Hour] (Damascus/Beirut: Dar Qutayba, 2001), pp. 164-208.

[11] Ahmad Thompson, Dajjal: The King Who Had No Clothes (London: Ta-ha Publishers, Ltd., 1986), p. 3.

[12] Ibid., pp. 6, 9, 80, and infra.

[13] See David Cook, “Muslim Fears of the Year 2000,” Middle East Quarterly, V, 2 (June 1998), pp. 51-62.

[14] Mohamad Yasin Owadally, Emergence of Dajjal. The Jewish King (Delhi: Rightway Publications, 2001).

[15] Ibid., p. 12.

[16] The former Alexandretta, on Turkey’s southwestern Mediterranean coast, of Indiana Jones fame.

[17] The Hijaz is the western coastal region of the Arabian peninsula.

[18] The Najd is central Arabia.

[19] Owadally, p. 35.

[20] Ibid., p. 36.

[21] Ibid., p. 68. The actual hadith cite is found in the Sahih of al-Bukhari: Book 041, Number 6985: Abu Huraira reported Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) as saying: “The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.”

Heres a little history for those inclined to an interest in such.

By general scholarly consensus, there were roughly 16 to 18 Million Jews in the world at the eve of WWII, well more than half of whom, 10 to 12 Million by most estimates, lived in what today is Europe and the former Soviet Union. Immediately following that war, the Eastern European/former Soviet Union Jewish population had declined to fewer than 2 Million; 6 Million had died in The Holocaust, the remainder were scattered across the globe. There are today in the world some 14 Million Jews, give or take a few hundred thousand, with around 5.5 Million living in Israel (which has a total population of approximately 7 Million), and roughly the same number living in The US, which has the world's largest Jewish population outside of Israel, though that is a tiny fraction (less than 1/50th) of the overall US population of nearly 300 Million.

Founded at the very end of the 13th Century in what then was known as Anatolia (more or less today's Turkey), the Ottoman Empire by the end of the 15th Century ruled a vast area extending from the Caucasus and the Black Sea to the Mediterranean and the shores of The Persian Gulf, encompassing all of today's Near East, most of the Middle East, North Africa's entire Mediterranean coast, including Egypt, the Baltics and the entire Adriatic coast, the land around and the islands within the Aegean Sea, all of what today are considered The Arab Lands, much of South Eastern Europe (in the 15th Century, Vienna very nearly fell to the Ottomans), and, of course, what today is Turkey, along with bits of today's Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

The empire began to enter a gradual decline around the middle of the 18th Century, beset by mounting internal chaos and dissention, eventually coming to be referred to disparagingly as "The sick man of Europe". Largely left behind by the Industrial Revolution, lacking contemporarily modern infrastructure such as electrical and communications grids, general public education system, up-to-date manufacturing capabilities, railroads and paved road networks, plagued with corruption, bitter political divisions, brigandry and widespread general lawlessness, what remained of the Ottoman Empire was the backwater of Western Civilization. However, unwell as it may have been compared to earlier vigor and glory, as the 20th Century dawned its size, influence, and reputation, even if not its power, remained considerable. Final collapse came with WWI; already torn by widespread internal revolt and independence issues, amounting almost to open civil war, the Ottoman Empire sided with Germany, and thus ensured its own doom. Its once-substantial (and essentially German-led) military was wiped out in just about all but name over a series of disastrous campaigns, most notably Allenby's 1917-18 "Palestine Campaign", which left that region firmly in British hands. Among the results of realignments following that war, the strife-crippled former empire was thoroughly dismembered, carved up, partioned away; after more than 6 centuries of glory, the Ottoman Empire was gone for good, consigned to history's rubbish tip.

In 1916, before WWI even had ended, the Sykes-Picot Agreement mandated to France and Britain the Southern portion of the hapless empire, what today are Lebanon and Syria were assigned to French oversight, today's Jordan and Israel (including the "West Bank") going to the British. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 iterated the intention to form a Jewish Homeland in the area under British mandate. Predating both of these, there existed a 1915 British assurance to the Sherif of Mecca that in return for Arab support against Germany and her allies (which of course included the Ottoman Empire) in the then-ongoing war, independence would be granted to the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire - provided, of course, that Britain did not lose the war, a happenstance the British were able to convince the Sherif was of vanishingly remote possibility. Lawrence of Arabia gets all wrapped up in this, but nevermind for now.

