Mustafa Abbasi’s WWII Narrative Collapses Under the Historical Record

Mustafa Abbasi’s WWII Narrative Collapses Under the Historical Record.

Mustafa Abbasi’s thesis attempts to recast the history of Palestinian Arab involvement in World War II into a story of broad anti-Nazi commitment and shared Arab-Jewish resistance. The historical record does not support that conclusion.

Yes, thousands of Palestinian Arabs enlisted in the British Army during WWII. That fact is real and documented. But Abbasi’s interpretation of what that enlistment meant politically and socially collapses under scrutiny.

The first problem is scale. Jewish enlistment dwarfed Arab enlistment. Roughly 27,000–30,000 Jews from Mandatory Palestine volunteered for British service, while Arab recruitment figures ranged closer to 9,000–12,000. Jews volunteered at roughly three times the Arab rate despite being a demographic minority. In 1940, Jews constituted only about 31.2% of Mandatory Palestine’s settled population, while Arabs made up nearly 69%. If Palestinian Arab society had truly mobilized around anti-Nazi conviction, the enlistment ratios would not have looked remotely like this.

The second problem is motive. Even sources sympathetic to Abbasi acknowledge that economic necessity was the dominant factor behind Arab enlistment. The Jerusalem Post article citing Abbasi explicitly states that many recruits were poor villagers and lower-class urban residents drawn by food, clothing, pay, and medical care provided by the British Army. Yoav Gelber similarly concluded that difficult economic conditions were the principal reason many Arabs enlisted.

This sharply contrasted with Jewish enlistment motivations. Jewish volunteers overwhelmingly viewed the war against Nazi Germany as existential. They enlisted not only to fight Hitler, but to defend the Jewish people and build the military foundations of future Jewish self-defense. Abbasi himself admits this distinction, yet attempts to blur its significance by vaguely invoking ideological anti-Nazism among sections of the Arab elite without substantiating the claim with convincing evidence.

A crucial fact that Abbasi omits is that large-scale Palestinian Arab enlistment into the British Army did not emerge organically from a widespread anti-Nazi mobilization inside Arab society. British authorities initially resisted the creation of a specifically Jewish regiment because they feared Arab backlash against expanding Jewish military participation. To overcome that obstacle, British officials required Jewish leaders to secure equivalent numbers of Arab recruits alongside Jewish volunteers. The Yishuv consequently helped facilitate Arab enlistment, including through financial incentives, in order to satisfy British conditions and advance the formation of Jewish military units. Palestinian Arab participation in the British Army was therefore, in substantial part, a byproduct of Jewish efforts to support Britain’s war effort and establish a Jewish fighting force — not evidence of a broad Palestinian Arab ideological commitment to defeating Nazism.

Raphael Bouchnik-Chen’s critique exposes the central weakness in Abbasi’s argument: the evidence does not demonstrate meaningful, widespread Palestinian Arab resistance to Nazism. Instead, Abbasi selectively highlights a minority phenomenon while downplaying the broader political atmosphere inside Palestinian Arab society during the war years.

That atmosphere was profoundly shaped by Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, whose alliance with Nazi Germany was not symbolic or peripheral. Husseini collaborated directly with the Axis powers, met Hitler personally, broadcast pro-Nazi propaganda, encouraged Muslim SS recruitment in the Balkans, and worked to block Jewish refugees fleeing Europe. He was the most influential Palestinian Arab political figure of the era.

Abbasi attempts to minimize Husseini’s significance by arguing he lost support after 1937. But the available evidence points in the opposite direction. Contemporary polling cited by researchers such as Yoni Rainey found overwhelming Palestinian Arab sympathy for Nazi Germany during the war. Rainey further argues that desertion rates among Arab recruits soared once Rommel’s advance into North Africa made a German breakthrough into Palestine appear possible.

Equally important is the context of Arab enlistment itself. As Bouchnik-Chen notes, the British authorities resisted creating a distinct Jewish fighting force partly out of fear of Arab backlash. Jewish leaders and institutions therefore helped facilitate Arab recruitment to satisfy British political conditions for expanded Jewish military participation. In other words, Palestinian Arab recruitment into the British Army was not the product of a broad Palestinian anti-fascist awakening. It emerged largely as a byproduct of Jewish efforts to support Britain’s war effort and establish Jewish military formations.

Abbasi also manipulates terminology in ways that distort historical reality. He repeatedly uses the term “Palestinians” while excluding the Jewish population of Mandatory Palestine from that category, despite the fact that British authorities routinely referred to both Jews and Arabs born in Palestine as Palestinians. Esther Herlitz, who served in the British Army during the war, explicitly recalled that “as far as the British were concerned, we from the Jewish Yishuv, and some Arabs, were Palestinians.” Abbasi’s selective terminology retroactively imposes a modern nationalist framework onto a period where the term had a broader civic meaning.

