Macron Smears the Yellow Vests

France's dispossessed are now being smeared by their president:

"The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has condemned antisemitic abuse of a leading intellectual by gilets jaunes (yellow vests) protesters and said it would not be tolerated. Police intervened to protect philosopher and writer Alain Finkielkraut after he was targeted by a group of protesters on the fringe of a demonstration in central Paris on Saturday, according to videos posted on social networks. 'The antisemitic insults he has been subjected to are the absolute negation of what we are and what makes us a great nation. We will not tolerate it,' Macron tweeted... Several protesters shouted 'dirty Zionist', 'we are the people' and 'France is ours', according to a video broadcast by Yahoo! News." (Macron condemns antisemitic abuse during gilets jaunes Paris protest, Agence France-Presse, 17/2/19)

This, of course, comes from a president who has falsely labelled anti-Zionism "a reinvention of anti-Semitism." (See my 27/4/18 post Trump's French Poodle.)

So, was the eminent philosopher, absent the adjective, falsely accused of being a Zionist?

It seems not:

"Parallel to Finkielkraut's denial of the existence of a black people comes his denial of the existence of a Palestinian people. Melding Sartre's 'the anti-Semite creates the Jew' with Golda Meir's 'there is no Palestinian people,' Finkielkraut regards the Palestinians merely as an epiphenomenon of Israel.' 'Is there anything in Palestinian identity,' he asks in his book of dialogues with Peter Sloterdjik, 'besides the refusal of Israel?'" (Race in Translation: Culture Wars Around the Postcolonial Atlantic, Robert Stam & Ella Shohat, 2012)

The Suez Aggression Rides Again

It's back to 1956*, chaps, with Britain and France now key players in the Saudi/Emirati intervention in Yemen.

In addition to arming the Saudis, Britain (along with the US) has just vetoed a UNSC resolution designed to prevent a Saudi/Emirati attack on the Yemeni port city of Hodeidah. (See UN rejects plan for ceasefire in Yemen port, Jason Ditz, antiwar.com, 15/6/18)

As for the French, they've apparently deployed special forces to Yemen to bolster Emirati troops there. (See French special forces on the ground in Yemen, Jason Ditz, antiwar.com. 16/6/18)

These two imperial recidivists, you'll remember, accompanied Trump on his bombing run in Syria in April. Now they're at it again, this time in Yemen. When will they ever learn?

As Syrian MP Fares Shehabi tweeted on June 16: "In short, the UK, US & France are behind all of our nightmares and tragedies in the region! We don't have any positive collective memory of anything good they did for us! For a century all they did was conquer, destroy, divide, loot, abuse and terrorize our people!"

[*When Britain and France colluded with the Israelis to seize the Suez Canal and topple Egypt's president Nasser. See my 14/4/18 post Anthony Nutting Turns in His Grave.]

Trump's French Poodle

Have we reached an historic moment? Is the formulation of US policy in the Middle East now in the hands of Tel Aviv... and Paris? Has USrael has found, in Emmanuel Macron, its Tony Blair? Has Bush's poodle become Trump's French poodle? Has Dumb found his Dumber? Whatever's going on, the Trump-Macron bromance is truly weird.

Regardez:

"Just a month after another brief flirtation with the idea of withdrawing from Syria, President Trump once again said he wants US troops out of Syria, promising 'big decisions' very soon. His first talk of a pullout was scrapped days later. This time, he backtracked almost instantly. With French President Emmanuel Macron in tow, Trump told reporters that he and his allies are taking a long-term approach to Syria, and that this would involve leaving 'a strong and lasting footprint' within Syria. He said talk of the long-term issues in Syria was 'a very big part' of his discussions with Macron.

"The idea that Macron is driving Trump's decision-making was a big issue last week. Macron claimed credit for Trump agreeing to stay in Syria, but quickly reversed course, and insisted the two had always agreed on the issue." (Trump again backtracks on Syria pullout, vows 'strong and lasting footprint', Jason Ditz, antiwar.com, 24/4/18)

Just on the issue of dumbness, how dumb is Macron? By all accounts, tres. 

For example, it seems he's completely unaware of the difference between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism: "Addressing Benjamin Netanyahu [last year]... who attended [an event in France to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Vel D'Hiv round-up, in which 13,152 French Jews were deported to Nazi concentration camps by the then Vichy French government], the French leader said: 'We will never surrender to the messages of hate; we will not surrender to anti-Zionism because it is a reinvention of anti-Semitism." (Emmanuel Macron says anti-Zionism is a new type of anti-Semitism, independent.co.uk, 17/7/17)

In addition to conflating the unconflatable and allowing Netanyahu to make cheap propaganda out of the Vel D'Hiv round-up, thus exploiting the suffering of its Jewish victims, France's appalling colonial record in Syria appears to give him no pause for thought whatever - assuming he's even aware of it that is. Now more than ever, it's worth reviewing the sorry story. The following extract comes from Jeremy Salt's vital book, The Unmaking of the Middle East: A History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands, 2008:

"In 1919 [the Syrians] held a congress in Damascus and chose a king (the sharif [of Mecca's] son Faisal) without being fully aware of the extent to which their rights were being bargained away in London and Paris. In 1920 France partitioned Syria by establishing an enlarged Lebanon and giving it a constitutional arrangement that privileged Christians against Muslims. When negotiations with the Syrian government failed, it sent an army across the Lebanon mountains to bring Damascus to heel. The French forces met stubborn resistance all the way, punishing 'rebellious' villages by bombing them from the air or putting them to the torch. At the base of the anti-Lebanon mountains thousands of Syrian nationalists took up defensive positions around the pass at Khan Maysalun. The pitched battle that ensued dragged on for several hours; by the time the nationalists were routed, 150 were dead (including their commander Yusuf al 'Azma) and another 1,500 wounded. French losses were 42 dead and 152 wounded. Faisal fled before the French entered Damascus and began taking over public buildings.

"Over the years the French used the full range of colonial devices to control Syria. The strategic need to anchor the French presence at both ends of the Mediterranean meant not just consolidating a military presence on land and at sea but blocking the growth of religious and national sentiment. Accordingly, the French 'did not conceal their preference for Christians above Muslims and for the mountain minorities (Maronites, Alawites, Druzes and Turcomans) above the majority Sunni Arabs of the coast, desert and cities.' Separate states - effectively colonial protectorates - were established around Damascus and Aleppo; within the state of Aleppo, the coastal sanjak (subprovince) of Alexandretta (Iskanderun) was excluded and given its own autonomous administration before France completely debauched its 'sacred trust' responsibility under the mandate by handing the region over to Turkey in 1939 (the very region it had insisted in 1918 was part of la Syrie integrale); the coastal region of Latakia was given statehood, and in the south the Jabal Druze was given autonomy with its own governor and an elected council. These arrangements were modified over the years, but French interests always had to predominate. Each state or autonomous region functioned under the control of French delegues and departmental advisers; parliaments (in Lebanon as well as Syria) could be prorogued at the high commissioner's discretion and constitutions suspended indefinitely.