Overall, the area assigned to British oversight traditionally - from long before the time of the Crusades - had been referred to as "The Palestine". It was never a nation in any sense, just a conceptualized region, consisting largely of insect-infested, disease-ridden swamp and arid, barren desert. At that time (the beginning of the 1920s) the region was, and long, long had been, sparsely populated (fewer than half a Million inhabitants across an area roughly the size of New Jersey or today's Hungary), traversed by nomads, scattered about here and there with remote settlements of no more than a few dwellings and outbuildings - little more than large farms, really, tiny rural villages, and a few towns, with only a very few really worthy of being designated a "City". Civil Infrastructure outside the few larger towns and the even fewer cities was minimal, and most of what there was could best be described as primitive; few paved roads, virtually no municipal services, little if any law and order, no electric power or telephone grids - barely a telegraph grid, for that matter.

The late 19th Century saw the beginning of large-scale Jewish migration into the region, already, and for centuries before, home to a considerable Jewish population - perhaps a fifth of the area's total population - many with roots extending back to and in some cases well predating The Crusades, a few into pre-Roman Biblical times. The influx of European Jewish settlers brought with it the first real civil development the region had seen in well over a millennium, a boom, in fact.

These new settlers, primarily European and Russian Jews, began what only may be characterized as a Renaissance for the region, draining swamps, converting desert to farmland, raising settlements to villages, villages to towns, and towns nearly to cities. This growth encouraged the migration into the area of Arabs and others from the Greater Near and Middle East, drawn by employment opportunity and far superior living conditions than these native peoples had known for centuries beyond memory. Within a few decades, by the 1920s, the region's population essentially had exploded, Jew, Arab, Christian, Druze, and others alike, Jews comprising a modest majority throughout the region, a significant majority in the larger population centers. Most commerce and administration was conducted by Jews, Jews owned by far the greatest portion of arable land (having themselves largely reclaimed it from swamp and desert), and nearly all of what little industry there was (mostly producing agricultural and consumer goods and tools for domestic consumption) was of Jewish origin and ownership, a natural consequence of said enterprises largely having been established by Jews. This is not to say there was no native, non-Jewish agriculture, commerce or industry - most certainly there was and it formed a vital component of the local economy, though nowhere near the Jewish component.

In the early 1920s, the British in effect subdivided their administrational mandate, "The Palestine", creating two districts. One district, a narrow strip lying to the West of the Jordan River, which the British designated "Palestine", already preponderantly Jewish by population, was to not only permit but to encourage Jewish settlement. Lying to the East of the Jordan, the other, nearly four times times larger portion, the British designated "Trans-Jordan", restricting that district from further Jewish settlement (and forcing the only somewhat compensated displacement of a fair number of Jews at the time living and owning property and businesses in the district, incidentally), intending it to become the "Arab-Palestinian Homeland", envisioned to become eventually a semi-autonomous member of what then was The British Commonwealth, while the smaller Eastern district was to become the "Jewish Palestinian Homeland", likewise intended and anticipated eventually to take its place as a partner in The British commonwealth.

Trans-Jordan, renamed "Jordan" shortly after WWII, was more or less given to the administrational control of a local strongman, Abdullah bin al-Hussein (or Husayn), whose family roots were anchored not in "The Palestine", but in the Arabian Peninsula and were of the sort of intertwined sectarian and secular nobility common in Arab culture. Abdullah, technically an "Emir", or governor, effectively ruled as a king until 1949, at which point, with both Britain's and his parliament's approval, he formally became Abdullah I, the Hashemite King of Jordan, and Jordan became a fully autonomous nation. On his death by assassination a couple years later, the crown passed to his son (by a British mother, one Toni Gardiner - quite a story there, but, again, never mind), Talal bin Abdullah, on who's abdication for reason of health (madness) within a couple years of his accession, Talal's then-yet-minor son, Hussein bin Talal, acceeded to the crown, ruling untill his death of natural cause in 1999, whereupon his son, Abullah II, current Hashemite King, assumed the crown. Anyhow, enough of Jordan for this discussion.

In the smaller, Eastern portion of the re-partitioned British mandate, now officially "Palestine" by British designation at the time of its forming, the British themselves, through Crown-Appointed Governors and functionaries, maintained direct administration. In contrast to the displacement of Jews from Trans-Jordan, and proscription against further Jewish settlement therein, Arabs and others were not institutionally displaced nor restricted from entering and settling in "Palestine". Largely due to the far more robust economy of "Palestine", the partition attracted a steadily increasing stream of Arab settlers, largely from Trans-Jordan, but significantly from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and the Arabian Peninsula as well.

