Pan-Arabism

Yeah, I know.

It sometimes looks like- Pan-Arabism, like a focus on, like, a broader Arab identity.

Mm.

And sometimes it looks like Pan-Islamism, this kind of connection just to an Islamic ummah, not just in this region, but the world.

There's definitely a partisan aspect that goes without saying.

But the Mufti also, he didn't have a sense of pan-Arabism.

What became sort of the rallying cry of the resistance in the Near East, which was a combination of pan-Arabism and an East Bloc aligned, but discernibly non-communist, sort of militant socialism that was not what he viewed as the way forward for Palestinians and he was absolutely a pan-Islamist but he didn't he didn't view pan-Arabism as a meaningful concept and frankly it's not on the other side Zionists then and now have tried to cast the Mufti as sort of a Palestinian Khodrian or some sort of ethno-sectarian nationalist who's a mirror of themselves who wanted to annihilate Jewry owing to some sort of highly binary zero-sum concept of racial and sectarian struggle in the region.

That's naked propaganda.

And interestingly, when people in the Churchill government, who are particularly sympathetic to Zionist perspective, tried to convince the Home Office of these things, and went as far as trying to push the British authorities to try and capture the al-Husseini, this was quickly quashed.

So T.E. Lawrence, or Lawrence of Arabia, and Sir Henry McMahon, British High Commissioner in Egypt, brokered a deal.

In exchange for troops, Britain offered support for pan-Arab independence.

Great Britain is prepared to recognise and support the independence of the Arabs in all regions within the limits demanded by the Sheriff of Mecca.

Then, with the Arabs on side, Britain pursued further allies.

And the reason is partly ideological and partly practical.

Ideologically, Nasser after 52 framed Egypt as the leader of the Arab world, and annexing Palestinian territory would have undercut the whole pan-Arab argument.

It'd have looked like Egypt was carving off a piece of Palestine for itself.

Practically, Gaza was a burden.

Although he was very careful not to characterize the conflict in sectarian terms, owing to the reality that his party was a Sunni majority party and a sea of Shia Muslims.

But also, that would have compromised his entire raison d'etre and political life, which was to create a genuine Arabism writ large, um, as a mobilizing catalyst.

And, um, whether people, whether the, you know, and, and, and the Iraqi bath tried to carry it, whether, whether it was Saddam himself, whether it was the ministry of information or whether it was the work cabinet, they tried to characterize it as a, as a, as a racial conflict, especially as things went bad after 1983, you know, where, where the Arab people like fighting like the Persian other, or like the Azeri, you know, uh, of alien, um, Whether, like, Iraqi people, like, bought into that in any way or not, I don't really think they did.

It didn't matter.

In fact, that project said after Iraq, they were gonna go on and take Iran, which, oh, by the way, [laughs] here we are.

So I'm just wondering, you know, if he has any, uh, co- And by the way, the, the, the... against this whole notion of Pan-Arabism that went back to Nasser, Saddam, and even Gaddafi, al- although he was in North Africa, um, uh, we've always been against any, any kind of that, that situation.

US or Western dominance in the Middle East.

Well, Peter, what do you say about that very big question, big-picture question to your namesake? Um, you know, bin Laden would often rail against the, um, the, the Americans and Westerners stealing their oil.