Inside Syria: The Backstory of Their Civil War and What the World Can Expect (5 page)

His Majesty's Government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of the object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
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The Balfour Declaration was deeply rooted in the arrogance and racism of the imperial powers toward Syria, Palestine, and the entire region. Britain didn't even pretend to consult the opinion of local Arabs. For someone who was supposedly a devout Christian, Balfour disregarded the opinions of the local Palestinian population, at least 10 percent of whom were Christians. It was not a religious decision but a calculation of power.

Lord Balfour admitted as much, writing in 1919, “The four great powers are committed to Zionism and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.”
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The Balfour Declaration and subsequent British policy are the cause of strife to the present day. British foreign secretary and Labour Party leader Jack Straw said in 2002, “A lot of the problems we are having to deal with now, I have to deal with now, are a consequence of our colonial past…. The Balfour Declaration and the contradictory assurances which were being given to Palestinians in private at the same time as they were being given to the Israelis—again, an interesting history for us but not an entirely honourable one.”
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During World War I, both major colonial powers claimed historic ties to Arab land. The French argued they had rights in Syria because of their crusader castles built centuries before, and now the British could claim they were supporting the Jewish people who lived in Palestine two thousand years ago. Neither argument carried much weight with the people of Syria and Palestine. Uprisings would soon flare throughout the region.

The larger-than-life, World War I–era political characters are etched in the history books. David Lloyd George became prime minister and later the chief British delegate at the Paris Peace Conference. By 1922, however, he was involved in a scandal for selling knighthoods. He became politically marginalized and died in 1945. When Arthur Balfour died in 1930, major newspaper obituaries made no mention of the Balfour Declaration. Chaim Weizmann served as the first president of Israel from 1949 until his death in 1952. Sir Mark Sykes died of influenza in 1919 while a delegate to the Paris Peace Conference.

I was initially drawn to
Lawrence of Arabia
because of its magnificent desert cinematography, the exciting battle scenes, and Lawrence's support for the Arab cause. Only later did I understand that a crucial scene distorted history. Toward the end of the film, the Arab armies have occupied Damascus and set up a governing council in city hall. The scene is based on a description in the
Seven Pillars of Wisdom
. But unlike Lawrence's version, the filmmakers have Arab leaders bicker and show no understanding of electricity generation, water works, and other modern technology. They blame each other for the city's problems and threaten one another with violence.

The British stand aside and wait for the Arab disunity to consume them. Eventually the Bedouins depart, leaving the British to take power. Peter O'Toole is distraught as he learns that the Arabs are not ready for self-government. In reality, the British Army under General Allenby tried to assert control but was rebuffed by the General Syrian Congress. The congress elected King Faisal ruler of the new Arab kingdom liberated from the Turks. The congress governed Damascus for nearly two years, until the British turned over Syria to the French, thus carrying out the Sykes-Picot accord.

There certainly was quarreling, infighting, and even a short-lived rebellion. But the Arabs were able to restore electric power, provide clean water, and establish police and other vital services using the former Ottoman Empire employees and technicians. Lawrence, in the
last chapter
of
Seven Pillars
, defended the congress. “Our aim was an
Arab Government with foundations large and native enough to employ the enthusiasm and self sacrifice of the rebellion.”
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Lawrence added that the Arab government “endured for two years, without foreign advice, in an occupied country wasted by war, and against the will of important elements among the Allies.”

Despite Lawrence's opposition to direct British colonial rule, his legacy remains controversial among Arabs, according to Elie El-Hindy, chair of the Political Science Department at Notre Dame University outside Beirut. “People in the region look at this as the time of high manipulation by Western countries,” Professor El-Hindy told me. “They look at Lawrence and other British, French, and American agents as manipulators who tried to grab whatever was left from the Ottoman Empire and [bring it] into their own area of control.”
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El-Hindy did admit one glaring irony. The main reason people of the Middle East know about Lawrence is because of the 1962 movie. They just interpret it differently than Western audiences. The film helps perpetuate the myth of Arabs as unable to govern themselves because they suffer from centuries of religious and ethnic divisions. The same myth continues to the present day.

