Joel Rayburn, a Major in the U.S. Army and from 2002 to 2005 taught history at the U.S. Military Academy, has an essay in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs. In it, he draws historical comparisons between the British involvement in Iraq and the current American intervention.
In light of the recent Sunni-Shiite tensions in Samara, the historical context is quite interesting.
He starts with:
A number of pundits have recently noted the parallels between the United Kingdom’s experience eight decades ago and the United States’ today. The comparisons, however, have generally centered on the early and middle phases of both occupations. Too few have focused on the ignominious end of the United Kingdom’s reign in Mesopotamia and the lessons those events hold for the United States today. In fact, Washington’s current position bears a strong resemblance to London’s in the late 1920s, when the British were responsible for the tutelage of a fledgling Iraqi state suffering from immature institutions, active insurgencies, and the interference of hostile neighbors. Eventually, this tutelage was undermined by pressure from the British Parliament and the press to withdraw — forces quite similar to those in the United States now calling for a withdrawal from Iraq. Building a better understanding of the United Kingdom’s mistakes — and of the consequences of that country’s ultimate withdrawal from Iraq — could thus help illuminate the present occupation and provide answers to when and how to end it. If the British record teaches anything, it is this: costly and frustrating as the fostering of Iraqi democracy may be, the costs of leaving the job undone would likely be far higher, for both the occupiers and the Iraqis.
And of the British context:
In 1920, a large-scale Shiite insurgency cost the British more than 2,000 casualties, and domestic pressure to withdraw from Iraq began to build. In the revolt’s aftermath, the war hero T. E. Lawrence led a chorus of critics in the press and Parliament denouncing London’s decision to continue the costly occupation. “The people of England,” Lawrence wrote, have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. … Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our imperial record, and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are to-day not far from a disaster….
“We say we are in Mesopotamia to develop it for the benefit of the world. … How long will we permit millions of pounds, thousands of Imperial troops, and tens of thousands of Arabs to be sacrificed on behalf of colonial administration which can benefit nobody but its administrators?” Although the London Times remained mainly supportive of the government’s policy in Iraq, other leading British papers, most notably the Manchester Guardian, echoed Lawrence’s call to end the occupation.
The result was what historians have called the “Quit Mesopotamia” campaign, which remained an issue in British politics until the end of the British mandate in Iraq in 1932. For more than a decade, a diverse collection of anti-imperialists, pacifists, Labourites, and Lawrence loyalists kept up a steady stream of criticism in the United Kingdom’s opposition press. The Quit Mesopotamia critics effectively tapped into the British sentiment against imperialism, which had become widespread after the end of World War I. The British public’s interest in maintaining a worldwide empire had waned; the working classes, which had sacrificed so much for the war, wanted their government to invest in the stagnant domestic economy, not in costly imperial adventures. Unlike their ally the United States, the United Kingdom experienced no economic boom in the Roaring Twenties, and unemployment steadily rose throughout the decade. British voters registered their disapproval of the Conservatives’ imperialist tendencies by voting the Labour Party of Ramsay MacDonald into power in 1923. Although that Labour government was short-lived (thanks to a scandal), the Conservatives got the message and in 1925 initiated a series of increasingly desperate measures to sell their Iraq policy to the public.
Colonial Secretary Leopold Amery led the rhetorical charge. In speeches in Parliament and before audiences throughout England, Amery blasted critics for their “reckless disregard … of the honour of their country.” Calls by British newspapers to pull out of Iraq only emboldened the country’s enemies, Amery said, and a “policy of scuttle” would expose the British to far greater dangers than those they would encounter while “fulfilling [their] obligations” to the Iraqi people. The London Times weighed in on Amery’s behalf on September 25, 1925, observing that the “cost of premature withdrawal” would probably be a Turkish invasion of Mosul.
Amery claimed that the situation in Iraq was significantly better than his critics realized. Returning from a fact-finding tour of the mandate in 1925, he said that Iraq’s development was proceeding well enough to promise the British a “substantial return” on their investment in that country. The whole Middle East was undergoing fundamental changes, he declared, and Iraq would soon be a model of development and democracy for the entire region. Besides, he said, Iraq was serving as “a splendid training ground” for the Royal Air Force (RAF), which since 1922 had been charged with defending Iraq and maintaining order there.
