King Abdullah I: As the Arabs See The Jews 1

King Abdul­lah I : As the Arabs See The Jews

Edi­tor’s Note : This fas­ci­nat­ing essay, writ­ten by King Hus­sein’s grand­fa­ther King Abdul­lah, appeared in the Unit­ed States six months before the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. King Abdullah I: As the Arabs See The Jews 2 In the arti­cle, King Abdul­lah dis­putes the mis­tak­en view that Arab oppo­si­tion to Zion­ism (and lat­er the state of Israel) is because of long­stand­ing reli­gious or eth­nic hatred. He notes that Jews and Mus­lims enjoyed a long his­to­ry of peace­ful coex­is­tence in the Mid­dle East, and that Jews have his­tor­i­cal­ly suf­fered far more at the hands of Chris­t­ian Europe. Point­ing to the tragedy of the holo­caust that Jews suf­fered dur­ing World War II, the monarch asks why Amer­i­ca and Europe are refus­ing to accept more than a token hand­ful of Jew­ish immi­grants and refugees. It is unfair, he argues, to make Pales­tine, which is inno­cent of anti-Semi­tism, pay for the crimes of Europe. King Abdul­lah also asks how Jews can claim a his­toric right to Pales­tine, when Arabs have been the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty there for near­ly 1300 unin­ter­rupt­ed years ? The essay ends on an omi­nous note, warn­ing of dire con­se­quences if a peace­ful solu­tion can­not be found to pro­tect the rights of the indige­nous Arabs of Palestine.

The Tran­script

I am espe­cial­ly delight­ed to address an Amer­i­can audi­ence, for the trag­ic prob­lem of Pales­tine will nev­er be solved with­out Amer­i­can under­stand­ing, Amer­i­can sym­pa­thy, Amer­i­can support.

So many bil­lions of words have been writ­ten about Pales­tine — per­haps more than on any oth­er sub­ject in his­to­ry — that I hes­i­tate to add to them. Yet I am com­pelled to do so, for I am reluc­tant­ly con­vinced that the world in gen­er­al, and Amer­i­ca in par­tic­u­lar, knows almost noth­ing of the true case for the Arabs. 

We Arabs fol­low, per­haps far more than you think, the press of Amer­i­ca. We are frankly dis­turbed to find that for every word print­ed on the Arab side, a thou­sand are print­ed on the Zion­ist side.

There are many rea­sons for this. You have many mil­lions of Jew­ish cit­i­zens inter­est­ed in this ques­tion. They are high­ly vocal and wise in the ways of pub­lic­i­ty. There are few Arab cit­i­zens in Amer­i­ca, and we are as yet unskilled in the tech­nique of mod­ern propaganda.

The results have been alarm­ing for us. In your press we see a hor­ri­ble car­i­ca­ture and are told it is our true por­trait. In all jus­tice, we can­not let this pass by default.

Our case is quite sim­ple : For near­ly 2,000 years Pales­tine has been almost 100 per cent Arab. It is still pre­pon­der­ant­ly Arab today, in spite of enor­mous Jew­ish immi­gra­tion. But if this immi­gra­tion con­tin­ues we shall soon be out­num­bered — a minor­i­ty in our home.

Pales­tine is a small and very poor coun­try, about the size of your state of Ver­mont. Its Arab pop­u­la­tion is only about 1,200,000. Already we have had forced on us, against our will, some 600,000 Zion­ist Jews. We are threat­ened with many hun­dreds of thou­sands more.

Our posi­tion is so sim­ple and nat­ur­al that we are amazed it should even be ques­tioned. It is exact­ly the same posi­tion you in Amer­i­ca take in regard to the unhap­py Euro­pean Jews. You are sor­ry for them, but you do not want them in your country.

We do not want them in ours, either. Not because they are Jews, but because they are for­eign­ers. We would not want hun­dreds of thou­sands of for­eign­ers in our coun­try, be they Eng­lish­men or Nor­we­gians or Brazil­ians or whatever.

