What is remarkable about Zionism’s claim to the ‘Promised Land’ is how careless they are about preserving its history

The irony of Zionism’s colonisation of Palestine is that it’s the Palestinians who are descended from the original Hebrew tribes

When I listen to spokespersons for the settlers, people like Daniella Weiss who claim that God gave the Jews the Land of Israel, that they are merely ‘returning’ home, I can’t help wondering why it is that the Zionist settlers are so careless about preserving its heritage.

The biblical landscape of the West Bank has been all but destroyed by the hideously ugly hilltop settlements that they have built. I often wonder what these Americanised Judeo-Nazi settlers would do if they ever encountered an ancient Hebrew tribesman from whom they claim descent.  Probably he’d be shot on sight as a ‘terrorist’.

Despite the claims of Zionism’s fascistic rulers, the original Zionist settlers accepted that the Palestinians were the original occupants of what they call the Holy Land. Both David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, Israel’s second President, acknowledged that if anyone is descended from the ancient Hebrew tribesmen it was the Palestinians.  Indeed many Jewish customs persisted throughout the centuries in Palestinian homes such as lighting candles on a Friday night.

According to Israeli historian Tsvi Misinai

nearly 90 percent of all Palestinians are descended from the Jews. ‘And what's more, about half of them know it,’ he says. Not only that, many Palestinians retain Jewish customs, including mourning rituals, lighting Shabbat or memorial candles and even wearing tefillin.

That is the irony of the Zionist claim to be ‘returning’ to Palestine. It is the Palestinians who have a greater claim to be the descendants of the ancient Hebrews. Most Israeli Jews are simply European settler colonists whose ancestors at some stage converted to Judaism. This is another reason why the Zionist colonisation of Palestine was always a political and racial, not religious, phenomenon. See also Clinging to ancient traditions, the last Samaritans keep the faith

The article below from Ha’aretz describes the deliberate Zionist destruction and vandalism in the ancient town of Tiberias. Tiberias was the one of four holy cities for Jews in Palestine – the others being Safed, Jerusalem and Hebron. The architecture, which went back centuries, was in many cases deliberately destroyed to erase the traces of its Arab inhabitants. Zionism represented the intrusion of the West, with all its gaudy and cheap Americanised culture, into the Orient.

A similar phenomenon occurred when Ibn Saud and the Wahabi army took over Arabia. Over 98% of the Kingdom’s historical and religious sites have been destroyed since 1985, estimates the Islamic Heritage Research Foundation in London. “It’s as if they wanted to wipe out history,” says Ali Al-Ahmed, of the Institute for Gulf Affairs in Washington. See Saudi Arabia Bulldozes Over Its Heritage and Never-ending destruction of historical sites in Mecca and Medina, cradle of Islam

The Zionist  destruction of the biblical heritage of Palestine was perpetrated by the Haganah, the Israeli army and the kibbutzim, who deliberately destroyed the ancient Palestinian villages so as to erase all trace of the previous occupants.  So ashamed are the Zionists of what they did that they still refuse to release files from Haganah’s archives from 1948. The Zionists know that contrary to the lies of people like Israeli Ambassador Tzipi Hotoveli, the Nakba is no lie.

International forces overseeing the evacuation of Iraq al-Manshiyya, near today's Kiryat Gat, in March, 1949.Credit: Collection of Benno Rothenberg/Israel State Archives 

For over a decade Israeli Defense Ministry teams have scoured local archives and removed troves of historic documents to conceal proof of the Nakba. See Burying the Nakba: How Israel Systematically Hides Evidence of 1948 Expulsion of Arabs and Secret Israeli unit hiding documents to undermine history of Nakba: Report

One day when the Israeli state is dismantled we will see the Zionist lies for what they are but the fact that Israel is reclassifying files that previously were released demonstrates that the leaders of Israel know in their hearts that their state is an illegitimate one.

Tony Greenstein

How Israel Destroyed Old Tiberias

Sitting on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, old Tiberias is full of winding streets and ancient monuments – most of which are currently in a shockingly derelict state.

The Omari Mosque in Tiberias, built in the 18th century by Zahir al-Umar.Credit: Gil Eliahu

Moshe Gilad

May. 18, 2022 2:12 PM

Tiberias was once a small city. Walking the length of the Old City from north to south takes less than a half hour. This week, we took a leisurely stroll from the Zahir al-Umar Fortress to the Greek Orthodox Church on the shore. It’s a short distance, only a few hundred meters, but the sights are astounding.

An illustration of Zahir al-Umar, who was the autonomous Arab ruler of northern Palestine in the mid-18th century.Credit: Ziad Zaydany

Professor Mustafa Abbasi, a historian, pointed out the buildings that have survived in this part of the city. We saw the fortress; the administrative building built by the Ottomans known as the saraya; the building that once housed the Tiberias Hotel; the Franciscan Church; the guard towers on the remnants of the ancient city wall, the dilapidated Omari Mosque built by Zahir al-Umar (whose  name is sometimes spelled Daher al-Omar) in the 18th century and the sealed-off Al-Bahr Mosque. We saw the Etz Hahayim Synagogue built by Rabbi Hayyim Abulafia, and drank coffee on the boardwalk. We turned down two offers to sail on the lake in a boat. We bought hats at one of the shops on Hagalil Street. Abbasi chose a khaki-colored cap. Mine had two yellow pineapples on it.

