Azzam Pasha quotation

The Azzam Pasha quotation was part of a statement made by Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzam, the Secretary-General of the Arab League from 1945 to 1952, in which he declared in 1947 that, were a war to take place with the proposed establishment of a Jewish state, it would lead to "a war of extermination and momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacre and the Crusades."^[1]

The quote was universally cited for decades as having been uttered on the eve of the outbreak of hostilities between Israel and the Arab states several months later. The source of the quote was traced by the computer scientist Brendan McKay to an October 11, 1947, article in the Egyptian newspaper Akhbar al-Yom, titled "Arab countries prepare for war" (Arabic: البلاد العربية تستعد للحرب) in a section titled "War of extermination..." (Arabic: ...حرب إبادة), which included the quote, with the added words "Personally, I hope the Jews do not force us into this war, because it would be a war of extermination and momentous massacre ..."^[1][2]

The historian Efraim Karsh considers this quote a "genocidal threat".^[1] The Israeli historian Tom Segev has disputed Karsh's interpretation, saying that "Azzam used to talk a lot" and pointing to another statement from May 21, 1948, in which Azzam Pasha declared his desire for "equal citizenship for Jews in Arab Palestine".^[2]

Azzam Pasha was selected to be the first Secretary-General of the Arab League in March of 1945. The first proposal for a joint Arab military intervention in Palestine was proposed by the King of Saudi Arabia Ibn Saud in September of that year. Azzam Pasha rejected this idea, warning in a report to Egyptian Prime Minister Mahmoud Nuqrashi that the "destruction of the Jews by force is not a solution to the Palestine problem", as well arguing that since the Arab armies were dependent foreign countries for their supplies, the league didn't have to adopt "such extreme measure", since the powers wouldn't consent to an Arab war against the Jews.^[3] Weeks later, Azzam shelved another proposal, this time from Iraq, for Arab military action.^[4]

In an interview with Le Progrès Egyptien on October 5th 1945, Azzam declared:

"If you could assure me that the handing of Palestine to the Jews would mean peace everywhere, I should give all of it. However, such a solution would involve constant conflicts like those that developed in Ireland. But if a partition of the country is likely to effect a solution and put an end to the present disturbed situation, let us study such a possibility most carefully.”^[5][6]

At the Bloudan conference in June on that year, Nuqrashi announced his opposition to Arab intervention while Azzam argued that the time was not right for military preparations; the Arab League rejected Amin al-Husseini's plea for an Arab volunteer army under his command, while secretly deciding to assist Husseini and to boycott the US and the UK if it would come to armed struggle.^[3][7][8] The head of the Bloudan conference, Muhammad Husayn Haykal, would later deny in his memoirs responsibility for the secret protocols, which he was either unaware or opposed, except for the agreement to raise the Palestine issue in the UN Assembly.^[4] Again, in December of 1946, the Arab League rejected another Iraq proposal, which called for an Arab police force to be sent to Palestine with British approval.^[9] In September of 1947, yet another Iraqi proposal at Sofar calling for the implementation of the secret protocols of Bloudan was rejected.^[10][11] It wasn't until April of 1948, two weeks before the Mandate of Palestine was set to expire, that the Arab chiefs of staff met to plan an intervention.^[12] Despite publicly rejected Zionism, Egyptian officials privately met with Zionist leaders as early as October 1945.^[13] In December 1945 the head of the Arab department of the Jewish Agency Eliyahu Sasson met in Cairo with the former Egyptian Prime Minister Ali Mahir. Mahir expressed his support for Jewish-Arab relations, even going as far to suggest the Zionists might eventually join the Arab League.^[14] In August 1946, Sasson met Mahir in Cairo again, who offered to mediate between British, Zionist and Arab officials. The then Prime Mininster Ismail Sidqi promised to endorse either partition or a bi-national solution in exchange for Zionist assistance in Egypt's disputes with the UK.^[15] Sasson proposed a deal whereby Egypt would convince the Arab states to accept partition and in return the Jewish Agency would lobby on behalf of the Egyptians to persuade the British to transfer their troops on the Suez Canal bases to the new Jewish state. Surprisingly, the Egyptians were receptive to this offer.^[16] Sasson reported back to the Jewish Agency:

In his [Azzam’s] view there is only one solution and that is: partition. But collective debates and discussions are required in order to arrive at this solution. As the Secretary of the Arab League, he cannot appear before the Arabs as the initiator of this suggestion. His position is very delicate. He is married to seven wives (that is, he is the Secretary of seven Arab states), each one fearing her fellow wife, competing with her and trying to undermine her. He can see fit to support partition on two conditions: If one of the Arab states will find the strength and the courage to take the initiative and to propose the matter at a meeting of the League, and if the British will request that he follow this line.^[17]

