Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (31 page)

A careful listener could have been excused for being confused as to whether it was a fact or a myth that the British were or were not Jews, though the weight of the argument seemed to suggest that they were. He or she might also conclude that now all Americans, that is, not just Franklin Roosevelt, were Jews. This remarkable broadcast assumed only some knowledge of the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac, which when combined with the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of twentieth-century Europe offered a full explanation of Allied actions during World War II. Radical anti-Semitism was also Nazism's opiate. The more the Americans and British succeeded in defeating Axis forces in North Africa, the more Nazi Arabic radio resorted to its ultimate ideological weapon: it simply stated that the Allies were identical with the Jewish enemy. From its earliest months and years, Arab and Muslim anti-Americanism included strains of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.23 When American politicians began to express more support for a Jewish state in Palestine, Axis radio saw further evidence that Washington had "openly declared its hostility to Arabs and Islam."24

Allied military victories in North Africa brought about an expansion of American intelligence and political activities in the region and thus a modest expansion of reports about the impact of Axis propaganda. As Joseph Bendersky has documented, some leading officers of the "G-2" staff of the Military Intelligence Division (MID) responsible for examining such trends were themselves advocates of anti-Semitic and certainly anti-Zionist sentiment.25 Nevertheless, as the MID field agents were concerned above all with winning the war, their reports did not shrink from reporting anti-Semitic or pro-Axis sympathies in the Middle East. On January io, 1943, George Wadsworth, the general consul of the American Legation in Beirut, sent the first of ten weekly military intelligence reports to American military intelligence officials in Cairo. "Notes on the Situation in Syria and Lebanon" were authored by a certain "Gwynn." In addition to reports on the local political scene, they included a section on "Subversive Activities." For the week of January 1-7, Gwynn reported that "enemy propaganda has been as virulent as usual, the usual hackneyed themes being harped upon: American imperialism, American sympathy with the Jews, the emptiness of the Atlantic Charter and the Four Freedoms, and divergence between American and British war aims. An especially effective theme was underscored in a Bari broadcast of December 29 where the former Mufti of Jerusalem was quoted as declaring that `The Arabs hope with all their heart for Axis victory which alone can assure their liberty `from Anglo-Saxon yoke.' "26 The following week Gywnn reported that "the fundamental themes of enemy radio propaganda have undergone little change." The Axis station from Athens asserted that "if the United States and England come out of this war victorious, which God forbid!, they will repudiate all promises and will colonize all the Arab countries of the Near and Middle East." Gwynn reported that "the appeals to the Arabs to rise up against the Jews and their protectors, the British and the Americans, have been particularly strident this week, in the hope, doubtless, of leading to further demonstrations. 1127

On February 17, Secretary of State Hull requested that Wadsworth "telegraph immediately your estimate of the efficacy of Office of War Information activities in your area;" including its "effect on local population in terms of American prestige and United Nations' war effort."28 In his reply of February i9, Wadsworth noted that American efforts, which consisted of a "weekly halfhour English musical record and quarter-hour Arabic specialty programs;" were modest compared to the Italian and German broadcasts. Axis radio was on the air several hours every day and evening.29 (In June, another OWI official in Beirut estimated that the io,ooo shortwave radio sets in Lebanon created a potential audience of 25,000 listeners.)30 Wadsworth added that U.S. news bulletins, leaflets, posters, and pamphlets were circulated to the local press. Yet Wadsworth doubted that OWI efforts could "ever harvest more than a fraction of their merited effort so long as American leadership at home is tarred, in the Arab view, with political Zionism. This more than ever before means, always in the Arab view, extension of Zionist influence into this and neighboring coun- tries."31 Wadsworth, like OWI officials in the United States, viewed an American association with Zionism as a political albatross limiting Allied efforts to win and sustain Arab and Muslim sympathy.

