Dear Palestine: A Social History of the 1948 War

A weekly radio broadcast by the general secretary of the association, Muhammad Fawzi Darwish, on the situation in Palestine also helped to win hearts and minds. But it seems that the association’s most successful propaganda weapon was mass rallies, which often drew thousands of supporters, and where anti-Jewish Islamic rhetoric was apparently often used.

After Syria, Iraq was the country that sent the most volunteers to the ALA: 800 of the 15,000 Iraqis who initially registered their names for volunteering.

Although Arabs constituted two-thirds of the population of Mandate Palestine, the Arab state was allocated only 43 percent of Palestine’s territory; meanwhile, the Jewish state was allocated 56 percent of Palestine’s territory, in which 45 percent of the population would be Arab. Not surprisingly, the plan was endorsed by the Yishuv but rejected by the Palestinian leadership and all Arab states.

Viewing Orientals as lazy people who shy away from hard work, and as animals, was standard colonial discourse. The only chance at reform, some soldiers believed, was through mimicry.

Many of the well-to-do among the Moroccan immigrants to Israel also displayed different sentiments compared to the majority of Moroccan Jews who wanted to leave Israel. As mentioned, 30 percent of North Africans in the IDF wanted to stay in Israel and also called their families in Morocco to come join them. Explaining their desire to stay, some adopted an Orientalist discourse themselves and internalized their alleged inferiority.

By that point the British had decided to leave Palestine. Imperial overstretch and immense financial debt after the Second World War motivated the decision, as did concerns over Arab public opinion and the inability to reach an agreement with the United States on Palestine’s future. Jewish guerrilla attacks against the British in Palestine may have also played a small role.

Nearby, former Arab officers in the Ottoman army led revolts in the mandated territories of Iraq and Syria in 1919 and 1925, respectively. These revolts brought together grassroots agendas and the political ambition of the former Ottoman officers.

Similarly, ALA men from around the Arab world came to Palestine in solidarity with Palestinians, but also for other reasons: from a will to improve the volunteers’ standing inside their immediate families, to financial constraints, to Islamic and anti-Fascist solidarity. Even when pan-Arabism was cited as the motivation for volunteering, it was never an ideology embraced in a vacuum. It was always locally inflected.