These arguments made little impression on the opponents of the occupation. The Labour Party accused the Conservatives of wanting to remain in Iraq for the sake of oil stockholders. “We should never get out of [Iraq] without wrenching something, such as the national honour or the interests of bondholders,” declared the senior Labour Party MP and future prime minister Clement Attlee in Parliament in 1926. “Therefore,” he said, “we had better wrench free at once.”
Nonetheless, Amery’s public defense of the occupation helped the policy withstand parliamentary challenges in 1925 and 1926, and the United Kingdom’s occupation looked set to continue indefinitely. In accepting the League of Nations mandate in 1920, the British government had committed itself to at least 20 years of guardianship of Iraq’s state and society, and when it signed the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of 1926, London promised to stick around until 1951 (or until an independent Iraq joined the league). Yet starting in 1925, the Conservatives began secretly looking for a way out. In 1927 — just one year after pledging to stay in Iraq for a quarter century — key ministers in Stanley Baldwin’s government proposed a pullout. According to Robert Cecil, a trusted Baldwin adviser, withdrawal from Iraq would be “a complete answer to those of our critics who allege that we are anxious to have a militarist or adventurous foreign policy. That charge has done us a great deal of harm already and may easily be fatal to our existence at the next election.”
Publicly, the Conservatives began to speak about the need to “reduce expenditure” in Iraq. In 1925, Sir Samuel Hoare, head of the Air Ministry and another close Baldwin adviser, acknowledged that “since the war we [have] spent a great deal in the Middle East, and the British taxpayer [has] asked whether the expenditure was worthwhile, and whether it could be reduced.” Returning from a trip to Iraq that year, Hoare announced that once the contested frontier near Mosul was settled with Turkey, the British could reduce their role in Iraq. As a government minister, Hoare could not have made this declaration without Baldwin’s approval; his statement therefore had the effect of an official promise to bring home some British troops. And indeed, the Conservatives soon made the promise a reality: by early 1927, the Baldwin government had pulled most British soldiers out of Iraq, leaving a few RAF squadrons and a battalion of Indian infantry to defend the country alongside a fledgling Iraqi army of only 9,000 men.
He continues:
…in March 1927, the Baldwin government proclaimed the Iraqi army capable of defending the country itself and withdrew the last battalion of British ground troops. Mere months later, southern Iraq came under attack by thousands of Wahhabi Ikhwan (“brothers”). The Ikhwan were a puritanical sect that had brutally conquered the holy cities of Mecca and Medina in 1924. Like today’s insurgents under Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Ikhwan were Salafi fighters who invaded Iraq from the desert to terrorize its Shiites (whom the Salafi consider apostates). For the better part of two years, starting in 1927, all that stood between the Ikhwan and the lightly armed Iraqi tribes was a small desert detachment of British-trained Iraqi troops under the leadership of Captain John Glubb, who would later head the Arab Legion in Transjordan. Only with great difficulty did Glubb obtain occasional air support from the overstretched RAF squadrons stationed near Basra and Baghdad.
British officials were slow to grasp the extent of the Ikhwan threat. The British high commissioner in Iraq at the time, Sir Henry Dobbs, declared the Ikhwan defeated in 1928. Acknowledging that the Wahhabi invaders had hurt Iraq’s economy by discouraging foreign investment, he informed the press that “the only grave injury done to Iraq … [has] been inflicted by wild reports manufacturing scare after scare.” In fact, although no official report was ever conducted, it is probable that the Ikhwan managed to kill hundreds of Iraqis. Dobbs’ assessment of the Ikhwan’s strength, meanwhile, was also wrong: the next year, they invaded again, in large numbers. Indeed, the Ikhwan continued to threaten Iraq until they were routed by the army of Ibn Saud in mid-1929.
During this same period, the resurgent Turkey of Mustafa Kemal (better known as Atatürk) threatened Iraq from the north. Kemalist Turkey mounted an unsuccessful invasion of Mosul in 1922 and thereafter continually intrigued against Iraqi rule among the Kurdish tribes in the region. Like Iraq’s Sunni Arabs today, the Kurds of the mandate period represented a communal threat that consumed the attention and resources of the Iraqi state. With Turkish support, the Pesh Merga of the Barzani tribe and its allies were able to sustain an insurgency against the Iraqi government for almost four years. At one point, the Iraqi army was forced to deploy three-quarters of its strength in the Kurdish Sulaimaniya region in an attempt to put down the insurgents. In the spring of 1931, as the formal handover of sovereignty to the Iraqis approached, the British roused themselves to pacify the Kurds for good. For over a month, the RAF bombed Kurdish villages, finally forcing the rebels to capitulate.
