Azzam's Genocidal Threat
2011; Middle East Forum; Volume: 18; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2767-049X
Autores Tópico(s)Indian History and Philosophy
ResumoOf the countless threats of violence made by Arab and Palestinian leaders in the run up to and in the wake of the November 29, 1947, partition resolution, none has resonated more widely than the warning by Abdul Rahman Azzam, the Arab League's first secretary-general, that the establishment of Jewish state would lead to a of and which be spoken of like the Mongolian and the Crusades. threat is generally believed to have been made during briefing to the Egyptian press on May 15, 1948, shortly after the pan- Arab invasion of the newly-proclaimed state of Israel. Some scholars trace it to May 16 New York Times report, citing the Egyptian daily al-Ahram.1 Yet this New York Times edition contains no such item whereas the original al-Ahram report has yet to surface. Others cite BBC broadcast as their source,2 yet comprehensive examination, completed by Efraim Karsh, of the corporation's archives in Reading, England, has found no evidence of this broadcast. Others, like the renowned American journalist, I. F. Stone, who covered the saga of Israel's birth as it unfolded, simply noted the threat without proper attribution.3 Indeed, failure to trace the original document4 has given rise to doubts as to whether Azzam actually made this threat. Criticizing Karsh for noting the threat in Palestine Betrayed,5 Israeli academic Benny Morris wrote: But was their aim, as Karsh would have it? There is no knowing. Indeed, the Arab leaders going to in 1948 were very sparing in publicly describing their goals and exterminating the Jews never figured in their public bombast. I myself in the past have used the one divergent quote, by Arab League Secretary-General Abdul Rahman Azzam from May 15, 1948, in which he allegedly spoke of war of extermination and momentous massacre la the Mongols. But in my recent history of the 1948 (Yale University Press, 2008), I refrained from reusing it after discovering that its pedigree is dubious.6 Yet, the original document does in fact exist. It has eluded scholars for so long because they have been looking in the wrong place. In his account of Israel's birth, Stone alluded to the possibility that the threat was made on the eve of the U.N. vote on partition, with the aim of averting this decision, rather than before the pan-Arab invasion of Israel six months later.7 Following this lead, David Barnett found Jewish Agency memorandum, submitted on February 2, 1948, to the U.N. Palestine Commission, tasked with the implementation of the partition resolution, and yet again to the U.N. secretary-general on March 29, 1948. Describing the panoply of Arab threats of and actual acts of violence aimed at aborting the partition resolution, the memorandum read: (6) ... The practical and effective means contrived and advocated by the Arab States were never envisaged as being limited by the provisions of the Charter; indeed, the Secretary-General of the Arab League was thinking in terms which are quite remote from the lofty sentiments of San Francisco. This war, he said, will be of and which be spoken of like the Mongol massacres and the Crusades.8 The Jewish Agency memorandum cites an October 11, 1947 article in the Egyptian newspaper Akhbar al-Yom as the quote's source. An examination of the original article (see box right) readily confirms the quote's authenticity, laying to rest one of the longest running historiographical debates attending the 1948 war. WAR OF EXTERMINATION An October 11, 1947 report on the pan-Arab summit in the Lebanese town of Aley9 by Akhbar al-Yom's editor, Mustafa Amin, contained an interview he held with Arab League secretary-general Azzam. Placed in special box titled A War of Extermination, the interview read as follows (translated by Efraim Karsh; all ellipses are in the original text): Abdul Rahman Azzam Pasha spoke to me about the horrific that was in the offing . …
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