The Arab Revolt in Palestine from 1936-1939 was a watershed moment in the history of Mandatory Palestine. It convinced both the Zionists and the British that a conciliation between Jewish and Arab interests in Palestine was no longer achievable and thus prefigured partition, which was first proposed by the Peel Commission in 1937. The revolt began in April 1936 with a general strike directed against the British mandate government and the Yishuv. On April 25, 1936, the Arab Higher Committee (AHC) under the leadership of Mufti Amin al-Husseini was established to coordinate the strike activities. The AHC demanded the cessation of Jewish emigration, the end of land sales to Jews and the establishment of a constitutional government. The cessation of the strikes in October marked the end of the first phase of the revolt. The second, more violent phase of the revolt started in September 1937. It was marked by large scale irregular fighting between the British forces and Arab guerilla bands and would last until 1939.86 The militarization of the conflict was accompanied by a professional effort
by the Arab leadership to internationalize the conflict via propaganda and diplomacy. While the propaganda was still largely concentrated on the Arab-Islamic world,
84Kampffmeyer, “Egypt and Western Asia,” 153–54. 85 Ibid., 162–65.
86Jacob Norris, “Repression and Rebellion: Britain’s Response to the Arab Revolt in
Palestine of 1936–39,” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 36, no. 1 (2008): 26–27.
42 significant investments were made to influence Western public opinion and decision- making circles, in particular in Britain and the US.
This was not an entirely new development. The Arab Executive had realized the necessity of exerting some influence on the mandate administration via the Britain government early on. To that end, it decided to dispatch a delegation to London in March 1921. A British committee in support of the Arabs in Palestine encouraged this decision. The committee counted many prominent personalities, the politicians Lord Sydenham and Lord Lemington among others.87 According to the prominent Syrian
pan-Arab propagandist Fakhri al-Barudi, Lord Northcliffe, the publisher of the the
Times and the Daily Mail, who had toured Palestine in 1922, had also advised the
Arabs during his stay to invest more in propaganda in order to make their case heard: “Lord Northcliffe, owner of the newspaper ‘The Times’, during his stay in Palestine,
said to a group of Palestinians who visited him: ‘You are complaining here and nobody
in England hears you because you practice no propaganda there. The English opinion might be more interested in the result of a soccer match than in the Palestinian
question.’”88 From the beginning, the Arabs could thus count on a fine collection of
dedicated pro-Arab activists. During its long stay in Britain, the Arab Executive delegation also enjoyed support from the right-wing and anti-Semitic press. This included the Morning Post, the newspaper which had become notorious for its publication of the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’. Its editorial line pressed for a British withdrawal from the Middle East. The most famous pro-Arab British journalist was Joseph Jeffries. Jeffries had worked as a war correspondent for the Daily Mail newspaper during World War I and had visited Palestine several times. His criticism of Zionism was evidently tinged by anti-Semitism. In the pages of the Daily Mail, he inveighed against the financial schemes and atheism of the “Bolsheviks” and “Judeo-
87 Porath, The Emergence of the Palestinian Arab National Movement, 1918-1929,
137.
88 Centre des hautes études sur l’Afrique et l’Asie moderne, “Notes sur le bureau
national Arabe de recherches et d’informations de Damas” 1938, 4, ANF 20000002/17.
43
Slavs”, who had secured Palestine by duping the British.89 Jeffries continued to provide
substantial support for the Arab Cause in Britain. In 1923, he published the first excerpts of the MacMahon-Hussein correspondence to support Arab demands regarding Palestine.90 Between 1921 and 1939, several emissaries and six official
delegations visited London, half of them before 1929. Then, with the flaring up of the Arab-Jewish conflict after the Wailing Wall riots in 1929, the diplomatic effort resumed. A fourth and a fifth diplomatic mission were dispatched in 1930 and in 1936. The last official Arab-Palestinian delegation made the journey to the London Conference in 1939. In 1930, an SMC delegation including Shakib Arslan was also sent to the US to lobby with the government and the Arab-American community – with limited success.91
In the 1930s, the Arabs moved to establish permanent diplomatic structures in the British capital so that they could communicate directly with the British government and public. The first such plans to permanently staff an Arab center in London had in fact
89David Cesarani, “Anti-Zionist Politics and Political Antisemitism in Britain, 1920–
1924,” Patterns of Prejudice 23, no. 1 (1989): 29–35.
90 Joseph Mary Nagle Jeffries, The Palestine Deception (Daily mail, 1923). 91“Arabs Sending Delegations to England and America,” Jewish Daily Bulletin,
January 3, 1930, http://www.jta.org/1930/01/03/archive/arabs-sending-delegations- to-england-and-america; “Arab-Christian Quits American Delegation,” Jewish Daily
Bulletin, February 21, 1930, http://www.jta.org/1930/02/21/archive/arab-christian-
quits-american-delegation; “Urge Arabs Here to Buy Palestine Lands,” Jewish Daily
Bulletin, June 4, 1930, http://www.jta.org/1930/06/04/archive/urge-arabs-here-to-buy-
palestine-lands; “Arab Delegation to U.S. Made Financial Failure, Bendak Says,”
Jewish Daily Bulletin, September 28, 1930,
http://www.jta.org/1930/09/28/archive/arab-delegation-to-u-s-made-financial-failure- bendak-says; Bawardi, The Making of Arab Americans, 202; Naomi Wiener Cohen,
The Year After the Riots: American Responses to the Palestine Crisis of 1929-30
44 already been made in 1923, but never materialized.92 These plans would eventually
be realized in the 1930s.