"From beginning to end the platform on which this colonial structure was built was force. More than six thousand French soldiers (most of them colonial troops from North or West Africa) had already died suppressing 'rebels' and 'brigands' since 1920 when Sultan al Atrash, angered at the arrest of Druze sheikhs, routed a French column in late July 1925 and besieged the occupied Druze town of Suwayda. When a second column sent to punish the sheikh for the destruction of the first was also scattered, a wave of uprisings spread across the whole of Syria with the speed of a grass fire. The 'great Arab revolt' had begun, and the French moved swiftly to crush it. In October an uprising in Hama led by Fawzi al Qawuqji - later to make his name fighting the British in Iraq and the Zionists in Palestine - was met with aerial bombardment of the market area and ground action by the hated Senegalese levies that left more than three hundred dead. Outside the town 'rebels' set fire to railway stations and pulled up the lines; in the south, eight villages and the town of Majd al Shams in the Golan were left in ruins after French attacks that left tens of thousands of people homeless; attacks on the Druze in one part of Syria led to Druze uprisings elsewhere, with the town of Hasbeyya (in Grand Liban) being recaptured only after an assault by more than three battalions of Algerian infantry backed by cavalry, tanks, field artillery, and air support.

"Inevitably, Damascus had to bear the brunt of French imperial anger. The main point of resistance was the orchard area on the outskirts of the city known as the Ghuta. Already by October 15 about a hundred 'brigands' had been killed in 'clearing operations.' Twenty-four of the bodies were carried into the city by French soldiers and put on public display in the central square, a touch of barbarity that only further inflamed public feeling. On October 17, Druze horsemen arrived at the Ghuta, and the nationalists began moving toward the center of Damascus, bypassing the barricades set up to keep them out. The next evening the French began bombarding the southern quarters of the town before turning their attention to the center the following morning, 'this time with high explosive shells striking in all quarters from the central bazaars down to the middle of the Maydan.' In two days, 1,416 people (including 336 women and children) were killed and much of the central city was ruined by tank and artillery fire and air attack. The Suq Midhat Pasha and the Suq al Hamidiyya markets near the Umayyad mosque were destroyed. Shop fronts were riddled with machine-gun fire. In the biblical 'street called straight' (running alongside the Umayyad mosque), whole buildings collapsed into piles of rubble. The palatial mansions of the urban notables were shattered. The French high commissioner (General Sarrail) had made part of the 'Azm Palace his quarters, and that was quickly besieged by 'rebels.' The general's rooms were pillaged and the selamlik (where official guests were received) was destroyed. 'Very serious damage' was done to the library, 'where valuable and irreplaceable prints and books dealing with Arabic art have either been absolutely destroyed or injured beyond repair.' Tapestries and carpets were looted both from the 'Azm Palace and the mosques of the Maydan quarter by persons unknown, but the nationalists accused French troops of taking them before setting the mosques on fire.

"There were no apologies from the French government, only outrage at the killing of French troops and the destruction of property by 'brigands.' A collective fine (of about P35 per person) was imposed on Damascus, and the city was subjected to a house-by-house search for weapons. In the country, villages 'where brigands are reported to have been harbored and victualled' were torched, yet the resistance continued. More than 200 Druze fighters were killed and more than 200 wounded in fighting with the French around Majd al Shams in April 1926. Suwayda was retaken by the French the same month after a large-scale battle between 12,000 French troops and a Druze force of 4,000 to 5,000, of which number about 600 men were killed and another 800 wounded for perhaps 120 deaths on the French side.

"With resistance slowly being broken in the north and the south, the French were able to concentrate on the center. In February they had made another attempt to crush resistance in Damascus, and on May 7 they struck again: 'In less than 12 hours the French army struck with more intensity than it had either in October [1925] or February. The number of houses and shops destroyed during the aerial bombardment or as a result of incendiaries was estimated at well over 1,000. The death toll was equally staggering, between 600 and 1,000. The vast majority were unarmed civilians, including a large number of women and children: only 50 rebels were reported killed in the attack. Afterwards the troops indulged in pillaging and looting and then paraded their spoils through the streets in the city centre... The French assault made a formerly busy quarter of 30,000 a virtually deserted ruin.'

"On July 8, a further six days of fighting began when the French military command sent some 5,000 troops, backed up by tanks, field artillery, and aircraft, into the Ghuta. Another 1,500 people (an estimate because, like most occupying armies, the French had no interest in counting the people they were killing) died (only a few hundred of them 'rebels') at the cost of about 200 'French' (mainly colonial troops) lives. Druze and other nationalist leaders fled into Transjordan; France was to retain its hold on Syria and Lebanon until 1946, when, weakened by the war and disgraced by a final bombardment of Damascus in which hundreds of people were killed, it was compelled to withdraw under British pressure and transfer the authority given to it by the League of Nations to nationalist governments." (pp 83-86)

And Macron wants the US to stay in Syria?

Educating Macron

Shlomo Sand's Why I cannot be a Zionist: an Open Letter to Emmanuel Macron:

"As I began reading your speech on the commemoration of the Vel d'Hiv round-up... I was grateful that you... took a clear position... yes, France is responsible for the deportation [of Jewish origin people to the death camps], yes, there was anti-Semitism in France before and after the Second World War... I saw these positions as standing in continuity with the courageous statement you made in Algeria, saying that colonialism constitutes a crime against humanity. But... I was rather annoyed by the fact that you invited Benjamin Netanyahu. He should without doubt be ranked in the category of oppressors, and so cannot parade himself as a representative of the victims of yesteryear...

"I stopped being able to understand you when, in the course of your speech, you stated that 'Anti-Zionism... is the reinvented form of Zionism.' Was this statement intended to please your guest, or is it purely and simply a marker of a lack of political culture? Has this former student of philosophy... read so few history books that he does not know that many Jews or descendants of Jewish heritage have always opposed Zionism, without this making them anti-Semites? Here I am referring to almost all the old grand rabbis, but also the stances taken by a section of contemporary orthodox Judaism. And I also remember figures like Marek Edelman, one of the escaped leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, or the communists of Jewish background who took part in the French Resistance in the Manouchian group, in which they perished. I also think of my friend and teacher Pierre Vidal-Naquet and of other great historians and sociologists like Eric Hobsbawm and Maxime Rodinson... And finally I wonder if you seriously expect of the Palestinians that they should not be anti-Zionists!

