Posted on 10/13/2017 9:46:59 PM PDT by beaversmom
Part One, Chapter Nine
Autumn 1929
Haj Amin al Heusseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, assumed the pulpit. The mosque stood on a great plaza that had been the Temple Mount of Solomon and Herod. Since Islam it had been the site of Al Aksa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, where Mohammed made his legendary ascension to heaven. Known now as the Haram esh Sharif, the Most Noble Sanctuary, it was considered the third most sacred site in all of Islam.
"The criminal Jews are going to take the Haram esh Sharif by a signal of a ram's horn blowing on Yom Kippur. They are going to destroy the Dome of the Rock and this mosque and rebuild their temple!" the Mufti shouted.
"Death to the Jews!" the congregation responded.
"Hatred of the Jews is sacred!" cried the Mufti.
"Death to the Jews!" they chanted.
Out they poured, brandishing knives, clubs, and hidden pistols from beneath their robes. Frothing, enraged by the sermon, the Arab mob fell upon the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City nearby, a quarter inhabited by defenseless Hassidim. They tore into the little room-sized synagogues and burned Jewish holy books, smashed up shops, urinated and defecated on Torah scrolls, pulled beards, clubbed and garroted, and when it was done, thirty Jews had been murdered.
"The Jews have destroyed Al Aksa!"
The word roared over Palestine from mosque to mosque accompanied by crudely faked photographs.
"Death to the Jews!"
In the holy city of Safed in the Galilee, where the oriental Jewish scholars studied the mystical books of Cabala, eighteen were massacred.
"Death to the Jews!"
In Abraham's city of Hebron, where Jew and Moslem jointly worshiped at the tombs of the patriarchs, the burial place of Abraham and many biblical characters, the Arab mob murdered and dismembered sixty-seven unarmed and undefended men, women, and children.
Other attacks were co-ordinated as the Arabs spilled out of their mosques in Jaffa, Haifa, Beer Tuvia, and Huida, spurred by the infamous lie that the Jews were taking over the Haram esh Sharif.
Using the pulpit and the power and position of his title as Mufti, Haj Amin al Heusseini moved through the decade of the 1920s and spread his tentacles into every corner of Palestine. He was a landowner of enormous properties, which were share-cropped in a feudal tradition. The Mufti's domain was a destitute, illiterate fiefdom of desperate serfs who were easily aroused and manipulated into religious frenzy inside the mosque.
While the Jewish Agency flourished, the Mufti blocked creation of an Arab Agency, which would have caused him to co-operate with rival clans and diminish his personal ambitions. This left the Arab community with an impoverished and ineffectual health and education system and no plans for future progress.
Instead, the Mufti maneuvered. Arab life was completely centered around the Moslem religion. A Surpeme Moslem Council was a major body controlling religious funds, religious courts, the mosques, moneys for orphans and education. Haj Amin al Heusseini seized the presidency of the Council, which, in addition to his title as Mufti, gave him a hammerlock on the Arab community.
As president of the Supreme Moslem Council he had vast funds at his disposal without having to make a public accounting. He likewise controlled the appointment of preachers, mosque officials, teachers, and judges. So broad and dominating had the Mufti's powers become that he immodestly added the word "Grand" to his title and thus became the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. The calm of the decade had been deliberately broken when he turned loose his ragged legions in a raw play for absolute power.
Although the carnage had been great in undefended Jewish holy cities, the Mufti's gains had been limited. He had struck at isolated pockets of pious scholars and rabbis and against rival Arab clans. The rioters, however, gave wide berth to the Jewish farming settlements, which were simply too tough to be attacked.
The Mufti tried and got nowhere in the Valley of Ayalon against the Jewish kibbutzim. Gideon Asch, the Haganah commander, had secretly armed and trained all males and females of fighting age. His area remained very quiet during the 1929 riots. A good part of the relative calm in Ayalon was due to the Muktar of Tabah, who ordered his people not to get involved in the Mufti's "holy war."
Although Shemesh and Tabah did not co-operate in or co-ordinate defensive matters, there was always ongoing business to discuss and most of the original coolness changed.
Haj Ibrahim personally did not set foot in the kibbutz proper. On those occasions when he visited Gideon he would enter the gate and ride through the fields to their rendezvous point by the stream. Likewise, Gideon visited him at the knoll but never at the muktar's home.