Since 1934, Amin al-Husseini had entertained the idea of opening a propaganda mission in London, but these plans were only to be realized after the outbreak of the Arab Revolt in 1936.93 Thus, two months into the revolt, on June 10, 1936, an AHC
delegation consisting of Jamal Husseini, Izzat Tannous and Shibly Jamal was dispatched to London. Their primary goal was to try to bring Colonial Secretary William Ormsby-Gore around to their viewpoints. Ormsby-Gore had previously refused to give in to the AHC demands and was therefore accused of pro-Zionist leanings.94 While the
1936 delegation to Britain did not achieve much progress on the diplomatic front, it was a public relations success. Izzat Tannous was instrumental in cultivating the pro-Arab network in the country, meeting up with several prominent British sympathizers of Arab nationalism. The list included such eminent figures as S.F. Newcombe, a former Arabist in the British Army who had been instrumental in the Arab Revolt and was one of T.E. Lawrence’s closest friends and collaborators; Joseph Jeffries; the conservative MP, Clifton Brown; and the travel author, H.V. Morton.95 The latter was a highly
influential writer whose book about his travels in the Middle East was distributed to British servicemen stationed in the region during WW II. It was later revealed that he harbored anti-Semitic convictions and had some sympathies with the ideology of National Socialism.96 MP Clifton Brown facilitated the AHC delegation’s being
introduced to sympathetic MPs, many of whom would later form the pro-Arab
92 Ann Mosely Lesch, Arab Politics in Palestine, 1917-1939: The Frustration of a Nationalist Movement, vol. 11 (Cornell University Press, 1979), 171.
93 Miller, Divided against Zion: Anti-Zionist Opposition in Britain to a Jewish State in Palestine, 1945-1948, 11:10.
94 Izzat Tannous, The Palestinians: A Detailed Documented Eyewitness History of
Palestine Under British Mandate (New York, N.Y: I.G.T. Company, 1988), 176–79.
95Kerry Webber, “S.F. Newcombe - A Short Biography,” In the Shadow of the Crescent, August 18, 2015, http://shadowofthecrescent.blogspot.com.es/p/sf-
newcombe-short-biography.html; Tannous, The Palestinians, 181–82.
45 Parliamentary Committee in the House of Commons.97 Lord Winterton, a friend of the
Hashemite Jordanian King Faisal, chaired the group, which counted about sixty MPs at its apogee, all of them conservatives.98 Moreover, it was decided to establish a
permanent base for pro-Arab propaganda in the UK at H.V. Morton’s house. This base was initially known as the Palestine Information Centre (PIC) and was later renamed Arab Centre. The leadership of the new center was shared by Morton, S.F. Newcombe, Mrs. Stewart Erskine, Mrs. Frances Newton--the daughter of a missionary and a fervent anti-Zionist herself--as well as Musa al-Husseini. During their stay, the delegation also authored an eleven page pro-Arab pamphlet with the title ‘The Palestine Case – Statement by the Palestine Arab Delegation’, which was the first anti- Zionist propaganda publication in Britain authored by an Arab body.99 However, the
body did not retain its independence for long. Acting as the honorary secretary of the Arab Centre, Frances Newton met the Mufti in 1937, and offered to submit the pro- Arab Centre directly to him and the AHC. The Mufti agreed and dispatched his delegates Emil Ghoury and Izzat Tannous to London.100 The good spirit of the English
pro-Arab sympathizers amazed the latter: “They acted as if the Arab Palestine case was their own, exerting honest keen effort which lasted three consecutive years only
to be interrupted by the second catastrophe of the century, the Second World War.”101
The enthusiasm of the foreign pro-Arab activists was in no way inferior to that of the AHC functionaries.
When Izzat Tannous arrived in London, he held a meeting with the staff of the Arab Centre. It was decided to start the publication of a weekly bulletin, The Arab Center
Bulletin, which was to be distributed to politicians, the media and various organizations,
starting with a circulation of 5’000.102 The pamphlets the Arab Centre produced during
97 Tannous, The Palestinians, 181–82. 98 Ibid., 201–2.
99 Ibid., 183–87.
100Miller, “More Sinned Against than Sinning? The Case of the Arab Office,
Washington, 1945–1948,” 12.
