Army of Shadows, Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917–1948

"Army of Shadows" is a book by Hillel Cohen. [ [http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/16091/ Advocacy Corner | The Jewish Exponent ] ] It was published in Hebrew in 2004, translated from the Hebrew by Haim Watzman and published in English by the University of California Press in 2008.

The first Chapter can be read at the website of the University of California Press. [ [http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10892/10892.ch01.pdf Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917-1948 ] ]

The 2004 publication of "Army of Shadows" in Hebrew "caused a stir" among both Jewish and Arab intellectuals, with both sides finding the evidence presented by Cohen unpalatable. [ Shadowplays, by Neve Gordon, March 24, 2008, The Nation [http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080324/gordon] ]

In ‘’Army of Shadows, Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917-1948,’’ Hillel Cohen, a scholar at the the Harry S. Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem tackled a complex subject. According to historian Benny Morris writing in the New Republic, “His perspective--and this is one of his book's strengths--is neither pro-Palestinian nor anti-Palestinian, neither pro-Zionist nor anti-Zionist. Cohen argues--with Talleyrand, who famously quipped that "treason is a matter of dates"--that "treason is ultimately a social construct. Definitions vary with circumstances," and "collaboration" is "in the eye of the beholder." So Cohen leaves "the moral and political judgment" to his readers.” The Tangled Truth by Benny Morris, the New Republic, May 07, 2008 [http://www.tnr.com/story.html?id=0e100478-298c-438c-a994-e1800474ad19] ]

Cohen’s book redefines our understanding of the Middle East in a number of ways. Cohen carefully documents the thousands of Arabs, ranging from wealthy absentee landlords to fellahin smallholders, who sold land to Zionist organizations, and documents that everyone understood that control of land was an necessary precondition to fulfillment of the national goals of both Arabs and Jews. He quotes a Jerusalem math teacher named Mustafa Effendi Tamr who in 1911 wrote: "You are selling the property of your fathers and grandfathers for a pittance to people who will have no pity on you, to those who will act to expel you and expunge your memory from your habitations and disperse you among the nations. This is a crime that will be recorded in your names in history, a black stain and disgrace that your descendants will bear, which will not be expunged even after years and eras have gone by.”

Cohen explains the varied motives of sellers, some wanted money, some sold land for money or acted as intelligence agents for the Zionists even while publicly denouncing land sales, but there were also non-monetary motivations. Some thought that cooperating with the Zionists would improve the life of their clans and villages. Others thought that it was impossible to defeat the Zionists and, therefore, wiser to cooperate with them. Others were committed nationalists who believed that staying on the land was paramount, and that working for and cooperating with the Zionists was the strategy that would enable them to stay on the land. Others were driven to collaborate with the Zionists or with the British out of their intense hatred for Hajj Amin al-Husayni.

Cohen sees the Arabs of Mandatory Palestine as split between two positions. There were those who agreed with Hajj Amin al-Husayni that all of Palestine must remain Arab and that the Zionists must be fought. And there were those who argued according to what Cohen calls the "discourse of the possible," that the Zionists were too powerful to be defeated and that, therefore, the path of wisdom lay in some sort of co-existence.

Hajj Amin al-Husayni

Some of the most controversial material in the book deals with Hajj Amin al-Husayni. The Husayni clan and faction began to punish their opponents as early as the 1920s. In 1229 they murdered Sheikh Musa Hadeib near the Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem. In the 1929 Palestine riots Husyani spread the falsehood that the Jews intended to tear down the Al Aksa mosque and Dome of the Rock shrine on the Temple Mount. Over the course of the next decade, Husyani had a thousand Arabs murdered, 500 in 1938 alone. In 1939, the Husaynis were paying 100 Palestine pounds to assassins who murdered important "traitors," 25 pounds for petty "traitors," and 10 pounds for murdering a Jew.

Husyani’s methods drove many Arabs to side with and even to fight alongside the Zionists.

1939 White paper

Perhaps the most shocking allegation in the book is that Hajj Amin al-Husayni often put his own position in Palestinian politics above what the interests of the Palestinian nation, most crucially so in 1939. The result was that Husayni rejected the British White Paper of 1939 that, reneging on the promise of a Jewish homeland made in the Balfour Declaration, effectively promised the Palestinian Arabs majority rule and independence within a decade. According to Cohen, Husayni rejected the offer because Britain did not guarantee his position as ruler of the Palestinian Arab state it proposed to create.

1948

In 1948, both because of the widespread hatred for Husyani and because of incomplete commitment to Palestinian nationalism, very few Palestinian Arabs took up arms against the fledgling Zionist state.

Stephen Schwartz (journalist) writing in the Weekly Standard finds this the most notable aspect of the book. He notes that although while the Husanyi called for war against the new state of Israel, according to Cohen, Palestinian "Arabs were in no hurry" to join the battle: "Only a minority of Arabs were involved in offensive activities, this unwillingness to fight was frequently buttressed by agreements with Jews in nearby settlements." [ [http://www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=14999&R=13A251E4F2 PREVIEW: The Third Jihad ] ]

Religion and nationalism

Benny Morris is more interested in Cohen’s presentation of evidence of the integral role of Islam in the Palestinian national identity. Morris writes that “From the first, the nationalism of Palestine's Arabs was blatantly religious. Almost all the ‘nationalist’ statements Cohen quotes were couched in religious or semi- religious terms. We are dealing here with an Islamic nationalism.”

Collaboration

Writing in The Nation, Neve Gordon calls "Army of Shadows" "groundbreaking" for exposing a "particularly nefarious side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," the manipulation of paid Arab collaborators by Zionist organizations. [ Shadowplays, by Neve Gordon March 24, 2008, The Nation [http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080324/gordon] ]

March 6, 2008

Notes