The context helps us give an idea why Sunni Muslims are so dominant in present-day Iraq:
When the mandate actually ended in 1932, Iraq’s British-built institutions began, one by one, to collapse. With the occupiers gone, Iraq’s Sunni Arab elite used the army not to defend the state against foreign invaders, but to suppress Iraq’s Assyrians, Kurds, and Shiites. The Iraqi army of the 1930s was the most dangerous kind: it was easily the most powerful institution in the country, too strong to be checked by other groups and free from any real constitutional constraints, but it was also too weak to actually defend Iraq from outsiders. As the British-installed King Faisal lay dying in Switzerland in 1933, Iraqi troops massacred Assyrians in northern Iraq and returned to Baghdad as heroes. Army leaders then used their newfound prestige to meddle in the country’s politics, backing certain factions in parliament in return for the passage of conscription laws that bolstered the army’s strength but turned young Shiite men into a military underclass. By 1936, Iraq’s generals had gathered enough power to carry out a military coup, ending constitutional government and setting a precedent that would recur again and again.
At the same time, Iraqi society, the most ethnically diverse in the Arab world, came fully under the sway of Sunni Arab chauvinists. Typical of this development was the fate of Iraq’s educational system, which fell under the control of Sati al-Husri, a Syrian pan-Arabist who taught that Shiite Islam was heretical. Under his influence, the Iraqi government began to suppress Shiite religious holidays and practices — a policy that sparked large-scale Shiite uprisings in the mid-1930s. By the 1940s, Iraq, one of the least Sunni of all Arab states, had become a bulwark of what historian Elie Kedourie called “the Sunni spirit of domination.”
The coups following 1936 mostly involved the Sunni Arab officer corps. By 1939, Iraq’s military rulers had become openly hostile to the United Kingdom. When war broke out in Europe, Baghdad opened back channels to the Axis powers, and it finally offered up the country to Hitler in 1941. Faced with the prospect of an Axis stronghold on their line of communication to India, the British were forced to invade Iraq once again. As British troops approached Baghdad, Iraqi soldiers and police carried out a final act of official butchery, slaughtering hundreds of Iraqi Jews. There followed a second British occupation of the country that lasted until 1948.
Had the United Kingdom stayed longer the first time around, much of this mayhem could have been avoided. Continued British oversight would have prevented the Iraqi government from falling into the hands of military dictators, and the presence of a British force in the country would likely have restrained the Iraqi army from preying on Iraq’s minority communities. Since the British had opposed Iraqi conscription throughout the 1920s, it is safe to assume they would have continued to do so if the mandate had been extended, thereby removing a significant irritant from the relationships among Iraq’s ethnic and sectarian communities. The typically pragmatic British political advisers would also have been unlikely to allow Sunni Arab supremacists to pervert Iraq’s public educational system.
These restraints could have helped Iraq develop into a more stable society, in which Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, and other minorities would have somehow found a way to live together peacefully. Instead, these groups spent the next 70 years of Iraq’s independence with daggers drawn, each decade pocked by civil war.
Rayburn concludes by arguing that the US cannot afford to make the same mistakes as appear to have happened in the past –
Washington thus now finds itself facing roughly the same question that London faced between 1925 and 1927: Should it leave Iraq, or continue until its project there has truly fulfilled its aims? In the British case, both sides of the debate — the Quit Mesopotamia critics and the Conservative officials who minimized Iraq’s problems — apparently believed that the United Kingdom could leave Iraq without repercussions, regardless of whether the mandate had actually served its purpose. They came to assume that an independent Iraq would somehow muddle along — and that if it did not, the consequences would not affect the British.
Accordingly, the Conservative government succumbed to the political and media pressure to pull out. After 1925, as British officials continued to pay lip service to the original goals of the mandate, they privately began looking for ways to withdraw early, even though many of them recognized that chaos would ensue. To avoid a similar result today, the U.S. government and its allies must confront what the United Kingdom’s premature withdrawal achieved: namely, disaster both for Iraq and for its occupier. Having left the work of the mandate undone, the British were forced to return and attempt to finish the job nine misery-filled years later. The United States can ill afford to do the same.