"Nonetheless, I suppose that you do not particularly appreciate people on the Left, or, perhaps, the Palestinians. But knowing that you worked at Rothschild Bank, I will here provide a quote from Nathan Rothschild. President of the union of synagogues in Britain, he was the first Jew to be named a lord in the United Kingdom, where he also became the bank's governor. In a 1903 letter to Theodor Herzl, the talented banker wrote that he was anxious about plans to establish a 'Jewish colony'; it 'would be small and petty, Orthodox and illiberal, and keep out non-Jews and the Christians.' We might conclude that Rothschild's prophecy was mistaken. But one thing is for sure: he was no anti-Semite!

"Of course, there have been, and there are, some anti-Zionists who are also anti-Semites, but I am also certain that we could find anti-Semites among the sycophants of Zionism. I can also assure you that a number of Zionists are racists whose mental structure does not differ from that of other Judeophobes: they relentlessly search for a Jewish DNA (even at the university I teach at).

"But to clarify what an anti-Zionist point of view is, it is important to begin by agreeing on the definition of the concept 'Zionism', or at the very least, a series of characteristics proper to this matter... First, Zionism is not Judaism. It even constitutes a radical revolt against it. Across the centuries, pious Jews nurtured a deep ardour for their holy land, and more particularly for Jerusalem. But they held to the Talmudic precept intimating that they should not collectively emigrate there before the coming of the Messiah. Indeed, the land does not belong to the Jews, but to God. God gave and God took away again; and he would send the Messiah to restore it when he wanted to. When Zionism appeared, it removed the 'All Powerful' from his place, substituting the active human subject in his stead.

"We can each give our own view on the question of whether the project of creating an exclusive Jewish state on a slice of land with a very large Arab-majority population is a moral idea. In 1917, Palestine counted 700,000 Arab Muslims and Christians and around 60,000 Jews, half of whom were opposed to Zionism. Up till that point, the mass of the Yiddish-speaking people who wanted to flee the pogroms of the Russian Empire preferred to migrate to the American continent. Indeed, two million made it there, thus escaping Nazi persecution (and the persecution under the Vichy regime).

"In 1948 in Palestine there were 650,000 Jews and 1.3 million Arab Muslims and Christians, 700,000 of whom became refugees. It was on this demographic basis that the State of Israel was born. Despite that, and against the backdrop of the extermination of the European Jews, a number of anti-Zionists reached the conclusion that in the name of avoiding the creation of fresh tragedies it was best to consider the State of Israel as an irreversible fait accompli. A child born as the result of a rape does indeed have the right to live. But what happens if this child follows in the footsteps of his father?

"And then came 1967. Since then Israel has ruled over 5.5 million Palestinians, who are denied civil, political and social rights. Israel subjects them to military control: for part of them a sort of 'Indian reservation' in the West Bank, while others are locked up in a 'barbed wire holding pen' in Gaza (70% of the population there are refugees or their descendants). Israel, which constantly proclaims its desire for peace, considers the territories conquered in 1967 as an integral part of the 'land of Israel,' and it behaves there as it sees fit. Thus far 600,000 Jewish-Israeli settlers have been moved in there... and this has still not ended!,

"Is that today's Zionism? No!, reply my friends on the Zionist Left - which is constantly shrinking. They tell me that we have to put an end to the dynamic of Zionist colonisation, that a narrow little Palestinian state should be created next to the State of Israel, and that Zionism's objective was to establish a state where the Jews would be sovereign over themselves, and not to conquer 'the ancient homeland' in its entirety. And the most dangerous thing in all this, in their eyes, is that annexing territory threaten's Israel's character as a Jewish state.

"So here we reach the proper moment for me to explain to you why I am writing to you, and why I define myself as a non-Zionist or anti-Zionist, without thereby becoming anti-Jewish. Your political party has put the words 'La Republique' in its name. So I presume that you are a fervent republican. And, at the risk of surprising you: I am, too. So being a democrat and a republican I cannot - as all Zionists do, Left and Right, without exception - support a Jewish State. The Israeli Interior Ministry counts 75% of the country's citizens as Jewish, 21% as Arab Muslims and Christians and 4% as 'others' (sic). Yet according to the spirit of its laws, Israel does not belong to Israelis as a whole, whereas it does belong even to all those Jews worldwide who have no intention of coming to live there. So for example, Israel belongs a lot more to Bernard Henri-Levy or to Alain Finkelkraut than it does to my Palestinian-Israeli students, Hebrew speakers who sometimes speak it better than I do! Israel hopes that the day will come when all the people of the CRIF ('Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France') and their 'supporters' emigrate there! I even know some French anti-Semites who are delighted by such a prospect. On the other hand, we could find two Israeli ministers close to Netanyahu putting out the idea that it is necessary to encourage the 'transfer' of Israeli Arabs, without that meaning that anyone demanded their resignations.

"That, Mr President, is why I cannot be a Zionist. I am a citizen who desires that the state he lives in should be an Israeli Republic, and not a Jewish-communalist state. As a descendant of Jews who suffered so much discrimination, I do not want to live in a state that, according to its own self-definition, makes me a privileged class of citizen. Mr President, do you think that makes me an anti-Semite?" (counterpunch.org, 11/8/17)

Great Advances in French Colonialism

Saladin, we're back!

- General Henri Gouraud on entering Saladin's tomb, July 25, 1920

I do not require Assad's departure.

- French President Emmanuel Macron, July 13. 2017

Almost 100 years after the French destroyed Syria's first independent Arab state in 1920, Macron continues to channel the malign spirit of French colonialism. Of course, you can guarantee that this arrogant Gallic fool has never even heard of General Gouraud.

Portrait of a Grub

The Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior, protesting against French nuclear testing in the South Pacific, was blown up by French intelligence agents in Auckland harbour on July 10, 1985, killing Portuguese freelance photographer Fernando Pereira.

Christine Cabon was one of these agents and had been chosen to infiltrate the Greenpeace crew by posing as an environmental activist.

A vile grub by any standards. But note this particular twist in the tale:

"Retired [NZ] detective superintendent Allan Galbraith, who tracked Cabon to Israel, said he didn't expect to see her extradited. But he would like to talk to her: 'I'd be interested to know what she knew about what her information was leading to. Whether she knew there was going to be a sabotage of a ship...'... It was a surprise to find her in Israel,' Galbraith says now. 'I think the Israelis were very well aware she was an intelligence agent'." (No apology as spy tracked down, Cecile Meier, Sunday Star-Times/Sydney Morning Herald, 10/7/17)

A Greg Sheridan Update

Just to update you on the health of Australia's greatest intellectual, foremost foreign policy analyst, and egregious gentile Zionist (not to mention former MP Tony Abbott's trusty 'suppository of wisdom') Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan...