Clearly, some did fight honorably alongside Jews and British forces against the Axis. That historical fact deserves recognition. But isolated examples do not justify rewriting the political reality of the period.

The dominant organized Palestinian Arab leadership aligned itself with the Axis camp. The dominant mass sentiment within Palestinian Arab society was deeply hostile to Britain and Zionism. Arab enlistment remained limited relative to population size, heavily economically motivated, and politically marginal compared to the Jewish war effort.

Abbasi’s theory is therefore not a corrective to forgotten history. It is an attempt to construct a counter-narrative that morally rehabilitates Palestinian Arab politics during WWII by inflating a limited phenomenon into a defining national story.

The historical evidence does not sustain that interpretation.

Despite these injustices and hardships the Jews of Palestine readily volunteered, to the number of 26,000 to fight on the side of the Allies, distinguished themselves on every front in the Near and Middle East, and sustained many sacrifices. On the other hand, not more than 9,000 Arabs volunteered, making a per-centage proportion of six Jewish volunteers to one Arab, and many of them deserted...

The Jewish Forum (London, England). (1945). United Kingdom: (n.p.), p.14

https://books.google.com/books?id=XtyWpW9il_cC&q=volunteered

Collier’s: Incorporating Features of the American Magazine. (1946). United States: Crowell-Collier Publishing Company, p.30

No Peace in Palestine...

... British were obliged to maintain large garrisons in the Holy Land to prevent outright civil war.

Appeasement was the mood of the moment and Neville Chamberlain appeased the Arabs, and at the same time, the anti-Semitic Axis.

Without consulting the League of Nation of the United States, Chamberlain issued in May 1939, the now famous White Paper..

World War II intervened. The Jews made common cause with the British Palestine’s Jewish population of only $50,000 gave some 40.000 men and women volunteers to the British armed forces. In comparison, Palestine’s Arab population of 1,100,000 provided only 8.000 troops, 4,000 of whom deserted before seeing action.
Many of the rest wound up fighting for the Nazis or the Fascists. Many of these, captured by G.I’s, were until recently in an Alabama prisoners-of-war camp.

https://books.google.com/books?id=_qVCAQAAIAAJ&q=arabs%20%22deserted%22%20%20axis

the Arabs are astir with new and democratic dreams. The Jews have one tremendous advantage over the Arabs, however. They know what they want, while the masses of plain Arabs have as yet only a very faintly discernible idea. ... ...

Well, let us see. Once again comparisons are in order. This is what the balance sheet shows. By the end of January, 1944, 41,000 Palestinian residents were serving with the country’s regular military forces. Of these 32,069 were in the British army, 23,324 of them Jews and 8,745 Arabs. The local auxiliary police numbered 9,608, of whom 5,790 were Jews and 3,818 were Arabs.

The official Statistical Abstract for Palestine placed the country’s population at over 1,100,000 and that of the Jews 484,408.
In other words, although the Arabs outnumbered the Jews by nearly three to one, they contributed well under one-third of the manpower for the Palestinian contingent serving against the Nazi-Fascist enemy.

Actually the number of Jews serving in Palestine’s armed forces was considerably higher than the statistics indicate. In the fall of 1944 a Jewish brigade was formed. It contained a thousand or more Jews who were new conscripts and these must be added to the list of Hebrews who went to war from Palestine. In any event, even the official figures placed the number of Jews in the regular Palestine forces at 25,695 with an additional 5,790 in the Home Guard.

In contrast to the Jews, who were able only with great difficulty to obtain the privilege of carrying a rifle — or pick and shovel — against their tormentors, Arabs had literally to be dragged off to the war against the Axis . Of the approximately 8,000 Arabs in service some 4,000 deserted, most of them with their weapons.

Gervasi, F. (1946). To Whom Palestine?. United Kingdom: D. Appleton-Century Company, Incorporated, pp.85-86
https://books.google.com/books?id=7-FGAAAAIAAJ&q=arabs%20%22deserted%22%20%20axis

AFFAIRS IN PALESTINE.

Palestine’s contribution to the cause of the United Nations during the war stood out in marked contrast to that of the Arab-dominated countries in the Middle East.
Some contribution was made by the Arab sectors of the population; the most useful was that of the fellahin who were stimulated to increase their production by the high prices of agricultural products. Some service was rendered to the armed forces by the Arabs: there were 9,000 enlistments in the various branches, and no doubt in individual cases the Arabs made as good a record as the Jews.

However, the ratio of Arab enlistments
to the total population was small, half the volunteers were discharged and a large percentage deserted, some with arms.

The attitude of the political leaders was divided and uncertain at the beginning of the war, and the pro-Axis elements prediminated until the victory of the United Nations became apparent.