Comments
3 responses to “The Last Exit From Iraq”
There is as far as I’m aware no intention of withdrawal. In fact permenant bases have been constructed all over Iraq.
“Should it leave Iraq, or continue until its project there has truly fulfilled its aims? ”
Depends what you consider the aims to be.
A civil war in Iraq now would certainly provide ample reason for coalition forces to prolong occupation, whereas relative peace would require coalition withdrawal without securing a reliable puppet regime.
Mr Rayburn’s remarks regarding the British experience just “eight decades ago” is further evidence that it is vastly crucial understand historical patterns – and even to know history for the basis of comparative analysis of the current dilemmas the world faces.
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Dr. Mohamed El-Sayed Habib, First Deputy of the Chairman of the Muslim Brotherhood, affirmed that the artificial uproar over the feared establishment of a so-called religious state and the related allegations concerning a resulting threat to Copts’ rights and to arts and creativity, following the big Brotherhood electoral victory in the latest legislative elections in Egypt, is no more than an artificial, unfounded controversy.
He talked about the Brotherhood’s vision of the political and economic reform, how to bring about development in its broadest sense, the Brotherhood’s relations with the U.S. administration and other topics that we discussed with him in this interview.
Q: The latest period has witnessed a clear ascendancy of the Muslim Brotherhood on the political scene as a result of which it garnered 88 seats in the People’s Assembly -Egypt’s parliament. What are the issues that the Brotherhood will be interested in raising in the People’s Assembly?
A: I would like first to confirm that the presence in the People’s Assembly of 88 Muslim Brothers will not substantially affect the form or composition of the assembly where the ruling party enjoys, in its own words, a more than comfortable majority. The difference there is that the debate will be serious, the discussions will be fruitful and constructive and the oversight and law-making roles will be more distinguished. This could have a favorable effect on the decisions of the People’s Assembly, enhancing its effectiveness and restoring citizens’ confidence in it.
Regarding the main issues that preoccupy the Brotherhood deputies, they revolve around three major questions:
First, the question of political reform and constitutional amendment, bearing in mind that it represents the true and natural point of departure for all other kinds of reforms;
Second, the question of education, scientific research and native development of technology since this constitutes the mainstay of resurgence and the basis for progress and advance.
Third, the question of comprehensive development in all its dimensions: human, economic, social, cultural, etc.
In this regard, we cannot fail to emphasize the societal problems from which the Egyptian citizenry suffers, i.e. unemployment, inflation and increasing prices, housing crisis, health problems, environmental pollution, etc.
Q: There are some people who accuse Muslim Brothers of being against arts and creativity and are concerned that your deputies in parliament will take an attitude against everything implying culture and creativity. What do you think?
A: In principle, we are not against culture, arts and creativity. On the contrary, Islam strongly encourages refining the public taste and confirms the need to shape one’s mind, heart and conscience in such a way as to bring forth man’s potentialities and prompt him to invent and innovate in all fields of life. There is no doubt that the atmosphere of freedom is conducive to a creative culture and creative arts, particularly if the latter express the daily concerns of the citizen and the challenges he faces and if they reflect the values of society and the public morality observed by people of good nature and sound minds.
On the other hand, the atmosphere of dictatorship and despotism produces a kind of culture and art that is more inclined towards abject trivialities, indecencies, depreciation of people’s minds and deepening their ignorance. A nation that is capable of innovation and creativity is necessarily capable of bringing about resurgence, advance and progress. Some people consider that creativity is born from the womb of suffering. Every society has peculiar cultural identity and has its values, traditions and customs. I think it is the right of the people’s deputies, or rather their duty, to maintain that peculiarity and to play their role in bringing to accountability those bodies or institutions that promote pornography, homosexuality or moral perversion under the guise of creativity. It is essential to subject those so-called creative works to examination and review by specialized and expert people in various fields. Ultimately, it is the judiciary that has the final say as to whether or not those works should be allowed.
Q: Do you have an integral program for the uplifting of the political and economic situation of Egypt?
