Difference between revisions of "Darwish Al-Miqdadi"

The other candidate was Darwish Miqdadi.. In 1929 he was expelled to Iraq after taking part in the disturbances of that year. After a spell he returned to Palestine and was re-arrested during the Arab Rebellion. When released, he fled once more to Iraq. In Iraq he did not abandon his nationalist activity; while working as a teacher and education inspector, he published his ideas. He participated in a delegation to Nazi Germany and collaborated with Rashid Ali. He was allowed to return to Palestine in October 1945, and in the summer of 1946 he succeeded Ahmad Shuaqyri as the Director of the Arab Office in Jerusalem.

Al-Miqdadi accompanied Iraqi student missions to Germany in the 1930s. While there, the British report, he organized an Arab youth movement along Nazi lines, escorting its members on a grand tour of European capitals in order to rally Arab youth to the Nazi cause. In Iraq, he revived the Palestine Defense Committee and was active in the Muthanna Club and other pan-Arab organizations.

The British considered him to be a pro-German agitator. British views of Akram Zu'aytir, a member of the Palestinian Istiqlal and leader of the Arab revolt. From Nablus, Zu'aytir was invited to Iraq in by Sami Shawkat where the Palestinian nationalist hired him to write textbooks and other pedagogical materials. In 1939 the French refused Zu'aytir a visa to Syria...

Arab Nationalist Party and the Young Egypt, whose mission became to ideologize this rejection. In 1931, Darwish al-Miqdadi, a Palestinian graduate of the AUB, a teacher in Iraq and an ardent associate to most, if not all pan-Arabist networking of the 1930’s, published his "History of the Arab Nation" which was subsequently adopted as a textbook for the Arab history curriculum in Iraqi intermediate schools. In this book, the Arab ideology and the pan-Arabist view of imperialism were so intractably intertwined that Arab nationalism seemed unimaginable without its opposition to the west. For al-Miqdadi, it was the Arabs’ destiny to occupy the most strategic crossroads of world trade...

The Anti – Jewish Farhud in baghdad, 1941… On June 1-2, 1941, thousands of Baghdad Moslems attacked the Jews of the town, murdering men and women, children and aged people, raping women and girls and plundering property… Al-Miqdadi was also active in another organisation. In 1931, he set up a scout group called ‘al-Jawwal ….

In the year 5696 (c. 1936), the riots broke out in the Land of Israel. Every minor agitation and every exaggerated news that reached Iraq by the Arab newspapers from the Land of Israel made wings to the detriment of the Jews there. From the day the riots began in Israel, Iraqi Jews avoided walking in the streets in the evening, even in the Jewish neighborhoods. Every Jewish institution and Jewish club was seen by the Arabs as "Zionist" and therefore it was permissible to burn and destroy it. The war against Zionism was officially waged. Systematically and persistently, the Ministry of Education in Iraq filled the government schools with national Arab teachers from Israel, who incited the Arab youth to hate Israel and Zionism by all the means at their disposal - orally, in writing, and in the study books they authored. The mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini; the radio, the newspaper and the book in Iraq - they were all directed against the Jews and Zionism alike.

In the years 5696-7 (1936-7), ten Jews were murdered in Baghdad and Basra. There were many cases of robbery and looting by the Muslim mob. Bombs were dropped on Jewish clubs. The Jewish community closed for two days in 1937 to protest this inhumane treatment; and while the head of the community ("rayiys altaayifa"), Sasson Kaduri, appealed to the authorities to punish the rioters, we were asked to officially declare that the Jews of Iraq have nothing to do with their brothers in E.Y. [Palestine].

In Cheshvan 5697 (October 1936) there was a military revolution in Iraq under the leadership of General Bakr Sidqi al-Askari [بكر صدقي العسكري] The roots of the coup were rooted in the religious, racial and political differences that left their mark on the country from the day it was founded. All the previous ministers were dismissed and left the country.

Yasin (Faha) al-Hashimi [ياسين الهاشمي], the previous prime minister (who at the time worked out extensive plans to undermine the existence of the Jews in Iraq and even prepared to go to Israel and catarize the Jews before the Peel Commission), also fled and found his death in Syria.

The members of the new cabinet headed by Hikmat Sulayman did not show an overly negative attitude towards the Jews, although they did not show sympathy for them either. The revolution brought in its wake a change that was in favor of the Jews for a very short period of time. It distracted them from the Jews for a while and they were more interested in the results of the revolution and the new power relations.

