Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzam Quotes
There is no shame in being compelled by force to accept an unjust and undesirable situation. It is shameful to accept such a fact without attempting to prevent it.
This notion of maintaining honor by fighting has led the Arabs down a very destructructive spiral. To avoid thedgling "shame" of accepting the cration of Israel, they invaded the flefgling nation but were beaten back. The Israelis, then, realizing that they were vulnerable, siezed strategic locations from which future attacks might be launched. The Arabs then attacked again, justifying the Israeli policies which the Arabs wanted to reverse. So to avoid this shame, the started another war which they lost and lost even more territory as the Israelis were even more justified in preventing attacks. Finally, to avoid shame, the Arabs again attacked and lost the Sanai Desert, Gaza, The West Bank, the Golan Heights and Jerusalem. Afteer 60 years, many Arabs wanted to stop the crazy spiral and negotiate, but there are many who still want to continue and regain their honor and pride.
Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzam, 1893-1976, Secretary General, The Arab League, Statement to Abba Eban, Foreign Minister of Israel, 1947
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
At that time Jews in Palestine were in the minority. The issue of how to obtain the land was hotly debated amongst Jewish groups. Jabotinsky was at one extreme—colonize and take the land just as the Arabs had done to the Jews when there was a Jewish majority. His view did not however prevail. The policy was to buy the land from individual Arabs and Jewish land up to 1948 was obtained that way. In that year the UN partitioned Palestine and 11 Arab armies attacked the new state of Israel and asked the Arab civilians to leave the area so that the Army could cleanse it of Jews. Many did not, and they or their descendants are still on their land or have sold it. The Arabs who left, were suspected of being possible collaborators or terrorists, and they have never been paid for their land or allowed to return. Compensation is still in dispute. At the same time Jews driven out of Arab countries by law and the military have never been compensated or given any right of return either.
Just like Spain and Persia, the Arabs by fighting lost not only more land, but also lost the respect of most of the non-Muslim War. The conscious decision to choose an irrational strategy that would cause loss of life, land and respect has none-the-less repeatedly been chosen by the Arab culture. much to its detriment. Azzam is one of the few Arabs to admit this to the non-Islamic World.
This was one of the most accurate foreign policy assessments ever made. The next year the first Arab-Israeli war began when the state of Israel came into being. See {624566} for another accurate prediction.
Mohamed Anwar El-Sedat
What is particularly interesting about this passage is that a Middle Eastern contemporary historian and commentator compared circumstances to political events with the Umayyads and the Abbisids to those in Persia and Rome. Chosroes (Khosrow) was a Persian King who had his brothers murdered, and Caesar was viewed as a tyrant. Even then, the history of politics, in one country influenced events and attitudes in others,
She and most other German scientist fled from the Nazis—she to Sweden. Hahn, her former collaborator, remained in Germany and worked for the Nazis. The letter was written in the expectation that Moe Berg, an American OSS agent would have it delivered to Hahn in Germany. So far as anyone can tell, it was never delivered but was used by the OSS for analysis of German physics prowess.
Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzam (Arabic: عبد الرحمن حسن عزام), also known as Azzam Pasha, was an Egyptian diplomat and politician. He was the first Secretary-General of the Arab League, from 22 March 1945 to September 1952.