A: We believe that the political reform is the true and natural gateway for all other kinds of reform. We have announced our acceptance of democracy that acknowledges political pluralism, the peaceful rotation of power and the fact that the nation is the source of all powers. As we see it, political reform includes the termination of the state of emergency, restoring public freedoms, including the right to establish political parties, whatever their tendencies may be, and the freedom of the press, freedom of criticism and thought, freedom of peaceful demonstrations, freedom of assembly, etc. It also includes the dismantling of all exceptional courts and the annulment of all exceptional laws, establishing the independence of the judiciary, enabling the judiciary to fully and truly supervise general elections so as to ensure that they authentically express people’s will, removing all obstacles that restrict the functioning of civil society organizations, etc.
We cannot forget in this regard the need to make constitutional amendments, including modifying the text of article 76 of the Constitution with a view to ensuring equal opportunities and free and true competition among all citizens, through the annulment of all impossible conditions that were arbitrarily inserted in the latest amendment of that article – conditions which have emptied that amendment from its substance. The reform should also include changing the wording of article 77 of the Constitution so as to limit the tenure of the presidency to just one four-year term, extendable only by one more term; changing the articles which grant the president of the republic absolute and unlimited powers and establishing his accountability before the legislative council in view of the fact that he heads the executive branch of government.
As to our program for reviving the economy, it comprises several basic mainstays:
1. Reviewing the role of the public sector and the privatization process;
2. Providing social welfare through the subsidies scheme and the restoration of the institution of Zakat (poor dues in Islam);
3. Reforming the State’s public finance (public expenditures, fiscal policy, public borrowing, deficit financing);
4. Correcting the monetary policy track;
5. Balanced opening up to the world economy (liberalization of foreign trade, promoting exports and foreign investments);
7. Intensifying popular participation, through providing support to local councils and reinstating the rights of Islamic Wakfs (religious endowments);
8. Seeking urgent solutions to the unemployment problem till grow becomes self-propelled;
9. Supporting the private sector as a spearhead for the realization of development objectives;
10. Confronting corruption decisively; and
11. Catching up with scientific and technological progress.
Q: The political reform program put forth by Muslim Brothers does not differ from those of other political parties, what is then the advantage of your program?
A: Muslim Brotherhood shares most elements of political reform with other political and national forces. This is due to the joint efforts that political parties and forces have deployed during the past decades, which had culminated in the adoption in 1997 of a common document for political reform called “Political Reform and Democracy”.
Certainly, there are differences among political formations as to the priority to be assigned to those elements, as well as the mechanisms to be employed. There is also a semi-agreement among all political forces on the need to introduce some constitutional amendments- as was mentioned earlier- although some secularists want to change the Constitution in a comprehensive and drastic way, including article 2 of the current Constitution which states that Islam is the official religion of the State and that the principles of Islamic sharia (law) are the main source of legislation. Such a change would be in complete conflict with the desire of the entire people, who are characterized by their strong religious attachment and their willingness to be governed by the provisions of Islam. We must not, however, forget the belief and morality dimension which the Muslim Brotherhood insists on observing in their practice of politics as well as its compliance with Islamic legal rules and precepts such as the discipline of jurisprudence dealing with priorities and balances, etc.
Q: Some segments of the elite in
Egypt and abroad are worried that the Muslim Brotherhood seeks to establish a theocracy. How would you react to that?
A:This concern stems from a wrong understanding of the nature of Islam. To those who speak about a religious state, in the same ecclesiastical meaning given to it in Europe in the middle ages, when the church had hegemony over a State’s authorities, we wish to say that the issue here is completely different.
The Muslim Brotherhood has gone through the latest legislative elections on the basis of a clear-cut program under the slogan “Islam is the Solution”, given the fact that Islam, as Imam el-Banna said, is a comprehensive program that encompasses all aspects of life: it is a state and a country, a government and people, ethics and power, mercy and justice, culture and law, science and justice, resources and wealth, defense and advocacy, an army and an idea, a true belief and correct acts of worship (Imam el-Banna’s Teachings Message). In fact, this conforms fully to the Constitution which states, in its second article, that the State’s religion is Islam and that principles of Islamic sharia (law) are the main source of legislation. We say that the State that we want is a civic state, i.e. a state of institutions, based on the principles of constitutional government.
