To be very British, and understated about it, the Arab Revolt between 1936 and 1939, had turned out very badly for the Muslims, discussed in Parts 32 and following.

But there’s always a silver lining in every cloud, and the silver lining in the Grand Mufti’s cloud was World War 2. And best of all Hitler offered the glittering prospect of a Final Solution to both of their Jewish problems.

And as lawyers say, Hitler and the Grand Mufti were ad idem on this topic – at one. This was one problem that Hitler really wanted to help permanently fix.

Tag words: Arab Revolt; Grand Mufti; Haj Amin al-Husseini; World War 2; Holocaust; Genocide; The Final Solution; Adolf Hitler; American Christian Palestine Committee; Glubb Pasha; Herbert Hagen; Adolf Eichmann; Nazism; Führer; Joachim von Ribbentrop; Major General Erwin La Housen; Abwehr; National Socialism; Waffen-SS; Fawzi al-Qawuqji; General Erwin Rommel; Afrika Korps; Suez Canal; SS Einsatzkommando Afrika; SS Obersturmbannführer Walter Rauff; Wilhelm Melchers; Dieter Wisliceny; SS General Oskar Dirlewanger; Dr. Heinrich Willerman; Alois Brünner;

British collective punishment, increasing British military deployments to Palestine, especially after the British did the disgraceful Munich deal with Hitler in 1938 which freed up considerable military forces, and the impact of combined British and Jewish intelligence, made fighting and beating the Arab Revolt so much easier.

As I have demonstrated over many programmes, the Muslim population in Palestine, were overwhelmingly citizens of other countries and not people who were born in the land area comprising the British Mandate of Palestine.

That naturally lent itself to gaining considerable intelligence from the Muslims. Instead of fighting the British, the Muslims in the British Mandate were more naturally inclined to fight each other. Disciplined guerrilla organisations avoid that pitfall, but the Muslim revolt was not remotely a disciplined organisation.

This one story tells just how outclassed the Muslims were in this fight with the British, with the aid of Jewish intelligence. The Jews were bugging conversations in the Grand Mufti’s ultra secure, impregnable, residence that the British Army was reluctant to attack because of the strength of the position.

Tag words: collective punishment; Adolf Hitler; Muslim; Jews; Palestine; British Mandate; Grand Mufti; Haj Amin al-Husseini; Nashashibi clan; Michael Hughes; Britain’s Pacification of Palestine; al-Qawuqji; al-Mua`rada forces; Ngo Dinh Diem; South Vietnam; effendi; fellahin; Mao Zedong; Guerilla Warfare; General Sir Robert Haining; Colonel Gilbert MacKereth; Sûreté; General Sir John Dill; Arab Revolt; Vietnam War; Viet Cong; Walid Khalidi; Lewis Andrews; Walter Moffatt; Peel Report; Chaim Weizmann; Balfour Declaration; Colonial Secretary, Malcolm MacDonald; Zionist Congress; Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact; Arab Higher Committee; Irish Free State; Michael Collin; Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921; Vietminh; Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement 1998; North Vietnamese; battle of Dien Bien Phu;

The Arab Revolt of 1936-1939 had consequences that are still being felt and lived to this day. One good thing came out of it, if you’re a Muslim – not if you’re an Israeli though – and a really bad thing came out of it, if you’re a Muslim, not an Israeli which, I would say on balance, outweighs the good that the Muslims got.

To be fair, the good thing was an accident so let me tell you about it.

Tag words: Arab Revolt of 1936; Muslim; Israeli; Grand Mufti; Haj Amin al-Husseini; Arab Higher Committee; Nashashibi Clan; effendi; notables; King Abdullah; League of Nations; Palestine; League’s Mandate Commission; Fawzi al-Qawuqji; Michael Hughes; Britain’s Pacification of Palestine; Oren Kessler; Palestine 1936; Qassamite gunmen; Zvi Danenberg; Israel Chazan; The Bible; Genesis 16:12;

This programme is about how the Muslims, remarkably, and unwittingly, created the Israeli Defence Forces that would, at least so far, allow Israel to survive the fury of its overwhelming numerous and powerful enemies attempts to crush it. Of course Israel has to win every war. If it loses one it will all be over for it, in a massive blood bath.