Think for a moment : In the last 25 years we have had one third of our entire pop­u­la­tion forced upon us. In Amer­i­ca that would be the equiv­a­lent of 45,000,000 com­plete strangers admit­ted to your coun­try, over your vio­lent protest, since 1921. How would you have react­ed to that ?

Because of our per­fect­ly nat­ur­al dis­like of being over­whelmed in our own home­land, we are called blind nation­al­ists and heart­less anti-Semi­tes. This charge would be ludi­crous were it not so dangerous.

No peo­ple on earth have been less anti-Semit­ic” than the Arabs. The per­se­cu­tion of the Jews has been con­fined almost entire­ly to the Chris­t­ian nations of the West. Jews, them­selves, will admit that nev­er since the Great Dis­per­sion did Jews devel­op so freely and reach such impor­tance as in Spain when it was an Arab pos­ses­sion. With very minor excep­tions, Jews have lived for many cen­turies in the Mid­dle East, in com­plete peace and friend­li­ness with their Arab neighbours.

Dam­as­cus, Bagh­dad, Beirut and oth­er Arab cen­tres have always con­tained large and pros­per­ous Jew­ish colonies. Until the Zion­ist inva­sion of Pales­tine began, these Jews received the most gen­er­ous treat­ment — far, far bet­ter than in Chris­t­ian Europe. Now, unhap­pi­ly, for the first time in his­to­ry, these Jews are begin­ning to feel the effects of Arab resis­tance to the Zion­ist assault. Most of them are as anx­ious as Arabs to stop it. Most of these Jews who have found hap­py homes among us resent, as we do, the com­ing of these strangers.

I was puz­zled for a long time about the odd belief which appar­ent­ly per­sists in Amer­i­ca that Pales­tine has some­how always been a Jew­ish land.” Recent­ly an Amer­i­can I talked to cleared up this mys­tery. He point­ed out that the only things most Amer­i­cans know about Pales­tine are what they read in the Bible. It was a Jew­ish land in those days, they rea­son, and they assume it has always remained so.

Noth­ing could be far­ther from the truth. It is absurd to reach so far back into the mists of his­to­ry to argue about who should have Pales­tine today, and I apol­o­gise for it. Yet the Jews do this, and I must reply to their his­toric claim.” I won­der if the world has ever seen a stranger sight than a group of peo­ple seri­ous­ly pre­tend­ing to claim a land because their ances­tors lived there some 2,000 years ago !

If you sug­gest that I am biased, I invite you to read any sound his­to­ry of the peri­od and ver­i­fy the facts.

Such frag­men­tary records as we have indi­cate that the Jews were wan­der­ing nomads from Iraq who moved to south­ern Turkey, came south to Pales­tine, stayed there a short time, and then passed to Egypt, where they remained about 400 years. About 1300 BC (accord­ing to your cal­en­dar) they left Egypt and grad­u­al­ly con­quered most — but not all — of the inhab­i­tants of Palestine.

It is sig­nif­i­cant that the Philistines — not the Jews — gave their name to the coun­try : Pales­tine” is mere­ly the Greek form of Philis­tia.”

Only once, dur­ing the empire of David and Solomon, did the Jews ever con­trol near­ly — but not all — the land which is today Pales­tine. This empire last­ed only 70 years, end­ing in 926 BC. Only 250 years lat­er the King­dom of Judah had shrunk to a small province around Jerusalem, bare­ly a quar­ter of mod­ern Palestine.

In 63 BC the Jews were con­quered by Roman Pom­pey, and nev­er again had even the ves­tige of inde­pen­dence. The Roman Emper­or Hadri­an final­ly wiped them out about 135 AD. He utter­ly destroyed Jerusalem, rebuilt under anoth­er name, and for hun­dreds of years no Jew was per­mit­ted to enter it. A hand­ful of Jews remained in Pales­tine but the vast major­i­ty were killed or scat­tered to oth­er coun­tries, in the Dias­po­ra, or the Great Dis­per­sion. From that time Pales­tine ceased to be a Jew­ish coun­try, in any con­ceiv­able sense.