Imam el-Banna states: “the principles of constitutional government consist of: maintaining all kinds of personal freedom, consultation and deriving authority from the people, responsibility of the government before the people and its accountability for its actions, and the clear demarcation of power of each branch of government. When a scholar considers those principles, he would clearly find out that they are all in full agreement with the teachings, disciplines and norms of Islam concerning the system of government. Consequently, Muslim Brothers think that the constitutional system of government is the closest system of government in the world to Islam. They prefer it to any other system of government.” (Message to the 5th Conference).
Q: Although the Brotherhood refuses to submit an application for the establishment of a political party under the pretext that the Political Party Committee is unconstitutional, some people submitted similar applications which were approved, what do you think about that?
A: Along with other political and national forces, we seek to amend or change the Political Parties Law. Consequently, the so-called Political Party Committee is unconstitutional and acts as both adversary and judge. It creates more problems than it solves and interferes in the internal affairs of parties in such a way as to paralyze their movement and curb their effectiveness. This is one of the reasons why those parties are weak and fragile. Furthermore, we don’t want to set up a political party to face the same destiny as existing parties. The problem lies in the general political atmosphere and unless that atmosphere is changed things will remain what they are now. Briefly, we want the party to be established when people want to have it established, just through notification.
Q: Your discourse sometimes mixes between religion and politics which means that you are neither purely religious people nor purely professional politicians. What is the nature of that dichotomy?
A:Politics is part of religion. I remember in this regard Imam al-Banna’s statement that “If Islam is something different than politics, sociology, economics and culture, what is it then?” He also says “A Muslim is not fully Muslim unless he engages in politics, thinks over the state of affairs of his Umma and concerns himself with it.”
Q: Some Copts in Egypt were so alarmed by the recent rise of the Muslim Brotherhood that some of them declared that they would leave Egypt as a result! What is the nature of the Brotherhood’s relations with Copts?
A: We consider our Coptic brothers as citizens enjoying all rights associated with citizenship and as part of the fabric of the Egyptian society. We consider them as partners in the country, in decision-making and in determining our future. Consequently, the basis for filling public posts shall be efficiency, ability and experience, not religion or beliefs.
On that basis, we see no justification or logic for the concern of some Copts over the rise of Muslim Brothers. But this is due to the bad political atmosphere in which the Egyptian people live and which has led to a general state of apprehension and tension. It has been aggravated by the self-imposed isolation of our Coptic brothers and their failure to integrate in public life.
From our side, we are conducting dialogues with them and are trying to take them out of their isolation, by encouraging some individuals among them to take part in the activities of syndicates, conferences and symposiums dealing with public affairs. In addition, we support some of them in legislative and syndicate elections.
Q: From time to time, the question of your relations with the U.S. surfaces. Do you have any relation with them? Have you contacted them through direct or indirect channels?
A:There is no relation whatsoever between us the U.S. There is no contact of any kind with them. We have repeated that several times before. We are not a state within a state and we are very much interested in reinforcing the independence and prestige of our State and in respecting its institutions. We cannot permit anyone to compromise that prestige nor can we allow ourselves to be a reason for that. If the U.S. administration wants to enter into a dialogue with us, they first would have to get the approval of the Egyptian Foreign Ministry. And then what are we going to discuss with them?
Q: Your attitude with regard to Jews is not clear: at times you declare that you are not going to cancel treaties concluded with them if you take power, and at times you say that the holocaust is a myth, what is exactly your attitude?
A: The Zionist entity (Israel) has usurped the land of Palestine, the land of Arabs and Muslims. No proud people can accept to stay put when their land is occupied and their sacred places are assaulted. Resisting occupation is required by Islam and sanctioned by international law, agreements and customs. As to the Camp David Accord and the peace treaty that were concluded by Egypt with the Zionist entity (Israel) in the late 1970s, they are presumed to be thoroughly reviewed periodically by international lawyers, strategists and national security experts, taking into account the local, regional and international dimensions of the question. The outcome of their review should be submitted to the democratic institutions of the Sate for decision.
As to the reported statement describing the holocaust as a myth, it was not intended as a denial of the event but only a rejection of exaggerations put forward by Jews. This does not mean that we are not against the holocaust. Anyway, that event should not have led to the loss of the rights of the Palestinian people, the occupation of their land and the violation and assault of their sacred places and sanctities.
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