More on Professor Porath's book

Submitted by Wallace Edward Brand (United States), Oct 6, 2011 at 18:42

In Chapter 7 of his book on the alleged Palestinian Arab national movement, Professor Porath explains the origin of a dispute at the Wailing Wall between the Jews and the Arabs that ultimately resulted in a massacre of 100 Jews in Hebron and Safed. It all started over the question of whether the Jews could bring on the Jewish Sabbeth, torahs, chairs or benches, and a dividing wall between men and women and place them on the plaza before the wall. Professor Porath goes into this in great detail.

Then, he says "Some have claimed that the entire conflict over the Wailing Wall came about only because al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni wanted to rouse the Palestinian national movement from its sleep." Porath explains it this way: "Rather it would seem that in so far as the Palestinian community had managed to overcome its internal divisions to a considerable extent and there had been a reawakening of its national movement, the SMC and its President were able to exploit what seemed to them a Jewish provocation, in order to intensify the struggle against the Jews. The Wall affair enabled them to give the struggle against the Jews a RELIGIOUS DIMENSION and to enlist the support of the urban and rural masses, WHO UNTIL THEN HAD NOT BEEN ATTRACTED BY THE SECULAR NATIONALIST SLOGANS." [my emphasis]

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