Eliezer Tauber

The Press and the Journalist as a Vehicle in Spreading National Ideas in Syria in the Late Ottoman Period

In the period from the Young Turk Revolution in 1908 to the outbreak of World War I in 1914, several Arab societies, or branches of Arab societies, that became disseminators of national ideas, were established in Syria and the Lebanon. Some of them (such as al-Fatdt, with its headquarters in Paris) strove for the general Arab idea while other promoted the Syrian and Lebanese ideas (the Decentralization Party, with its headquarters in Cairo, and the Society of the Lebanese Revival). One of the most important mediums to popularize the ideas of these societies, in their various nuances, was the Arab press. The following list of newspapers includes the newspapers that appeared in Syria and in the Lebanon during the period of the Young Turks and explicitly supported the general Arab ideas or the particularist ideas-the Syrian and the Lebanese. The political identification of these newspapers was decided by two criteria: (a) the specific society supported by them; (b) participation of newspaper owners or editiorial staff in the societies. In Syria and the Lebanon at the beginning of the 20th century there were, of course, many other newspapers besides those listed here. Some of these unlisted ones were unqualifiedly pro-Ottoman (such as alBaldgh), or pro-Committee of Union and Progress (CUP)1 (al-Ra y al-CAmm and AbdbFl), while others had no clear political tendency and did not meet the two prescribed criteria.

Palestine 1948: the cryptography of the Arab volunteers

The Army of Sacred Jihad and the Rescue Army were the two main forces which fought for the Arab side in the 1948 Palestine war, prior to the invasion of the Arab regular armies. It is the purpose of this article to examine the cryptography of these two militias and show how their attempt to develop reliable ciphers failed, which was both a symptom and a factor in their general failure in the Palestine war against the Jews.

The Army of Sacred Jihad: An Army or Bands?

According to Israeli historiography, the local Arab forces which fought against the Jews in the first half of 1948 were mere bands, isabat, a term also used to describe the Arab gangs which operated in the 1936–1939 Arab revolt. While the Arabs do not perceive this term in the negative sense beheld by Jews—some Arab writers have also used this terminology— they, for their part, called the forces of the Jewish Hagana organization, isabat al-Haghana, the Hagana bands. Apparently, each nation has its own usage of the term ‘bands’ in its historiography. It is the purpose of this article to examine whether the main military force in the ranks of the local Arabs in Palestine in the 1948 war was indeed composed of bands or whether it was an army, as claimed by many of the Arab sources. Research byAvrahamSela and JosephNevo, has addressed the political and military activities of the Arabs of Palestine in both the years preceding the 1948 war and during it. None of this, however, has brought an orderly narrative of the structure of the local Arab forces, and especially that of their main organization, Jaysh al-Jihad al-Muqaddas, the Army of Sacred Jihad. Haim Levenberg tried to offer such a narrative of the Arab paramilitary forces in Palestine prior to the invasion of the Arab armies. However, while he gave a fair description of al-Najjada, Jaysh al-Jihad al-Muqaddas did not exist as far as his book was concerned. Furthermore, claiming that Arab memoirs were ‘characterized by inaccuracies and gross exaggerations’, Levenberg used them only ‘sparingly’; though he did use the Arab press. There are many documents in the Israeli archives mentioning the activities of al-Jihad al-Muqaddas, but hardly any deal with it as a coherent organization and there is only one partial study of the organization (limited to the Jerusalem region) in the Israel Defence Forces Archives, written by Mordechai Abir. It is the intention of this article to provide an extensive narrative of the structure and makeup of this organization, as has not been done before, based first and foremost on the Arab sources themselves.