The bottom line of the tour that we did: The sights are lovely and awful at the same time. Tiberias is a beautiful city that sits on the shore of a beautiful lake, but it also very neglected and unattractive. The remnants of the Old City are large structures built of black basalt, things of real beauty, but only a few remain and some are in terrible condition. The city wall was nearly completely destroyed by the combined damage of earthquakes, severe flooding in 1934, the war of 1948 and events since then. Amazing assets of the city are either, at best, totally neglected or, at worst, deliberately wrecked.

The building that was once the Hotel Tiberias. Credit: Gil Eliahu

All this happened on our watch. Just 74 years ago, Israeli sappers blew up entire historic quarters of the city that were home to both Arabs and Jews. A city rich in historical and cultural heritage was almost totally wiped off the face of the earth.

No new, attractive city center was built in its place. The streets in the center of the Old City all look terrible now. Some are appallingly rundown. Zahir al-Umar's Omari Mosque looks like a ruin being used as a dump in the heart of the city. Many shops on the main streets stand empty. An entire building on Hagalil Street is burned-out and covered with soot. Several buildings appear to be abandoned. In other streets, there are stores and coffee shops that bear the signs of poverty and neglect. The boardwalk named for Yigal Allon has been fixed up a bit, but it still not very inviting. It’s quite disheartening to see a city that is such an important center of tourism for the Galilee area look this way.

Prof. Abbasi, who has extensively researched the history of the Galilee area and teaches at Tel Hai Academic College, recently published a book in Hebrew titled “Tiberias and its Arab Inhabitants during the British Mandate Period, 1918-1948.” The book is a detailed academic historical study, but I found myself reading several chapters with bated breath. The story of Tiberias is presented from a different vantage point, one with which I was not familiar. Abbasi tells the tale of a mixed Arab and Jewish city that could serve as a model of coexistence. He also traces the story of this city’s destruction.

Some 300 years ago, Zahir al-Umar, then the Ottoman ruler of the Galilee, invited Rabbi Hayyim Abulafia, convincing him to travel from Izmir and settle on the banks of the Sea of Galilee. The rabbi finally relented, arriving with 40 adherents in 1740, and the governor assisted him in constructing the Jewish Quarter in the heart of the Old City. The quarter was surrounded by Muslim ones, and the relations between the neighbors, according to Abbasi, were excellent. This tranquil coexistence characterized Tiberias for over 200 years. The Jewish leadership, headed by the Abulafia and Alhadif families, large and prestigious Sephardi families, lived in good relations with the Arab residents, headed by the al-Tabari family, whose members served as qadis and muftis and held much property.

The walls of the Old City in Tiberias.Credit: Gil Eliahu

• One of the world's oldest mosques found in Tiberias, Israel
• One man’s crusade to capture the memories of an Arab Israeli town
• Where the streets have no Arabic name, a group of women reminds us of Palestinian history

Thanks to the local leadership, peace was maintained during the 1929 riots that washed over the rest of the country. Twenty years later, the situation was different. Moderating influences had weakened. The Jewish mayor, Zaki Alhadif, was murdered in 1938. In Kiryat Shmuel, near the city, 19 Jews were murdered that year. The moderating forces on each side disappeared. The extremists and the militants dictated the tone.

On April 18th, 1948, after several days of battle between the Haganah underground militia and Arab forces, the British removed the Arabs of Tiberias by bus. Before that, the Old City had been home to 6,000 Jews and 5.000 Arabs. (Today, the city is home to 50,000 people, all Jews.) Tiberias, long sacred to Christians and Jews, received a sanctified status from Muslims, as well. The holiest Muslim compound in the city, almost unmentioned in advertising for the city, according to Abbasi, is a shrine to Sitt Sakina, a descendant of the Prophet Mohammed. This tomb is known today as the Tomb of Rachel, wife of Rabbi Akiva, and is located at the southern end of town.

Part of the Greek Orthodox monastery in Tiberias.Credit: Gil Eliahu

According to Abbasi’s book, Tiberias had become a symbol of Arab and Jewish coexistence for hundreds of years. The warm relations ended in a grand collapse, at the height of which the Arabs of Tiberias and the Jews of the Old City were forced to leave their homes. The British moved the Arabs to Nazareth and Jordan, and the Old City’s Jews were moved to other neighborhoods. The residents of Tiberias were the first Arab urban community to be removed in its entirety, and reearch shows that this happened partly because Jewish decision-making shifted out of the city, to the Haganah national headquarters.

This is how Abbasi describes this astonishing sequence of events:

“Immediately after [the removal], there began a systematic and intentional demolition of the holy Old City, which was razed to the ground. […] Such destruction was common and carried out in hundreds of Arab villages and towns, but it was very surprising in Tiberias, which was considered a sacred Jewish city, and many of its homes were owned by Jews. […] The interesting part about the destruction, in addition to the loss of valuable historical, archeological, and religious riches, was the stubborn struggle by Jews from the Old City to receive compensation. Jews who against all expectations, found themselves sharing the suffering of their Arab neighbors.”

Women walk by the Greek Orthodox Church on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, in Tiberias. Credit: Gil Eliyahu

Old Tiberias was destroyed in three stages. First, in April 1948, a few buildings were destroyed in the fighting. In June of that year, the military blew up a few more buildings, and in January 1949 massive demolition of Old City houses began.

