{"id":27506,"date":"2016-01-09T19:33:37","date_gmt":"2016-01-09T17:33:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/norkhosq.net\/?p=27506"},"modified":"2016-01-09T19:34:18","modified_gmt":"2016-01-09T17:34:18","slug":"how-zionism-helped-to-create-the-kingdom-of-saudi-arabia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/norkhosq.net\/?p=27506","title":{"rendered":"How Zionism helped to create the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Nu’man Abd al-Wahid<\/a> on January 7, 2016<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The covert alliance between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Zionist entity of Israel should be no surprise to any student of British imperialism. The problem is the study of British imperialism has very few students. Indeed, one can peruse any undergraduate or post-graduate British university prospectus and rarely find a module in a Politics degree on the British Empire let alone a dedicated degree or Masters degree. Of course if the European led imperialist carnage in the four years between 1914 \u2013 1918 tickles your cerebral cells then it\u2019s not too difficult to find an appropriate institution<\/a> to teach this subject, but if you would like to delve into how and why the British Empire waged war on mankind for almost four hundred years you\u2019re practically on your own in this endeavour. One must admit, that from the British establishment\u2019s perspective, this is a formidable and remarkable achievement.<\/p>\n

In late 2014, according to the American journal, \u201cForeign Affairs<\/a>\u201d, the Saudi petroleum Minister, Ali al-Naimi is reported to have said \u201cHis Majesty King Abdullah has always been a model for good relations between Saudi Arabia and other states and the Jewish state is no exception.\u201d Recently, Abdullah\u2019s successor, King Salman expressed similar concerns to those of Israel\u2019s to the growing agreement between the United States and Iran over the latter\u2019s nuclear programme. This led some to report that Israel and KSA presented a \u201cunited front<\/a>\u201d in their opposition to the nuclear deal. This was not the first time the Zionists and Saudis have found themselves in the same corner in dealing with a perceived common foe. In North Yemen in the 1960\u2019s, the Saudis were financing a British imperialist led mercenary army campaign against revolutionary republicans who had assumed authority after overthrowing the authoritarian, Imam. Gamal Abdul-Nasser\u2019s Egypt militarily backed the republicans, while the British induced the Saudis to finance and arm the remaining remnants of the Imam\u2019s supporters. Furthermore, the British organised the Israelis to drop arms for the British proxies in North Yemen, 14 times<\/a>. The British, in effect, militarily but covertly, brought the Zionists and Saudis together in 1960\u2019s North Yemen against their common foe.<\/p>\n

However, one must go back to the 1920\u2019s to fully appreciate the origins of this informal and indirect alliance between Saudi Arabia and the Zionist entity. The defeat of the Ottoman Empire by British imperialism in World War One, left three distinct authorities in the Arabian peninsula: Sharif of Hijaz: Hussain bin Ali of Hijaz (in the west), Ibn Rashid of Ha\u2019il (in the north) and Emir Ibn Saud of Najd (in the east) and his religiously fanatical followers, the Wahhabis.<\/p>\n

Ibn Saud had entered the war early in January 1915 on the side of the British, but was quickly defeated and his British handler, William Shakespear was killed by the Ottoman Empire\u2019s ally Ibn Rashid. This defeat greatly hampered Ibn Saud\u2019s utility to the Empire and left him militarily hamstrung for a year.[1] The Sharif contributed the most to the Ottoman Empire\u2019s defeat by switching allegiances and leading the so-called \u2018Arab Revolt\u2019 in June 1916 which removed the Turkish presence from Arabia. He was convinced to totally alter his position because the British had strongly led him to believe, via correspondence with Henry McMahon, the British High Commissioner in Egypt, that a unified Arab country from Gaza to the Persian Gulf will be established with the defeat of the Turks. The letters exchanged between Sharif Hussain and Henry McMahon are known as the McMahon-Hussain Correspondence.<\/p>\n

Understandably, the Sharif as soon as the war ended wanted to hold the British to their war time promises, or what he perceived to be their war time promises, as expressed in the aforementioned correspondence. The British, on the other hand, wanted the Sharif to accept the Empire\u2019s new reality which was a division of the Arab world between them and the French (Sykes-Picot agreement) and the implementation of the Balfour Declaration<\/a>, which guaranteed \u2018a national for the Jewish people\u2019 in Palestine by colonisation with European Jews. This new reality was contained in the British written, Anglo-Hijaz Treaty, which the Sharif was profoundly averse to signing.[2] After all, the revolt of 1916 against the Turks was dubbed the \u2018Arab Revolt\u2019 not the \u2018Hijazi Revolt\u2019.<\/p>\n