Maybe this programme could be called how the Muslims shot themselves in both feet.

Tag words: Muslims; Israeli Defence Force; Arab Higher Committee; Rebel fighters; mujahid; Michael Hughes; Britain’s Pacification of Palestine; Wing Commander Ritchie; Palestine; havlagah; Jews; British Mandate; Yishuv; General Officer Commanding, Archibald Wavell; Special Night Squads; SNS; Sir Harold MacMichael; High Commissioner of Palestine; Colonial Office; Arab Revolt; Grand Mufti; Haj Amin Al-Husseini; Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Field Marshall Sir Cyril John Deverell; Moshe Shertok; Ben Zvi; Haganah; Palmach; Frank Kitson; Captain Ord Wingate; Laurence of Judea; Iraq Petroleum Company; IPC; Palestine Electricity Corporation; police; supernumeraries; ghaffirs; notrim; temporary additional constables; special constables; private police officers; auxiliary port police force; temporary additional police; a special frontier protection unit; Jewish settlement police; Jewish supernumerary police; special auxiliary police; railway protection police; night watchmen; special policemen; Iraq Petroleum Company TAPline protection force; Army special night and Q units; T E. Lawrence; Lawrence of Arabia; Plymouth Brethren; Charterhouse school; General Reginald Wingate; Hejaz; London's School of Oriental Studies; John Bunyan; He Who Would Valiant Be; To be a Pilgrim; Jerusalem; Trevor-Royle;

On 19 April 1936 the Muslims gave the Jews the gift of their homeland, promised by the British in the Balfour Declaration, then by the League of Nations when it created the British Mandate on 24 July 1922 – far bigger than was looking likely at that time – if they were to get one at all. 

What the Jewish homeland would eventually look like was tricky. The Muslims had fought against it ever being created, they had fought against Jewish immigration, they had fought against the British Mandate. But thanks to the Arab Revolt that began on 19 April 1936, they gave the Jews what they had been trying to block - their homeland. 

They gave the Jews pretty well everything they had wanted (if you ignore Churchill giving away 83% of their promised homeland to King Abdullah in Transjordan) and much much more than the pittance that the British had ended up promising the Muslims in the 1936 Peel Report, nothing in the 1939 White Paper and the land that the United Nations offered them with their Resolution 181 for the partition of the rump of the Jewish homeland on 29 November 1947.

The Muslims had wanted it all – and they ended up with close to nothing.

The Jews paid a price for what happened during the Arab Revolt, a price that they’re sill paying today, but overall, they could never have hoped for a better outcome at the time that Arab Revolt started.

In my last two programmes I looked at the early days of the Arab Revolt. Now it’s time to look at the big picture – starting with the unplanned and runaway strike and revolt, that started by itself, and never really found anyone to lead it.

Tag words: Muslims; Arabs; Balfour Declaration; League of Nations; British Mandate; Arab Revolt; Churchill; King Abdullah; 1936 Peel Report; 1939 White Paper; United Nations; Resolution 181; Easter Riots; Nabi Musa; Adolf Hitler; Nuremberg Laws; Palestine; US Immigration Act 1924; anti-semitism; Quran; Mohammad; Istiqlal Party; Arab Higher Committee; Izz al-Din al-Qassam; Fawzi al-Qawuqji; Chaim Weizmann; David Ben-Gurion; Golda Meyerson; histadrut; Grand Mufti; havlagah; Ze’ev Jabotinsky;

The murders of the Jews living in Palestine on 15 April 1936, Israel Hazan, Zvi Danenburg and the wounding of Nafchi, was typical of what the Muslim leadership wanted for Palestine – no Jewish homeland. A goal that they single mindedly pursue, even down to this day. Stop more Jews coming in. Create a new country out of at least Syria and Palestine combined, like it was under the Ottomans. The fact that there was never a country called Palestine in the 1300 years of Ottoman Rule is now lost in the myths that the Muslims have successfully told since the Six Day Arab Israeli war.