This was 1,815 years ago, and yet the Jews solemn­ly pre­tend they still own Pales­tine ! If such fan­ta­sy were allowed, how the map of the world would dance about !

Ital­ians might claim Eng­land, which the Romans held so long. Eng­land might claim France, home­land” of the con­quer­ing Nor­mans. And the French Nor­mans might claim Nor­way, where their ances­tors orig­i­nat­ed. And inci­den­tal­ly, we Arabs might claim Spain, which we held for 700 years.

Many Mex­i­cans might claim Spain, home­land” of their fore­fa­thers. They might even claim Texas, which was Mex­i­can until 100 years ago. And sup­pose the Amer­i­can Indi­ans claimed the home­land” of which they were the sole, native, and ancient occu­pants until only some 450 years ago !

I am not being face­tious. All these claims are just as valid — or just as fan­tas­tic — as the Jew­ish his­toric con­nec­tion” with Pales­tine. Most are more valid.

In any event, the great Moslem expan­sion about 650 AD final­ly set­tled things. It dom­i­nat­ed Pales­tine com­plete­ly. From that day on, Pales­tine was solid­ly Ara­bic in pop­u­la­tion, lan­guage, and reli­gion. When British armies entered the coun­try dur­ing the last war, they found 500,000 Arabs and only 65,000 Jews.

If sol­id, unin­ter­rupt­ed Arab occu­pa­tion for near­ly 1,300 years does not make a coun­try Arab”, what does ?

The Jews say, and right­ly, that Pales­tine is the home of their reli­gion. It is like­wise the birth­place of Chris­tian­i­ty, but would any Chris­t­ian nation claim it on that account ? In pass­ing, let me say that the Chris­t­ian Arabs — and there are many hun­dreds of thou­sands of them in the Arab World — are in absolute agree­ment with all oth­er Arabs in oppos­ing the Zion­ist inva­sion of Palestine.

May I also point out that Jerusalem is, after Mec­ca and Med­i­na, the holi­est place in Islam. In fact, in the ear­ly days of our reli­gion, Moslems prayed toward Jerusalem instead of Mecca.

The Jew­ish reli­gious claim” to Pales­tine is as absurd as the his­toric claim.” The Holy Places, sacred to three great reli­gions, must be open to all, the monop­oly of none. Let us not con­fuse reli­gion and politics.

We are told that we are inhu­mane and heart­less because do not accept with open arms the per­haps 200,000 Jews in Europe who suf­fered so fright­ful­ly under Nazi cru­el­ty, and who even now — almost three years after war’s end — still lan­guish in cold, depress­ing camps.

Let me under­line sev­er­al facts. The unimag­in­able per­se­cu­tion of the Jews was not done by the Arabs : it was done by a Chris­t­ian nation in the West. The war which ruined Europe and made it almost impos­si­ble for these Jews to reha­bil­i­tate them­selves was fought by the Chris­t­ian nations of the West. The rich and emp­ty por­tions of the earth belong, not to the Arabs, but to the Chris­t­ian nations of the West.

And yet, to ease their con­sciences, these Chris­t­ian nations of the West are ask­ing Pales­tine — a poor and tiny Moslem coun­try of the East — to accept the entire bur­den. We have hurt these peo­ple ter­ri­bly,” cries the West to the East. Won’t you please take care of them for us?”

We find nei­ther log­ic nor jus­tice in this. Are we there­fore cru­el and heart­less nationalists”?

We are a gen­er­ous peo­ple : we are proud that Arab hos­pi­tal­i­ty” is a phrase famous through­out the world. We are a humane peo­ple : no one was shocked more than we by the Hit­lerite ter­ror. No one pities the present plight of the des­per­ate Euro­pean Jews more than we.

