Way off-topic, but I crave your indulgence as I re-post an item (first dug out last year, which took a while to turn up again) on a vexed subject discussed somewhere here, about a fortnight ago - the Arabs in WWII.

In 1946, the eminent American Christian Palestine Committee (combining the American Palestine Committee and the Christian Council on Palestine), incorporating luminaries such as Fiorello LaGuardia, Sumner Welles, Carl J. Freidrich, Reinhold Niebuhr, Everett Dirksen, Claude Pepper and Paul Tillich, published its Documented Report, “The Arab War Effort”.

Here’s a salient excerpt, verbatim, from its detailed section on “Palestine & Transjordan”:

“In April, 1941 [during the pro-Nazi, proto-Islamofascist revolt in Iraq], unlike the Transjordan Frontier Force, the Arab Legion did not mutiny. Desertions from the armed forces of Middle East countries - both by Arab officers and soldiers - form a chapter of their own.

“Desertion was repeatedly urged in Nazi radio and leaflet propaganda and by the Fifth Column in each Arab country. The Nazis and the Arab leaders in Germany [principally composed of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini, ousted rebel Iraqi PM, Rashid Ali el-Gailani, Prince Mansur Daoud of Egypt, the bloody Palestinian-Syrian arch-terrorist, Fawzi Qauqji and Syrian Fascist boss, Anton Saade] vigorously propagandised against the enlistment of Arabs in the British Army (or its ancillaries). This was hardly necessary.

“So very few Palestine Arabs joined that Syrians, Lebanese, Egyptians and Transjordanians were encouraged to cross into Palestine and enlist as Palestinians, to fill the quota fixed for Palestine Arab units. [Once these thousands of men had signed up, their families and dependents were automatically sponsored by the British to follow them into Palestine, taking up residence there.]

“It will be recalled that enlistment in parallel Jewish units was held down to the Arab rate - a peculiar service indeed for the war effort on the part of the British Palestine Administration. It took the steadily worsening military situation in the Middle East and the continued pressure by the Jewish volunteers to break down this sham at ‘equality’. [By late 1944, 25, 714 Palestinian Jews were serving with the British, while 9,041 Arabs were on the books.]

“Many Arab troops from Palestine went over to the enemy. The Germans were successful, with the assistance of the Arab leaders, in mobilising recruits for their Arab Brigades from the ranks of Palestinian Arab prisoners-of-war and deserters. In the liberation of Europe, Allied forces captured numerous Arabs, who had formerly been in the British Army, in German uniforms.

“Apart from regular desertions to the enemy, there were additionally hundreds of cases of ordinary desertion by Arab military personnel, mostly leaving their units with their arms. At least half the Arabs from Palestine disappeared from the British lines through desertion. [On top, a large proportion of Arabs were further discharged as ‘unfit for duty’.]

“... Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria and the Lebanon did not declare war on Germany until February 1945, when the end of hostilities was imminent and Allied victory was absolutely certain. These declarations of war at the eleventh hour were merely formal, since none of these states took any part in military operations. Their declarations were obviously aimed at securing seats on the United Nations Organization, at the establishment of which, in San Francisco, only those States which had which had declared war on the Axis before March 1, 1945, could participate”.

Posted by: HGII at February 2, 2005 5:11 PM