The thing is, contrary to my last report on the subject, it seems he still hasn't fully recovered from his recent attack of that current curse of the scribbling class, Corbynitis. For example:

Trump "has turned out to be not quite as bad as I had feared," but Corbyn (who's still on the UK parliament's opposition benches!) "is 100 times worse than Trump and in every possible sense completely unfit to be prime minister."

And this is apparently because he's "a longtime supporter of terrorists and dictators, a friend of the most extreme forces within British society," and, the fact that he "came so close," "shows how nearly deranged elements of Western politics are." (A revolution that could still end in a riot, The Australian,15/6/17)

Let me run that past you again, at least in part:

Corbyn is 100 times worse than Trump! 

100 TIMES WORSE THAN TRUMP!!

You can see the great man's still got a way to go here. But rest assured, he is fighting back. Hope, as they say, springs eternal:

"So how come France is so different? Macron comes across as a bit prissy and has developed some annoying celebrity tics. But he is a mainstream and credible person [who] leads an apparently blameless life." (ibid)

So frenchy so chic so... mainstream...

Macron's Israeli Mates

"Israeli politicians who have met Emmanuel Macron said Monday they are impressed with the French presidential candidate. Macron, who will face a runoff race against far-right candidate Marine Le Pen on May 7, was in Israel in September 2015 when he was economy minister and met with his counterpart, Arye Deri. 'I was very impressed by him,' Deri said... Macron met Labor leadership candidate Erel Margalit when he came to Jerusalem, which led to an invitation to Margalit to meet with Macron and French President Francois Hollande at the Elysee Palace. Margalit, who was a high-tech entrepreneur before he entered politics, said the two have met four of five times... 'If Macron is elected, France will embark on an innovation economy and Israel will be at the center of its economic cooperation,' Margalit said... According to Margalit, Macron inquired about advancing joint Israeli-Palestinian economic projects in Bethlehem as a catalyst for building relations. Asked for Macron's view on diplomatic issues, Margalit said he 'wants the two-state solution to be a win-win for Israel'." (Emmanuel Macron's Israel ties, Gil Hoffman, jpost.com, 24/4/17)

The Angry Brigades

In a 9/2/15 post, Me, Myself & I in Raqqa & Melbourne, I featured a snapshot of wannabe Australian jihadi Musa Cerantonio.

Although French political scientist Olivier Roy's focus, in his essay Who are the new jihadis? (theguardian.com, 13/4/17), is on French jihadis, he could just as easily have been writing about the likes of Cerantonio. His essay is therefore as relevant here as in France.

He sees "contemporary jihadism, at least in the west," essentially as a "youth movement... constructed independently of parental religion and culture," and stresses, above all, its nihilistic character:

"The systematic association with death is one of the keys to understanding today's radicalisation: the nihilist dimension is central. What seduces and fascinates is the idea of pure revolt. Violence is not a means. It is an end in itself."

Crucially, he makes the point that contemporary jihadist terrorism "does not arise from the radicalisation of Islam, but from the Islamisation of radicalism."

"The typical radical," Roy points out, "is a young, second-generation immigrant or convert, very often involved in episodes of petty crime, with practically no religious education, but having a rapid and recent trajectory of conversion/reconversion, more often in the framework of a group of friends or over the internet than in the context of a mosque. The embrace of religion is rarely kept secret, but rather is exhibited, but it does not necessarily correspond to immersion in religious practice. The rhetoric of rupture is violent - the enemy is kafir, one with whom no compromise is possible - but also includes their own family, the members of which are accused of observing Islam improperly, or refusing to convert."

In addition to their ignorance of Islam, Roy finds that the type has zero engagement with, or interest in, the real problems and issues that afflict the Middle East:

"The Muslim community such terrorists are eager to avenge is almost never specified. It is a non-historical and non-spatial reality. When they rail against western policy in the Middle East, jihadis use the term 'crusaders'; they do not refer to the French colonisation of Algeria. Radicals never explicitly refer to the colonial period. They reject or disregard all Palestinian and religious movements that have come before them. They do not always align themselves with the struggle of their fathers; almost none of them go back to their parents' countries of origin to wage jihad. It is noteworthy that none of the jihadis, whether born Muslim or converted, has to my knowledge campaigned as part of a pro-Palestinian movement or belonged to any sort of association to combat Islamophobia, or even an Islamic NGO. These radicalised youths read texts in French or English circulating over the internet, but not works in Arabic.

"Oddly enough, the defenders of Islamic State never talk about sharia and almost never talk about the Islamic society that will be built under the auspices of Isis. Those who say they went to Syria because they wanted 'to live in a true Islamic society' are typically returnees who deny having participated in violence while there... Living in an Islamic society does not interest jihadis: they do not go to the Middle East to live, but to die. That is the paradox: these young radicals are not utopians, they are nihilists."

Finally, he underlines his thesis that it is not Islam as such that motivates these troubled souls, but rather a form of narcissism:

"There is a temptation to see in Islam a radical ideology that mobilises throngs of people in the Muslim world, just as Nazism was able to mobilise large sections of the German people. But the reality is that Isis's pretensions to establish a global caliphate is a delusion - that is why it draws in violent youngsters who have delusions of grandeur."

Turkish Designs on Northern Syria

Hm...

"Now, prompted by domestic strife and external realpolitik, Mr Erdogan appears to be downsizing his aims and recasting Turkey in a peacemaking role while aiming to secure, with Russia's tacit approval, a large area of northern Syria as a semi-permanent buffer zone under its control. Turkish forces and allied rebel militias have seized an area of 2000sq km in northern Aleppo province since launching a cross-border operation in August to dislodge Islamic State from the frontier. They are now closing in on al-Bab, the last ISIS-held town between Aleppo and Raqqa. According to Turkish government sources, that is where they will stop and where renewed diplomatic ties will take over." (Putin, Erdogan carving up northern Syria, Hannah Lucinda Smith, The Times/ The Australian, 3/12/16)

If this report is correct, it wouldn't be the last time Turkey took a bite out of Syria. The story of the north-western Syrian province of Alexandretta (now Iskanderun), is instructive. In the 1930s, Turkey laid claim to Alexandretta on the grounds that it was Turkish (although less than half the population were Turks). France (which then ruled Syria under a League of Nations Mandate) and Turkey agreed to have the status of the province determined by the League Council, and, in January 1937, a settlement was reached in Turkey's favour. In the words of historian A.L. Tibawi, the settlement's: "... essence was to constitute the district of Alexandretta as a separate political entity with full internal independence under a statute and a fundamental law of its own. Its connection with Syria was restricted to customs and monetary matters, and its foreign affairs which were to be conducted by Syria after independence." (A Modern History of Syria, Including Lebanon & Palestine (1969), p 353)

Now here's where it gets really interesting:

"In the summer of 1938 when elections for an assembly were to be held under the new dispensation, France was more occupied with the larger problems of Germany... and gave way to Turkish pressure on a number of vital matters including the co-operation of Turkish troops for the maintenance of order during the elections. By this and similar means the Turkish minority won 22 out of the 40 seats. When the assembly met for the first time it elected a Turk for a speaker, another Turk for head of the state, renamed the territory the Republic of Hatay, and appointed an all-Turkish cabinet.