After this torch had been lit by these Muslims on 15 April 1936, who seemed to be acting on their own, a massive popular eruption followed. The Muslim leadership, mostly under the control of the Grand Mufti through the Arab Higher Council, scrambled to get on board and then to lead what had started spontaneously as a popular movement that these leaders had no idea was coming.

Many more Jews were going to be murdered, but the response of the Jewish leadership to that was happening was far-sighted and brilliant. The modern state of Israel, that was born from the bloodbath, and the total defeat of the Muslims in the 1948 civil war between the Jews and the Muslims and the survival of the state of Israel in the 1948 war when the adjoining Arab nations tried and failed to crush Israel, had been guaranteed because of what had happened from 15 April 1936 until the Revolt had petered out by about 1939. The Nakba, the Palestinian Catastrophe, as the 1948 wars are known, had had its roots firmly laid over a decade before in the Arab Revolt. This is the beginning of that story.

Tag words: , Israel Hazan; Zvi Danenburg; Nafchi; Arab Higher Committee; Nakba; Palestinian Catastrophe; the Arab Revolt; Salim al-Musri; Hassan Abu Rass; Jews, Muslims; Arabs; National Muslim Committees; League of Nations; British Mandate; Grand Mufti; Hajj Amin al-Husseini; Eliezer Bichutsky; Haim Pashigoda; Kornfeld; Kupermintz; Yosef Lieberman; Hauranis; Al-Jamia al-Islamiya; Davar newspaper; Palestine Post; Muhammad Abu Zeid; Abed Ali; Al-Difiz; Filastin; The Nation; Selig Levinson; Shlomo Marsum; General Sir Arthur Wauchope; Palestine (Defence) Order in Council 1931; Emergency Regulations 1936;

History tells us that between 800 and 1100 AD was the Golden Age of Arabic science. Well it isn’t history that I’m getting this from. It’s from Hassan Hassan, a columnist for The National newspaper in Abu Dhabi, the UAE., He’s also a contributor for The Guardian, Foreign Policy and the Carnegie Endowment. He graduated from the University of Nottingham, the UK, with a Master of Arts in International Relations.

During that period, Hassan says, the Muslim world was the beacon of innovation that triggered Europe's Renaissance and Enlightenment periods. But after that time, he tells his readers, Islam turned its back on science. If you’re a Muslim, most likely a devoutly religious one, who is happy about this state of affairs, well that’s your choice. Whose to blame, or to take the credit for that rejection of science? It seems that most people hold Abu Hamid Al Ghazali responsible for this state of affairs. He lived between 1055-1111AD. But Hassan Hassan says that’s not true and he is innocent of any responsibility for that change. Hassan says that the one man force, driving Muslims away from science, was actually Abu Ali al-Hassan al-Tusi, better known as Nizam al-Mulk, the grand vizier of the Seljuq dynasty between 1018–1092.

For the first time in Islamic history, religious studies became institutionalised. Because of the new winds that were blowing through the palaces of Baghdad, the smart Muslim dropped science like a hot potato, and did the smart thing. Religious studies were seen as a more lucrative career path – that was where the big bucks were. Up until then science and Islam were intertwined – liked the strands in DNA’s double helix.

Century on century then passed. Islam that had been such a dominant and feared force in the world at first started to hit the hard defensive walls of Christian Europe which brought what had up until then been the irresistible advance of Islam to a grinding halt. Defensive resistance of the Christians to Islam, with the advances in science driven technology, hastened the decline of Islam. The West began to advance into Islamic countries. Stalemate turned to defeat. The first of many great insults was the arrival of Napoleon with a small force of French soldiers, and scientists to add insult to injury, thrashed the Mamluks and then marched on the Promised Land. It was other European powers, mainly the Royal Navy, that ended Napoleon’s successes in the Middle East. The Ottoman Empire went into a slow decline and eventually died the death at the end of the First World War.