Actually, the Sharif let it be known that he will never sell out Palestine to the Empire\u2019s Balfour Declaration; he will never acquiescence to the establishment of Zionism in Palestine or accept the new random borders drawn across Arabia by British and French imperialists. For their part the British began referring to him as an \u2018obstructionist\u2019, a \u2018nuisance\u2019 and of having a \u2018recalcitrant\u2019 attitude.<\/p>\n

The British let it be known to the Sharif that they were prepared to take drastic measures to bring about his approval of the new reality regardless of the service that he had rendered them during the War. After the Cairo Conference in March 1921, where the new Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill met with all the British operatives in the Middle East, T.E. Lawrence (i.e. of Arabia) was dispatched to meet the Sharif to bribe and bully him to accept Britain\u2019s Zionist colonial project in Palestine. Initially, Lawrence and the Empire offered 80,000 rupees.[3] The Sharif rejected it outright. Lawrence then offered him an annual payment of \u00a3100,000.[4] The Sharif refused to compromise and sell Palestine to British Zionism.<\/p>\n

When financial bribery failed to persuade the Sharif, Lawrence threatened him with an Ibn Saud takeover. Lawrence claimed that \u201cpolitically and militarily, the survival of Hijaz as a viable independent Hashemite kingdom was wholly dependent on the political will of Britain, who had the means to protect and maintain his rule in the region.\u201d [5] In between negotiating with the Sharif, Lawrence made the time to visit other leaders in the Arabian peninsula and informed them that they if they don\u2019t tow the British line and avoid entering into an alliance with the Sharif, the Empire will unleash Ibn Saud and his Wahhabis who after all is at Britain\u2019s \u2018beck and call\u2019.[6]<\/p>\n

Simultaneously, after the Conference, Churchill travelled to Jerusalem and met with the Sharif\u2019s son, Abdullah, who had been made the ruler, \u201cEmir\u201d, of a new territory called \u201cTransjordan.\u201d Churchill informed Abdullah that he should persuade \u201chis father to accept the Palestine mandate and sign a treaty to such effect,\u201d if not \u201cthe British would unleash Ibn Saud against Hijaz.\u201d[7] In the meantime the British were planning to unleash Ibn Saud on the ruler of Ha\u2019il, Ibn Rashid.<\/p>\n

Ibn Rashid had rejected all overtures from the British Empire made to him via Ibn Saud, to be another of its puppets.[8] More so, Ibn Rashid expanded his territory north to the new mandated Palestinian border as well as to the borders of Iraq in the summer of 1920. The British became concerned that an alliance maybe brewing between Ibn Rashid who controlled the northern part of the peninsula and the Sharif who controlled the western part. More so, the Empire wanted the land routes between the Palestinian ports on the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf under the rule of a friendly party. At the Cairo Conference, Churchill agreed with an imperial officer, Sir Percy Cox that \u201cIbn Saud should be \u2018given the opportunity to occupy Hail.\u2019\u201d[9] By the end of 1920, the British were showering Ibn Saud with \u201ca monthly \u2018grant\u2019 of \u00a310,000 in gold, on top of his monthly subsidy. He also received abundant arms supplies, totalling more than 10,000 rifles, in addition to the critical siege and four field guns\u201d with British-Indian instructors.[10] Finally, in September 1921, the British unleashed Ibn Saud on Ha\u2019il which officially surrendered in November 1921. It was after this victory the British bestowed a new title on Ibn Saud. He was no longer to be \u201cEmir of Najd and Chief of its Tribes\u201d but \u201cSultan of Najd and its Dependencies\u201d. Ha\u2019il had dissolved into a dependency of the Empire\u2019s Sultan of Najd.<\/p>\n

If the Empire thought that the Sharif, with Ibn Saud now on his border and armed to the teeth by the British, would finally become more amenable to the division of Arabia and the British Zionist colonial project in Palestine they were short lived. A new round of talks between Abdulla\u2019s son, acting on behalf of his father in Transjordan and the Empire resulted in a draft treaty accepting Zionism. When it was delivered to the Sharif with an accompanying letter from his son requesting that he \u201caccept reality\u201d, he didn\u2019t even bother to read the treaty and instead composed a draft treaty himself rejecting the new divisions of Arabia as well as the Balfour Declaration and sent it to London to be ratified![11]<\/p>\n