101 Tannous, The Palestinians, 202. 102 Ibid.
46 the Arab Revolt in Palestine caused controversy. Additionally, in 1937 and 1938, the Centre published two booklets by Frances Newton, titled ‘Punitive Measures in Palestine’ and ‘Searchlight on Palestine’, which accused the British of acting excessively and arbitrarily in their suppression of the Arab Revolt in Palestine. British officials invested great effort to prove the mendacity of these accusations. The latter booklet also featured the picture of a torn-up Coran, allegedly desecrated by the British, although the event was not personally witnessed by Newton. This had British officials worried that it may be used to stoke anti-British sentiment among Muslims. Archibald Wavell, then General Officer Commanding of the British forces in Palestine, rejected the veracity of this report in a letter to the Colonial Office: “The torn Koran is a regular feature of such propaganda, and is simply manufactured evidence to provoke religious feeling. I am absolutely certain that no Koran has at any time been torn or defaced
during a search by troops.”103 Material produced by the Arab Centre was not only
directed at the British public, but also distributed in Arab and Muslim countries. Warnings in this regard reached British officials from Egypt,104 Damascus,105 and other
countries, leaving British officials fearing that the booklets would “’fan anti-British
propaganda in 35 Arab countries”.106 The fact that anti-British propaganda was being
spread from England must have been a new experience.
The PIC not only consorted within respectable circles, but also found support amongst the British extreme right, which it reciprocated. Thus, the PIC announced its events in the fascist press and members of the AHC and Amin al-Husseini’s Palestine Arab Party, such as Emil Ghoury and Izzat Tannous, published in it. In these instances, Arab propagandists revealed their extreme anti-Semitism, which they otherwise often sought to hide from Western audiences. In the late thirties, PIC member George
103Archibald Wavell, “Letter from Archibald Wavell,” March 31, 1938, TNA CO
733/370/8.
104“Letter to H.F. Downie,” August 22, 1938, TNA CO 733/370/8.
105Gilbert MacKereth, “Letter from British Consulate in Damascus to High
Commissioner,” June 7, 1938, TNA CO 733/370/8.
106Miller, “The Other Side of the Coin: Arab Propaganda and the Battle against
47 Mansur lectured in front of the anti-Semitic Nordic League, stating that “extermination
is the only solution to the Jew problem in Palestine and he could think of no better one
for this country.” 107 Mansur also maintained contact with Robert Gordon-Canning, an
advocate of an alliance between Fascism and Islam.108 Robert Gordon-Canning was
a longtime Islamo- and Arabophile. Gordon-Canning had first discovered his enthusiasm for Islam during the Rif War, when he served as the honorary president for the Committee for the Defence of the Muslim Rif. His admiration for Islam sprang from his disaffection with the West and Christianity. In an article in 1924 in the Islamic
Review, a journal run by the Ahmadiyya sect, he contrasted the virtues of Islam with
the corrupted and materialist West. In the following years, he also voiced his opposition to Zionism using anti-Jewish rhetoric. Gordon-Canning arrived in Palestine in early November 1929, where he was hosted by the Mufti and other Arab Executive Committee functionaries. He was probably responding to an initiative by the Arab Executive’s Awni Abdel Hadi, who sought to recruit a pro-Arab advocate to participate in the inquiry into the anti-Jewish pogroms, which had shaken Palestine in August 1929. Gordon-Canning toured the country, visiting dignitaries and openly railing against Zionism. In a speech in Haifa, he compared the Arab struggle against Zionism to Mohammed’s jihad against the polytheists. After his return, he tried to act as an unofficial spokesman for the Mufti vis-à-vis the Colonial Office, but failed to be recognized by it in that role.109 Gordon-Canning joined the British Union of Fascists
(BUF) in 1934, and was responsible for the BUF’s international relations, particularly with Germany and Italy. But he also maintained contact with Shakib Arslan in Geneva. A column on foreign affairs by Gordon-Canning regularly appeared in the BUF’s central organ, Action. In his function, he possessed a certain influence on shaping the BUF’s stance on international affairs and especially Palestine. His views were largely
107Graham Macklin, “A Fascist ‘Jihad’: Captain Robert Gordon-Canning, British
Fascist Antisemitism and Islam,” Holocaust Studies 15, no. 1–2 (June 1, 2009): 88– 89, doi:10.1080/17504902.2009.11087231.
108Graham Macklin, “A Fascist ‘Jihad’: Captain Robert Gordon-Canning, British
Fascist Antisemitism and Islam,” Holocaust Studies 15, no. 1–2 (June 1, 2009): 88– 89, doi:10.1080/17504902.2009.11087231.
48 congruent with that of the Nationalist-Islamic faction, which was organized around the Mufti Amin Husseini and his Palestine Arab Party.110His 1938 book ‘The Holy Land:
Arab or Jew?’ shows the influence of the anti-Jewish conspiracy theories and the ‘War
on Islam’ narratives, which at that time were popularized in Palestine by the YMMA and the Mufti’s newspapers.111 The book presented Zionism as a conspiracy of Jewish
bankers, who sought to subjugate or eradicate the Arabs for their imperial interests. He called Zionism the “tenth crusade”, which was however not Christian in nature, but
Bolshevistic.112 In his combination of far-right and Islamic anti-Semitism, Gordon-
Canning could be described as a pioneer. Besides Britain, AHC propaganda also targeted the US. Its campaign started with a fundraising tour by Tannous in May 1937.113 AHC propaganda in the US in the years 1937-1939 will be discussed in detail
in Chapter Two.