Half the properties in the Old City were Jewish-owned, yet the authorities destroyed its ancient area almost completely, showing no regard for its holiness or history of coexistence. According to Abbasi, the demolitions were not random, but part of an overall approach toward Arab villages and towns in order to prevent the return of the Arab residents.

While the government made no formal decision to destroy the city, it provided the military and municipal authorities with the means to do so, and never tried to prevent the destruction. Government institutions displayed contempt toward the Jews of the Old City, who belonged to what was called “the old yishuv.” This contempt was expressed not only in the destruction of their homes, but also the confiscation of the land and the demand that they pay rent for their temporary abodes in empty Arab homes.

Abbasi’s conclusion is that Tiberias, to the decision-makers, was a city with an Eastern landscape or appearance. He says proponents of the destruction repeatedly described it in a similar way:

“In its appearance and narrow alleys it was, to them, a manifestation of the old, degenerate, and corrupt. This attitude was common to many in those days, and is particularly vivid in the description by senior Jewish National Fund figure Yosef Weitz. The Arab and Muslim ‘Eastern landscape’ was to them not only a danger to national security, but also an object of repugnance. To them, it symbolized the backwardness of the East, and therefore they didn’t hesitate to destroy it, even at the cost of hurting Jews.”

The former Hotel Tiberias, which was built by German Templers.Credit: Gil Eliyahu

Remains of the citadel at Tiberias which Zahir al-Umar built early in his rule. Credit: Gil Eliyahu

A street in Tiberias' Old City. Credit: Gil Eliahu

What we see in today’s today is a direct result of the destruction that took place 74 years ago. There are places in Tiberias that look slated for immediate demolition, and others where perhaps it would have been better to just not build anything. Much of what had been built simply looks bad, and that includes some of the new hotels.

History will connect us

Abbasi is one of the most optimistic people I have ever met. He believes in peace and the brotherhood of nations. He believes in the sanctity of life and a good future. When I suggest that the city was ruined by crooks, he looks at me softly and smiles patiently.

“I believe that history needs to be enlisted for compromises and not wars,” he says. “We enlisted history to exhaust and kill each other. I was born in a home that believed in the brotherhood of nations. My family ran a Sufi order in Safed, and the chief rabbis of Safed were friends of my grandfather and helped him stay in the country. History should connect the two peoples. I don’t omit the difficult points, but the question is how you present them. Tiberias and its people need to make hopeful voices heard. Let us provide hope without giving up describing what happened.”

Part of the fortress built by Zahir al-Umar around Tiberias. Credit: Gil Eliyahu

According to Abbasi, his book is unique in telling the story of the Arabs of Tiberias, who have been absent or presented as component with no weight or impact in other studies. Their absence, he says, is a perversion of history and denies answers to those seeking to delve deeper into the city’s history. In the final chapter of his book, he writes: “The main contribution of this book is that, despite its focus on the British Mandate period, it also discusses the Arab population of Tiberias since the renewal of the city in the early 18th century.”

In a conference held via Zoom to mark the publication of Abbasi’s book a few weeks ago, historian Prof. Aviva Halamish of the Open University said that historically, Tiberias’ situation was different from that of other mixed cities in the country. This was because of a number of factors: a relatively peripheral location, the Sephardic Jewish majority, Jews and Arabs living side by side in the Old City, the fact that most Jewish immigrants who arrived in the city weren’t Zionist, and mostly the fact that Arabic was the dominant language in the city, common to both Jews and Arabs. Nationalism, says Halamish, was more muted, and so relations between Arabs and Jews were closer and more relaxed.

A postcard with a photo of Tiberias taken in 1917. The Hotel Tiberias can be seen in the center. Credit: Unknown author

In 2007, journalist Dalia Karpel created a fascinating documentary film, “The Diaries of Yossef Nachmani.” The film centers on the days of conquest and destruction in Tiberias through the eyes of Nachmani, an alum of Hashomer, the paramilitary self-defense organization active in the 1910s, and the director of the Jewish National Fund office in Tiberias, who worked a great deal with the Arab population.

The film paints a captivating depiction of the change in Nachmani’s beliefs. At first, he was a proponent of dialogue and reconciliation with the Arab population, and supported having it remain in the city. He wrote lines in his diary such as: “We are widening the abyss and arousing hate. The hotheads’ urges must be restrained.” Soon after, in a total turnaround, Nachmani avidly supported the destruction of the Old City to prevent the return of the Arabs. To add to the already bizarre situation, his son, Shimon Nachmani, was one of the explosives technicians who, on military orders, blew up the Old City homes.

No one left to care for the people

A couple walks by the Sea Mosque in Tiberias.Credit: Gil Eliyahu

“I study on the micro level,” Abbasi says of his research. “From a collection of details I build a macro, and thus produce a different story than generalizations, and an overall model of history. Generalizations are the easy way to write history. I don’t set boundaries in advance. The material sets the boundaries and leads me to the story. The study of Tiberias and its Arab population is an example of a case of micro-historical research of our country.

"The history here [in the city] is written from the bottom up, through the daily life of the urban population in all its components, from the elite to the commoners, who were the overwhelming majority in the city, and in our case mostly Arabs. There were fishermen among them, farmers, builders, workers at the nearby hot springs, water vendors, women who worked in the tourism industry, drivers and coach owners, and even immigrants who came from Syria, stayed in the city and worked odd jobs. Without understanding the social

processes and the interactions between them and the local elite, it is hard to understand the city’s history.”