The Jews were driven by a hatred of all that Hitler represented. Defeat of the Axis was essential to the future of the Jews all over the world and to the work of reconstruction in Palestine. They bent their energies to a successful prosecution of the war. The Jewish enlistments were so large as to prove embarrassing to the British authorities who wished at first to keep them down to the level of the Arab enlistments. The Palestinian Jewish units made a noteworthy contribution to the victory in the Middle East. Of even greater import was the Jewish Palestinians’ contribution in industrial production. The possibility of obtaining needed materials on the spot saved invaluable time and conserved shipping space. The services rendered were recognized by the British authorities, but the Yishuv’s contribution to the war did not affect at all the political attitude toward the Jewish national home .

Political Attitude Among Jews and Arabs.
In October, 1939 , shortly after the outbreak of the war, the Mufti of Jerusalem...

Palestine: A Study of Jewish, Arab, and British Policies. Published for the Esco Foundation for Palestine, Inc. (1947). United States: Yale University Press, pp. 1007-1008.

https://books.google.com/books?id=uXJuemG6Qk4C&q=%22a%20large%20percentage%20deserted,%20some%20with%20arms%22

The Arab leaders whom Britain had appeased in turn betrayed their appeasers, and openly sided with the Axis powers. Hitler and Mussolini enjoyed the support of the leader of Palestine’s Arabs, the Mufti. When the Palestine Regiment was formed, nine-tenths of its ranks were made up of Jews.
More than half of the Arab contingent deserted or joined the Axis armies.

The Regiment later became the nucleus of the Jewish Brigade.

Miller, I. (1955). Israel, the Eternal Ideal. United States: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, p.38

https://books.google.com/books?id=TBhWAAAAYAAJ&q=arabs+%22deserted%22++axis

Alon, D. (1969). Arab Racialism. Israel: Israel Economist, p. 19
https://books.google.com/books?id=RJILAQAAIAAJ&q=arabs%20%22deserted%22%20%20axis

Arab troops in contact with the German forces on the Italian and Western fronts deserted whenever possible amd in many cases volunteered to serve the German ranks.

Arab troops in contact with the German forces on the ... Arabs who had fled from Iraq and Palestine and parachuting them into ... Axis forces. When captured, not by Americans but by the British from whose forces they had deserted ...

Other wartime activities of the indefatigable Mufti included making making pro-German broadcasts to Moslems everywhere, including India and the U.S.A.; organising espionage from his Geneva office, with links in Egypt and Turkey; directing the training of Arabs who had fled from Iraq and Palestine and parachuting them into Palestine to carry out sabotage. When these were captured in Palestine, they demanded P.O.W. status as members of the ‘Mufti’s Legion.’ (One of them was Hasan Salameh, who later commanded the Arab forces on the central front in the concerted Arab attack on Israel in May ‘48.) In 1943 ...

An informer’s report from July 1942 indicates how heated the atmosphere in Palestine had become in anticipation of the Germans’ arrival. According to this report, some units of the British 9th Army remained in Palestine to protect the Jewish population from Arab assaults, despite the critical military situation on the Egyptian front.

Such protective measures on the part of the mandatory power were urgently required during those months, as thousands of Arab soldiers deserted the British army in the course of the German advance.

By 1943, 8,000 Arabs—7,000 from Palestine—had deserted with their weapons and gone into hiding, in order to be able to join Rommel’s troops after the eagerly awaited invasion.

Mallmann, K., Cüppers, M. (2010). Nazi Palestine: The Plans for the Extermination of the Jews in Palestine. United Kingdom: Enigma Books, p.139

https://books.google.com/books?id=8JiqNpE-Lz4C&pg=PA139

Burleigh, M. (2014). Small Wars, Faraway Places: Global Insurrection and the Making of the Modern World, 1945-1965. United States: Penguin Publishing Group, pp.91-92

https://books.google.com/books?id=EUeLDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA91

When the Zionists offered to raise a Jewish army to fight the Axis, the British prevaricated, eventually conceding a joint Arab and Jewish battalion attached to the East Kent Buffs in which the Jewish contingent fought and the Arabs deserted.

Ten thousand or so Palestinian Jews (and 7,000 Palestinian Arabs) served as individuals in the British armed forces.
In late 1944 the British at last sanctioned a Jewish Brigade, which fought with distinction. British equivocation, however justifiable in terms of keeping the Arabs on side, was to give the Zionists a potent propaganda weapon to use against them once the mass murder of European Jews was revealed to an uncomprehending world.

As evidence built up of Nazi murder of Europe’s Jews, so Zionist insistence on a secure Jewish state of Israel intensified. If all else failed, the world’s Jews could repair there. This meant that the Jews were never going to accept the preferred British fix of Arab and Jewish enclaves with a bi-national Palestine.

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