Цитаты из книг — Shay Hazkani

Zionism was initially very influential in the DP camps established in the American zone in Germany. Many members of youth movements were eager to immigrate to Palestine from 1945 onward.

The day after the UN approved partition, fighting reignited between Jews and Arabs, with the understanding that British departure would inaugurate the ultimate battle for Palestine.

Although the protest in Baghdad was initially against the treaty, it quickly came to encompass a much wider range of demands: from calls to send Nuri al-Saiʿd (the pro-British politician who dominated Iraqi politics for decades) and Prime Minister Salih Jabr to the gallows, to calls to distribute bread to the people…

Al-Salihi’s letter demonstrates the extent to which all of these convictions and sectarian identities intersected: not only did he display an anti-Fascist sentiment but also an ideological mix of Iraqi nationalism, pan-Arabism, anticolonialism, and Islamic solidarity. Of course, this degree of ideological mixing should…

At the same time, more violent steps were taken to convince those who refused to enlist. Already in March 1948 the third congress of Holocaust survivors in DP camps decided that those who evaded the draft “would be excluded from social and political life.” By mid-April those who refused to present themselves for…

Alluding to those difficult times in Palestine, a notable from Haifa, Hanna Badr Salim, wrote the editor of al-Difaʿ(Defense) in February 1948 that “we waged war on Zionism, but we were unprepared” because “we were busy fighting one another, which distracted us from the danger.” Even Amin al-Husayni himself may have…

In the Arab world, European expansion into the Ottoman Empire was a malady of similar magnitude. France sponsored autonomous Christian rule in Mount Lebanon in 1861; Algeria and Tunisia were occupied by the French in 1831 and 1881, respectively, and Libya by Italy in 1911. Most egregious in the eyes of many was Britain’s…

Exaggerations in letters home were also not unique to the ALA. Soldiers writing to their families from war zones around the world have often chosen to boast about victories—real or invented—in order to placate or impress their loved ones.

One of the most effective “social cement” themes was the Bible, which had been used already in Palmach education materials before 1948 to promote the view that “activism”—a euphemism for militarism—was the only course of action for the Jewish people. Numerous education pamphlets in 1948–49 stressed the bravery of the Jews…

The Haganah was engaged in sociopolitical training—commonly called hasbara—from its inception in 1920, but a specialized hasbara department was established only during the Second World War. The department focused on both political indoctrination and military education, and a special emphasis was placed on the question of…

A weekly radio broadcast by the general secretary of the association, Muhammad Fawzi Darwish, on the situation in Palestine also helped to win hearts and minds. But it seems that the association’s most successful propaganda weapon was mass rallies, which often drew thousands of supporters, and where anti-Jewish Islamic…

After Syria, Iraq was the country that sent the most volunteers to the ALA: 800 of the 15,000 Iraqis who initially registered their names for volunteering.

The Baʿth party’s propaganda campaign attempted to convince potential volunteers that fighting for Palestine would help secure personal and political freedoms for all Arabs, not only Palestinians. Yet the party did not simply aim to force Arab regimes to change; rather, it considered the fight in Palestine as a means…

Although Arabs constituted two-thirds of the population of Mandate Palestine, the Arab state was allocated only 43 percent of Palestine’s territory; meanwhile, the Jewish state was allocated 56 percent of Palestine’s territory, in which 45 percent of the population would be Arab. Not surprisingly, the plan was endorsed by…

Viewing Orientals as lazy people who shy away from hard work, and as animals, was standard colonial discourse. The only chance at reform, some soldiers believed, was through mimicry.

Many of the well-to-do among the Moroccan immigrants to Israel also displayed different sentiments compared to the majority of Moroccan Jews who wanted to leave Israel. As mentioned, 30 percent of North Africans in the IDF wanted to stay in Israel and also called their families in Morocco to come join them. Explaining…

By that point the British had decided to leave Palestine. Imperial overstretch and immense financial debt after the Second World War motivated the decision, as did concerns over Arab public opinion and the inability to reach an agreement with the United States on Palestine’s future. Jewish guerrilla attacks against the…

Nearby, former Arab officers in the Ottoman army led revolts in the mandated territories of Iraq and Syria in 1919 and 1925, respectively. These revolts brought together grassroots agendas and the political ambition of the former Ottoman officers.

Similarly, ALA men from around the Arab world came to Palestine in solidarity with Palestinians, but also for other reasons: from a will to improve the volunteers’ standing inside their immediate families, to financial constraints, to Islamic and anti-Fascist solidarity. Even when pan-Arabism was cited as the motivation…

For those coming from afar, and for the families they left behind, participation in the 1948 war was driven by complex, and often surprising, interests and causes, not all of which can be tied back to the mobilization campaigns back home. Still, both Jews and Arabs subscribed to a certain collective logic that emphasized…