"Not content with these victories, the Turkish government exploited the strained world situation to an even greater extent and pressed for the annexation of Hatay. Britain and France were very eager to secure if not a Turkish alliance at least Turkish neutrality in a European conflict that seemed inevitable. It is said that Britain, who had given Turkey a big credit loan for rearmament, persuaded France to sacrifice Alexandretta as a price for gaining Turkish goodwill. France capitulated by signing an agreement in June 1939, ceding the territory to the Turkish Republic. This was clearly a grave violation of article 4 of the mandate which stipulated that the mandatory was required to see that 'no part of the territory of Syria and Lebanon is ceded or leased or in any way placed under the control of a foreign power'." (ibid)

One to watch...

The Unexamined Life

Bugger STEM, if you don't know and own your (colonial) history, you don't know yourself:

"Algeria experienced an 'Arab Fall' in 1988, which led to a war between armed Islamic groups and the Algerian army and state. Many journalists, intellectuals, artists were among about 200,000 Algerians who died under the blades and bullets of these fanatic murderers. Almost overnight, the face of Algerian society changed and entered one of the darkest times of its history. During the paroxysm of the war in the mid-90s, my parents decided that it was safer to temporarily move to France, as my mother had received death threats. It was a return 'home' for her as she was born and raised in France by immigrant Algerian parents. I remember feeling grateful that I could finally walk down the street without being scared. But yet, I often felt out of place. I encountered racism for the first time and discovered what it was like to be an outsider. I was surprised to discover that Algerians were not exactly well received and welcome. I did not know then, considering my age, the complicated intricacies inherited from colonial times." (America accepted me - an Algerian Muslim - in a way France never did, Melyssa Haffaf, The Guardian, 30/8/16)

Digital Dementia

Digital dementia has to be the plague of our age, and this is surely its worst symptom:

 "Before the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris in January 2015, Adel Kermiche was a cheerful, music-loving and devout French teenager. But that terrorist atrocity, and the suspicion-filled aftermath, 'acted like a detonator', his mother said. Soon his greatest wish was to join the so-called Islamic State, which his mother said had 'bewitched' him on social media. '[After Charlie Hebdo] he said we could not practise our religion in peace in France,' Kermiche's mother said. 'He was speaking with words that did not belong to him. He was bewitched, like he was in a cult'." (Normandy church attacker 'bewitched' by IS, Nick Miller, Sydney Morning Herald, 28/7/16)

 A useful guide to the phenomenon (and much else as regards IS) is Abdel Bari Atwan's Islamic State: The Digital Caliphate (2015). Here are the opening paragraphs to chapter 1: Masters of the Digital Universe:

"Islamic State could never have achieved its territorial ambitions, nor could it have recruited such a large army in so short a time, without its mastery of the internet.

"Al-Qa'ida was the first major jihadist network to sense the potential of the worldwide web, using its darker recesses in a covert manner to share ideology, information, plans and correspondence. Its younger operatives also launched early cyber attacks on 'enemy' websites, presaging the emergence of the 'cyber jihad' that is raging today.

"Today, Islamic State and its supporters use the internet and social networking platforms in a brazen, overt way, marketing their 'brand' and disseminating their material in mainstream networks such as Twitter. For those already in the territories of Islamic State, as much as for potential recruits on their laptops in a thousand bedrooms across the globe, concealing identity and location remains a priority. But there are myriad ways this can be done. Advice on the wide range of 'anonymity products' available online is freely available for those who seek it - much of this advice is produced by Islamic State recruiters for the would-be jihadist. Those who fail to ensure their online anonymity are those we see detained and prosecuted. Sadly, this is only a tiny minority." (p 9)

How France 'Shaped' Modern Syria

The following understatement is a classic of its kind:

"'We tend to forget that history is still important,' said Anthony Cordesman of the Centre for Strategic Studies and International Studies in Washington. 'France is the country that shaped modern Syria... " (France's colonial history puts it in the sights of terrorists, Julian E. Barnes & Matthew Dalton, The Wall Street Journal/ The Australian, 18/7/16)

France "shaped" Syria.

Before France, Syria was without form and void. After France, hey presto, Syria! (Trot out that mocking line: What did the Romans France ever do for us?)

So how did La Belle France "shape" Syria?

As follows:

1) In the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916, France (& Britain) decided to chop up Greater Syria (today's Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Jordan) with Syria and Lebanon going to France, and Palestine and Transjordan to Britain. (Of course, the British had already promised, in 1915, that most of Greater Syria would become part of an independent Arab nation.)

2) At the San Remo Conference of 1920, under the pretext of 'accepting' a League of Nations' 'mandate', France declared its intention to take control of Greater Syria (minus the British bits). This was despite the existence of a popular, constitutional Arab monarchy under King Faisal based in Damascus. Syrian resistance was promptly smashed by a vastly superior French force at the Battle of Maysalun, and Faisal was forced to flee. General Gourard, the 'hero' of Maysalun, reportedly kicked the tomb of Saladin in Damascus, and said, Wake up, Saladin. We have returned. My presence here consecrates the victory of the Cross over the Crescent.

3) Gourard then tore off Mount Lebanon, adding to it the coastal cities of Tyre, Beirut and Tripoli, and the inland Biqa Valley, and proclaimed the new entity Greater Lebanon (Grand Liban).

4) With Palestine and Transjordan already hacked from the bleeding corpse of Greater Syria, and Lebanon likewise, Gourard then set about slicing what was left of it into statelets: the state of Damascus; the government of Aleppo; the autonomous Alawite district; and the autonomous Mountain of the Druzes.

