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.