Mustafa Abbasi’s WWII Narrative Collapses Under the Historical Record
Mustafa Abbasi’s WWII Narrative Collapses Under the Historical Record. Re fake title on JSTOR. Fact: Arab Palestinians NOT against fascism Mustafa Abbasi’s thesis attempts to recast the history of Palestinian Arab involvement in World War II into a story of broad anti-Nazi commitment and shared Arab-Jewish resistance. The historical record does not support that conclusion. Yes, thousands of Palestinian Arabs enlisted in the British Army during WWII. That fact is real and documented. But Abbasi’s interpretation of what that enlistment meant politically and socially collapses under scrutiny. The first problem is scale. Jewish enlistment dwarfed Arab enlistment. Roughly 27,000–30,000 Jews from Mandatory Palestine volunteered for British service, while Arab recruitment figures ranged closer to 9,000–12,000. Jews volunteered at roughly three times the Arab rate despite being a demographic minority. In 1940, Jews constituted only about 31.2% of Mandatory Palestine’s settled population, while...