Word: antonius
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Tracing Arab nationalism back to 1847, and attributing its early beginnings largely to the influence of U. S. missionaries in Syria, who brought printing presses and organized Arab clubs, Author Antonius insists that Arab nationalism has now become essentially a matter of self-preservation. Admitting that nothing but harm can come out of the terror now raging in Palestine, he insists that physical violence by the Arab is the "inevitable corollary of the moral violence" done the Arab, that Arab terrorism in Palestine does not need German or Italian propaganda to foster...
...Zionist dream of making Palestine a Jewish State is doomed to failure, says Mr. Antonius, if for no other reason than that the Arab peasantry prefers death to giving up its land. Disgraceful as he considers the German treatment of Jews, the "cure for the eviction of Jews from Germany is not to be sought in the eviction of the Arabs from their homeland. ... No code of morals can justify the persecution of one people in an attempt to relieve the persecution of another." He denies emphatically that Jewish money in Palestine has helped the lot of the Arab masses...
Often has it been pointed out that the British made two sets of conflicting promises, one to the Arabs, another to the Jews, for Palestine. Author Antonius does not lay the conflicting promises as much to British duplicity as to the fact that the British left hand often was ignorant of what the right hand was doing. The Foreign Office, the India Office, the War Office, the Admiralty, the Arab Bureau in Cairo all had hands in the Arab negotiations. Moreover, says the author, "it behooves the Arabs to remember that war and rectitude are not natural companions." He asks...
Besides poring over dusty old files of Arab newspapers and digging out much hitherto unpublished diplomatic correspondence, Author Antonius had long interviews with the leading figures of the Arab revolt. The late Hussein, having lost his Hejaz throne, recounted British promises bitterly, supplied several missing links. The late King Feisal of Iraq, Hussein's son, revealed that he had at first opposed the revolt against the Turks...
Most interesting, however, are the author's comments on Colonel T. E. Lawrence. No Lawrence-worshipper, Mr. Antonius says that the famed colonel's Arabic was far from perfect, would have deceived no one in Arabia. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom is full of misunderstandings, defects, errors. The Lawrence account of his almost singlehanded capture of Aqaba, Mr. Antonius suggests, is bragging. Auda Abu Tayeh, ally of Feisal, planned the attack and, with Feisal's approval, executed it, independent of outside help. The Lawrence chronicle of British-Arab negotiations is "confused and chronologically impossible...