Abbasi says the heroes of the city, who fought tooth and nail to maintain coexistence, were Mayor Alhadif and the Al-Tabari family. Alhadif’s family came to Tiberias in the 18th century along with with Rabbi Abulafia and his disciples. Alhadif served as mayor from 1928 until his murder in 1938. When the supporters of coexistence vanished from the stage, there was no one left to care for the people.

How can Tiberias’ future be better?

The Etz Hahaim Synagogue in Tiberias.Credit: Gil Eliahu

“Tiberias can be the jewel of the Galilee. The leaders of the city need to change their thinking and connect with the Arab population in the Galilee. Tiberias flourished when it was better connected to the region, both within the Galilee and beyond the border. It was a city convoys passed through en route to Damascus. Golani Interchange was actually part of Tiberias and served as the most important junction in the country since the dawn of time.

“We should remember that Tiberias depended in the past on connections with Syria and Jordan. Until 1948, five buses left from here to Jordan every day. If there is a ‘warm’ peace with Jordan and peace with Syria, Tiberias will not remain a peripheral city.

“The Night of Bridge” – June 16, 1946, when Israeli paramilitary forces blew up the bridges connecting Mandatory Palestine with the neighboring countries – “was the night economic ties with the East were destroyed. Tiberias is a city at the edge of the East. If you’re not connected to the East, you have no economy. You can’t live in the East and revile everything Eastern.

Prof. Mustafa Abbasi.Credit: Gil Eliahu

“For a historian like me, who knows both sides well, it breaks my heart. I’m connected to the country and the religion. I have deep roots here. But when I see both sides harming each other, I feel bad. It surprises me that it is the intellectuals on both sides who either stay on the sidelines, or join the most extreme statements.

“Once there is a high dose of religiosity and nationalism, it’s lethal. National and religious zeal is destructive. We have turned nationalism into the holiest thing. To me, humanity is the center of the world, and not the nation…

 “I am optimistic because humanity is a smart creature. I believe, based on a connection to Sufism, that every human being has a divine spark. You cannot be a Sufi and hate others. The goal is to turn this into a way of life. My grandfather sat with clerics from all denominations in Safed and Jish and respected them. At prayer time, everyone went to pray to their own prophet and came and sat back down, to talk and be happy. I ask today, how did we get to such levels of hate? Our lack of familiarity has turned us into monsters. To stop that, we need dialogue and discourse.”

 

The remnants of a ruined stone tower in Tiberias.Credit: Gil Eliahu 

What is the conclusion of your book about Tiberias?

“The writing of the book lasted for three years, and what kept me strong during that time was that despite the tragic end of Tiberias, it shows the ability of its leaders to live together for 200 years and overcome crises. The local leaders were heroes because they fought against the odds. The extremists may have won eventually, but Tiberias proved that we can live together. Since the Arabs were thrown out of the city, everyone has suffered.”

Requests for the comment of the Tiberias municipal authorities to the above and as to its plans for the Old City received no reply.

Understanding the Background to the Murder of Jamal Khashoggi

King Abdel Aziz Ibn Saud with Sir Percy Cox

How Zionism and British Imperialism helped create the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

The barbaric murder of Jamal Khashogii, medieval in its savagery as befits this western imposed regime, has literally set the cat amongst the imperialist pigeons.

For some time Israel has been building, with the full support of the Trump administration, an alliance with Saudi Arabia against Iran. When Obama  reached his agreement on nuclear weapons with Iran and the European states, it was a combined Israeli and Saudi Arabian campaign which led to the decision of Trump to abrogate the agreement.

Jamal Khashogii, murdered Saudi journalist - he was no radical but was on the wrong side of the divide in the Saudi royal family

Mohammed bin Salman has been touted in the West as a ‘reformer’ and ‘moderniser’ whereas he is nothing of the kind.  He is as authoritarian and capricious as any who have proceeded him. His primary goal is to remove any impediment to an open relationship with Israel and that means ‘solving’ the Palestinian Question by forcing a Bantustan-style solution in the area. Even arch-collaborator Mahmoud Abbas has resisted such an open betrayal.

There is nothing ‘modern’ about MBS. The decision to allow women to drive, which is essential if women are to be integrated into the Saudi economy, was also accompanied by the round up of women rights activists. To see in the decision any form of liberation for Saudi women or democratisation in Saudi Arabia is an exercise in self-deception. As the murder of Khashoggi has demonstrated, the iron rule of the Saud dynasty continues unchecked. Modernising the state simply means making it more open to western investment and reducing the dependence on oil revenues.

Consulate staff in Istanbul

The other aspect of his ‘modernisation’ consists of some curbs on the religious police, the "mutawa" and the clerical establishment. This is part of the attempt to move Saudi Arabia away from the Wahhabist and Salafist tradition in the light of the way this political current has morphed into ISIS and Al-Qada. However I wouldn’t advise people to hold their breath, not least because of the strength of the existing religious and clerical caste in Saudi Arabia.

Only those who see Saudi Arabia as a place which will do the West’s bidding and who view the state as a rock of support for imperialism see modernisation and democratisation. MBS himself, despite all the western propaganda about him being a progressive moderniser has been impetuous and erratic, an accident waiting to happen.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo meets MBS 16.10.18

When it comes to repression MBS has been no reformer. Whether it has been the arrest of women’s rights activists or the increased pace of executions, not least of Shi’ites, MBS has shown that when it comes to repression he is every bit as capable as his predecessors. Last year he arrested hundreds of princes and held them in a luxury hotel where, according to some reports, many were tortured to get them to relinquish their ill-gotten gains.