Lawrence of Arabia
ends with an unhappy Peter O'Toole driving out of Damascus to return to London. In real life, Lawrence did return to London—not despondent, but to continue his fight for neocolonialism. Within a short time, T. E. Lawrence would become a household name, thanks to a little-known American war correspondent.

Reporter Lowell Thomas interviewed T. E. Lawrence for only about a week, but in the years that followed, he managed to create the myth of Lawrence of Arabia, promote his own career as a daring foreign correspondent, and spread myths about Arabs. Lawrence wasn't riding a camel in the desert when they met. They were in Jerusalem and Aqaba after the British had occupied those cities and the fighting had stopped. But Thomas was intrigued by the short British officer wearing a
keffiyeh
head scarf and an embroidered traditional robe, and sporting a curved dagger in his belt. Thomas was searching for an American war hero, but British citizen Lawrence would do. Thomas was to transform this little-known liaison officer into a world-famous figure.

Thomas created the romanticized version of Lawrence that was later maintained in the 1962 film. A fictional version of Thomas, played by Arthur Kennedy, even showed up in the movie. Thomas almost single-handedly created the myth of Lawrence of Arabia while perpetuating many of the modern-day prejudices about Muslims and Arabs. Those prejudices would impact Syria and the entire region for years to come. Thomas was a twenty-two-year-old reporter and adventurer when World War I broke out. He had already produced one of the first filmed travelogues and was a fervent supporter of the Great War at a time when many Americans opposed it. His love of film and war were to come together in an unusual way.

In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson's administration put together
a fact-finding team supposedly to report on developments in the war. In reality, the trip was intended to promote the war effort to the American public. Thomas was happy to join the group.

Already a talented orator and an endless self-promoter, Thomas understood the impact of movies as propaganda. But he faced the problem of freelancers everywhere: he had no funding. So Thomas contacted old businessman friends in the meatpacking industry in Chicago, where he had been a reporter. Executives at Armour, Swift, and other beef processors were anxious to support the war effort, in no small part because of the profit they could make selling meat to the military.
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So eighteen meatpacking executives raised $100,000 to finance Thomas's trip, a huge budget in those days. Thomas, his wife, Fran, and skilled cameraman Harry Chase went first to the European front and then to the Middle East. When Thomas met Lawrence in Jerusalem, Thomas found what he considered the perfect combination of war hero and mysterious denizen of the Arab world.

Thomas interviewed Lawrence for a total of a few days (according to Lawrence) or a few weeks (according to Thomas). In 1919, Thomas returned home to put together his material.

He eventually developed the world's first multimedia lecture show. Thomas used three projectors, slides, stage props, dancers, and live music. His florid rhetoric conjured up scenes of endless desert sands, veiled women, and Bedouins carrying curved swords.

Thomas's stage show was a huge hit. He played to overflow crowds in Madison Square Garden in New York and the Royal Opera House in London, among other venues. Here's how Thomas modestly described his extravaganza:

When I opened in London I used the sixty-piece Welsh Guards Band in their scarlet uniforms. On stage, the Moonlight On the Nile scene, as the curtain opened on the Nile set, the moon faintly illuminating distant pyramids, our dancer glided onstage for a two-minute Dance of the Seven Veils accompanied by an Irish tenor in the wings, singing the Mohammedan Call To Prayer, which Fran had put to music. At
the end of this I emerged in a spotlight and without even saying Good Evening Ladies and Gentlemen, I started my show with the words: “Come with me to the lands of mystery, history and romance.” The first prologue ever used in connection with films. This again was one of my wild ideas. Then the pictures began to roll.
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Thomas never explained what the slinky “Dance of the Seven Veils” had to do with the Arab revolt.