The United Nations Special Committee on Palestine was set up in May 1947 to develop proposals for the partition of Palestine. Recommendations to this effect were made in September of that year. The majority plan proposed a distinct two-state solution, the minority plan foresaw a federal state. Though the Jews had accepted the majority plan, the Arab countries were unanimous in their negative reactions to both plans, and openly spoke of taking up arms were either of these proposals enacted.^[18][19] For Ernest Bevin, the British Foreign Secretary, the majority plan would only lead to an outbreak of generalized violence, as clearly unjust to the Arabs, whilst the minority plan was inapplicable since it assumed a prior accord between Jews and Arabs.^[20]

On September 15,^[21] Azzam Pasha, who was held in high esteem by David Ben-Gurion,^[2] met a Zionist delegation in London, consisting of Abba Eban, David Horowitz, both liaison officers with the Jewish Agency who were accompanied by the journalist Jon Kimche.^[2] The emissaries stated that there was no doubt that a Jewish state would be established and requested that the Arab states accept the consequences and cooperate. They were willing to give cast-iron guarantees against any form of Jewish expansionism.^[22] Azzam Pasha, in his capacity as Secretary General of the Arab League, suggested that the Zionist project be abandoned, and that the Jews could integrate themselves into Arab society on the basis of autonomous entities. He argued that it was pointless to appeal to political realism when the whole Zionist project demonstrated the efficacy of will-power. There was no option but war. The Zionists, he argued, would be thrown out in the future, just as the Crusaders had been. His Zionist interlocutors read this statement as a fascist declaration, unable, according to Henry Laurens, to see that, as with the Jews of Europe, emancipation from enslavement for the Arabs was seen as requiring recourse to force.^[2][23]

In Horowitz's account, Azzam declared:

"We shall try to defeat you. I am not sure we'll succeed, but we'll try. We were able to drive out the Crusaders, but on the other hand we lost Spain and Persia. It may be that we shall lose Palestine. But it's too late to talk of peaceful solutions."^[2]

Upon being informed of the meeting, Ben-Gurion, who had previously called Azzam the "most honest and humane among Arab leaders", and who had earlier ordered the Haganah to prepare for a war, summarized Azzam's position in a meeting with members of his political party:

"As we fought against the Crusaders, we will fight against you, and we will erase you from the earth."^[2][24]

At the pan-Arab summit of 19 September 1947, which convened at Saoufar in Lebanon, the League decided to employ all available means to ensure the independence of Palestine as an Arab state.

On October 11, the editor of Akhbar el-Yom, Mustafa Amin, ran an interview he had obtained from Azzam Pasha to report on the outcome of the summit. The article was entitled "A War of Extermination", and in one passage contained the following words.^[1]

I personally wish that the Jews do not drive us to this war, as this will be a war of extermination and momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Tartar massacre or the Crusader wars. I believe that the number of volunteers from outside Palestine will be larger than Palestine's Arab population, for I know that volunteers will be arriving to us from [as far as] India, Afghanistan, and China to win the honor of martyrdom for the sake of Palestine ... You might be surprised to learn that hundreds of Englishmen expressed their wish to volunteer in the Arab armies to fight the Jews.

— Mustafa Amin, Arab countries prepare for war, Akhbar al-Yom, October 11, 1947

In early December 1947 Azzam told a rally of students in Cairo that "The Arabs conquered the Tartars and the Crusaders and they are now ready to defeat the new enemy," echoing sentiments he had expressed to a journalist the previous day.^[25]

A Jewish Agency memorandum, submitted on February 2, 1948, to the U.N. Palestine Commission, tasked with the implementation of the partition resolution, and yet again to the U.N. secretary-general on March 29, 1948, referred to the Azzam Pasha quotation, citing the October 11, 1947, article in Akhbar al-Yom.

... The "practical and effective means" contrived and advocated by the Arab States were never envisaged as being limited by the provisions of the Charter; indeed, the Secretary-General of the Arab League was thinking in terms which are quite remote from the lofty sentiments of San Francisco. "This war," he said, "will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongol massacres and the Crusades."

— Jewish Agency memorandum, February 2, 1948^[1]

At the time of the utterance, according to Segev, the Arab–Israeli conflict was raging also in the media of the day, as either side sought to show the other side was agitating for war. Azzam had, he concludes, 'supplied the Zionists with a sound bite that serves Israeli propaganda to this very day,' and some 395 books, and roughly 13,000 websites cite this excerpt to this day.^[2]

Azzam's quoted first sentence, without its initial caveat, appeared in English in a Jewish Agency memorandum to the United Nations Palestine Commission in February 1948.^[26] During the next few years, the same partial sentence appeared in its correct 1947 setting in several books.^[27] However, by 1952, many publications, including one published by the Israeli government, had moved its date to 1948,^[28] specifically to May 15, 1948, shortly after the outbreak of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.^[1] As the war got underway, The Jerusalem Post quoted a further declaration from him:

Whatever the outcome, the Arabs will stick to their offer of equal citizenship for Jews in Arab Palestine and let them be as Jewish as they like.^[2]

Until 2010, the source of the quotation has been commonly claimed to be a press conference in Cairo on May 15, 1948, one day after the Israeli declaration of independence, which some versions say was broadcast by the BBC.^[29]