As Daniel Shapiro, the former US Ambassador writes in Ha’aretz the Khashoggi murder is a disaster for Israel above all. In Israel’s attempt to achieve regional supremacy Saudi Arabia has been Israel’s most important ally in the region. This not a new relationship. It was first established in the civil war in Northern Yemen in the early 1960’s between Royalists and Republicans. Israel then gave covert support.

Turkish journalists protest Erdogan's repression

The grisly murder of Khashoggi, captured by all accounts by a Turkish monitoring device, demonstrates the medieval barbarity of the Saudi regime. Anyone who thinks MBS wasn’t aware of what was happening is indeed naive.

As Shapiro says ‘"It’s worse than a crime. It’s a mistake." One might add, a strategic mistake.’ To capture and then dismember a journalist of the Washington Post and not to realise that there would be a comeback suggests that the regime of MBS lacks any deep decision making or thought processes. From the blockade of Qatar to the kidnapping of Lebanon’s Prime Minister Saad Hariri, MBS has demonstrated that he is impetuous and incapable of strategic thinking.

Despite command of the air, the war in Yemen has been a public relations disaster. The only thing in MBS’s favour is there doesn’t appear to be a force in Saudi Arabia capable of overthrowing him, despite obvious discontent amongst the clerical caste and large chunks  of the royal caste to say nothing of the Shi’ite minority and the Saudi population itself.

Trump and MBS on a demonstration outside the White House!

What is remarkable about the murder of Khashoggi is the complete silence of Netanyahu and the Israeli government  It is as if they are transfixed like a rabbit in the headlines knowing that anything they say can only do MBS damage.

As Shapiro points out it is conservative Republican senators Rubio and Lindsey Graham who have been loudest in their opposition to what is happening.  One gets the feeling that the orientation to Saudi Arabia and the proposed confrontation with Iran that Trump and John Bolton favours does not meet with their approval.

As Ron Kampeas and the JTA observed in Why Are Some pro-Israel Voices Speaking Out Against Jamal Khashoggi? the Israel lobby is not at all happy at what is happening.  Khashoggi is being portrayed as an anti-Semitic supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, anti-Israel and a supporter of terrorism.

Trump with chart of US military sales to Saudi Arabia

Patrick Poole described Khashoggi as ‘a democrat reformer journalist holding a RPG with jihadists.” Frontpage magazine under David Horowitz joined in the attack.  Frontpage is a virulently Islamaphobic paper.

On Oct. 17, the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s European office sent out a release titled “Wiesenthal Centre Exposes Jamal Khashoggi Antisemitic Tweets.” Khashoggi’s support for ‘terrorism’ is a major theme of these Zionist attacks.

Ha’aretz has been the leading Zionist paper bemoaning what is happening. Louis Fishman complained that people were falling for Turkey’s conspiracy. In On Khashoggi, U.S. Journalists Are Falling for Turkey's Conspiracist, State-run Media Fishman warns of the machinations by a Turkish state which is itself hardly a friend of journalists.  True but irrelevant and there is a difference between detaining journalists and cutting them up and burying them in the grounds of the Saudi Consul’s villa!

Fishman’s main complaint though is that the wily Erdogan is using the murder of Khashoggi to strike back at his Saudi rival thus further complicating the Middle East jigsaw.

Israel is the great loser in this hence why its lobbyists have been playing up Khashoggi’s ‘terrorist’ credentials. MBS is a strong supporter of the Trump ‘peace agreement’ which is believed to involve the transplantation of much of Gaza’s population into the Sinai desert.

Thus it is that Tzvia Greenfield, who is a supporter of the left-Zionist Meretz, argues in Why We Should Go Easy on the Saudi Crown Prince. She writes that ‘for 50 years we’ve prayed for a key Arab leader who agrees to sign a significant pact with Israel. Such a leader has finally arrived’.

A good roundup of the Israel Lobby’s activity is in Ali Abunimah’s Israel lobby wants Saudis to get away with Khashoggi murder. As Ali points out, everytime there has been a new Saudi ruler, he has been greeted as a ‘reformer’ even though the repression has never let up. This is a Western game to legitimise every new dictator. It is strange that Saudi Arabia is such a repressive state given the number of reformers there have been! 

That is why this article by Nu'man Abd al Wahid is important.  It shows how British imperialism first created Saudi Arabia by plucking Ibn Saud out of the desert in order to weaken and overthrow more nationalistically oriented Arab leaders, in particular Sherif Hussein of Mecca and how it was integrally linked to the British capture of Palestine and the establishment of the Palestine Mandate and its support of the Zionist settler colonial project.  It is an article which bears reading by those interested in the background to the savage Wahhabist rulers of this desert monarchy stuffed with oil.

Tony Greenstein

How Zionism helped create the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Nu'man Abd al-Wahid

First published in Mondoweiss

SHAFAQNA – On January 7, 2016, amid rising tensions in the Middle East – which tensions have seen Saudi Arabia hardened its narrative against Iran on account of fabricated, and many have argued non-existent threats, Nu’man Abd al-Wahid decided to looked in the genesis of Saudi Arabia – its political history, and the ideology which has supported its absolutist monarchy.