A February 13 memo from George Britt of the OWI office in Beirut conveyed this sentiment. OWI could "talk about the horrors of Axis conquest," but conquest did not fill the Lebanese and Syrians with dread. "Against our story of evils under the Axis heel and the perfidy of Adolf Hitler, they have their own notions about who is perfidious and a documented conviction that at least they can trust Hitler to eliminate their pressing immediate irritations."32 The "natives" wanted to get rid of French rule and expected the United States to help in doing so. The question of Jewish immigration to Palestine was equally serious. After the Republican leader WendellWilkie as well as two hundred senators and congressmen had expressed support for Jewish immigration to Palestine, Britt noted "Axis radios screamed about it all day Sunday, two days after Christmas, with repetitions since."As a result of the expression of such views, Britt thought that in Lebanon and Syria, "probably the Americans are viewed with more hostility and misgiving on the Zionist issue than even the British." To be sure, things looked better than in summer 1942 as "the whole face of the war began its rapid change" from possible victory by Rommel to "Montgomery, Eisenhower, Stalingrad, finally [Allied victory in] Tunisia."33

In June, Britt wrote that Allied military victories were "the greatest of all propaganda elements here." Nevertheless, "a constant Axis propaganda is at work here, centering on superbly skilled Axis radio broadcasts, the whole purpose of which is to deceive. Hearing the confident tone of Axis announcements, watching their selection, distortion and fabrication of news, one cannot remain blind to their powerful persuasive possibilities. This influence uncorrected could preserve on ice the illusion that the Axis was unbeatable and that it was fighting for the rights of these people here. OWI has been a daily corrective." When the OWI agents arrived in June 1942, "the people were saturated with Axis talk." The Lebanese and Syrians "loathed the French" and "distrusted the British, fear their Zionist connections, [and] discounted what they said." A "word from American lips had an effect enjoyed by no other agency." OWI in Beirut hoped to draw on the "substantial latent popularity of America" to "supply a positive element to United Nations appeal." In September 1942, that meant impressing the local population "with our determination and bigness, and with our certainty of winning." By February 1943, in part thanks to the efforts of OWI, "the whole country knows America is in the war and that is the most convincing fact they could hear."34

But "as the Zionist problem has entwined the Americans in its tentacles, the Office of War Information has kept silent." Those in Syria and Lebanon who were opposed to the Axis and favorably disposed to the Allies had "difficulty in remaining pro-American in view" due to the expression of pro-Zionist statements in the United States Congress. Rather than attempt to explain the basis for such sentiment, Britt thought silence was "much more effective than preaching tolerance to agitated Arab nationalists-who are the largest and most cohesive group here-who have witnessed a minority being built up into a political majority by external stimulation and subsidy for the purpose of taking the rule of their own country away from them." Given Britt's framing of the Palestine conflict in this way, he was unlikely to use the OWI to attempt to present another side of the issue. The Arabs were asking American officials if the United States endorsed the British White Paper or if the Zionists would succeed in shaping American policy. United States "silence and evasion" about the issue of further Jewish immigration to Palestine would "make no converts to our side in the war."35 In Britt's view, Nazi Germany's primary advantage in the propaganda war in the Middle East lay both in its opposition to Zionism, which resonated with the great majority of Arabs and Muslims, and in its anti-Semitism, which also found support from a smaller but still substantial group. The Axis swam with these currents. The Americans and British swam against them. Anti-Zionism was much broader than support for Nazism, but all supporters of the Axis were anti-Zionists. Indeed, anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism were among the sources of the appeal of the Axis whereas those Arabs and Muslims who supported the Allies did so, often, in spite of American and British support for some kind of Jewish presence in Palestine.

In February and March, the Mufti was again on Axis radio. On February 8, he was interviewed on Berlin in Arabic. He said that all Arabs wanted "to be free and to rid Islam of appendages which are foreign to its specific rules. They want Islam to be pure as at the beginning and the Moslems once again to be master." Muslims could be influential "in the organization of the new world" as a result of "fuller cooperation between the Arab world and Europe." Europeans needed to work to understand Arab civilization. When they did, the Arab world's geographic position and the progress of communication would produce "better and fuller cooperation." Asked what part Islam should play "in resisting International Jewry;' Husseini replied that "Islam realized the danger of Judaism from its very birth. In periods when Islam was weak, the Jews took the opportunity to combat it. However, the Moslems were successful in resisting the Jews and in reducing to nought their attempts." The Palestine Arabs now were in the forefront of resistance to the Jews. Asked for recommendations for shaping "an independent Islamic policy against Bolshevism," he replied that "the teachings of Islam" laid the basis of an economic, political, and social system that was "in sharp contrast to Communism.... Every Moslem must resist such a destructive movement." He warned the audience in Morocco and Algeria that the Jews wanted to "Zionize" their countries, which they viewed as a "bridgehead between New York and Jerusalem."36