Bakr Sidqi, the initiator of the coup, was inclined to fascism. He carried out the massacre of the Assyrians and was called by the people of Iraq the "Conqueror of the Assyrians". At the time he married a Nazi German woman. A considerable number of Nazi girls were deliberately sent from Germany to Iraq for espionage and propaganda purposes and would socialize with the high-ranking army officers and some members of the government. In Baghdad, an Arab Nazi association was created under the name "Al-Muthanna" [نادي المثنى], headed by the Arab Nazi Dr. Saib Shawkat [صائب شوكت], director of the government hospital in Baghdad. This party had a special club whose members were among the educated and the officers, and where all the conspiracies against the Jews were hatched.

The Jews, pressed between a rock and a hard place, did everything in their power to show their loyalty to the government of their country. The Jews donated tens of thousands of pounds to various national causes, to aviation and the Iraqi Red Crescent, while the government spared no opportunity to extort additional funds from them.

Haj Amin Al Husseini, who was the mufti of Jerusalem, and some of his assistants from the Arabs of Eretz Israel ["Palestinians"] (such as: Akram Zuaiter [أكرم زعيتر] and Darwish Miqdadi [درويش مقدادي]) organized the anti-Jewish propaganda. With threats of death and by vile means, they extorted money from the Jews of Iraq for the terrorist fund that managed the disturbances in Palestine.

The Jews of Babylon who never harmed their government and Iraqi nationalism in any way, bore their suffering and insult in silence and worried about their fate and their future. They put on the "sidara" (Iraqi national hat) on their heads and sent their sons to serve in the Iraqi army. Hundreds of young men served in this army and gave themselves up for their country. Instead of the Hebrew songs they used to sing in the previous years - they now started singing national Iraqi Arab songs. All this was of no use when the days of disturbances came.

Shavuot Riots 1941 (June 1-2, 1941)

Self-government in Iraq has never been stable. Between the years 1932-1950 it was ruled by three kings, 31 governments (compared to 14 in the years of the British mandate in 1921-1932); 9 houses of parliament (compared to 3 during the mandate period), of which only two (the one elected in 1939 and the last one) completed During their four years in office, there were also six coups, starting with the Bakr Sidki coup until the coup of 1941. The Second World War broke out on September 3, 1939, when the government in Iraq was in the hands of Nuri al-Said, known as pro-British.

He fulfilled the terms of the 1930 treaty with Britain and severed Iraq's diplomatic relations with Nazi Germany and German subjects were imprisoned in Habaniah. His actions infuriated the pro-Nazis who were looking for an opportunity to overthrow the existing government. On October 16, 1939, the Jerusalem mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini arrived in Iraq (Masuria). Magnificent receptions were held in his honor, which were used for propaganda against both the Jews and the British. He established a special bureau for the war against the Jews and the British. And in this he was helped by some of the Palestinian exiles who were with him: his relative Jamal al-Husseini, Musa al-Alami, Akram Zuaiter, Emil Ghori, Darwish al-Miqdadi, Kaukaji, Amin Ruiha and others. On January 31, 1941, Rashid Ali al-Gaylani [al-Kilani] resigned as the head of the Iraqi government as a protest against the pro-British policy of Foreign Minister Nouri al-Said and the Iraqi curfew. Two months later, he managed to carry out a military rebellion and establish a military dictatorship in the country.

The curfew, Nouri al-Said and their supporters fled towards Jordan and from there to Palestine. Iraq betrayed England, only because of which it gained independence, and gave its hand to Nazi Germany. Among those who voted for rape in the Iraqi parliament in favor of Rashid Ali were also the Jewish deputies. All British subjects found in Iraq were placed in detention camps. The British army that landed in Basra at the beginning of the rebellion started marching towards Baghdad. A pro-Nazi Iraqi army was sent to hold up the advance.

The Iraqi government at the time had less than fifty obsolete model aircraft.

Rashid Ali turned to Hitler for help, German planes appeared in the skies of Iraq, and the war between Great Britain and Little Iraq began. Ostensibly it was a huge war in Nance, a war of a great power against a small powerless power, but in fact it was not like that. England, which at that time was able to return the situation to normal for several hours, acted with great slowness and great patience. The British army that organized in the Land of Israel an invasion force for Iraq arrived in Baghdad only after a few weeks.

This slowness was in the minds and souls of the Jews.

Immediately after the rise of Rashid Ali, the Iraqi Jews realized that their fate was sealed. The Muslims awaited for a day of "revenge" and divided among themselves the property of the Jews: the house of so-and-so to so-and-so, so-and-so's daughter and so-and-so's wife to so-and-so. They threatened the Jews that they would leave no survivor.