The two men seemed to find their times together a welcome respite from their burdens of office. Haj Ibrahim was constantly disarmed by the coolness of the Jew, who he felt was half Bedouin anyhow. He respected Gideon. He respected the way he handled a horse and spoke Arabic. He respected a fairness in Gideon that he was not able to practice himself. What he liked most about talking with Gideon was a new aspect of his life: an ability to speak to another person about his own hidden thoughts. Haj Ibrahim was an inner man of a people long conditioned never to speak inner feelings. His situation was even more lonely, for a muktar must never let anyone know his thoughts. A structure of silence was the rule of life. Public utterances, even to a friend or relative, were always based on what was expected to be said. No one spoke of personal longings, secret ambitions, fears.
With Gideon it was different. It was not so much like speaking to a Jew. It was more like speaking to a flowing stream or the leaves of a tree fluttering in the wind or to an animal in the fields, an abstract way of letting the tongue go a bit wild and not guarding every word. It was delightful. He and Gideon could argue loudly and insult one another and realize they didn't have to get angry with each other because of it. When Gideon was gone for long periods Ibrahim would send a messenger to Shemesh for an urgent meeting over an imagined complaint.
The afternoon drifted away at the stream. Haj Ibrahim took a swig of wine, placed the bottle back into the pool to cool, opened a tin, and unwrapped a small stick of hashish.
"Just a little for me," Gideon said. "I have to argue with bureaucrats later."
"Why don't the Jews enjoy hashish?"
"I don't know."
"We offer to sell . . . but . . . no one buys it. You enjoy it. Do they know you enjoy it?"
"Not really. At least they don't want to believe it. They accept the fact I'm a creature of the desert. They tolerate my Bedouin side," Gideon said.
Gideon took a long draw on the little pipe, emitted an "ahhh," and lay back on the ground. "We should be proud. The valley stayed peaceful during the riots."
"Who had a choice?" Ibrahim said. "Your hand controls the valve on our water."
"Suppose we didn't have the water arrangement. Would you have encouraged your people to riot?"
"During the summer heat my people become frazzled. They worry about the autumn harvest. They are drained. They are pent up. They must explode. Nothing directs their frustration like Islam. Hatred is holy in this part of the world. It is also eternal. If they become inflamed, I am but a muktar. I cannot stand against a tide. You see, Gideon, that is why you are fooling yourselves. You do not know how to deal with us. For years, decades, we may seem to be at peace with you, but always in the back of our minds we keep up the hope of vengeance. No dispute is ever really settled in our world. The Jews give us special reason to continue warring."
"Do we deal with the Arabs by thinking like Arabs ourselves?"
"That is the catch. You cannot think like an Arab. You, personally maybe. But not your people. I give you an example. There is a clause in our water agreement we did not ask for. It says the agreement can be terminated only if it were proved that someone from Tabah committed a crime against you."
"But suppose the Mufti's men did it. Should that be a reason to cut your water off? We don't believe in punishing an entire village for something you did not do."
"Aha! Ibrahim said. "That proves you are weak and that will be your downfall. You are crazy to extend us mercy that you will never receive in return."
"The Jews have asked for mercy a million times in a hundred lands. How can we now deny mercy to others who ask it from us?"
"Because this is not a land of mercy. Magnanimity has not part in our world. Sooner or later you will have to play politics, make alliances, secret agreements, arm one tribe against another. You will start thinking more and more like us. Jewish ideals will not work here. You Jews have come in and destroyed a system of order we created out of the desert. Perhaps the bazaar looks disorganized to you, but it provides us with the means to survive the harshness of this life and prepare us for a better life hereafter."
"It need not be that life under Islam is meaningless on this earth and that you are only here for the purpose of waiting to die. Could it be, Haj Ibrahim, you use Islam as an excuse for your failures, an excuse to quietly accept tyranny, an excuse for not using sweat and ingenuity to make something out of this land."
"Come now, Gideon. What will happen when my poor people learn to read and write. They will begin to want things impossible for them to have. You get all the money you want from the world Jews. What will Fawzi Kabir give us without making a deal for himself? No, Gideon, no. The Jews are breaking down a way of life we are conditioned to. Don't you see . . . every time the outsider comes here he brings with him ways we cannot cope with."