Ever since 1919 the British had gradually decreased Hussain\u2019s subsidy to the extent that by the early 1920\u2019s they had suspended it, while at the same time continued subsidising Ibn Saud right through the early 1920\u2019s.[12] After a further three rounds of negotiations in Amman and London, it dawned on the Empire that Hussain will never relinquish Palestine to Great Britain\u2019s Zionist project or accept the new divisions in Arab lands.[13]In March 1923, the British informed Ibn Saud that it will cease his subsidy but not without awarding him an advance \u2018grant\u2019 of \u00a350,000 upfront, which amounted to a year\u2019s subsidy.[14]<\/p>\n

In March 1924, a year after the British awarded the \u2018grant\u2019 to Ibn Saud, the Empire announced that it had terminated all discussions with Sharif Hussain to reach an agreement.[15] Within weeks the forces of Ibn Saud and his Wahhabi followers began to administer what the British foreign secretary, Lord Curzon called the \u201cfinal kick\u201d to Sharif Hussain and attacked Hijazi territory.[16] By September 1924, Ibn Saud had overrun the summer capital of Sharif Hussain, Ta\u2019if. The Empire then wrote to Sharif\u2019s sons, who had been awarded kingdoms in Iraq and Transjordan not to provide any assistance to their besieged father or in diplomatic terms they were informed \u201cto give no countenance to interference in the Hedjaz\u201d.[17] In Ta\u2019if, Ibn Saud\u2019s Wahhabis committed their customary massacres, slaughtering women and children as well as going into mosques and killing traditional Islamic scholars.[18] They captured the holiest place in Islam, Mecca, in mid-October 1924. Sharif Hussain was forced to abdicate and went to exile to the Hijazi port of Akaba. He was replaced as monarch by his son Ali who made Jeddah his governmental base. As Ibn Saud moved to lay siege to the rest of Hijaz, the British found the time to begin incorporating the northern Hijazi port of Akaba into Transjordan. Fearing that Sharif Hussain may use Akaba as a base to rally Arabs against the Empire\u2019s Ibn Saud, the Empire let it be known that in no uncertain terms that he must leave Akaba or Ibn Saud will attack the port. For his part, Sharif Hussain responded that he had,<\/p>\n

\u201cnever acknowledged the mandates on Arab countries and still protest against the British Government which has made Palestine a national home for the Jews.\u201d[19]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sharif Hussain was forced out of Akaba, a port he had liberated from the Ottoman Empire during the \u2018Arab Revolt\u2019, on the 18th June 1925 on HMS Cornflower.<\/p>\n

Ibn Saud had begun his siege of Jeddah in January 1925 and the city finally surrendered in December 1925 bringing to an end over 1000 years of rule by the Prophet Muhammad\u2019s descendants. The British officially recognised Ibn Saud as the new King of Hijaz in February 1926 with other European powers following suit within weeks. The new unified Wahhabi state was rebranded by the Empire in 1932 as the \u201cKingdom of Saudi Arabia\u201d (KSA). A certain George Rendel, an officer working at the Middle East desk at the Foreign Office in London, claimed credit for the new name.<\/p>\n

On the propaganda level, the British served the Wahhabi takeover of Hijaz on three fronts. Firstly, they portrayed and argued that Ibn Saud\u2019s invasion of Hijaz was motivated by religious fanaticism rather than by British imperialism\u2019s geo-political considerations.[20] This deception is propounded to this day, most recently in Adam Curtis\u2019s acclaimed BBC \u201cBitter Lake<\/a>\u201d documentary, whereby he states that the \u201cfierce intolerant vision of wahhabism\u201d drove the \u201cbeduins\u201d to create Saudi Arabia.[21] Secondly, the British portrayed Ibn Saud\u2019s Wahhabi fanatics as a benign and misunderstood force who only wanted to bring Islam back to its purest form.[22] To this day, these Islamist jihadis are portrayed in the most benign manner when their armed insurrections is supported by Britain and the West such as 1980\u2019s Afghanistan or in today\u2019s Syria, where they are referred to in the western media as \u201cmoderate rebels<\/a>.\u201d Thirdly, British historians portray Ibn Saud as an independent force and not as a British instrument used to horn away anyone perceived to be surplus to imperial requirements. For example, Professor Eugene Rogan\u2019s recent study on the history on Arabs claims that \u201cIbn Saud had no interest in fighting\u201d the Ottoman Empire. This is far from accurate as Ibn Saud joined the war in 1915. He further disingenuously claims that Ibn Saud was only interested in advancing \u201chis own objectives\u201d which fortuitously always dovetailed with those of the British Empire.[23]<\/p>\n