That dancer and similar irrelevant scenes cleverly played to Western stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims. They were to have a long-term impact on Americans' view of Syria and the entire region. Thomas promoted Lawrence as the white savior of the Middle East. Lawrence biographer Richard Aldington noted that Thomas's British and American audiences understood little about the Middle East. Thomas “doubtless calculated that what little they thought they knew came from hazy memories of the Arabian Nights and the Bible [and] a reading of sensational novels of ‘The Sheik.'”
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Thomas quickly became the latest in a long line of Orientalists, intellectual dilettantes who seemingly explain the mysteries of the Middle East while patronizing Arabs and promoting the superiority of Western culture. For example, Thomas wrote in his 1924 book
With Lawrence in Arabia
that Muslim leaders had sought to unify Arabs. “None was successful, but where they failed, Thomas Edward Lawrence, the unknown unbeliever, succeeded. It remained for this youthful British archaeologist to go into forbidden Arabia and lead the Arabs through the spectacular and triumphant campaign.”
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In reality, as explained in the
previous chapter
, Arab nationalists unified themselves and helped defeat the Ottoman Empire.

Thomas's characterization of Islam as a violent, intolerant religion echoes contemporary, right-wing views. “Mecca and Medina, its sister metropolis, are the two most mysterious cities in the world,” Thomas wrote. “Any man in the vicinity of either who declared that Christ was the son of God would be torn to pieces.”
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And Thomas was not above lying to embellish the Lawrence myth.
In a 1919 magazine article, he claimed to have been with Lawrence when he dynamited a Turkish railway line behind enemy lines. Thomas wrote “about the expedition in vivid detail—but it never took place,” according to historian Jeremy Wilson. “Thomas's diaries, together with other contemporary documents, show that he and Lawrence were together for only a day or two in Aqaba, during one of the quietest periods in the Arab campaign.”
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After the war, Thomas performed his multimedia show in the United States, Europe, and Asia, eventually playing to an estimated four million people. Lawrence went to see the performances several times in London, professing not to like them. But Lawrence posed for additional Thomas photos dressed in Arab garb. Clearly, Lawrence's career benefited from the publicity. Thomas later said of Lawrence, “He had a genius for backing into the limelight.”
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Thomas earned millions from his performances and launched his career. He went on to become a famous travel writer and radio newscaster. He was an early pioneer in newsreels and TV. And he continued his pattern of carrying out the needs of big business. During World War I he took funding from the Armour company for his Mideast travels. Later in life he syndicated radio broadcasts to NBC and CBS but collected his salary from the show's sponsor, oil giant Sunoco. In 1947, Thomas cofounded what would become Capital Cities Broadcasting. Although he had left Capital Cities years before, that company later bought ABC in 1980 and grew to be one of the biggest media conglomerates in the world. Thomas died one year later in 1981.

At the end of
Lawrence of Arabia
, Peter O'Toole leaves Damascus despondent and disillusioned with the failures of the Arab revolt. In real life, he did depart Damascus for London, but far from being alienated, he immediately plunged into imperialist politics. Lawrence met with Prime Minister David Lloyd George and members of the cabinet. He promised that his wartime ally Faisal bin Hussein, and other Hashemite allies, would support the British if French power was reduced or eliminated altogether from the Middle East. Lawrence attended the
Paris Peace Conference, working as an undersecretary for Winston Churchill, who was then the secretary of war.

The Paris Peace Conference opened January 18, 1919, and closed one year later. It resulted in the Treaty of Versailles, which was most famous for imposing harsh sanctions on Germany to cover the costs of the Allied war effort. But Paris was also abuzz with discussions of how to carve up the old Ottoman Empire—an argument that was not fully resolved for another four years. Britain and France competed fiercely to set up new colonies and spheres of influence. Each had its allies among the Arabs and Zionist leaders.