"That's the point, Ibrahim. Islam cannot hide from the world any longer. With the Jews here, we can give you a window to a world you can't avoid."
Ibrahim shook his head. "It has always been trouble when outsiders come here and tell us how to live. First the Crusaders, then the Turks, then the British, then the French . . . everyone telling us our ways are no good and we must change."
"You're wrong about one thing. The Jews belong here. We come from the same father. We are both sons of Abraham. There must be a place in our father's house for us. One small room is all we ask."
"Look at the color of your eyes, Gideon. You are a stranger from a strange place."
"There have always been Jews and Arabs in Palestine and there always will be. We got our blue eyes from wandering in a hostile world, and some of us need to come home."
"And we are being asked to pay for the crimes of the Christians against you," Ibrahim said.
"Pay? It's not your land, Ibrahim. You've given up on it long ago. You've neither fought for it, nor worked for it, nor ever called it a country of its own."
"Your trying to create a Palestine in your own image. You are pushing us into a world we do not know. We must have something we understand, something we can contend with. You are confusing us," Ibrahim said.
"Why don't you make a small start, like sending some of your children to our clinic? They don't have to die of the stomach or chest pains and they don't have to go through life blind for trichoma."
For the first time Ibrahim became annoyed and restless to end their meeting. "It is Allah's will that the weak among us be weeded out." He walked to where his horse grazed and took its reins. Gideon stood and sighed.
"We have a strong new generator in the kibbutz--"
"No, Ibrahim interrupted, "we do not want your electricity."
"What I had in mind was running a single wire over to your cafe. In that way, a radio can be installed."
"Oh, Gideon, you know how to tempt me. A radio . . . you know very well that it would make me only slightly less great than the Prophet in the eyes of the people."
A radio, Ibrahim pondered. Gideon was slowly but steadily building up an account of favors. Surely he would call in those favors. That is the way the world worked--but a radio!
"I accept," Ibrahim said.
"One more thing. I am taking a wife next week after the Sabbath. Will you come with your muktars and sheiks?" Gideon asked.
Ibrahim got on his horse. He shook his head. "No, it is not a good thing. My people will see men and women dancing together, eating together. It is not a good thing."
They galloped side by side to the kibbutz gate. The sentry spotted them and opened up. Ibrahim rode through, then turned. "I shall come myself," he called, "because you are my friend."
I’m am not a prolific reader, sorry to say. But I finished Exodus by Leon Uris in August, and I really enjoyed it. I am now reading sort of the flip side of Exodus...The Haj also by Uris.
I found Chapter 9 in the first section of the Haj to be a fascinating look into the Arab-Muslim mindset. Some of it I knew or gathered from osmosis, but I really thought this chapter was quite intelligently written, and I enjoyed the back and forth between Gideon Ash, a Jewish character in the book, and The Haj, the Muslim.
Many things went through my mind as I read it...I thought about history, recent world events, scenes from movies, and other reading I have done.
The situation with Saddam Hussein and the Iraq War came to mind, and even though it’s not appealing to our Western mindset, I thought about how a “strong man” type leader is needed in that part of the world or things just totally go to pot. Like the Haj said, they can’t cope with other ways of doing things.
When the Haj refuses the offer of medical help from Gideon saying it is God’s will to take the weak, it reminded me of this scene from Lawrence of Arabia:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2cDJwxS50I
(2:34 minutes)
And the well scene, also from Lawrence of Arabia, where Lawrence cannot fathom why Sherif Ali just murdered his guide for seemingly no reason:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gMt1PBC5BU
(4:23 minutes)
Lawrence tells him:
“Sherif Ali, so long as the Arabs fight tribe against tribe, so long will they be a little people, a silly people, greedy, barbarous, and cruel, as you are.”
This is true in my estimation, but as it was true 100 years ago, I believe it will be true 100 years from now. It’s unfortunate, and I certainly have no crystal ball, but grudges are not forgotten in that part of the world as we all know, and the fictional Haj tells Gideon pretty much the same.
