From: Ismail Zayid
To: Dauphinee, Bev
Sent: Thursday, February 02, 2006 2:51 PM
Subject: Manufacturing history.

Canada Palestine Association,
P.O.Box, 1085,
Halifax, NS. B3J 2X1
Tel: 429 9100
 
Feb. 2, 2006
 
The Editor,
The Halifax Herald
 
Dear Editor;
 
Mr. Andrew Smith, in his article :{"Is history repeating itself in today's Iran?" Feb.2}, is using the unacceptable rhetoric by Iran's president, in reference to the Holocaust and Israel, to spew his offensive charges, of Nazism and Anti-Semitism, against Islam and Arab nationalism.
 
Arab opposition to British imperialism came about long befor Nazism was created. This Arab stand emanated from the deception and fraudulence of Britain and its allies in the First world War [WW1]. The Arabs, under the leadership of Sharif Hussein of Mecca, joined the Allies in the war against the Ottoman Empire and its German allies, on the basis of the agreement they made with Britain in the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence, in 1915. This agreement stated that in the event of the Allies winning the war, the Arabs, throughout the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula, would be granted full independence. However, the Allies, Britain, France and Russia, proceeded to conspire, in the secret Sykes-Picot treaty of 1916, that in the event of their victory they will take no notice of their agreement with Hussein and will apportion Palestine, Tran-Jordan and Iraq for Britain, and Syria and Lebanon for France, and guarantee for Russia control of the Bosphorus and Dardanelle Straits, to reach the warm waters of the Mediterranean. In October 1917, the Bolshevik Revolution came about and Russia walked out of the war and disclosed the contents of the Sykes-Picot Treaty to the Ottoman Sultan, who passed it on to Hussein who questioned his British allies. The British sent Commander Hogarth to Jeddah and told Hussein that they are truthful to their word and to take no notice of Bolshevik lies. On Nov. 2, 1917, before the British even conquered Palestine, the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Arthur Balfour, issued, in an act of extraordinary generosity, with other peoples' land, his infamous Balfour Declaration in a letter to Lord Rothschild, a British Zionist leader, stating that: "His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people....., it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine." The four-letter word 'Arab' is never mentioned, and to refer to the Arab population of Palestine, who constituted at the time 92% of the population as the "non-Jewish communities" is not only preposterous but the height of fraudulence.
 
It is these policies and the struggle against British and French imperialism in the Middle East has continued for decades. It is that imperialism that brought about the continuing conflicts that we see to this day.
 
As to the offensive charges of Anti-Semitism, made by Mr. Smith, against Islam and the Arabs, I will let Chaim Weizmann answer that. Chaim Weizmann, Israel's first president stated in his testimony before the Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry, in 1946 in Jerusalem : " I would not like to do any injustice. The Muslim world has treated the Jews with considerable tolerance. The Ottoman Empire [of which the Arabs were a major part] received the Jews with open arms, when they were driven out of Spain and Europe, and the Jews should never forget that." Unfortunately many Jews have not heeded Weizmann's advice and have forgotten that.
 
Sincerely,
 
Ismail Zayid, MD
President, Canada Palestine Association.