The recent Palestine riots have been seized by the Syrian nationalists as an opportunity to propagate the Arab idea of solidarity and the idea of the unity of the Moslem countries of the Near East. The Arab press of Damascus and Beirut have been publishing highly exaggerated reports of the Palestine troubles. They systematically described the situation in Palestine as being the reverse of the truth, viz., that the Arabs are the victims of savage assaults of the Jews, and that the latter are profaning the harem, killing defenseless Moslem women and children. Some papers even dare to represent the Hebron arocities as having been committed by Jews against the Arabs.
Such continual false propaganda resulted in great excitement among the Moslems of this country and particularly those of the interior. The climax of the effervescence was reached when all the local press published at the same time, (a fact which leads one to believe that there existed an organized false press propaganda) that the Jews threw boms on the Mosque of Omar and destroyed it.
The city of Damascus closed for three consecutive days, and the nationalists were organizing protest meetings and manifestations. Beirut and Aleppo and very soon all the cities of Syria joined the movement. In every place Arab manifestations and protest meetings were organized, which led to the belief that an inevitable general Syrian unheaval was at hand. The French authorities who at first adopted a passive attitude were compelled, in view of the approaching danger, to react energetically, prohibiting rigorously any new manifestations.
Great panic reigned all the time in the Jewish communities of the country and particularly in Damascus and Aleppo and where the Arab nationalists are very numerous and influential.
The French authorities, fearing an attack on the Jewish community of Damascus guarded the Jewish quarter by means of French troops and tanks during the three days of the manifestations. Two Jewish young men, Dr. Shallouh, a dentist, and a certain Joseph Kayat, who by no means represent either the Jewish community of Damascus or its youth, published in the Arab press a circular declaring that the Jews of Damascus had nothing to do with the Zionists in Palestine.
A similar declaration was issued by the frightened Jews of Aleppo.
In Beirut things were different for the Jewish community, and more serious. This was due first of all to the presence of a branch of the Anglo-Palestine Co., Ltd., and secondly to a recent incident that had occurred with the editor of “Al. Ahrar,” the most in- (Continued on Page 4)
All these press attacks were published at the time of the general excitement of the country and when the Moslems of Beirut were organizing public meetings and manifestations. The Jewish Communal Council paid a visit to the Grand Mufti of Beirut and while directing his attention to the aggressive attacks of the local press against the Jews, requested him to use his influence with the organizers of the public meetings and manifestations with a view to avoiding any eventual aggressions being committed against the Jews of Beirut.
The French authorities on their part, took all the necessary measures for the protection of the Jewish quarter of Beirut during these critical days, and no untoward accident had to be registered.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