Since the end of the war, Emir Faisal had headed the Arab Kingdom of Hedjaz, encompassing much of the former Ottoman Arab territories. Lawrence translated as Faisal gave a famous speech at the peace conference, calling for Arab independence. Faisal received strong verbal backing from Britain and the United States, who supported his claims to Syria and Lebanon. But Faisal's views angered the French, who coveted that region for themselves.

Since the British issued the Balfour Declaration supporting a Jewish presence in Palestine, Zionist leaders had become important new players in the Middle East. At the behest of the British government, Lawrence brought Faisal from Paris to London just before the opening of the peace conference. The British brokered a secret meeting with Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann.

Faisal was receiving £150,000 a month from the British.
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The Zionists were sending Jewish settlers to Palestine. The British hoped to use both sides to keep populist and nationalist Arabs in check.

On January 3, 1919, Faisal and Weizmann agreed on a border that would create Jewish and Arab countries. They agreed to establish a Zionist-controlled state in Palestine, leaving the rest to the Hashemite monarchs. The Zionists were to get land and peace. The monarchs got a vastly larger territory and promises of Zionist help with economic development.
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The Zionist movement sometimes points to this agreement as an indication of early Arab acceptance of a Jewish state. But Faisal
attached a handwritten addendum that made clear that the deal would go through only if the British followed up on their wartime promises of an independent Arab state. The addendum read: “If the Arabs are established as I have asked in my manifesto of 4 January, addressed to the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, I will carry out what is written in this agreement. If changes are made, I cannot be answerable for failing to carry out this agreement.”

In addition, the General Syrian Congress, which briefly ruled postwar Syria and Lebanon, issued a declaration renouncing the agreement and censuring Zionism. British officials had never intended to establish a truly independent Arab state nor to recognize a Zionist state. The Weizmann-Faisal agreement was a dead letter within days of its signing.

But the methodology lived on in Israeli policy. When Israel was established in 1948, the Zionists allowed King Abdullah of Jordan to seize the West Bank in hopes that the Hashemite monarch would cooperate with Israel. Abdullah was King Faisal's older brother, and his family rules Jordan to this day. For many years Israel made deals with corrupt Arab monarchs rather than respond to Palestinian demands for sovereignty.

While the colonial powers were wheeling and dealing, there was one effort to determine popular opinion in the region. The British, French, and Americans initially agreed to set up a commission that would survey public opinion in the Arab region of the former Ottoman Empire. Did the people favor independence, colonial control, or something in between? The other powers dropped out of the project, but the United States forged ahead. President Woodrow Wilson formed the Inter-Allied Commission on Mandates in Turkey, better known as the King-Crane Commission. It produced some surprising results.

Henry Churchill King, born in 1858, was a theologian and an academic when chosen to cochair the commission. Photos show a handsome man wearing a clerical collar, a stylish suit, and the round glasses favored by intellectuals of the time. King had studied at Oberlin College in Ohio
and went on to graduate school at Harvard. He went back to teach mathematics and philosophy at Oberlin before becoming its president.

King was sensitive to the views of Protestant missionaries who were lobbying hard for greater US involvement in the Middle East. Missionaries had established American schools, churches, and hospitals with the aim of finding new converts to Christianity. The missionaries wanted to expand their presence but needed more active US government participation in the region.

Charles R. Crane, also born in 1858, was a wealthy industrialist and heir to the Crane plumbing fortune (think Crane toilets). Crane had developed a great interest in international affairs. He had been appointed US envoy to China in 1909 and participated in a US delegation to the new, revolutionary Soviet Union in 1917. Crane was also an anti-Jewish bigot who later wrote favorably about Hitler's policy toward the Jews.
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In the 1930s Crane helped finance the first oil exploration in Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

Back in 1919, when the King-Crane Commission was appointed, Crane represented the kind of activist businessman who advocated that international policy decisions should be driven by the corporate profit motive. King, Crane, and a group of advisors set out for a long journey through the Middle East in the summer of 1919. They traveled by boat to Jaffa (now incorporated into Tel Aviv) and then by car over the rutted roads of the Arab lands.