The investigation proved that already at the beginning of May, with the outbreak of the rebellion, feverish preparations were made for a wild attack on the Jews. At the head of the mob was Younis A-Sabawi - a member of the Ministry and the leader of the national organization "Youth Squad" [Futuwwa]. The abominable propaganda was carried out in public meetings, in newspapers and on radio broadcasts day and night. He distributed weapons to the "youth squad", gathered the entire mob around him and put them in a "ready" state to carry out his plan.

With the escape of Rashid Ali to Berlin, a provisional government was established in Baghdad.

One of the representatives of the provisional government spoke on the radio on Shabbat, the eve of Shavuot, and announced that the next day (Sunday, 6 Sivan 5701) a legal government would be established and the blackout in the city would be abolished. The Jews believed in these promises and breathed a sigh of relief. The masses who were preparing to plunder and rob the Jews were disappointed by this news, regretted the fall of Rashid Ali and were angry with the Jews who were looking forward with joy to the pro-British rule of the curate Abd al-Ila. Many Iraqi soldiers and officers, who fled the battlefield, walked the streets disgruntled and hungry with weapons in hand. The curfew entered the palace of Sad al-Karrah, which is located a few kilometers from Baghdad, at noon on May 30. On that day, Younis A-Sabawi declared himself the military governor of the country. A special security committee headed by Mayor Arshad Al-Omari and the Chief of Police signed a cease-fire agreement on May 31. Yunis A. Sabawi invited the head of the Jewish community in Baghdad to him and demanded that he tell the Jews not to leave their homes for the three days: Saturday, Sunday and Monday, which are the two days of Shavuot. That morning, Yunis sent a call to the masses through the broadcasting service, to carry out a massacre of the Jews; However, this call was delayed by the head of the security committee, who was able to ban Yunis A. Sabaowi and transport him across the border.

On Sunday 6 Sivan, the curfew arrived at the Baghdad airport (about two kilometers from the city).

The wild massacre began on Shavuot, Sunday and Monday, 6-7 in Sivan 5701 (June 1-2, 1941).

On the first day before noon, the Jewish dignitaries went together with the other "dignitaries" to welcome the curfew. The uplifted mood of the Jews was not pleasant for the soldiers and civilian policemen; And on their return, together with the Muslim mob, they attacked the Jews in the main streets and massacred them.

Jews sitting in cars and buses were taken out by force, beaten to death, slaughtered with swords and daggers in front of everyone. The bus drivers trampled over the bodies of the dead without any sense of morality. The mob was immediately joined by Muslim "respectables", school students, government officials, a large part of the civil and military police, policemen and officers. They divided the city into areas and began robbery and murder, from which they equipped themselves with rifles and pistols, and from which they killed with swords, daggers, knives, hatchets, bayonets and all destructive tools.

The mass slaughter surrounded all the Jewish neighborhoods and especially the main streets of Baghdad, Al Rashid Street and Ghazi Street, which are inhabited by many Jews, and the Abu Sifan neighborhood.

The rioters were not satisfied with only murder, they also resorted to severe torture. With great cruelty and savagery that cannot be described with a human pen. They abused, tortured and murdered every Jew who came near them: man and woman, old man and child; toddlers and suckling babies were murdered in the arms of their parents. They also attacked girls and women and raped them in front of the men and then abused them, cut them to pieces and spread their organs all over.

On the second day, an order was given to the mob to go to the police headquarters and take weapons from there. The rioters also used machine guns.

Along with the murder, robbery and looting began in the city. Most of the houses and shops of the Jews were destroyed.

The Jewish shops were marked with a red sign even earlier and because of that no non-Jewish shops were broken into. At the head of the robbers marched military and police personnel and they encouraged the mob to their heinous acts. Senior police officers brought trucks and loaded them with the property they looted from Jewish homes and shops. In several cases, the robbers opened the taps and filled the Jewish homes with water. The Muslim women took off the clothes of the dead bodies and put them on on themselves.

In the places close to the river and in the houses where wells were found - they threw the children and babies into the waters in front of their parents. The rioters also ran amok in the synagogues of the Jews and desecrated them. The 'Farha' synagogue was completely looted. The Torah scrolls were thrown out, the bags that were coated with silver and gold - were robbed.

There is some truth to the widespread rumor that all the patients who were transferred to the government hospital under the management of Israel's torturer Dr. Saib Shawkat - were killed by poison.