In conclusion, one of the most overlooked aspects of the Balfour Declaration is the British Empire\u2019s commitment to \u201cuse their best endeavours to facilitate\u201d the creation of \u201ca national home for the Jewish people\u201d. Obviously, many nations in the world today were created by the Empire but what makes Saudi Arabia\u2019s borders distinctive is that its northern and north-eastern borders are the product of the Empire facilitating the creation of Israel. At the very least the dissolution of the two Arab sheikhdoms of Ha\u2019il and Hijaz by Ibn Saud\u2019s Wahhabis is based in their leaders\u2019 rejection to facilitate the British Empire\u2019s Zionist project in Palestine.<\/p>\n

Therefore, it is very clear that the British Empire\u2019s drive to impose Zionism in Palestine is embedded in the geographical DNA of contemporary Saudi Arabia. There is further irony in the fact that the two holiest sites in Islam are today governed by the Saudi clan and Wahhabi teachings because the Empire was laying the foundations for Zionism in Palestine in the 1920s. Contemporaneously, it is no surprise that both Israel<\/a> and Saudi Arabia<\/a> are keen in militarily intervening on the side of \u201cmoderate rebels\u201d i.e. jihadis, in the current war on Syria, a country which covertly and overtly rejects the Zionist colonisation of Palestine.<\/p>\n

As the United States, the \u2018successor\u2019 to the British Empire in defending western interests in the Middle East, is perceived to be growing more hesitant in engaging militarily in the Middle East, there is an inevitability that the two nations rooted in the Empire\u2019s Balfour Declaration, Israel and Saudi Arabia, would develop a more overt alliance to defend their common interests.<\/p>\n

Notes<\/em><\/p>\n

[1] Gary Troeller, \u201cThe Birth of Saudi Arabia\u201d (London: Frank Cass, 1976) pg.91.<\/p>\n

[2] Askar H. al-Enazy, \u201c The Creation of Saudi Arabia: Ibn Saud and British Imperial Policy, 1914-1927\u201d (London: Routledge, 2010), pg. 105-106.<\/p>\n

[3] ibid., pg. 109.<\/p>\n

[4] ibid., pg.111.<\/p>\n

[5] ibid.<\/p>\n

[6] ibid.<\/p>\n

[7] ibid., pg 107.<\/p>\n

[8] ibid., pg. 45-46 and pg.101-102.<\/p>\n

[9] ibid., pg.104.<\/p>\n

[10] ibid.<\/p>\n

[11] ibid., pg. 113.<\/p>\n

[12] ibid., pg.110 and Troeller, op. cit., pg.166.<\/p>\n

[13] al-Enazy op cit., pg.112-125.<\/p>\n

[14] al-Enazy, op. cit., pg.120.<\/p>\n

[15] ibid., pg.129.<\/p>\n

[16] ibid., pg. 106 and Troeller op. cit., 152.<\/p>\n

[17] al-Enazy, op. cit., pg. 136 and Troeller op. cit., pg.219.<\/p>\n

[18] David Howarth, \u201cThe Desert King: The Life of Ibn Saud\u201d (London: Quartet Books, 1980), pg. 133 and Randall Baker, \u201cKing Husain and the Kingdom of Hejaz\u201d (Cambridge: The Oleander Press, 1979), pg.201-202.<\/p>\n

[19] Quoted in al-Enazy op. cit., pg. 144.<\/p>\n

[20] ibid., pg. 138 and Troeller op. cit., pg. 216.<\/p>\n

[21]In the original full length BBC iPlayer version this segment begins towards the end at 2 hrs 12 minutes 24 seconds.<\/p>\n

[22] al-Enazy op. cit., pg. 153.<\/p>\n

[23] Eugene Rogan, \u201cThe Arabs: A History\u201d, (London: Penguin Books, 2009), pg.220.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

– See more at: http:\/\/mondoweiss.net\/2016\/01\/zionism-kingdom-arabia#sthash.7x36JCLB.dpuf<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
—————————–<\/div>\n
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About Nu’man Abd al-Wahid<\/h6>\n

Nu\u2019man Abd al-Wahid is a Yemeni-English independent researcher specialising in the political relationship between the British state and the Arab World. His main focus is on how the United Kingdom has historically maintained its political interests in the Arab World. A full collection of essays can be accessed at http:\/\/www.churchills-karma.com\/<\/a>. Twitter handle: @churchillskarma<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Other posts by Nu’man Abd al-Wahid<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

– See more at: http:\/\/mondoweiss.net<\/a><\/div>\n

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Nu’man Abd al-Wahid on January 7, 2016 The covert alliance between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Zionist entity of Israel should be no surprise to any student of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/norkhosq.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/norkhosq.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/norkhosq.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/norkhosq.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/norkhosq.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27506"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/norkhosq.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27511,"href":"https:\/\/norkhosq.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27506\/revisions\/27511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/norkhosq.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/norkhosq.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/norkhosq.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}