An Egyptian writer in 1961 maintained that the quotation was "completely out of context". He wrote that:

"Azzam actually said that he feared that if the people of Palestine were to be forcibly and against all right dispossessed, a tragedy comparable to the Mongol invasions and the Crusades might not be avoidable. ... The reference to the Crusaders and the Mongols aptly describes the view of the foreign Zionist invaders shared by most Arabs."^[30]

In 2010, doubt over the provenance of the quotation was voiced by Joffe and Romirowsky^[31] and by Morris.^[32]

In 2010, the source of the quote was traced by the computer scientist Brendan McKay to an October 11, 1947, article in the Egyptian newspaper Akhbar al-Yom, titled "A War of Extermination", which included the quote with the added words, "Personally, I hope the Jews do not force us into this war, because it would be a war of extermination and momentous massacre ...".^[1][2] McKay shared his discovery with Jewish-American pro-Israel researcher David Barnett, who then published a paper on his discovery together with Karsh. Karsh nonetheless accused McKay of failing to share it 'with the general public' on Wikipedia, 'so as to keep Arab genocidal designs on the nascent Jewish state under wraps', which McKay called 'quite a distortion'.^[33]

Karsh, together with his co-author David Barnett, consider the Azzam Pasha quotation a "genocidal threat".^[1]

Tom Segev, also an historian, disputes this interpretation, saying that "Azzam used to talk a lot" and pointing to another statement from May 21, 1948, in which Azzam Pasha declared his desire for "equal citizenship for Jews in Arab Palestine".^[2] In response to Segev, Karsh wrote that while it is true that Azzam was prepared to allow survivors of the destroyed Jewish state to live as dhimmis, in his view "this can hardly be considered an indication of moderation".^[33]

Michael Scott Doran offered a different view on Azzam's goals. In his opinion:

The flimsy alliance that the Egyptian authorities pretended to let King Abdallah lead into battle was, at one and the same moment, an anti-Israeli and an anti-Jordanian instrument. Cairo viewed the coalition not as a weapon for destroying Zionism but, rather, as a catapult designed to hurl the Jordanian army at the Israelis. The distinction between these two conceptions is indeed fine, but significant nonetheless. In military terms, the goal of the coalition was to liberate as much Palestinian territory as possible and to weaken, if not defeat, the enemy. In political terms, however, its purpose was to prevent the partition of Palestine between Israel and Jordan by forcing Amman, first, to make war against Zionism, and, second, to refrain from cutting a deal with the enemy without the authorization of Cairo. .. In addition, they had no choice but to capture the moral high ground of Arab politics by advocating a policy of no compromise, even though they realized that compromise would be a very likely outcome of the conflict. Calling for the liberation of Palestine, and behaving in a manner consistent with the call, were essential components of the Egyptian project, but they did not constitute its central objective. Thus, partial failure on the battlefield would not constitute a failure of the entire operation, if the maneuver were to result in driving a wedge between King Abdallah and the Zionists. If Cairo stopped short of destroying Zionism and yet still succeeded, say, in creating a Palestinian state sandwiched on the West Bank between Jordan and Israel, then it would have achieved its fundamental goals of preventing the expansion of Jordan and thwarting the creation of an Amman– Tel Aviv axis.^[34]

Personally I hope the Jews do not force us into this war because it will be a war of elimination and it will be a serious massacre which history will record similarly to the Mongol massacre or the wars of the Crusades. I think the number of volunteers from outside Palestine will exceed the Palestinian population. I know that we will get volunteers from India, Afghanistan and China to have the glory of being martyrs for Palestine. You might be shocked if you knew that many British have shown interest in volunteering in the Arab armies to fight the Jews.

This fight will be distinguished by three grave issues; faith, since all fighters believe that his fight for Palestine is the short road to heaven. Second it will be a chance for looting on a grand scale. Third, no one will be able to stop the zealous volunteers who will come from all over the world to revenge the Palestinian martyrs because they know that the battle is an honor for all Muslims and Arabs in the world...

Moreover, the Arab is distinguished from the Jew in that he accepts defeat with a smile, so if the Jews win the first battle we will win in the second, third or the last. On the other hand a single defeat of the Jews will destroy their morale.

The Arabs in the desert love to go to war. ... I remember once while fighting in the desert I was called to make a peace and the Arabs asked me why do you do that? How can we live without a war? The Bedouin finds enjoyment in war which he does not find in peace!

I warned the Jewish leaders whom I met in London about continuing their policy, and I told them that the Arab soldier is the strongest in the world. Once he lifts his weapon, he does not put it down till he fires the last bullet in the battle, and we will fire the last bullet...

In the end I understand the consequence of this bloody war, I see in front of me its horrible battles, I can imagine its victims but I have a clear conscience since we were called to fight as defenders and not attackers!^[35]

Phrases and quotations

• A land without a people for a people without a land
• There was no such thing as Palestinians
• The bride is beautiful, but she is married to another man

Doran, Michael (1999). Pan-Arabism before Nasser: Egyptian Power Politics and the Palestine Question. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195160086.