But we say that Pales­tine has already shel­tered 600,000 refugees. We believe that is enough to expect of us — even too much. We believe it is now the turn of the rest of the world to accept some of them.

I will be entire­ly frank with you. There is one thing the Arab world sim­ply can­not under­stand. Of all the nations of the earth, Amer­i­ca is most insis­tent that some­thing be done for these suf­fer­ing Jews of Europe. This feel­ing does cred­it to the human­i­ty for which Amer­i­ca is famous, and to that glo­ri­ous inscrip­tion on your Stat­ue of Liberty.

And yet this same Amer­i­ca — the rich­est, great­est, most pow­er­ful nation the world has ever known — refus­es to accept more than a token hand­ful of these same Jews herself !

I hope you will not think I am being bit­ter about this. I have tried hard to under­stand that mys­te­ri­ous para­dox, and I con­fess I can­not. Nor can any oth­er Arab.

Per­haps you have been informed that the Jews in Europe want to go to no oth­er place except Palestine.”

This myth is one of the great­est pro­pa­gan­da tri­umphs of the Jew­ish Agency for Pales­tine, the organ­i­sa­tion which pro­motes with fanat­ic zeal the emi­gra­tion to Pales­tine. It is a sub­tle half-truth, thus dou­bly dangerous.

The astound­ing truth is that nobody on earth real­ly knows where these unfor­tu­nate Jews real­ly want to go !

You would think that in so grave a prob­lem, the Amer­i­can, British, and oth­er author­i­ties respon­si­ble for the Euro­pean Jews would have made a very care­ful sur­vey, prob­a­bly by vote, to find out where each Jew actu­al­ly wants to go. Amaz­ing­ly enough this has nev­er been done ! The Jew­ish Agency has pre­vent­ed it.

Some time ago the Amer­i­can Mil­i­tary Gov­er­nor in Ger­many was asked at a press con­fer­ence how he was so cer­tain that all Jews there want­ed to go to Pales­tine. His answer was sim­ple : My Jew­ish advi­sors tell me so.” He admit­ted no poll had ever been made. Prepa­ra­tions were indeed begun for one, but the Jew­ish Agency stepped in to stop it.

The truth is that the Jews in Ger­man camps are now sub­ject­ed to a Zion­ist pres­sure cam­paign which learned much from the Nazi ter­ror. It is dan­ger­ous for a Jew to say that he would rather go to some oth­er coun­try, not Pales­tine. Such dis­senters have been severe­ly beat­en, and worse.

Not long ago, in Pales­tine, near­ly 1,000 Aus­tri­an Jews informed the inter­na­tion­al refugee organ­i­sa­tion that they would like to go back to Aus­tria, and plans were made to repa­tri­ate them.

The Jew­ish Agency heard of this, and exert­ed enough polit­i­cal pres­sure to stop it. It would be bad pro­pa­gan­da for Zion­ism if Jews began leav­ing Pales­tine. The near­ly 1,000 Aus­tri­an are still there, against their will.

The fact is that most of the Euro­pean Jews are West­ern in cul­ture and out­look, entire­ly urban in expe­ri­ence and habits. They can­not real­ly have their hearts set on becom­ing pio­neers in the bar­ren, arid, cramped land which is Palestine.

One thing, how­ev­er, is undoubt­ed­ly true. As mat­ters stand now, most refugee Jews in Europe would, indeed, vote for Pales­tine, sim­ply because they know no oth­er coun­try will have them.

If you or I were giv­en a choice between a near-prison camp for the rest of our lives — or Pales­tine — we would both choose Pales­tine, too.

But open up any oth­er alter­na­tive to them — give them any oth­er choice, and see what happens !

No poll, how­ev­er, will be worth any­thing unless the nations of the earth are will­ing to open their doors — just a lit­tle — to the Jews. In oth­er words, if in such a poll a Jew says he wants to go to Swe­den, Swe­den must be will­ing to accept him. If he votes for Amer­i­ca, you must let him come in.