5) A nationalist uprising (1925-26) was brutally quelled, with French forces shelling Damascus twice. Thousands of Syrians died in the process.

6) In 1939, France cut off  the northern Syrian province of Hatay, handing it to the Turks to keep them sweet during World War II.

That, in brief, is how La Belle France "shaped" Syria.

Thereby Hangs a Tale...

Guardian Australia is featuring a "video explainer" called Why is France targeted so often by terrorists (16/7). Its only reference to that nation's bloody colonial history is as follows:

"France has intervened militarily and economically to defend its interests in Africa and the Middle East."

To expand the old Shakespearean line: thereby hangs a largely overlooked, not to say forgotten, tale - at least by the mainstream media.

Although the warp and woof of this tale has many a tangled strand, I present here just one, involving the intersection between France's (along with Britain's and Israel's) failed stab at regime change in 1956 Egypt and its arrogant refusal to read the writing on the wall in 1960s French occupied/settled Algeria:

"When [British PM Anthony] Eden and [Foreign Secretary Selwyn] Lloyd left Paris [French PM Guy] Mollet was able to reassure his Israeli partner, David Ben-Gurion, that he could depend absolutely on British co-operation in the plan for invading [Egypt's] Sinai and capturing the [Suez] Canal. So confident, in fact, was the mood in Paris after the meeting of October 16 [1956] that Mollet and his Ministers now decided to toughen their Algerian policy. Until this moment they had not been certain enough of ultimate victory over the [Algerian] nationalists to go all out in their efforts to crush the rebellion. But now that [the Egyptian president] Nasser was to be destroyed, the order was given to pull no punches and a plan was promptly hatched to capture the leader of the Algerian rebels, Ahmed Ben Bella, by a singular act of treachery.

"Ben Bella was currently visiting Rabat at the invitation of the Sultan of Morocco, who, with Premier Bourguiba of Tunisia, was seeking to persuade the National Liberation Front of Algeria to agree to peace talks with the French. These efforts at mediation had earlier received active encouragement from Mollet himself, in token of which the French authorities had earlier given a safe-conduct across Algeria for the aeroplane which was to transport Ben Bella from Rabat to Tunis for the talks with Bourguiba. But Mollet was now no longer interested in discussing peace in Algeria. And when the aeroplane reached Algerian air space it was immediately intercepted by French fighters and forced to land at Algiers Airport. Ben Bella and four of his nationalist associates were then arrested and taken off to prison in France, where they were to remain until Algeria finally won her independence six years later.

"By this act of treacherous folly, France not only forfeited the last vestiges of Arab respect in North Africa, but, when her Suez plan failed to destroy Nasser, she served to prolong her own agony in Algeria by isolating the principal spokesman of the nationalists in a Paris prison and thereby denying to the only interlocutor valable the opportunity to negotiate a settlement. From then on it was war to the death in Algeria - and many Frenchmen as well as Algerians were to die in the six bloody years that followed. Egypt increased her assistance to the rebels, and the Moroccans and Tunisians, rebuffed in their efforts to bring about a truce, joined in giving the National Liberation Front all possible aid and protection." (No End of a Lesson: The Story of Suez, Anthony Nutting, 1967, pp 100-01)

When Journalists Sound Like IS Terrorists

Question: Why did the jihadi mongrels who perpetrated the attacks in Paris have it so damn easy?

Answer: Because there were no obstacles of any kind to obstruct them. Just your average civilian infrastructure: you know, streets, cafes, theatres, stadiums, what have you. Stroll in, stroll out:

"France has vowed a 'merciless' response to an unprecedented terrorist atrocity: six-co-ordinated attacks that stained Parisian streets with blood and left more than 120 people dead." (Paris attacks: France vows 'merciless' response to unprecedented atrocity, Nick Miller, The Sun-Herald, 15/11/15)

Question: Why did the same pack of jihadi mongrels who perpetrated the earlier attacks in Beirut have it so damn hard?

Answer: Well, they had to overcome a bastion, which is to say the projecting part of a fortification built at an angle to the line of a wall, so as to allow defensive fire in several directions, a structure that is part of a stronghold, which is a place that has been fortified to protect it against attack. Seriously:

"Lebanon was holding a day of mourning yesterday for 41 people killed in twin bombings... in southern Beirut... More than 200 people were also wounded... by the explosions... in the Burj al-Barajneh neighbourhood that is a bastion of the Shia Hezbollah movement... The attacks were the deadliest to hit a Hezbollah stronghold..." (Lebanon mourns bomb victims, AFP/The Australian, 14/11/15)

Now for all I know, whoever wrote that Agence France Presse piece, with its bastion and stronghold, could have been an IS operative. After all, look at how IS claimed responsibility for the Beirut blasts:

"In a statement posted online, IS claimed... 'Soldiers of the caliphate blew themselves up in the stronghold of the heretics...'" (IS claims twin suicide blasts, Ruth Pollard, Sydney Morning Herald, 14/11/15)

Stronghold! It's like an IS signature word, know what I mean?

Happily, I think we can safely assume that Herald journalist, Ruth Pollard's no jihadi because she didn't use the term at all in her piece, except, of necessity, in the IS quote:

"Islamic State has claimed responsibility for twin suicide blasts in the southern Beirut area of Burj al-Barajneh that killed at least 41 and injured more than 200." (ibid)

See? Not a bastion or a stronghold anywhere in sight, just your common and garden area, you know, with streets and cafes and theatres and stadiums and the like.

But just remember, from now on, whenever you see a journalist use the words stronghold or bastion in connection with an IS bombing in southern Beirut, it means that he/she is actually excusing what, if it occurred anywhere else, would be described as nothing less than a monstrous act of terrorism directed at innocent civilians. That, and sounding suspiciously like an IS propagandist.

France: On the Road to Criminalising Anti-Zionism? 2

Continued from the previous post:

"If we can say that the horrible actions of Islamic State are a perversion of the beliefs of the vast majority of the world's Muslims, can we also not say that Zionism is a perversion of Judaism? CRIF insists that the Paris attacks be labeled 'Islamist'. By the same logic, should we label Israel's crimes acts of 'violent radical Judaism'?

"While anti-Zionist Jews, secular and religious, have always insisted that Israel and Zionism do not represent them or their religion or cultures, politicians like Hollande reinforce the false and dangerous association between Jews as Jews on the one hand and Israel's violent racist colonialism against the Palestinians on the other. Some misguided youths, hearing these messages, may indeed believe Israel's claim that 'the Jews' are the enemies of the Palestinians and direct their anger or hatred towards Jewish targets. They may hear the Islamophobic diatribes emanating from many right-wing and liberal supporters of Israel and also conclude - falsely - that 'the Jews' are the enemies of 'the Muslims'. The message has to be clear always and is worth repeating: words or acts targeting Jews as Jews are never a form of solidarity with the Palestinians."