One of the richest countries in the world per capita, Saudi Arabia has recently pioneered a new foreign policy trend, one which has favored military intervention over diplomacy and political collaboration.

While governments have often disagree, military can only ever be a matter of last resort, a defense mechanism when all else has been exhausted.

Today Riyadh appears to have abandoned reason in favor of violence, threatening to drag the region in its wake.

In the following article Nu’man Abd al-Wahid turns to history to retrace the rise of the kingdom and those alliances which have led to the quagmire we find ourselves in.

The covert alliance between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Zionist entity of Israel should be no surprise to any student of British imperialism. The problem is the study of British imperialism has very few students. Indeed, one can peruse any undergraduate or post-graduate British university prospectus and rarely find a module in a Politics degree on the British Empire let alone a dedicated degree or Masters degree. Of course if the European led imperialist carnage in the four years between 1914 – 1918 tickles your cerebral cells then it’s not too difficult to find an appropriate institution to teach this subject, but if you would like to delve into how and why the British Empire waged war on mankind for almost four hundred years you’re practically on your own in this endeavour. One must admit, that from the British establishment’s perspective, this is a formidable and remarkable achievement.

In late 2014, according to the American journal, Foreign Affairs, the Saudi petroleum Minister, Ali al-Naimi is reported to have said “His Majesty King Abdullah has always been a model for good relations between Saudi Arabia and other states and the Jewish state is no exception.” Recently, Abdullah’s successor, King Salman expressed similar concerns to those of Israel’s to the growing agreement between the United States and Iran over the latter’s nuclear programme. This led some to report that Israel and KSA presented a “united front” in their opposition to the nuclear deal. This was not the first time the Zionists and Saudis have found themselves in the same corner in dealing with a perceived common foe. In North Yemen in the 1960’s, the Saudis were financing a British imperialist led mercenary army campaign against revolutionary republicans who had assumed authority after overthrowing the authoritarian, Imam. Gamal Abdul-Nasser’s Egypt militarily backed the republicans, while the British induced the Saudis to finance and arm the remaining remnants of the Imam’s supporters. Furthermore, the British organised the Israelis to drop arms for the British proxies in North Yemen, 14 times. The British, in effect, militarily but covertly, brought the Zionists and Saudis together in 1960’s North Yemen against their common foe.

However, as this author has previously written, one must return to the 1920’s to fully appreciate the origins of this informal and indirect alliance between Saudi Arabia and the Zionist entity. An illuminating study by Dr. Askar H. al-Enazy, titled, The Creation of Saudi Arabia: Ibn Saud and British Imperial Policy, 1914-1927, has further and uniquely provided any student of British Imperialism primary sourced evidence on the origins of this alliance. This study by Dr. Enazy influences the following piece.  The defeat of the Ottoman Empire by British imperialism in World War One, left three distinct authorities in the Arabian peninsula: Sharif of Hijaz: Hussain bin Ali of Hijaz (in the west), Ibn Rashid of Ha’il (in the north) and Emir Ibn Saud of Najd (in the east) and his religiously fanatical followers, the Wahhabis.

Ibn Saud had entered the war early in January 1915 on the side of the British, but was quickly defeated and his British handler, William Shakespear was killed by the Ottoman Empire’s ally Ibn Rashid. This defeat greatly hampered Ibn Saud’s utility to the Empire and left him militarily hamstrung for a year.[1] The Sharif contributed the most to the Ottoman Empire’s defeat by switching allegiances and leading the so-called ‘Arab Revolt’ in June 1916 which removed the Turkish presence from Arabia. He was convinced to totally alter his position because the British had strongly led him to believe, via correspondence with Henry McMahon, the British High Commissioner in Egypt, that a unified Arab country from Gaza to the Persian Gulf will be established with the defeat of the Turks. The letters exchanged between Sharif Hussain and Henry McMahon are known as the McMahon-Hussain Correspondence.

Understandably, the Sharif as soon as the war ended wanted to hold the British to their war time promises, or what he perceived to be their war time promises, as expressed in the aforementioned correspondence. The British, on the other hand, wanted the Sharif to accept the Empire’s new reality which was a division of the Arab world between them and the French (Sykes-Picot agreement) and the implementation of the Balfour Declaration, which guaranteed ‘a national for the Jewish people’ in Palestine by colonisation with European Jews. This new reality was contained in the British written, Anglo-Hijaz Treaty, which the Sharif was profoundly averse to signing.[2] After all, the revolt of 1916 against the Turks was dubbed the ‘Arab Revolt’ not the ‘Hijazi Revolt’.

Actually, the Sharif let it be known that he will never sell out Palestine to the Empire’s Balfour Declaration; he will never acquiescence to the establishment of Zionism in Palestine or accept the new random borders drawn across Arabia by British and French imperialists. For their part the British began referring to him as an ‘obstructionist’, a ‘nuisance’ and of having a ‘recalcitrant’ attitude.

The British let it be known to the Sharif that they were prepared to take drastic measures to bring about his approval of the new reality regardless of the service that he had rendered them during the War. After the Cairo Conference in March 1921, where the new Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill met with all the British operatives in the Middle East, T.E. Lawrence (i.e. of Arabia) was dispatched to meet the Sharif to bribe and bully him to accept Britain’s Zionist colonial project in Palestine. Initially, Lawrence and the Empire offered 80,000 rupees.[3] The Sharif rejected it outright. Lawrence then offered him an annual payment of £100,000.[4] The Sharif refused to compromise and sell Palestine to British Zionism.