The Jews could not defend themselves against the wild crowd equipped with weapons. In individual houses, one Jew who possessed a weapon managed to save their lives. Other Jews, they used cold weapons to kill and be killed. The rest of the Jews got on the roofs of the houses and started running from one house roof to another.

In the morning of the second day, while riots were raging outside Baghdad, the curfew was busy assembling the new government, and Jamil al-Madfai was appointed prime minister. At the same time at 10:45 a curfew order was broadcast on the radio. Around noon, a new Iraqi army entered the city from the north, which had vowed curfew training and was mostly made up of Kurds. This army was ordered to disperse the rioters. After a few shots the mob dispersed. Dozens of rioters were killed. In the afternoon there was silence in the killing town.

In Berlin wurde ein 'arabischer Club' als Zentrum der Palästina-Agitation und des arabischsprachigen Rundfunks etabliert. Eichmann, Baldur von Schirach, Abwehrchef Wilhelm Canaris und der Leiter des Orientreferats im Auswärtigen Amt, Werner Otto Hentig, erkundeten die Möglichkeiten, die Araber auf ihre Seite zu bekommen. Dabei bildete der Mufti die zentrale person.

Während der deutsche Nationalsozialismus sich formte und an Einfluss gewann, entstand in arabischen Ländern die politische Ideologie des Islamismus. „Die Muslimbruderschaft wurde im Jahr 1928 von Hassan al-Banna in Ägypten gegründet ...

Miqdādī also served as president of the Arab Club in Berlin, see Sh. Arslān, 'Une Soirée au Club Arabe de Berlin', La Nation Arabe, no. 18–19, 1938, p. 1005. For Miqdādī, of Palestinian origin...

It was not until June 1937 that Berlin revised this course. The trigger was the proposal of the British Peel-Commission to divide the Mandate of Palestine into a smaller Jewish and a larger Muslim-Arab state. The "formation of a Jewish state ... is not in Germany's interest," countered the Reich Minister of Foreign Affairs, Konstantin von Neurath, as this would create an "additional power base under international law for international Jewry. There is therefore a German interest in strengthening Arabism as a counterweight to any such increase in power of Jewry." Strengthening the Arabs against the Jews: Berlin initially pursued the new course quietly so as not to alienate London, but the extent of the activities now set in motion was impressive. Students from Arab countries received German scholarships, companies hired Arab trainees, Arab party leaders were invited to Nuremberg party conferences and army leaders to Wehrmacht maneuvers. In Berlin, an "Arab Club" was established as the center of Palestine-agitation and Arabic-language radio.

Under the leadership of the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, the German News Bureau (DNB), whose regional headquarters in Jerusalem had already established an Arab service in 1936, intensified its intelligence activities. Dr. Franz Reichert, DNB director in Jerusalem, who not only had excellent relations with the Mufti but also with the Arab press, bribed journalists and dissident newspapers with well-financed advertising orders to get on track.

The disturbances in Palestine, too, were exploited by Nazi propagandists, not only with the object of creating difficulties for Great Britain, but also to stir up anti- Jewish feeling in all the Arab countries . A suspiciously large number of Nazi leaders took their holidays in Arab countries. The German Press was full of articles expressing sympathy with the Arab cause and fiercely attacking both the British and the Jews. The Nazi short-wave broadcasts adopted the same attitude. A Berlin club was used as Arab headquarters. Ostensibly the club was merely a cultural society for the benefit of Arab students in Germany, but, as the Daily Telegraph revealed, the printed notepaper used by this club bears the inscription in Arabic and German: "Permanent Defence Committee for Palestine and Europe, Berlin Headquarters." A hundred Arabs, their fares paid by the Nazis, attended the Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg in 1938.

Mahmud HUSNI EL ARABI, aliases Mahmoud HUSSENI EL ORABI; Mahmoud HUSNI EL ORABI; Mahmoud HOSNY EL ARABI; Mr COHEN: Egyptian. HUSNI was a prominent Egyptian Communist in the 1920s and 1930s. He had close Soviet links and claimed to have been paid by the Comintern. He lived and worked in Germany for seven years in the 1930s and was a pro-Nazi sympathiser and agitator in Egypt in the early 1940s.

A Pan-Arab State Promoted From Berlin!

Elaborate Organisation To Support Palestine Arabs.