Any oth­er kind of poll would be a farce. For the des­per­ate Jew, this is no idle test­ing of opin­ion : this is a grave mat­ter of life or death. Unless he is absolute­ly sure that his vote means some­thing, he will always vote for Pales­tine, so as not to risk his bird in the hand for one in the bush.

In any event, Pales­tine can accept no more. The 65,000 Jews in Pales­tine in 1918 have jumped to 600,000 today. We Arabs have increased, too, but not by immi­gra­tion. The Jews were then a mere 11 per cent of our pop­u­la­tion. Today they are one third of it.

The rate of increase has been ter­ri­fy­ing. In a few more years — unless stopped now — it will over­whelm us, and we shall be an impor­tant minor­i­ty in our own home.

Sure­ly the rest of the wide world is rich enough and gen­er­ous enough to find a place for 200,000 Jews — about one third the num­ber that tiny, poor Pales­tine has already shel­tered. For the rest of the world, it is hard­ly a drop in the buck­et. For us it means nation­al suicide.

We are some­times told that since the Jews came to Pales­tine, the Arab stan­dard of liv­ing has improved. This is a most com­pli­cat­ed ques­tion. But let us even assume, for the argu­ment, that it is true. We would rather be a bit poor­er, and mas­ters of our own home. Is this unnatural ?

The sor­ry sto­ry of the so-called Bal­four Dec­la­ra­tion,” which start­ed Zion­ist immi­gra­tion into Pales­tine, is too com­pli­cat­ed to repeat here in detail. It is ground­ed in bro­ken promis­es to the Arabs — promis­es made in cold print which admit no denying.

We utter­ly deny its valid­i­ty. We utter­ly deny the right of Great Britain to give away Arab land for a nation­al home” for an entire­ly for­eign people.

Even the League of Nations sanc­tion does not alter this. At the time, not a sin­gle Arab state was a mem­ber of the League. We were not allowed to say a word in our own defense.

I must point out, again in friend­ly frank­ness, that Amer­i­ca was near­ly as respon­si­ble as Britain for this Bal­four Dec­la­ra­tion. Pres­i­dent Wil­son approved it before it was issued, and the Amer­i­can Con­gress adopt­ed it word for word in a joint res­o­lu­tion on 30th June, 1922.

In the 1920s, Arabs were annoyed and insult­ed by Zion­ist immi­gra­tion, but not alarmed by it. It was steady, but fair­ly small, as even the Zion­ist founders thought it would remain. Indeed for some years, more Jews left Pales­tine than entered it — in 1927 almost twice as many.

But two new fac­tors, entire­ly unfore­seen by Britain or the League or Amer­i­ca or the most fer­vent Zion­ist, arose in the ear­ly thir­ties to raise the immi­gra­tion to undreamed heights. One was the World Depres­sion ; the sec­ond the rise of Hitler.

In 1932, the year before Hitler came to pow­er, only 9,500 Jews came to Pales­tine. We did not wel­come them, but we were not afraid that, at that rate, our sol­id Arab major­i­ty would ever be in danger.

But the next year — the year of Hitler — it jumped to 30,000 ! In 1934 it was 42,000 ! In 1935 it reached 61,000 !

It was no longer the order­ly arrival of ide­al­ist Zion­ists. Rather, all Europe was pour­ing its fright­ened Jews upon us. Then, at last, we, too, became fright­ened. We knew that unless this enor­mous influx stopped, we were, as Arabs, doomed in our Pales­tine home­land. And we have not changed our minds.

I have the impres­sion that many Amer­i­cans believe the trou­ble in Pales­tine is very remote from them, that Amer­i­ca had lit­tle to do with it, and that your only inter­est now is that of a humane bystander.

I believe that you do not realise how direct­ly you are, as a nation, respon­si­ble in gen­er­al for the whole Zion­ist move and specif­i­cal­ly for the present ter­ror­ism. I call this to your atten­tion because I am cer­tain that if you realise your respon­si­bil­i­ty you will act fair­ly to admit it and assume it.