As the stream of non-Jewish, predominantly Arab, overwhelmingly preponderantly Islamic immigrants into "Palestine" grew, so too grew tensions; the non-Jews perceiving themselves disadvantaged, disenfranchised, and otherwise oppressed by the majority Jewish population, who were by law confined to "Palestine", having option only to remain where they were or to quit the region altogether, the latter, given circumstances elsewhere in the world, particularly Europe, not a practicably viable option.

Throughout the 1920's in "Palestine" (which was roughly 20% the size of what had been "The Palestine", remember), incidents of violence, primarily but not absolutely exclusively Arab-initiated and directed against Jews and to a lesser extent against British administrational infrastructure, began to increase, with Arab/Islamic leaders both in "Palestine" and elsewhere pressing ever more stridently for the ouster of the Jews from what, by British intent and decree and with international assent was the smaller portion of the repartitioned British Mandate, the portion to which to which the Jews were restricted, and into which was flowing a small but not inconsiderable stream of European Jews , an immigrant stream a good deal less robust than that of Arabs and others entering "Palestine" from elsewhere in the region. 1920, '21, '23, and '26 saw major disturbances, Arabs attacking Jews and Jewish and British infrastructure. Throughout the decade, lesser outbreaks of violence and vandalism were frequent, at times almost weekly, occurrences, mostly Arab-on-Jew, though there were a few Arab-on-British Mandate Infrastructure and Jew-on-Arab and Jew-on-British Mandate Infrastructure incidents.

In the late summer of 1929, there occurred a disturbance in Jerusalem in which 3 Jews and 3 or 4 Arabs were killed. A mob of Arabs, largely youths and young men, attacked an intentionally provocative militant assembly of Jews asserting Jewish right to worship at the Wailing Wall, (a fragment of the temple destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE), to the Jews the holiest site in Jerusalem. The Wall, located in the Arab sector of the city and the site of the Mosque of The Dome of The Rock, was also Islam's holiest site in the city and long had been a friction point. Rumors flew in the Arab community throughout "Palestine" following the riot, and the next day the town of Hebron, about 20 miles south of Jerusalem (in what now is known as "The West Bank"), became the scene of what contemporary Jewish history remembers as "The Hebron Massacre". One of the oldest most revered sites in all of Judaism, home to a Jewish community for more than 3 millenia, one of the oldest continually inhabited sites on Earth, and location of perhaps the oldest Jewish cemetery in the world, which at the time was - and still is - in use, Hebron then had, and had for generations beyond numbering had, a thriving, vibrant Jewish community, then (late 1920s) numbering a few thousand.

Under the British administration, Hebron long had been considered a quiet, peaceful town, and the police department - the town's sole "law-and-order" asset - existed just
about in name only; it consisted of one full-time paid officer and a couple of more-or-less quasi-deputized part-time volunteers. That itself was not particularly notable; at the time, the entire Palestine Mandate security forces consisted of at most a few hundred British troops and a smattering of indigenous personnel, with only small arms and virtually no other military equipment, capability, or mission; little more than equivalent to impotent observers - hall monitors.

Over a 36-hour period, rampaging mobs of Arabs, again mostly youths and young men, wreaked havoc on the Jewish community of previously tranquil Hebron, ransacking homes and businesses, pillaging Jewish temples and schools. The pitifully inadequate "police department" of course was powerless to intervene, and the tiny police station itself became a barricaded, besieged refuge for terrified Jews. A fair number of Arabs did shelter many Jews in their homes, and the mobs of rioters certainly were nothing like a majority, nor even a numerically significant portion, of the community's Arab population. None the less, when the rampage ended something like 70 Jews were dead (and, apparently, maybe a dozen or so Arabs, some evidently killed when a burning building housing a Jewish-owned shop they were looting collapsed on them), the Jewish business and residential neighborhoods were in ruins, and in the end the Jews were forced to leave Hebron, relocated to Jerusalem by the British "in the interest of keeping the peace".

