Re fake title on JSTOR. Fact: Arab Palestinians NOT against fascism.
Posted on 05/25/2026 8:31:36 PM PDT by Freeleesy
Re fake title on JSTOR. Fact: Arab Palestinians NOT against fascism.
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.
References:
* Bouchnik-Chen, R. G. (2019, December 9). "Palestinian Arab volunteers in the British Army in WWII: A reality check". Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. [https://besacenter.org/palestinian-arabs-british-army/]
* Karpel, D. (2015). "When Palestinians and Jews fought together in the British Army)". The Museum of the Jewish Soldier in World War II. [In Heb.]
* Yemini, B.D.. (2022, May 15). "Nakba was result of Palestinians backing Nazis during WWII". Ynetnews. [https://www.ynetnews.com/opinions-analysis/article/s1bpi7cl5]
* The Jerusalem Post. (2019, June 12). "When Palestinian Arabs and Jews fought the Nazis side by side". [https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/when-palestinian-arabs-and-jews-fought-the-nazis-side-by-side-592200]
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No wonder Wikipedia promotes this distortion .
Even Abbasi himself didn’t dare to write such a title. But Matthew Wills, on JSTOR took Abbasi’s theory a step further and chose such a perversion of the truth.
Thanks Freeleesy
In true Soviet/Nazi/Orwellian 1984, the PALEOstinians are trying to alter historical facts and make themselves appear anti-Fascist when in fact the VAST MAJORITY supported Hitler in order for two things to happen:
a) Eventually bring the “Final Solution” to British Mandate Palestine and kill all the Jews there.
b) Oust British rule.
The Arabs went berserk (as usual) by trying to revolt against the British government. From 1936-1939 they went to war with the Jews and British. The British demolished them, put down the revolt and got on with WWII. The Arabs killed many Jews during this period, after all this is their favorite pastime.
In truth, the British established the “”Jewish Brigade” in the Army. Many Jews fought along side the British while the Arabs sat on the sidelines trying to sabotage British plans.
They can lie all they want. The truth still wipes their claims off the map.
The Mufti and The Poofter.
Muslims have no problem with lying.
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