But maybe some Arabs get that the Arab world needs to move forward...they understand that they cannot continue to live in the 8th century and the centuries forward as they always have:
A Wise Honest Arab Muslim Man Tells Muslims The Truth About Themselves - A Must See
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZZMXV_PRXk
And:
Are these Israel’s bravest soldiers? Meet the Sunni Muslim Arabs who fight on the front line in an ‘unbreakable blood pact’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3362369/Are-Israel-s-bravest-soldiers-Meet-Sunni-Muslim-Arabs-fight-line-unbreakable-blood-pact.html
Oh, and this post on FR from just today:
Jordan: Jews on Temple Mount are a ‘provocation’ to Muslims
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3594753/posts
Jordanian minister claims Jews visiting Temple Mount ‘harm’ Al-Aqsa mosque, ‘provoke’ Muslims around the world.
The Jordanian government condemned Israel for allowing Jews to visit the Temple Mount, calling it “irresponsible” and “provocative to Muslims around the world.”
Jordan’s Minister of State for Media Affairs Mohammad Momani published a statement declaring Israel’s actions “unacceptable.” Israel, he said, is “provoking in an irresponsible fashion” Muslims around the world.
Momani also claimed Israel is “harming” the “blessed Al-Aqsa mosque.”
According to Momani, Israel’s policy contradicts international law, which requires the preservation of holy sites.
Israel’s actions also harm the relationship between the two countries, and makes it difficult to reduce tension and preserve the historical and legal status quo at Al-Aqsa, Momani claimed. He insisted Israel cease the “provocations” and honor Jordan’s role as protector of holy places in Jerusalem, as per the contract between Jordan and Israel.
Bkmrk.
Bump. Highly recommend “Haj”. It gives a background history to Israel and the Middle East.
If you have a little Irish in your blood, read “Trinity” by Uris.
Thanks for the recommendation. I do believe I have a bit of Irish on my dad’s side. But after the Haj, I’m off to Mila 18! I’m itching to read that one. Trinity will have to be down the road some. :)
Best book ever about Arabs was written by a Jew.
I read Haj a while back
What did you think? I have heard it’s very good, and I’m enjoying it so far.
The fiction aspect is solid plus the bonus is that it is highly educational. With good insights into the Arab mind via the Haj Ibrahim character.
I read Exodus and Mila 18 when I was of high school age. Also Michener’s The Source.
Now you’ve done it. I have to go and read the book now. Good thing I’m about to get on a 15 hour flight.
I read The Haj 35+ years ago. It explained much of what had been going on in the Middle East, in a time not far removed from the 6 Day War and the Yom Kippur / October War, which latter carried the possibility of escalation into superpower confrontation and nuclear war. The entire U.S. military went to DEFCON 3 for a time.
The passage that always stuck with me was:
‘“So before I was nine I had learned the basic canon of Arab life. It was me against my brother; me and my brother against our father; my family against my cousins and the clan; the clan against the tribe; and the tribe against the world. And all of us against the infidel.”
It still explains much.
And I guess I must have read it soon after it came out in paperback, and not 35+ years ago. I was thinking I read it in college, but not for a class.
Holy cow on your flight time.
I commented to a friend not long ago that if I had money to be very frivolous, I'd get on a long flight just to read a book. That way I would have no distractions. I think that would be really fun.
From the beginning of the book. That passage stood out to me, too.
I just watched this video and posted it to FR:
...David Pryce Jones on Islamic Radicalism [truncated title] [YT Video link 19 minutes of talk]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3594833/posts
I stumbled upon this man’s name, David Pryce Jones, by looking up one of my old FR pages. I had totally forgotten about him. I must have heard him on a talk show, probably Prager, long ago. So I Googled him and found this video. Anyway, it just happens to tie in very nicely to this chapter of The Haj...oddly enough.
I was disappointed upon completion because it seemed to be attempting to describe a collective madness in a culture.
A friend read it, who happened to have a Masters in Psychology and we discussed it. Perhaps his Jewishness provided him with more insight than I could summon but in the end we seemed to conclude together that the absence of some sort of a rational ending was representative of the reality in that part of the world.
I read all of Uris’s books, but the last one (or 2) seemed to me to be not so impressive. (Man gets elected President and then discovers that he was born Jewish.) Leon should have stopped while he was ahead.
Ping for later
Thanks for posting. This is very insightful to me.
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