"The peace" did not keep well. While for several years there was no repeat of anything like what happened at Hebron, violence continued to be directed by the Arabs of "Palestine" against the Jews of "Palestine"; vandalism, beatings, bombings and burnings of homes, businesses, schools and temples, and of course murders, ranging from lynchings to assassinations by mass gunfire were common. It wasn't a pretty time, and it was getting unprettier as time went on. To be fair, there was nearly as much, if not more, Arab-on-Arab violence and general lawlessness as there was violence directed by Arabs against the Jews, and a few incidents involved Jew-on-Arab and Jew-on-Jew violence, though the latter two cases have to be considered almost in the "man bites dog" category - so atypical of common circumstance as to be particularly remarkable merely for having happened at all.

The next major eruption of anti-Jew violence in Palestine came in 1936. Several rival Arab tribal strongmen (or, as some might term them, "prominent Arab leaders") had managed by then to set aside their longstanding internecine differences, forming a loose, ad hoc religio-political construct which styled itself "The Arab High Command", opposed both to Jews and to British administration. Early in the year, this organization began staging protests and demonstrations, small at first, but their attendance and impact grew, with several violent incidents directed against Jews or Jewish properties. In April of 1936, The Arab High Command called for a general Arab strike and a boycott of Jewish business throughout "Palestine".

A Jerusalem demonstration related to the Arab strike eventuated into a riot, during which a bus carrying Jews was attacked and destroyed with a couple Jews killed and several more injured. Things went from bad to worse, and within days "Palestine" was engulfed in violence, nothing short of a rebellion, the uprising continuing into the early Winter of that year. British armed intervention stepped up, rising eventually to something quite like (but not so declared) martial law, armored units and infantry were brought in and deployed throughout the partition, conducting constant patrols and carrying out occasional raids and arrests. By mid to late November, while tensions still were high, the situation at least was notably calmer ... well, calm is probably not the right concept, but violence, though not entirely eliminated, had been greatly curtailed. Far from extinguished, the rebellion smoldered for a few months.

Arising essentially consequent to and coincident with this upheaval were a number of Arab political parties, some of which aligned themselves into a coalition calling itself "The Arab High Committee". A list of demands was drawn up and published by "The Arab Committee", calling for an end of Jewish immigration into "Palestine", forbidding Jews to acquire property, and the establishment of an autonomous Palestinian Arab government with the consequent end of British authority.

On the other side, the Jews had not been idle; there was the Zionist Congress, the Jewish Fund, and of course Haganah, formed some 25 years earlier as a loose, barely organized volunteer protection force for the kibbutzim, essentially outlying, remote farming settlements, had grown to become quite a large, well organized militia, having if not overt support at least tacit approval from the British administration. As well, what amounted to a shadow government had come into existence alongside that of the British Mandate Administration, Jews to a very large extent, with British acquiescence if not exactly enthusiasm, through The Jewish Agency managing their own civil affairs, to a significant extent in the cities and larger towns and all but absolutely exclusively in the more remote towns, villages, and settlements. Along with this, of course, were Jewish unions and political parties, not all of which got along very well if at all with one another. Interestingly, the existence and authority of the Jewish Agency was a major sore spot for the Arabs, but though the British offered to fund and to assist in the establishment of a similar Arab Agency, the Arab leadership refused even to consider the notion.

As a sidebar:

By the latter half of the 1930s, Britain's attention was being drawn ever more to the impending war with Germany. The "Palestine Problem" was becoming an increasingly inconvenient distraction. The Arabs, and their non-Arab coreligionist neighbors, wanted nothing to do with the Jews or a Jewish Homeland, and the Arabs and their coreligionist neighbors were in control of petroleum resources critically vital to Britain in the looming war. Arab goodwill toward Britain and the British cause began to assume an ever growing role in British considerations pertaining to the region and its situation.

Unsurprisingly, Germany was well aware of this, and perceived in the situation opportunity ripe for exploitation. A signal consideration, and one Germany quickly and enthusiastically pursued, was the Islamic antipathy toward Jews and the concomitant Islamic opposition to a Jewish Homeland in "Palestine". Though Germany was unable, due to existing entanglements (Spain's Civil war, Germany's own concerted, singleminded preparation for war with "The West"), and unwilling (due to intense and tricky diplomatic manoeuvrings) to openly support the conveniently (to the German POV) increasingly restive, militant Arab separatists, Germany none the less managed to funnel inspiration, advice, encouragement, and a fair amount of money and materiel (mostly small arms and associated ammunition, along with a small quantity of other munitions, chiefly grenades and bulk explosives) to the Arabs of "Palestine" and to some extent their coreligionist neighbors elsewhere in the region.