Quite aside from offi­cial Amer­i­can sup­port for the Nation­al Home” of the Bal­four Dec­la­ra­tion, the Zion­ist set­tle­ments in Pales­tine would have been almost impos­si­ble, on any­thing like the cur­rent scale, with­out Amer­i­can mon­ey. This was con­tributed by Amer­i­can Jew­ry in an ide­al­is­tic effort to help their fellows.

The motive was wor­thy : the result were dis­as­trous. The con­tri­bu­tions were by pri­vate indi­vid­u­als, but they were almost entire­ly Amer­i­cans, and, as a nation, only Amer­i­ca can answer for it.

The present cat­a­stro­phe may be laid almost entire­ly at your door. Your gov­ern­ment, almost alone in the world, is insist­ing on the imme­di­ate admis­sion of 100,000 more Jews into Pales­tine — to be fol­lowed by count­less addi­tion­al ones. This will have the most fright­ful con­se­quences in bloody chaos beyond any­thing ever hint­ed at in Pales­tine before.

It is your press and polit­i­cal lead­er­ship, almost alone in the world, who press this demand. It is almost entire­ly Amer­i­can mon­ey which hires or buys the refugee ships” that steam ille­gal­ly toward Pales­tine : Amer­i­can mon­ey which pays their crews. The ille­gal immi­gra­tion from Europe is arranged by the Jew­ish Agency, sup­port­ed almost entire­ly by Amer­i­can funds. It is Amer­i­can dol­lars which sup­port the ter­ror­ists, which buy the bul­lets and pis­tols that kill British sol­diers — your allies — and Arab cit­i­zens — your friends.

We in the Arab world were stunned to hear that you per­mit open adver­tise­ments in news­pa­pers ask­ing for mon­ey to finance these ter­ror­ists, to arm them open­ly and delib­er­ate­ly for mur­der. We could not believe this could real­ly hap­pen in the mod­ern world. Now we must believe it : we have seen the adver­tise­ments with our own eyes.

I point out these things because noth­ing less than com­plete frank­ness will be of use. The cri­sis is too stark for mere polite vague­ness which means nothing.

I have the most com­plete con­fi­dence in the fair-mind­ed­ness and gen­eros­i­ty of the Amer­i­can pub­lic. We Arabs ask no favours. We ask only that you know the full truth, not half of it. We ask only that when you judge the Pales­tine ques­tion, you put your­selves in our place.

What would your answer be if some out­side agency told you that you must accept in Amer­i­ca many mil­lions of utter strangers in your midst — enough to dom­i­nate your coun­try — mere­ly because they insist­ed on going to Amer­i­ca, and because their fore­fa­thers had once lived there some 2,000 years ago ?

Our answer is the same.

And what would be your action if, in spite of your refusal, this out­side agency began forc­ing them on you ?

Ours will be the same.Endmark

Abdul­lah I was the first King of Jor­dan. This arti­cle was pub­lished in The Amer­i­can Mag­a­zine, Novem­ber, 1947
Cite this arti­cle as : His Majesty King Abdul­lah I of Jor­dan (18821951), King Abdul­lah I : As the Arabs See The Jews,” in Bis­mi­ka Allahu­ma, Jan­u­ary 16, 2009, last accessed March 29, 2024, https://​bis​mikaal​lahu​ma​.org/​h​i​s​t​o​r​y​/​a​s​-​t​h​e​-​a​r​a​b​s​-​s​e​e​-​t​h​e​-​j​e​ws/

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2 responses to “King Abdul­lah I : As the Arabs See The Jews”

  1. abdelwadoud Avatar
    abdelwadoud

    Thank you for the beau­ti­ful article

  2. hang.tuah Avatar
    hang.tuah

    assalam­mualaikum.
    saya amat ter­tarik den­gan per­anan par­ti poli­tik PAS dalam kon­teks ISLAM. Bolehkah saudara men­erangkan lebih lanjut ?

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