But then, a little bit at a time, slow at first, but gathering pace much more swiftly then, change did start to sweep through just one country in the Middle East. It was the British Mandate of Palestine – the promised new Jewish homeland. This is what happened.

Tag words: Golden Age of Arabic science; Hassan Hassan; Abu Hamid Al Ghazali; Abu Ali al-Hassan al-Tusi; Nizam al-Mulk; Ottoman Empire; Passfield White Paper; effendi; the notables; fellahin; the peasant farmers; W. B. Fisher; Middle East; goats; Akira Kurosawa; Seven Samurai; Sam Peckinpah; The Magnificent Seven; Aaron Aaronsohn; Baron Rothschild; Atlit; Roderique Davison; Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856-1876; Cevdet Efendi; Balfour Declaration; Chaim Weizmann; General Allenby; Mount Scopus; Hebrew University; Emir Feisal; Albert Einstein; Lord Balfour; Sigmund Freud; Pan-Islamic Congress 1931; Zionists; Jaffa; British Mandate; Haifa; Palestine Railways; Nesher Cement Works; Maya Seikaly; Haifa: Transformation of an Arab Society 1918-1939; Kalandia; airport; Atarot; David Ben-Gurion; Iraq Petroleum Company pipeline; Iraq Petroleum Company; IPC; Mediterranean Fleet; Arab Revolt; Israel Hazan; Florentin; Salonica; Zvi Danenberg; Haganah; Nablus; Tulkarem; keffiyah; Yasser Arafat; Izza Din El Kassam; Nafchi; Knoll;

The 9th of Av in Jewish calendars is Friday on steroids. Nerves must be jangling as that day of the calendar approaches.

The worst high points in the history of the Jews happen on this day.

On that day in 586 BC, the Babylonians demolished the First Temple in Jerusalem built by the legendary Jewish king, Solomon. In the year 70AD, the Romans almost completely demolished the Second Temple built by King Herod the Great. What survived were the retaining walls, particularly sacred to the Jews is the wall on the west side. It's known as either the Wailing Wall or the Western Wall. 

Continuing the Jews incredible run of bad luck, on that same date in the year 135 AD, Rome brought to an end the Bar-Kochba revolt. Ending Jewish dreams of independence. After that revolt the province of Judaea was renamed Palestina harkening back to the previous occupants of that land in the long distant past, before the Jews arrived, the Philistines. The Philistines had lived in and around Gaza.

Then moving closer to our own times, on that same day, England expelled its Jews in the thirteenth century, France expelled its Jews in the fourteenth, and Spain, after Ferdinand and Isabella had reconquered all of their country from the Muslims, expelled their Jews in the fifteenth century.

You won’t be surprised to hear that in Jerusalem, on the 9th of Av, in 1929, one of the bloodiest riots so far against the Jews started, the triggering factor was the Grand Mufti. The object of the riot was over what the Jews call the Wailing Wall, or the Western Wall.

That riot was significant – it marked the beginning of a swelling violence against the Jews in Palestine, that would culminate in the Arab Revolt that broke out in 1936, all of which trouble saw the Jews having various rights of immigrating into Palestine, limited or ended, and likewise their entitlement to acquire land. This programme’s about the 1929 riots – and you’re not going to believe what happened.

Tag words: 9th of Av; Babylonians; Destruction of the First Temple; Romans; destruction of the Second Temple; King Solomon; King Herod the Great; Wailing Wall; Western Wall; Bar-Kochba revolt; Palestina; Philistines; Ferdinand and Isabella; Grand Mufti; Haj Amin al-Husseini; Arab Revolt 1936; Mohammad; Buraq; Night Journey to Jerusalem; British Mandate; Abu Maidan waqf; Saladin; Afdal; Yom Kippur; Torah; Balfour Declaration; Ottoman Empire; Star of David; the Dome of the Rock; Buraq Campaign; Al-Aqsa Mosque; Zionists; Joseph Klausner; Jabotinsky; Superintendent Raymond Cafferata; Ahron Bernzweig; God; Abu Mahmoud al-Kurdiya; North Vietnamese Tet offensive; Thawrat al-Buraq; the Buraq Uprising; British High Commissioner to the Palestinian Mandate; Sir John Chancellor; Cairo's Al-Ahram newspaper; Evening Star; Pan-Islamic Congress; Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Shawkat Ali; Muhammed Ali; Abraham; Shakib Arslam; Arab Party for Independence; Adolf Hitler; White Paper; Hope Simpson Report; Chaim Weitzman; World Zionist Organisation; Ramsay MacDonald; David Ben-Gurion;

