CNN's Presentation of Jerusalem, Part 4, The First World War, 1914-1918

 Nadene Goldfoot                                            

                                                       Djemal Pasha of the Ottoman Empire

CNN looked at Jerusalem during World War I through the eyes of the Arabs. Jews were not mentioned at all.  

 At the time, the Middle East was under the umbrella of the Ottoman Empire out of Turkey who had been an empire for the past 400 years.  The Arabs, had not been successful in taking the reigns and going against the Turks.  CNN highlighted Djemal Pasha,  who was an Ottoman military leader and one of the Three Pashas that ruled the Ottoman Empire during World War I. He was said to be a brutal man who incited the Arabs against the Turks.  

Jews were not mentioned during this highly critical period.  They were finally mentioned at the end of the program along with the Arabs, both of which had been lied to by Britain.  I found that to be the biggest surprise of all in their covering of this period, though I certainly have never mentioned Djemal Pasha to be an important character in the covering of Palestine or Jerusalem in our history, or TE Lawrence.                                                                   

Emir Faisal, 3rd son of the leader of Saudi Arabia and a Hashemite, direct ancestor of Mohammad,  was mentioned, however, who is one of my favorite characters.  I learned about a different side of him, in that he hated the Ottoman Empire.  The British were deeply involved, said to want the Holy Land to become a Christian land, something left over from the Crusade days.  I'm not sure that's what their main goal was;   more likely part of their empirical aspirations, and possibly learning early on of oil that would eventually be enormous pay-dirt.  After ruling for 30 years in Palestine, they hated to let it go.  The fact that Britain had lied to the Arabs was mentioned.                                 

                                                                             

Notice that Israel was put under international control.  THE MODERN frontiers of the Arab world only vaguely resemble the blue and red grease-pencil lines secretly drawn on a map of the Levant on May 16th 1916, at the height of the first world war. 

They got into the Sykes-Picot Agreement with the French as both did the dividing up of the Middle East and created a different geography.  Iraq was created, and they said that the Arabs had no say in this at all.  I would have thought that Emir Faisal was there representing the Arabs, but his opponents would have been the Allies of Europe; Britain, France, Russia, USA, etc. who did the dividing up of land.   Evidently the Arabs felt they were lied to and didn't realize what the British were doing.  They considered the British presence Occupying Palestine; never mentioned the horrible World War just fought and the fact that the Ottoman Empire had sided with the Germans who started the war.  

Damascus was mentioned a lot as a center for many of the Arabs, but not the word, Syria.                                                             

                         Allenby entering Jerusalem on foot.  Allenby deliberately chose to walk into the Old City because, he said, only the Messiah should ride into the Holy City. (That was not mentioned).  

In 1917 the Ottomans attacked the British supply lines and Pasha had a victory over the British.  Aqaba was a city on the way for the Arabs to take over Damascus. They went around in the desert which was a hard trek and took it from the back of the city that was not expected.  The Turks surrendered.  

Pasha of the Ottomans then went from Gaza to the inland to get to Jerusalem to take that city.  At the time, Germany had told him that he was no longer wanted, and wanted him out of the picture.  Germany had taken Jerusalem and destroyed the British.  The desert fight was brutal.                                                                           

      Liberation of Jerusalem when German soldiers finally left.  General Allenby on his horse saluting the Indian troops outside of Jerusalem’s Jaffa Gate on December 11, 1917, (photo credit: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)

At last General Allenby of the British entered Jerusalem and took it.  The Germans left, going northward  when a storm came up and did not destroy anything in the city. The mayor of Jerusalem was there with the keys to the city and surrendered to the British with a white bed sheet in December 1917.  Allenby was a brilliant man, speaking 3 languages; Arabic, English and probably French.  He was a man who listened to others when they spoke.                                                                         

Now, T.E. Lawrence entered the program.  He was a Brit but wound up speaking and helping the Arabs in this fight.  The Arabs called him that little white guy.  Lawrence was left for dead in the battle.  We discover that the movie, "Lawrence of Arabia" was not historically  accurate at all.  That's true of many presentations.  Lawrence had no part of our Jewish history at this time, siding along with the Arabs.  He dressed like them when they were together, making him very sheik.  

                                                                           

In January 1918, TE Lawrence went to Damascus.  The San Remo Conference was again mentioned where the Sykes Picot agreement was discussed.  TE Lawrence died in 1935 in a motorcycle accident. "T.E. Lawrence, known to the world as Lawrence of Arabia, died as a retired Royal Air Force mechanic living under an assumed name. The legendary war hero, author and archaeological scholar succumbed to injuries suffered in a motorcycle accident six days before. And this is what happened in Palestine during World War I.  The conference was attended by the four Principal Allied Powers of World War I who were represented by the prime ministers of Britain (David Lloyd George), France (Alexandre Millerand), Italy (Francesco Nitti) and by Japan's Ambassador Keishirō Matsui.          

                                David Lloyd George, Prime Minister of Britain, 

He served as the legal adviser of Theodor Herzl in his negotiations with the British government regarding the Uganda Scheme, proposed as an alternative homeland for the Jews due to Turkish refusal to grant a charter for Jewish settlement in Palestine.  (This was not mentioned, either.)

It was convened following the February Conference of London where the allies met to discuss the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire and the negotiation of agreements that would become the Treaty of Sèvres.  On 30 September 1918 supporters of the Arab Revolt in Damascus had declared a government loyal to Sharif Hussein, who had been declared "King of the Arabs" by religious leaders and other notables in Mecca. During the meetings of the Council of Four in 1919, British Prime Minister Lloyd George stated that the McMahon–Hussein Correspondence was the basis for the Sykes–Picot Agreement, which proposed an independent Arab state or confederation of states. In July 1919 the parliament of Greater Syria had refused to acknowledge any right claimed by the French Government to any part of Syrian territory.

It's hard to cover WWI and especially Jerusalem in one hour, and is also hard to do in my blog article, but one tries.  I was shocked to see that Jews, to the Arab biased professors, would have left them out completely and had just covered the battle of the Ottomans against the British, and the Arabs who had teamed up together to be against the Turks and win the war.  Jews also fought in this WWI battle, but their numbers were smaller than the Arabs, who were united by Emir Faisal.  I didn't notice anything said about  Haj Amin al-Husseni, the Sherif of Jerusalem, the Arab leader who went against Emir Faisal and was an enemy of the Jews.   

Resource:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Djemal_Pasha

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jerusalem

my notes on CNN's presentation

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/lawrence-of-arabia-dies#:~:text=T.E.,motorcycle%20accident%20six%20days%20before. ***

https://jewishaction.com/jewish-world/history/whats_the_truth_about_the_uganda_plan/