A Journalist's Story. — LONDON, Oct. 29. The "Daily Telegraph" Berlin correspondent gives details of what he describes as an elaborate pan-Arab organisation, with members spread throughout Europe and the Near East, which he says is assisting the Arabs in Palestine and endeavouring to obtain European support for a project for an All-Arab State embracing Palestine, Iraq and Syria. The correspondent says that the European headquarters of the organisation are in Berlin and financial support, it is believed, is supplied by a wealthy Syrian resident of Berlin. The operations are conducted under the cover of the Arab Club, which is ostensibly a cultural society for the benefits Arab students in Germany. The correspondent adds that under the auspices of the so-called Defence Committee for Palestine, all Arabs in Europe are mobilising with a view to collecting funds in aid of the Arab cause and to obtain support from European sources. Money supplies and arms are being sent from Europe, the Near East and Middle East to Palestine.

—Reuter.

As was reported in the House of Commons in February 16, 1938, in Palestine, "Italian women were disguised as charity workers and nuns and they supplied Arabs with faked pictures of Jewish atrocities and told the Arabs that their poverty was due to British mis-management. Travelling cinema vans showed the Arabs faked pictures of Jews killing Arabs . . . The Italian broadcast from Bari was picked up in Palestine and interspersed in an attractive programme was a series of slogans like ‘Palestine belongs to the Arabs’, 'Kill the Jews’ ‘Let Palestine Arabs re-arm'."

Similar activity, it was stated, took place in Syria...

While synagogues have been burned in Germany a mosque has been built in the heart of Berlin, where Moslems may perform their devotions.

That is a small item in the Nazi programme to capture the sympathies of the Arabs. Goebbel's Propaganda Ministry professes to have discovered a number of points common to the Nazi creed of the sword and the teachings of the.. Mohammed. Not only has a school been opened in Berlin , where Moslem students are given free education and board; it has been decided to "convert" 25,000 Nazis to Mohammedanism. They will be organised in a newly-formed Moslem association, Jamait-e'Muslimin, which already has an understanding with the Mufti, a leader of the Palestinian Arabs. It is intended that the 25,000 converts shall be sent to various Moslem countries as trade and political missionaries. Two centres have already been started for them in the Near East. The one in Cairo directs Nazi work in Egypt, Sudan, Palestine, and Transjordania. The other, in Bagdad, covers Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. Nazi agents are chiefly persons engaged in promoting German trade, teachers, bank clerks, and travellers. The chief forms of Nazi penetration are–subsidies to and blackmail of the vernacular Press, clubs, German classes, correspondence exchanges, and dissemination of propaganda and films.

Since the 1937 visit to the Near East of the Hitler Youth Leader Baldur von Schirach, Nazi propaganda has intensified. Typical of the methods now used to influence the Arabs and undermine British prestige in the Near East is the founding of a club called "el Nadi el Arrabi" (the Arab Club) which is the nucleus of an elaborate Pan-Arab organisation with members in all parts of Europe and the Near East. This organisation gives practical assistance to terrorists in Palestine. Its European head-quarters are in a third floor office on the Kurfuerstendamm in Berlin. It carries on its work: "under cover of the Arab Club, ostensibly a 'cultural society' for the benefit of Arab students in Germany. The printed notepaper used bears the inscription in Arabic and German: 'Permanent Defence Committee for Palestine in Europe–Berlin headquarters'. "Like all similar organisations in Germany, the 'Permanent Defence Committee' is obliged to possess an official Government permit for its activities." This permit has not yet been received , but M. Abdul Mottalib, an Arab citizen from Bagdad, who is secretary of the Arab Club, informed me (the Daily Telegraph Correspondent) that he had little doubt that permission would be granted without difficulty, 'as we conduct the Committee as part of our club.'

"The Arabs of Berlin, M. Mottalib Added, had net with nothing but sympathy and understanding at the hands of the Berlin authorities. "Under the auspices of the 'Defence Committee' all the Arabs in Europe are being mobilised with a view to collecting funds to aid the Arab cause in Palestine and to obtain support from European sources. Money, supplies and arms are being sent from Europe and the Near and Middle East to Palestine. Cash cannot be sent from Germany owning to strict currency regulations." [Report by the Daily Telegraph on October 29, 1938].

Nazi propaganda is rife in Palestine itself . Typical are the posters (written in Arabic) with text reading: "The Jew will (sic) use every penny he earns from you to buy your soil," and the kites which are flown bearing the inscription (in Arabic) "Long Live Hitler". An Arabic edition of "Mein Kampf" appeared in 1939. It has a picture of Hitler on the cover, under the heading of "The Strongest Man in the World". Hitler has taken care to remove from this Arabic edition the passage in which he puts the Arabs on an inferior 'racial grade'.

More than one Arabic newspaper has, in spite of the increased cost of newsprint, suddenly increased its number of pages and displayed German propaganda and pictures of ...