"In his address to CRIF, Hollande spoke about the 'Israeli-Palestinian conflict' in the bland terms of the defunct 'peace process'. He reaffirmed France's commitment to the fantasy of the 'two-state solution'... He offered not a single word of comfort or anger about the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza where there has been no reconstruction since Israel's summer attack devastated much of the besieged and impoverished territory. Hollande warned that those who do not learn from history are destined to relive it. Yet there was not one word of accountability or justice for the Israeli war crimes that left more than 2,200 people, including more than 500 children, dead in Gaza.

"Why are 1.8 million Palestinians, mostly refugees from present-day Israel, caged in Gaza under such abominable conditions in the first place? The answer is simple: their mere existence, the fact that they live and breathe as non-Jews, is considered a threat to Israel's self-declared identity as a 'Jewish state'. Palestinians are in a ghetto because of who they are and France's president has nothing to say about that.

"While French leaders are doing their best to pander to the prejudices of their audience, it is doubtful it will be enough. Richard Prasquier, the former president of CRIF, went on national television to say that Hollande and Valls had not gone far enough. CRIF's current president Roger Cukierman provoked anger from the French Muslim community leaders by declaring that 'all the violent attacks today are committed by young Muslims.' Cukierman also praised Marine Le Pen, leader of the racist, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim and traditionally deeply anti-Semitic National Front, as 'irreproachable'.

"Alas Hollande's ardor to combat racism was nowhere in sight when it came to the fanatical anti-Arab racism of Israel's leading political parties. CRIF heard no rebuke from the supposedly anti-racist Hollande for Cukierman's public embrace of Israeli ultra-nationalist politician Naftali Bennett, who boasts about how many Arabs he has killed and claims that Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian land are 'protecting London, Paris and Madrid.'

"In his speech Hollande announced education reforms to reinforce the messages he gave to CRIF. But what France really needs to teach its Jewish and Muslim citizens is that contrary to Israeli claims, Israel does not represent Jews and that Israeli policies and Israeli crimes are not Jewish policies or Jewish crimes. The irony is that it might prove more difficult to convince French Jews and Christians of this than it is to convince French Muslims."

France: On the Road to Criminalising Anti-Zionism? 1

"French president Francois Hollande has said his government will soon announce a raft of tough criminal laws to crack down on anti-Semitism, racism, homophobia and Holocaust denial. He made the announcement in a speech to CRIF, France's main Jewish communal body and Israel lobby group, on Monday. Hollande said that the Internet needed to be 'regulated' to suppress videos and even search results deemed 'anti-Semitic'. The president said the appropriate model would be the laws used to prevent the dissemination of child pornography. But the measures are likely only to make matters worse, among other things by criminalizing criticism of Israel and further conflating Zionism with Judaism...

"Hollande said that details of the draft law would be announced in the coming days by his prime minister Manuel Valls... Hollande promised that the laws would become more punitive, so that 'no anti-Semitic word or act goes without a response'... Only in passing... did Hollande mention that anti-Muslim hate attacks in France in January alone exceeded the entire number recorded in 2014. He did not announce any specific measures to combat this alarming phenomenon... Hollande did not consider that it was 'Western' interventions in Syria, Iraq, Libya and elsewhere that gave rise to the menace known as Islamic State...

"The president told CRIF that anti-Semitism has ancient routes, but asserted that 'a more recent source is hatred of Israel.' But if this is the case, who decides what is 'anti-Semitic'? If all anti-Israel and anti-Zionist statements will be considered anti-Semitic then hundreds if not thousands of publications in tens of languages will have to be banned by France. Hollande shared some disturbing statistics: in 2014 there were twice as many 'anti-Semitic acts' recorded as in 2013 and ten times more than before the year 2000. Lest I be accused of 'justifying' these acts, let me be clear: nothing, including Israel's crimes against Palestinians, justifies insulting or attacking Jews as Jews. But can it be a mere coincidence that 2014 was the year of Israel's latest horrific massacre of Palestinians in Gaza that was fully backed by the United States and most EU members, including France? Can it also be a coincidence that 2000 was the year the second intifada began and Israel launched a brutal crackdown that has since killed more than 8,000 Palestinians, often with weapons provided by those same states?

"What is the relationship between these facts? While Hollande insists that 'hatred' of Israel is a form of, or a 'source' of 'anti-Semitism', he does not acknowledge the role of Israel in generating the intense hostility sometimes misdirected against Jews. 

"The Palestinian national movement has always correctly insisted that its enemies are not 'the Jews', but rather Israel and the Zionist colonial movement. 

"Yet it is Israel that continues to insist that it acts in the name of Jews everywhere. 

"It is Benjamin Netanyahu who apparently considers himself not just prime minister of Israel but the leader of world Jewry. 

"It is Israel that has taken the symbols of the Jewish religion - including its most recognized one, the Star of David - and affixed it to uniforms and weapons of destruction and death that are used to carry out atrocities in Palestine and Lebanon. 

"It is Zionists who have taken holy scriptures and claimed that they provide a license for modern day Brooklynites and Parisians to violently steal land from Palestinian villagers. 

"It is Israel's government-financed settlers who torch Palestinian mosques and daub their walls with 'biblical phrases'. 

"It is Israel-government-backed religious fanatics who yearn - and plan - to destroy the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem and replace it with a 'Jewish temple'. 

"It is Israel that used the Paris Grand Synagogue as a recruiting base for its army and it is Israeli army commanders who cite Hebrew scripture to justify laying waste to Gaza." (France must treat online 'anti-Semitism' like child pornography, president says, Ali Abunimah, electronicintifada.net, 25/2/15)

Part 2 tomorrow.

Conspiracy Realists

Conspiracy theorists?