The association of the United States with the Jews that became important in German Arabic propaganda in spring and summer 1942 remained a constant theme of broadcasts of winter and spring 1943. On February 11, the Arab Nation declared that American propaganda was more powerful than the British or Bolshevik variety. President Roosevelt, Secretary of State Cordell Hull, and Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles had "stated quite openly that they are going to help the Jews. As the Jews are the most ardent enemies of the Arab countries, those who help them are also our enemies." Moreover, statements sympathetic to the Jews coming from American politicians in Congress and by American businessmen "have roused the fury of Arabs in Palestine." With their landings in North Africa, the Americans had "strengthened and consolidated their own imperialistic policy."37 On February 25, the Arab Nation attacked "the Jewish newspaper, the New York Times" for its support of a Jewish national home in Palestine. It referred to "dirty Jews" who "amass money through their greed" and who were crying "crocodile tears." It extended its sympathy instead to "poor Palestine, Syria, the Lebanon and Iraq;" countries that were "all suffering from the Jews and their servants."38 On March 6, Athens in Arabic described World War II as one "which was kindled by the Anglo-Saxons" and was "a Jewish one." The Arabs had to be on guard "against that arch-criminal Roosevelt." Should he succeed, the "heritage of Islam and Arabism will vanish with the wind .1131

On March 15, the Arab Nation repeated the assertion that World War II was "a Jewish war and that the Jews started it to defend their low race." The station attributed to the leader of Free French Forces in North Africa at that time, General Henri Giraud, the hope that Jews and Muslims would be able to establish good relations. In fact, the Jewish danger to the Arabs was "becoming acute. We who have lived in Europe have known the Jews and know their intrigues. It may not appear dangerous to you at present, but wherever Jews set foot they bring misery to the people of the country. Your duty as Arabs is to unite in your struggles against these enemies. You will experience for yourself the Jewish system which will abolish Arab traditions and Islamic beliefs." The Jews realized that "so long as Islam exists they will not be in peace, as they are aware that the Prophet Mohammed fought the Jews and called upon Moslems to continue the struggle. Mohammed chased the Jews from the Arab land and ordered Moslems to fight until they are extinct. The Jews therefore wish to fight; the Arabs will not remain with folded arms. They will rise against the Jews and fight them as they have already done in Palestine.."40

Nazi Arabic propaganda repeatedly asserted that Islam-not fundamentalist Islam or political Islam but simply the religion of Islam-constituted a non-Western ally in Nazism's war with the Jews: the conflict between Islam and the Jews was as total as that between the Jews and Nazi Germany. On March 19, Berlin in Arabic broadcast a speech by Husseini on the occasion of the Prophet's birthday. "The Grand Mufti of Palestine" again connected his interpretation of Mohammed's struggles with the Jews to contemporary events. On this day of celebration, he said that there was "hardly one Moslem country that is spared the control and tyranny of aggressive enemies, be it directly or indirectly." The Jews had "control over England and the U.S.A." and were taking advantage of the war "to lay their hands on the Holy Land." The Arabs would resist "till doomsday." The Jews were intending to turn Arab countries into "a refuge for the millions of Jews who were driven out of Europe." Mohammed "drove the Jews completely out of the Arab countries." In so doing he "gave us a great example." On the occasion of his birthday, it was "the duty of all the Arabs in particular and the Moslems in general to take an oath in front of God to destroy Jewish aspirations completely and demolish that imaginary bridge between New York and Jerusalem, thus proving for all times that faith is more powerful than money and the devilish and dirty conspiracies plotted by international Jewry."41 The Arabic-language text of the speech was printed as a pocket-size thirty-one-page pamphlet.42 On February 2, German agents distributed 4,000 copies in Tunis, 4,000 copies in Tangier, 2,000 copies in Ankara, 500 copies in Zagreb, 500 copies in Sofia, and 500 copies in Bucharest.43