When financial bribery failed to persuade the Sharif, Lawrence threatened him with an Ibn Saud takeover. Lawrence claimed that “politically and militarily, the survival of Hijaz as a viable independent Hashemite kingdom was wholly dependent on the political will of Britain, who had the means to protect and maintain his rule in the region.” [5] In between negotiating with the Sharif, Lawrence made the time to visit other leaders in the Arabian peninsula and informed them that they if they don’t tow the British line and avoid entering into an alliance with the Sharif, the Empire will unleash Ibn Saud and his Wahhabis who after all is at Britain’s ‘beck and call’.[6]

Simultaneously, after the Conference, Churchill travelled to Jerusalem and met with the Sharif’s son, Abdullah, who had been made the ruler, “Emir”, of a new territory called “Transjordan.” Churchill informed Abdullah that he should persuade “his father to accept the Palestine mandate and sign a treaty to such effect,” if not “the British would unleash Ibn Saud against Hijaz.”[7] In the meantime the British were planning to unleash Ibn Saud on the ruler of Ha’il, Ibn Rashid.

Ibn Rashid had rejected all overtures from the British Empire made to him via Ibn Saud, to be another of its puppets.[8] More so, Ibn Rashid expanded his territory north to the new mandated Palestinian border as well as to the borders of Iraq in the summer of 1920. The British became concerned that an alliance maybe brewing between Ibn Rashid who controlled the northern part of the peninsula and the Sharif who controlled the western part. More so, the Empire wanted the land routes between the Palestinian ports on the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf under the rule of a friendly party. At the Cairo Conference, Churchill agreed with an imperial officer, Sir Percy Cox that “Ibn Saud should be ‘given the opportunity to occupy Hail.’”[9] By the end of 1920, the British were showering Ibn Saud with “a monthly ‘grant’ of £10,000 in gold, on top of his monthly subsidy. He also received abundant arms supplies, totalling more than 10,000 rifles, in addition to the critical siege and four field guns” with British-Indian instructors.[10] Finally, in September 1921, the British unleashed Ibn Saud on Ha’il which officially surrendered in November 1921. It was after this victory the British bestowed a new title on Ibn Saud. He was no longer to be “Emir of Najd and Chief of its Tribes” but “Sultan of Najd and its Dependencies”. Ha’il had dissolved into a dependency of the Empire’s Sultan of Najd.

If the Empire thought that the Sharif, with Ibn Saud now on his border and armed to the teeth by the British, would finally become more amenable to the division of Arabia and the British Zionist colonial project in Palestine they were short lived. A new round of talks between Abdulla’s son, acting on behalf of his father in Transjordan and the Empire resulted in a draft treaty accepting Zionism. When it was delivered to the Sharif with an accompanying letter from his son requesting that he “accept reality”, he didn’t even bother to read the treaty and instead composed a draft treaty himself rejecting the new divisions of Arabia as well as the Balfour Declaration and sent it to London to be ratified![11]

Ever since 1919 the British had gradually decreased Hussain’s subsidy to the extent that by the early 1920’s they had suspended it, while at the same time continued subsidising Ibn Saud right through the early 1920’s.[12] After a further three rounds of negotiations in Amman and London, it dawned on the Empire that Hussain will never relinquish Palestine to Great Britain’s Zionist project or accept the new divisions in Arab lands.[13]In March 1923, the British informed Ibn Saud that it will cease his subsidy but not without awarding him an advance ‘grant’ of £50,000 upfront, which amounted to a year’s subsidy.[14]

In March 1924, a year after the British awarded the ‘grant’ to Ibn Saud, the Empire announced that it had terminated all discussions with Sharif Hussain to reach an agreement.[15] Within weeks the forces of Ibn Saud and his Wahhabi followers began to administer what the British foreign secretary, Lord Curzon called the “final kick” to Sharif Hussain and attacked Hijazi territory.[16] By September 1924, Ibn Saud had overrun the summer capital of Sharif Hussain, Ta’if. The Empire then wrote to Sharif’s sons, who had been awarded kingdoms in Iraq and Transjordan not to provide any assistance to their besieged father or in diplomatic terms they were informed “to give no countenance to interference in the Hedjaz”.[17] In Ta’if, Ibn Saud’s Wahhabis committed their customary massacres, slaughtering women and children as well as going into mosques and killing traditional Islamic scholars.[18] They captured the holiest place in Islam, Mecca, in mid-October 1924. Sharif Hussain was forced to abdicate and went to exile to the Hijazi port of Akaba. He was replaced as monarch by his son Ali who made Jeddah his governmental base. As Ibn Saud moved to lay siege to the rest of Hijaz, the British found the time to begin incorporating the northern Hijazi port of Akaba into Transjordan. Fearing that Sharif Hussain may use Akaba as a base to rally Arabs against the Empire’s Ibn Saud, the Empire let it be known that in no uncertain terms that he must leave Akaba or Ibn Saud will attack the port. For his part, Sharif Hussain responded that he had,

“never acknowledged the mandates on Arab countries and still protest against the British Government which has made Palestine a national home for the Jews.”[19]

Sharif Hussain was forced out of Akaba, a port he had liberated from the Ottoman Empire during the ‘Arab Revolt’, on the 18th June 1925 on HMS Cornflower.

