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Saturday, June 30, 2012

Continued Subversive Tactics of British Against Jewish Palestinian Settlement

Nadene Goldfoot
While Emir Faisal (1883-1933) descendant of Mohammad,  1st  son of Sherif Hussein bin Ali, Sharif and Emir of Mecca and his first wife Abdiyya bint Abdullahof the Hashemite family of Saudi Arabia and one time king of Syria and of Iraq, was encouraged about Jews settling in Palestine, at least until he was talked out of it, the British, whose responsibility to encourage Jewish settlement, in reality was not going to encourage it at all.  In fact, they did everything to undermine it.  

Emir Faisal saw the Zionist movement as a partner to the Arab nationalist movement, both fighting against imperialism.  He explained this to Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter in a letter on March 3, 1919, the day after Chaim Weizmann spoke in the Paris conference.  Faisel's letter said:
"The Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement...We will wish the Jews a hearty welcome home...We are working together for a reformed and revised Near East and our two movements complete one another.  The Jewish movement is nationalist and not imperialist.  And there is room in Syria for us both.  Indeed, I think that neither can be a real success without the other.

Also known as Faisal I, he was king of Iraq from 23 August 1921 to 8 September 1933. He died at age 50.  His son, Ghazi I reined from 8 September 1933 to 4 April 1939 and died at age 27. Ghazsi's son, Faisal II reigned from 4 April 1939 to 14 July 1858 and was then deposed.  He died at age 23.  The Hashemite dynasty was foreign to Iraq and were opposed by the majority Iraqi Shi'is and Kurds.  The 14 July Revolution established the Republic of Iraq.  

The 2nd son of Hussein, sherif of Mecca was ,Abdullah I who was the king of Transjordan, later called Jordan. He was king from 23 May 1946 to 20 July 1951 and then assassinated.  Abdullah, while visiting Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, was shot dead by "a Palestinian from the Husseini clan.  His son, Talal was then King from 20 July 1951 to 11 August 1952 and abdicated, being mentally ill.  He died 7 July 1972.  His son,  Hussein was King at age 17   from 11 August 1952 to 7 February 1999.  His son , Abdullah II was king from 7 February 1999 to the present day.  
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A different sort of Arab, the infamous Hajj Mohammed Amin el-Husseini,(1893-1974) in Jerusalem,  also claiming he was a descendant of Mohammad, was not about to accept Jews in Palestine. In 1921, Sir Herbert Samuel, high commissioner, had made him the Grand  Mufti of Jerusalem  from 1921-1937 and head of the Supreme Moslem council. During this time he promoted Islam and rallied the masses against the Jews.  Right away he began to organize  fedayeen, small groups of suicide squads, to terrorize Jews.  He was copying Kemal Ataturk's actions in Turkey who had driven out the Greeks from his country.  Husseini wanted to do the same, and tried to drive out the Jews.  It was easy to do because the British Administration was not taking any effective action against them so that they were actually revolting against British rule by doing this.  Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, who had been head of the British military intelligence in Cairo and later chief Political Officer for Palestine and Syria, wrote that "British officials "incline  towards the exclusion of Zionism in Palestine."

The British went as far as encourage the Palestinian Arabs to attack the Jews. Col. Waters Taylor, the financial adviser to the Military Administration in Palestine from 1919-1923 met with Haj Amin before Easter in 1920 and told he "he had a great opportunity at Easter to show the world...that Zionism was unpopular not only with the Palestine Administration but in Whitehall and if disturbances of sufficient violence occurred in Jerusalem at Easter, both General Bols, the Chief Administrator  in Palestine and General Allenby, the Commander of the Egyptian Force from 1917-1919, then High commissioner of Egypt, would advocate the abandonment of the Jewish Home.  Water-Taylor explained that freedom could only be attained through violence.

The Arab fear of being dominated was used as their excuse for their merciless attacks on peaceful Jewish settlers.  They were motivated by racial strife and misunderstanding.  In 1929, Arab convinced the mobs that Jews wanted the Temple Mount.  Jews had a custom of going to the Western Wall, which is part of the Temple Mount, and a riot started which was spread to Safed and Hebron and other villages and towns.

The British Administration made no effort to prevent this violence and nothing to protect the Jews.  After 6 days of rioting and killing, they finally brought in troops to stop it, after almost all the Jewish population of Hebron had fled or killed.  133 Jews were killed and 399 wounded in these pogroms.

Now the British did something.  They ordered an investigation, resulting in the Passfield White Paper.  Basically, it said that immigration and land purchasing of the Zionists were against Arab interests.  They interpreted the Mandatory obligation of the Arab community to mean that their resources are mainly for the growing Arab economy...So they placed restrictions on Jewish immigraton and land purchases.

Husseini again caused pogroms and riots in 1936 while chairman, and for this he was sentenced to exile in 1937.  He escaped  to Lebanon.  and later assisted Hitler and was largely responsible for the liquidation of the Jews in the Moslem areas of Bosnia.  In 1946 he escaped to Egypt.  After 1948, the birth of Israel, he set up a short-lived Palestine Goverment in Gaza which was later moved to Cairo. Husseini died in Beirut , Lebanon, unaccepted by the PLO as any sort of leader.   Palestinian historian Mattar blames him as the main culprit of sowing the seeds of the Arab-Israeli conflict.


Resource:  Myths and Facts, a concise record of the Arab Israeli conflict by Mitchell G Bard, PhD and Joel Mimelfarb
The standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haj_Amin_al-Husseini
http://frontpagemag.com/2011/11/08/voices-of-palestine-haj-amin-al-husseini/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_kings_of_Jordan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_kings_of_Iraq
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullah_I_of_Jordan

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