Harking back to the assurances given the Sherif of Mecca 30 years earlier, the Arabs and the other Islamists of the former Ottoman Empire were more than eager for the independence they felt was their due, and were quite at the end of their patience with the British and the French. Any enemy of the British and French was a friend of theirs. Winning friends and influencing people among these disaffected Islamists was no arduous task for Germany, who covertly conveyed to Arab and other Islamic leaders assurances of independence in return for their support against the Britain and France those folks already weren't very happy with anyway. Having captured Germany's attention and support, Arab Nationalism now had an external, and powerful, champion, even if that champion preferred for the moment to remain behind the scene, subtle and discrete. Enough of that for now, though ... lets get back to "Palestine".

We come now to 1937. Commissioned by The Crown in response to the upheavals of '36, the Peele Report was finished and published - to mixed reviews from the directly involved parties, the Jews an Arabs of "Palestine". In brief, the report's conclusion was that the Jews and the Arabs would never get along in a bi-cultural state, and its recommendation was for yet another partition, a smaller, more or less coastal, strip of "Palestine" for the Jews, the roughly 5 times larger remainder, including a bit over half the land at that time given to agriculture, for the Arabs. The Jews, not thrilled, none the less largely saw in the recommendation an opportunity to end the discord and violence, allowing them to at least begin to set up for themselves what they hoped would become a viable, peaceful state of their own.

The Arabs, on the other hand, wanted it all, and decided, in the face of what they perceived to be British reluctance and effective inability (the Arabs too knew war between Britain and Germany was looming, remember) to stop them, decided to take it.

Thus began The Arab Revolt, beside which the upheavals of '36 pale in comparison. Continuing into the opening months of WWII, it finally was put down through intensive British action against the insurgents. A significant development of the suppression effort was that the British not only officially recognized Haganah, the Jewish militia, but armed and supported it, including providing high ranking British officers (such as Orde Wingate, who went on to achieve the rank of Major General, in the Pacific Theater forming and leading the Chindits who liberated Burma, where in '44 Wingate died in a plane crash, eventually winding up buried in America's Arlington National Cemetery, a most singular resting place for one not of The American Military) - as advisors and liason in return for Haganah's support in the suppression of the revolt. Though never concrete, assurances were strongly implied if not expressly guaranteed that following the war Britain would at last see to the establishment of an independent, autonomous Jewish state. This was, however, contrary to the 1939 Mac Donald White Paper, wherein the British formally abandoned the idea of an independent Jewish state in favor of an independent state under joint Jewish-Arab government. Under-the-table British assurances coupled with the quite understandable Jewish antipathy toward Nazi Germany and the equally understandable Arab sympathy with Nazi Germany overcame Jewish anger over the policy statement set forth by the Mac Donald Whitepaper.

As WWII progressed, the British preoccupied elsewhere, Haganah, with full British support, took an increasingly independent role in the control of the "Palestine" sub-partition of the original British Palestine Mandate. Key among Haganah's activities of the time was the defense of British Mandate administration and infrastructure and general border security, becoming in effect an auxilliary of the British Army and a component of the overall British war effort in the Middle East. That not withstanding, Haganah also was heavily involved with the illegal (by British Mandate decree) smuggling of Jewish refugees into "Palestine" - an emotionally partisan but not altogether inaccurate portrayal of which is at the heart of the movie made from Leon Uris' (far more expansive than its movie) novel Exodus. There also were splinter groups which detached themselves from Haganah, perhaps most notably Irgun, or the "Stern Gang" (from its leader's name), which actively opposed British authority, quite violently. By the end of WWII, Haganah was a tightly organized, highly disciplined, well-trained-and-equipped (even possessing a small air arm), combat-experienced military, well-versed and eminently capable in the art and practice of "small war", or insurgency. That evolution proved quite to the inconvenience, irritation, and embarrassment of Britain over the next couple of years, as the "Palestinian" Jewish sentiment for an independent Jewish state became an uprising of its own, against the British Mandate Authority. The upshot of that development was the 1948 UN mandate establishing the State of Israel, and the 1948 Arab Israeli War which followed immediately thereupon, a war which never has really ended, flaring into open combat again in '56, '67, '73, '82, the '87-'90 Intifada, the 2000-'05 al-Aqsa Intifada, and current unpleasantness.

That's history for you.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.