Ibn Saud had begun his siege of Jeddah in January 1925 and the city finally surrendered in December 1925 bringing to an end over 1000 years of rule by the Prophet Muhammad’s descendants. The British officially recognised Ibn Saud as the new King of Hijaz in February 1926 with other European powers following suit within weeks. The new unified Wahhabi state was rebranded by the Empire in 1932 as the “Kingdom of Saudi Arabia” (KSA). A certain George Rendel, an officer working at the Middle East desk at the Foreign Office in London, claimed credit for the new name.

On the propaganda level, the British served the Wahhabi takeover of Hijaz on three fronts. Firstly, they portrayed and argued that Ibn Saud’s invasion of Hijaz was motivated by religious fanaticism rather than by British imperialism’s geo-political considerations.[20] This deception is propounded to this day, most recently in Adam Curtis’s acclaimed BBC “Bitter Lake” documentary, whereby he states that the “fierce intolerant vision of wahhabism” drove the “beduins” to create Saudi Arabia.[21] Secondly, the British portrayed Ibn Saud’s Wahhabi fanatics as a benign and misunderstood force who only wanted to bring Islam back to its purest form.[22] To this day, these Islamist jihadis are portrayed in the most benign manner when their armed insurrections is supported by Britain and the West such as 1980’s Afghanistan or in today’s Syria, where they are referred to in the western media as “moderate rebels.” Thirdly, British historians portray Ibn Saud as an independent force and not as a British instrument used to horn away anyone perceived to be surplus to imperial requirements. For example, Professor Eugene Rogan’s recent study on the history on Arabs claims that “Ibn Saud had no interest in fighting” the Ottoman Empire. This is far from accurate as Ibn Saud joined the war in 1915. He further disingenuously claims that Ibn Saud was only interested in advancing “his own objectives” which fortuitously always dovetailed with those of the British Empire.[23]

In conclusion, one of the most overlooked aspects of the Balfour Declaration is the British Empire’s commitment to “use their best endeavours to facilitate” the creation of “a national home for the Jewish people”. Obviously, many nations in the world today were created by the Empire but what makes Saudi Arabia’s borders distinctive is that its northern and north-eastern borders are the product of the Empire facilitating the creation of Israel. At the very least the dissolution of the two Arab sheikhdoms of Ha’il and Hijaz by Ibn Saud’s Wahhabis is based in their leaders’ rejection to facilitate the British Empire’s Zionist project in Palestine.

Therefore, it is very clear that the British Empire’s drive to impose Zionism in Palestine is embedded in the geographical DNA of contemporary Saudi Arabia. There is further irony in the fact that the two holiest sites in Islam are today governed by the Saudi clan and Wahhabi teachings because the Empire was laying the foundations for Zionism in Palestine in the 1920s. Contemporaneously, it is no surprise that both Israel and Saudi Arabia are keen in militarily intervening on the side of “moderate rebels” i.e. jihadis, in the current war on Syria, a country which covertly and overtly rejects the Zionist colonisation of Palestine.

As the United States, the ‘successor’ to the British Empire in defending western interests in the Middle East, is perceived to be growing more hesitant in engaging militarily in the Middle East, there is an inevitability that the two nations rooted in the Empire’s Balfour Declaration, Israel and Saudi Arabia, would develop a more overt alliance to defend their common interests.

Notes

[1] Gary Troeller, “The Birth of Saudi Arabia” (London: Frank Cass, 1976) pg.91.

[2] Askar H. al-Enazy, “ The Creation of Saudi Arabia: Ibn Saud and British Imperial Policy, 1914-1927” (London: Routledge, 2010), pg. 105-106.

[3] ibid., pg. 109.

[4] ibid., pg.111.

[5] ibid.

[6] ibid.

[7] ibid., pg 107.

[8] ibid., pg. 45-46 and pg.101-102.

[9] ibid., pg.104.

[10] ibid.

[11] ibid., pg. 113.

[12] ibid., pg.110 and Troeller, op. cit., pg.166.

[13] al-Enazy op cit., pg.112-125.

[14] al-Enazy, op. cit., pg.120.

[15] ibid., pg.129.

[16] ibid., pg. 106 and Troeller op. cit., 152.

[17] al-Enazy, op. cit., pg. 136 and Troeller op. cit., pg.219.

[18] David Howarth, “The Desert King: The Life of Ibn Saud” (London: Quartet Books, 1980), pg. 133 and Randall Baker, “King Husain and the Kingdom of Hejaz” (Cambridge: The Oleander Press, 1979), pg.201-202.

[19] Quoted in al-Enazy op. cit., pg. 144.

[20] ibid., pg. 138 and Troeller op. cit., pg. 216.

[21]In the original full length BBC iPlayer version this segment begins towards the end at 2 hrs 12 minutes 24 seconds.

[22] al-Enazy op. cit., pg. 153.

[23] Eugene Rogan, “The Arabs: A History”, (London: Penguin Books, 2009), pg.220.

About Nu'man Abd al-Wahid

Nu’man Abd al-Wahid is a Yemeni-English independent researcher specialising in the political relationship between the British state and the Arab World. His main focus is on how the United Kingdom has historically maintained its political interests in the Arab World. A full collection of essays can be accessed at http://www.churchills-karma.com/. Twitter handle: @churchillskarma.