Joseph Francis (journalist)

Yousef / Yusuf / Yussef / Joseph Francis [يوسف فرانسيس] (Born ca 1904 - Died on April 23, 1944) was a well known Arab journalist in the Holy Land Mandatory Palestine Eretz Yisrael.

For several years until 1936 the correspondent of the Cairo 'Al Ahram' and sub-editor of (Mufti's) 'Al Liwa', the "Palestine Arab Party" organ owned by Jamal eff. Husseini. Before that he worked with 'Falastin' and 'As Siraat'. He was also correspondent of overseas newspapers.

Already in 1933, Arab wish to form Arab Nazi party in Mandatory Palestine was expressed, weeks after Al-Husseini approached German consul in March, 1933 offering alliance against Democracies, in April "Joseph Francis, the Palestine correspondent of al-Ahram, wrote on behalf of a group of Palestinian Arabs to Heinrich Wolff, the German consul in Jerusalem (1933–35), asking for his aid in forming a local Arab Nazi party."

However, Wolff opposed it, it was conveyed in a note to the Foreign Office in Berlin in June, in which he argued: Because the strengthening of the prestige and the international position of the Reich.

This attempt is regarded the first of its kind.

Author:

A July 31, 1933 Foreign Office memorandum, distributed to German embassies in London, Cairo, Baghdad, Beirut, and Geneva, instructed diplomats to avoid Arab organizations, otherwise "members of the German Reich may otherwise come into suspicion of interfering in the political relationships of Palestine."

With zero cooperation from the German government and no possibility of joining the Nazi Party, Arabs decided to form their own Fascist and Nazi parties. If they could not join them, they would imitate them. In April 1933, Joseph Francis, editor of Falastin and correspondent for three other Arab newspapers, approached German Consul Wolff in Jerusalem offering "the felicitations and admiration of the youth of Palestine." Francis requested German "guidance on how to create a Fascist Party of Palestine with the goal of destroying the Jewish Communist movement which is devastating Palestine." Consul Wolff avoided any specific response. Francis came back in June 1933 and insisted that his request obtain a copy of Nazi Party bylaws be forwarded to senior Reich officials. If he didn't get a positive response, Francis suggested, he would contact Italian Fascists and use their bylaws - although he preferred the German bylaws.

Wolff again refused to comply. In a memo headlined "Planned Establishment of a National Socialist Arab Party," Wolff told Berlin, "The slightest easily imaginable indiscretion could endanger or even lose me the necessary and requisite trust of the Mandate government." He added, "Promoting the activist Nationalist Arab tendencies would be seen as directly counter to their [the Mandate's] political objectives." The German Foreign Ministry in Berlin supported Wolff's refusal to cooperate. In a dispatch copied to several embassies, Berlin instructed, "All official German representatives will refrain from any foreign policy decisions behind the circles of acquaintance associated with Francis, for one because it is not clear what paths the planned movement intends to strike out upon." The same enthusiastic approach and stony response played out in other Arab capitals. In August 1933, the German envoy in Baghdad was contacted by the publisher of the newspaper Istiqlal as well as some Arab legislators. They "have informed me that they have been contemplating forming a National Socialist Party emulating that of Germany. They have asked me to provide them materials about the German National Socialist Party, and in particular the party planks and if possible the bylaws in either English or French."

Activist Arab editor Amir Arslan, who headed up La Nation Arabe, circulated both in Geneva and in Syria, was repeatedly rebuffed in his efforts to schedule a meeting with Hitler or secure any assistance.

Ultimately, Arabs did create numerous Nazi-style or Fascist parties without assistance.

At the time, Francis resided in Jaffa.

By 1938, he was the Jerusalem correspondent of Al Mokattam of Cairo.

Other 'Arab Nazi Parties' efforts

Related:

Radicalization

Author cites:

Although no Arab fascist party was established in Palestine, there were always rumors. As early as the 1930s, the Jewish Agency tried to alert the Mandatory government to Arab sympathies for the Nazis. To this end, relevant articles from the Arab press were collected and translated into English. There was also speculation about the establishment of a "large number of organizations that imitated the methods of the Nazis and fascists"

A new party was allegedly founded:  

A great part of Palestine Youth, especially those who were educated in Germany, decided to found in Palestine a new party under the name of “The Arab Nazi Party of Palestine” in order to spread Hitler’s views in the eastern countries and assail Jewish feelings.

It is also reported that Akram Zuaiter, a radical politician from the Istiqlal Party, travelled to Damascus at the invitation of the Association for National Activity to study “fascist organisational methods”.

In fact, several smaller organisations and groups joined forces, which now appeared more radical and considered armed struggle against the mandate power and the Yishuv. 'Abd al-Qadir al-Husaini, the son of Musa Ka'im, had founded an organization in 1933 together with Imil al-Guri called al-Jihad al-Muqaddas [the Holy Jihad], which was made up mainly of Muslims from the Jerusalem/Ramallah region.

Two years later, Amin al-Husaini (al-Husseini) took over the leadership. Several members of this organization played a role as local commanders of armed units during the Arab Revolt, including, for example, Hasan Salama. At this time, other independent secret organizations of this kind were formed, which were mostly close to more radical parties such as Istiqlal, Youth Congress, Abu 'Ubaida, or the Mufti and tried to obtain money and weapons for their struggle. In appeals and letters, these units were directed in a sharp tone against British and Jewish representatives. The most well-known radical group was led by Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, radical Islamic preacher from Haifa. His group of radical nationalists had already begun armed struggle in Galilee before 1936. Al-Qassam had allegedly tried to make contact with Italian negotiators for this purpose. In November 1935 there was a clash with the British police in which al-Qassam and two of his comrades were killed.

Arab students educated in Germany "returned to Palestine determined to found the Arab Nazi Party of Palestine."

See also

• Fattah al-Imam
• Yusuf Abu Durra
• Muhammad 'Izzat Darwazeh
• Darwish Al-Miqdadi
• Munif al-Husseini
• Fuad Isa Shatara
• Amin Ruwayha
• Fuad Saba
• Emil Ghuri
• Yaqub al-Ghusayn

• Nazism at Arab Palestinians

References

"The Mufti.. concocted a new kind of antisemitism that combined traditional Muslim antisemitism, like the anti-Jewish verses you find in the Koran, with the Nazi antisemitism that demonised Jews... His whole ideology was antisemitic and from the very beginning he targeted Jews, not Zionists."

The difference between lies and reality is sometimes just a color on a map

W. Ormsby-Gore as he was preparing the royal commission report, "Though I knew there was ill-feeling between Jews and Arabs, I had not realized the depth and intensity of the hatred with which the Jews are held by the Arabs..."

"It is not Israel's settlement blocks but rather the Palestinian ideological blockade that constitutes the biggest barrier to peaceful arrangements . The Jew-hatred in this region must no longer be played down as a kind of local custom ..."

The only tweet (July 2014) on the Twitter account of the late American Elan Ganeles - murdered by Arab-Islamist "Palestinian" on Feb 27, 2023 hy"d: "I think you're always going to have tension in the Middle East, when there's [are] people who want to kill Jews, and the Jews don't want to be killed, and neither side is willing to compromise."