Tuesday, November 29, 2022
Elder of Ziyon
In the hours before the UN voted to partition Palestine into a Jewish and Arab states, the Secretary General of the Arab League, Abdul Azzam Pasha, warned that such a decision would result in a war of genocide against Jews in the Middle East.
This is the most complete text I can find of what he said, as the representative of the entire Arab world. speaking in English to a Western audience.
It is worth studying, because it is a blueprint for virtually every Arab statement about Israel since then, including those of Mahmoud Abbas today.
The speech is a combination of threats, bullying, fearmongering, hyperbole and incitement to genocide against Jews.
From the International News Service, November 29, 1947:
Arab Official Says Partition To Mean War Against Jews
Abdul Azzam Pasha. secretary general of the Arab League, warned today that a United Nations decision to partition Palestine could mean only one thing for Arabs —war against the Jews."In a statement made as the UN general assembly prepared to vote on the explosive issue he declared:"Such a decision would mean the end of the first phase of the Arab struggle to have Palestine become an independent Arab state. The second phase of the struggle will now begin . . . the Arabs will have a long run of victories even it it takes us until 1950 or 1960."We have justice. time and numbers on our side—everything but arms— and we shall get them too."He said that tribesmen in Iran. Iraq and Saudi Arabia are "itching to fight."Azzam Pasha. just back from a six-weeks' tour of Arab states. said a meeting of the Arab League is scheduled for the near future. He added: "There is no question of the Arab countries leaving the United Nations or severing diplomatic relations with nations which vote for partition."The Arab spokesman said that if Haganah. army of the Jewish agency for Palestine. tries to enforce a partition decision after the British leave and Palestine Arabs seek the help of other Arab states "we shall not hesitate."He declared: "Every Arab from Morocco to Afghanistan would rise in answer to the call of their Arab brethren."He forecast "disturbances" and "persecution" of Jews in neighboring Arab countries "in an atmosphere of hatred and animosity which will prevail in case of trouble." The spokesman added:"Palestine Arabs will not stop to find out who is Zionist and who is not. They will be fighting one enemy--Jews."Azzam Pasha said it is impossible to estimate the strength of Arab volunteers who would fight for Palestine.He explained that Arab men will not rally in great numbers if the Arabs are victorious from the start but that "if we suffer any defeats in the beginning then the Arabs will rally in huge numbers because it will be a question of racial pride."
Let's analyze this.
"The Arabs will have a long run of victories even it it takes us until 1950 or 1960" - As always, Arab predictions are wrong - but the intent behind them has not changed. Arab media today, outside of those from the Abraham Accords countries, still has the subtext that Israel is an aberration that will be wiped out as soon as the Arabs can get their act together. Instead of saying Israel will be destroyed in a decade, they often point to the Crusades, where it took about 200 years to reverse the Christian control of Jerusalem, saying that they are equally patient as their ancestors were.
"We have justice. time and numbers on our side—everything but arms— and we shall get them too." The theme of "justice" has been taken up by the Left against Israel, even though in this speech we see what it means - the total destruction of Jews in the Middle East. It is brilliant rhetoric meant to obfuscate genocidal intent.
"There is no question of the Arab countries leaving the United Nations or severing diplomatic relations with nations which vote for partition." This was a baseless threat, but Arabs can engage in hyperbole in threatening the West without consequence. And the Western world still remembers the oil shock of the 1970s: when the Arab nations had the power to use economic means to seriously threaten Western support of Israel, they did so. The repercussions, combined with the threat of Palestinian terror in Western cities, continue today.
"Every Arab from Morocco to Afghanistan would rise in answer to the call of their Arab brethren." This entire speech is part of pattern of the past 150 years where Arabs and Muslims take advantage of Western perceptions of them as irrational savages. The spectre of hordes of Arabs, willing to die for their cause, brandishing scimitars under a flag of jihad, is one that the Arabs have played to the hilt - and the West still falls for it.
But there is a grain of truth to it. Most Arabs just want to raise their families in peace, and have little interest in fighting wars for "Palestine." However, decades of antisemitic incitement in their media and schools results in a small percentage who swallow that narrative. These are the ones who join ISIS and Islamic Jihad and Hamas. This is useful to the Arab leaders, as Pasha continues:
"He forecast 'disturbances' and 'persecution' of Jews in neighboring Arab countries 'in an atmosphere of hatred and animosity which will prevail in case of trouble.'" The Arab leaders may not support the fanatics, but they are quite willing to keep them around for a game of good cop/bad cop. Their consistent message is that if world doesn't do what they demand, they cannot stop the crazies (or the "Arab street") from doing horrible things. If the fanatics slaughter the Jews, the Arab leaders who incite that slaughter in Arabic cannot be blamed - it is the West's fault for not listening to their sage advice.
"Palestine Arabs will not stop to find out who is Zionist and who is not. They will be fighting one enemy--Jews." Pasha is again pretending to distance himself from the Palestinian Arab fanatics when Arab leaders were directly inciting exactly such a bloodbath in Arabic. And note how he tries to manipulate the West in the aftermath of the Holocaust: his message is that "you didn't protect the Jews for the past decade, if you want to avoid another Holocaust you should do what we demand."
"It will be a question of racial pride" - this is what passed for politically correct antisemitism in 1947. Of course Arabs cannot accept Jews in positions of power, for racial reasons. He is saying that Arabs are a racial group and Jews are considered inferior - it would be an insult to Arab pride to accept Jews as equals.
This Nazi ideology made some inroads into mainstream Arab thought, and Abdul Azzam Pasha was still comfortable enough after World War II to evoke that same ideology.
In the end, though, it wasn't Nazi racial theories that animated this speech. It was age-old antisemitism.
When Mahmoud Abbas threatens that there will be worldwide terror unless Palestinians get their demands met, he is engaging in exactly the same threats that Pasha did. When Arab leaders pretend that Western capitulation to their demands will weaken, rather than embolden, Islamist terrorists, they are using Pasha's playbook. When an Arab leader like King Abdullah only yesterday threatens the West with more "escalation, violence, and extremism" unless Palestinian demands are met, he is copying Pasha's tactics.
The Arabs keep using that methodology because it works.
As mentioned, the predictions by Arab leaders are often way off, but the intent behind these threats are not. And that is a problem the West continues to ignore.
The Western reaction to these kinds of genocidal threats haven't changed in 75 years. There is no direct response, but the message becomes accepted. The myth of "linkage" of the Palestinian issue to every other Middle East problem comes from statements like Pasha's, and the West never called the Arab world on it. Instead, they believed it.
These statements are threats and incitement, and the Western world should respond with outrage, not meek acquiescence and winks that "they don't really mean it."
Finally, the other thing that hasn't changed in 75 years is that the "anti-Zionism"stated here was indistinguishable from antisemitism. The threats were of genocide against Jews, both within and without Palestine, with barely a pretext of the coming bloodbath being about Zionism.
Apologists will keep trying to draw a tortuous line between the two, but they are the same thing. And they always have been.
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