"The lesson was meant to be about Napoleon, but a history teacher in the Parisian suburb of Vitry-sur-Seine decided instead last week to hold a discussion with her teenage pupils about the terrorist attacks in [Paris]... For Marie, 30, the teacher, the shock of 3 days of terror in which 17 people were killed was compounded by the discovery that her 14-year-old pupils, most of North African origin, did not believe the attack had happened. 'They're lively, intelligent children,' she said. 'But most of them are convinced it's some sort of conspiracy involving the government, Israel or the CIA.... The parents think the same way. It's sad, really'." (We're not Charlie here: Muslim teens in banlieues, Matthew Campbell, The Sunday Times/The Australian, 19/1/15)

No, conspiracy realists:

"Five former US intelligence officials have revealed that the CIA and Mossad cooperated on the assassination of Imad Mughniyah*, the military chief of Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, in February 2008. The bomb which killed Mughniyah... was triggered remotely from Tel Aviv by agents with Mossad, who were in communication with US operatives on the ground in Damascus. 'The way it was set up, the US could object and call it off, but it could not execute,' said a former US intelligence official." (CIA aided Mossad to assassinate terrorist, Adam Goldman, Washington Post/Sydney Morning Herald, 2/2/15)

[*Chris Wallace: Director [of National Intelligence Mike] McConnell... the assassination of terrorist Imad Mughniyah this week - did the US have anything to do with that? McConnell: No, Chris. I'm aware of the circumstances around it, and we are now - interestingly from the kinds of capabilities we're talking about, we can see how various parties are commenting and so on. And the big question of course - Hezbollah has blamed Israel. But there's some evidence that it may have been internal - Hezbollah. (Transcript: DNI Mike McConnell on 'FNS', foxnews.com, 17/2/08)]

What's Going On at The Guardian?

Check out this incredible headline for Peter Beaumont's 17 January report at The Guardian reads (my emphasis):

Why are French Jews returning to Israel in such numbers?

That has to be deliberate. Funny how it came on the heels of Netanyahu's recent call for French Jews to come "home."

I'll leave you with the following savvy tweet of Charles Edward Frith. It neatly encapsulates the paradox that anti-Semitism and Zionism are basically just two sides of the same racist coin:

"If Hollande said France wasn't their country and all Jews should leave, that would be anti-Semitism. When Netanyahu says it, that's Zionism."

Clive Kessler's Rage Against the Historical Record

Clive Kessler, emeritus professor of sociology and anthropology at the University of NSW, is the author of a feature - Islam cannot disown jihadists driven by rage against history - in this weekend's Australian.

His appended bio says, "He has been researching and writing about the politics of resurgent and militant Islam, in Southeast Asia and globally, for half a century."

So where does 50 years' worth of cogitation on the subject of Islam lead? Apparently, to this sage conclusion:

"By the late 19th and early 20th century, much of the Islamic world had fallen under European colonial domination. It was dismembered and parcelled out among different Western powers - notably France, Britain, Italy and The Netherlands... No longer able to live in the world on their own terms according to their blueprint, the lands of Islam fell under derivatively foreign legal systems. They ceased to live, wherever they once had, under Islamic law, the Shariah. This defeat was humiliating. The world of Islam was wounded at its core. This would have been a painful experience for any once-proud but now enfeebled civilisation. But for Islam it was more and worse, than that. It was more and worse because of its long history of worldly success and its conviction of entitlement, an assurance vouchsafed by God, that Islam would forever be in charge."

In brief, ever since the colonial dismemberment of the Islamic world, instead of moving on, it's been stewing, obsessively sharpening the sword of jihad and generally itching for a return to the fabulous days of shariah!

That this kind of post 9/11 clash of civilizations nonsense is peddled at our universities - Kessler's essay originally appeared on the Australian National University's New Mandala website under the heading A rage against history - may come as a surprise. That it's been taken up and recycled in the Murdoch press, though, comes as no surprise.

Where to begin? Leaving aside Libya and Indonesia, let's concentrate on the Levant in the crucial years from 1918-20.

This was the period which followed the defeat of the Turks by British and Arab forces (the latter led by the Amir Faisal, son of of the Sharif of Mecca, Hussein). Critically, it was the period before the implementation of the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement (dividing the area between France and Britain), and the 1917 Balfour Declaration (imposing a Jewish National Home on the Palestinians), when the Arabs had a narrow window of opportunity to realise their dreams. It follows, therefore, that if these dreams were all about Islamic supremacy and shariah, you'd expect that to be reflected in the historical record.

Well, here's the hero of the Arab independence struggle, Faisal, addressing a public meeting of Syrian notables in Damascus in 1919:

"The Turks departed from our lands and we are now as children. We have no government, no army and no educational system. The huge majority of our people have no understanding of patriotism or freedom, or the meaning of independence... That is why we have to make them understand the blessing of independence... and endeavour to spread education, for no nation can survive without education, organisation and equality. I am an Arab and I have no superiority over any other Arab, not even by an atom... I call upon my Arab brethren irrespective of their different sects to grasp the mantle of unity and concord, to spread knowledge, and to form a government that will do us proud, for if we do what the Turks did [in misrule] we will also depart from the land, God forbid; but if we act in a responsible and dutiful way, history will record our deeds with honour. I repeat what I have said in all my previous positions. The Arabs were Arabs before Moses, and Jesus and Muhammad. All religions demand that [their adherents] follow what is right and enjoin brotherhood on earth. And anyone who sows discord between Muslim, Christian and Jew is not an Arab. I am an Arab before all else... The Arabs are diverse peoples living in different regions. The Aleppan is not the same as the Hijazi, nor is the Damascene the same as the Yemeni. That is why my father has made the Arab lands each follow their own special laws that are in accordance with their own circumstances and people... We should have started first by organising a congress that would have set out these laws [the constitution for the Arab state]. But the Arabs now living abroad are better fit to formulate such laws, and that is why we have postponed this matter until the exiles can meet. Those I have recalled from abroad are people who are competent in drafting good laws that are in the spirit of the land and the characteristics of its people. They will meet in Damascus or elsewhere in the Arab world for their congress." (Faisal of Iraq, Ali A. Allawi, 2014, pp 167-68)

Not a whisper about Islam!

And when the aforementioned congress finally convened in Damascus in March 1920, these were its concerns:

"[A] number of key resolutions were unanimously passed. The preamble to the resolutions summarised the position of the nationalists regarding the total independence of Syria within its natural frontiers, including Palestine, drawing on the right of the people to national self-determination, the promises of the Allies and [US President] Wilson's Fourteen Points. The congress rejected the Zionist plan for a Jewish National Home in Palestine and called for administrative decentralisation and a special status for Lebanon. The resolution then declared Syria to be a fully independent state within its natural boundaries and offered the crown of Syria to Faisal as its constitutional king." (p 272)

Just the kind of focus on national independence you'd expect from any newly liberated people:

Needless to say, the Arabs' wholly legitimate desire for the national independence for which they'd fought was anathema to French imperialism (just as it was to British imperialism in the case of Palestine), and Faisal's popular, non-sectarian, constitutional kingdom - along with the hopes for a brighter future which it embodied - was smashed by the French army at the battle of Maysalun in July 1920. (See my 2/6/12 post French Mandate Redux?)

Ah, but you wouldn't expect to read about that in Kessler's piece.