Ok – enough of the Palestinian refugees already. Nuff said in Parts 25 to 27 of this series.

The issue of illegal Muslim immigration into Palestine is huge when looking at what happened before the state of Israel was created in 1948.

The worst part of it was that a lot of bad hats came in. That was what Colonel MacKereth called them in Part 19. He used that term to mean any of the Muslims that were entering Palestine to commit acts of violence to very extreme violence. They were criminals, thugs, soldiers of fortune, whose very existence was about bringing violence to whoever their employer wanted harmed or killed. Their targets covered a wide range of people from moderate Muslims, who were able to live with the incoming Jews, to the Jews themselves of course. The moderate Muslims and the Jews were all fit to be killed.

The categories of Muslims coming in to Palestine did so for a wide variety of motives apart from the hired killers that I just spoke about. The Grand Mufti was pretty much single mindedly interested in doing violence, to moderate Muslims and all Jews, hence his association is with the bad hats.

But a lot of Muslims were drawn to Palestine for the prosperity that followed in the wake of the Jewish immigrants, and the money that was coming into the country that was creating jobs. The Muslim migrants coming into Palestine were coming in in very large numbers. They were taking up all of the jobs. The British, whose administration’s leanings had over the years from when Balfour first had the vision of creating a Jewish homeland, to the 1920’s when that attitude began to do a backflip, changed from pro-Zionist to anti-Zionist. These Arabist British administration officials developed an extreme interest in making sure that Jewish immigrants coming into the country, weren’t taking the jobs that they were creating. These British officials didn’t see it that way. But the truth was that the Muslim illegal immigrants were coming in in such large numbers, that some of the Muslims couldn’t get a job. When the British felt that there was a shortage of jobs for Muslims, legal or illegal – mostly they couldn’t tell, they would slow or stop Jewish immigration. That would in turn probably slow down the creation of jobs for everyone. Since the Jewish money that was coming into the country from wealthy Jews was intended to create jobs for Jews.

The common thread throughout the British administration of Palestine, was that they held what seemed like a never ending series of commissions that issued endless papers – mostly white in colour. 

And so in 1930 the British convened yet another commission, to look into the situation with Jewish immigration. As I said right at the beginning of this series, apart from the Easter Riots of 1920, which the Grand Mufti was very much behind, but those riots backfired on the Muslims, almost every other outbreak of Muslim violence saw the British crack down on the Jewish immigration, land purchases etc.

The latest commission was the Hope-Simpson Report. In it’s findings, it didn’t give the Jews much hope.

Tag words: Palestinian refugees; Muslim immigration; Colonel MacKereth; Jews; Grand Mufti; Haj Amin al-Husseini; Hope-Simpson Report; Report on Immigration, Land Settlement, and Development, 1930; the League of Nations British Mandate; Immigration of Other Than Jewish Labour; The White Paper; Lewis Yelland Andrews; Lewis Andrews; Arab Revolt; Passfield White Paper of 1933; Musa Alami; David Ben-Gurion; Chaim Wiezmann; Winston Churchill; Herbert Samuel; Lloyd George; Ramsay MacDonald; the Black Letter; Balfour Declaration; Ottoman Turks; Islamic Golden Age; Bar Kochba; Ezekiel 33:28; Peel Report 1937; Shaw Commissions Report; Palestine Mandate; 1948 Arab Israeli war;