An Intolerant, Violent Nationalism

Benny Morris has a fascinating essay in the May 7 issue of The New Republic, reviewing Hillel Cohen’s new book “Army of Shadows:  Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917-1948.”  One of the points that emerges from it is that Palestinian “nationalism” has in fact always been a jihad:

From the first, the nationalism of Palestine’s Arabs was blatantly religious. . . . Indeed, when the Palestinian national struggle turned significantly violent, against the British in 1936-1939 and against the Zionists in 1947-1948, the struggle was defined by the movement’s leaders as "a religious holy war," a jihad. . . .

In 1925, the mufti of Gaza, Hajj Muhammad Said al-Husseini, issued a fatwa forbidding land sales to Jews. The Jews, he said, were no longer a protected people (as they had been in the Islamic world during the previous thirteen centuries). Muslims who helped them were to be treated as heretics, and Christians who aided them were to be deported.

A more comprehensive fatwa against land sales was issued by the ulama (the authorities on law and religion) of Palestine in January 1935. It declared that "the seller and speculator and agent in [the sale of] the land of Palestine to Jews" abetted the prevention of "the mention of Allah’s name in mosques," and accepted "the Jews as rulers," and offended "Allah and his messenger and the faithful," and betrayed "Allah and his messenger and believers." . . . .

[I]n 1947, Jamal al-Husseini, Hajj Amin’s cousin and deputy, reportedly called for the murder of land-sellers: "Murder them, murder them. Our religion commands this and you must do as the religion commands.". . .

The founding declaration of the Higher Arab Committee, the executive body chaired by Hajj Amin alHusseini that was to lead the Palestinians both in the 1936-1939 Revolt and in the 1947-1948 war against the Yishuv, referred to the Palestinian National movement as "the holy national jihad movement." The following year, in July 1937, those who supported the British Peel Commission recommendations — to partition Palestine into Arab and Jewish states — were denounced as heretics, whereas those destroying Jewish property would be declared saints.

Ideologically, it is only a short leap from these utterances to those of the Hamas, the Islamist movement which today dominates the Palestinian political arena and Palestinian nationalism. . . .

Palestinian nationalism may not have been during the Mandate, and may not be today, quite the secular, democratic, and open nationalism of modern Western Europe; and it may still be defined in large measure by what it wishes to destroy rather than by what it hopes to build. It is intolerant, violent, and — above all — religious.  But it is most certainly a variety of nationalism.

Other reviews of the book are here.  The first chapter (“Utopia and Its Collapse”) can be read here.  It is a remarkably nuanced and fair-minded description of the interplay between Zionists and the local Arab population at the time of the Balfour Declaration, and it abundantly illustrates why Morris calls the book “erudite” “learned” and “important.”