By: Suzanne Broussard

 Faisal I bin Hussein bin Ali al-Hashimi, was King of the Arab Kingdom of Syria or Greater Syria in 1920, and was King of Iraq from 23 August 1921 to 1933. He was a member of the Hashemite dynasty.

 

At a banquet given in Faisal’s honor by Lord Walter Rothschild, “a leader of British Jewry and a prominent Zionist”, Faisal said:

“I have been told by people who regard themselves as civilized that the Jews want our Mosque in Jerusalem as a temple, and to grind down and stamp out the peasantry of Palestine.  For my part, I know that no true Jew holds these views. These insinuations have no effect on any of us. We are demanding Arab freedom and we would show ourselves unworthy of it if we did not now, as I do, say to the Jews, “Welcome back home, and cooperate with them to the limit of the ability of the Arab State… No true Arab can be suspicious of Jewish nationalism.  The Turks ruled by encouraging discord and enmity between their subject peoples and creeds and I regret that others are doing the same now. 

Lawrence said of Faisal of Iraq :  “He seemed to govern his men unconsciously hardly to know how he stamped his mind on them, hardly to care whether they obeyed.  It was a great art and it concealed itself, for Faisal was born to it.”

The last beloved member of Arabia’s old royal families is describe in the book, “Faisal of Iraq” by Ali A. Allawi.  Faisal represented the best of the ancient Syrian school of religious law.  It had prevailed not only in Syria but in the Magrib and Al Andalus, spread by the Ummayads before it was superseded in the ninth century by the Khasarian infiltration of the 9^th century.

Speaking to a journalist in 1920 Faisal stated that he’d been given continual assurances by Hogarth, Weizman and Lawrence that the Zionists did not seek to establish an independent state in Palestine and that their goal was to enable a flourishing  Jewish presence there without encroaching whatsoever an Arab rights and interests.

Faisal’s partly benign view regarding the Zionist project in Palestine had begun to erode as details emerged.   Zionist political ambitions clearly included the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. The tactical alliance that he had with Weizman was no longer useful to the Zionists.  Based as it was on the Zionists promise to help the cause of Arab independence and that Palestine would not be a Jewish state, this promise now had to be broken.  The Zionist had what they needed.

Faisal dies shortly after being given an injection by Dr. Albert Kocher in Switzerland, recommended to him by the British Royals while visiting them at Balmoral Castle and Buckingham Palace.  There is a photograph of him looking well, eating lunch a few hours before his death on Sept. 8, 1933 at the age of 50.

Faisal’s rivals, the Ibn Saud, have demonstrated to us the consequences of Faisal’s early death and the reason for the great mourning afterward, throughout all of Middle East.

The Zionists and their agent Lawrence [of Arabia] proceded to publish in Paris Le Matin, forged letters and false interviews which they claimed were written by Faisal, is which Faisal allegedly announced his support for the Zionists.  Faisal denied these. “The absence of any Arabic-language version of the letter further suggests that it was “concocted between Weizman, and Frankfurter without Faisal.”  Peter Frankfurter was Professor at the Harvard Law School and an advisor to the Zionist Organization.

Faisal’s staff secretary of the Hijaz wrote: “I believe this letter is part of the false claims made by Chaim Weizman and Lawrence to lead astray public opinion.”

Anatole France compared Faisal’s visage to that of Christ.

When his body arrived in Baghdad, it is estimated that a fifth of the male population of Iraq was there. It was an extraordinary number of people.  The women gathered on rooftops letting out screams of mourning as the procession made it’s way, the coffin drawn by 12 horses.  All of Baghdad and surrounding provinces’ crafts guilds had organized themselves into marching groups behind huge black banners signifying that he had died a martyr in service to his people.  All of the Arab Middle East were united in love for Faisal and hopes for their independence from foreign domination.

Faisal wrote in a letter to Frankfurter:

“If the views of the radical Zionists as presented to the [Peace Conference] should prevail, the result will be a ferment, a chronic unrest, and sooner or later civil war in Palestine. But I hope I will not be misunderstood.  I assert that we Arabs have none of the racial or religious animosity against the Jews which unfortunately prevail in many other regions of the world.  I assure you that with the Jews who have been seated for some generations in Palestine our relations are excellent.  But the new arrivals exhibit very different qualities from those “old settlers” as we call them, with whom we have been able to live and even co-operate on friendly terms. For want of a better word, I must say that new colonists almost without exception have come in an imperialistic spirit.  They say that for too long we have been in control of their homeland taken away form them by brute force in the dark ages, but  that now under the new world we must clear out, and if we are wise we should do so peaceably without making any resistance to what is the fiat of the civilized world” .

At this time occurred a massacre of the French-protected Armenians in Aleppo in a false flag operation.  The “rioters” wore uniforms of the French and served the purpose of thwarting a meeting between Clemenceau and Faisal, something that the Zionists dreaded.  The attempted assassination of Clemenceau shortly before had failed to kill him, so the riots were false flag plan B.  What the Zionist were trying to avoid by these tactics was a Commission of Inquiry into the question of the “Mandate”.

The Zionists had disguised themselves as “The Arab Club” in Syria in order to undermine the promised and expected ‘self determination’.  It was this promise that motivated Faisal to make the fatal decision of assisting in break up the Ottoman Empire.

The blue shaded area is the Ottoman Empire which was a thriving and peaceful place under Byzantine and Muslim rule.

The Ottoman empire used to export silken costumes and carpets to Europe through the ports of Turkey.  The Zionist were trying to avoid a vote by the people of Syria which would reveal their true will, as distinct from Zionist propaganda.  At all costs, the Zionists maintain an elitest position in which public input and public will is eliminated, so that the minority can rule the majority.

Faisal’s words recorded by Amin Rihani, Lebanese writer and historian on the question of choice between religions:

“Our religious schools are old and barren…the child comes to the mosque school with an empty mind that is filled with superficial religious knowledge…but we still need these schools.  If we abandon them today and teach our children only natural sciences then they will turn to atheism and materialism.  But I promise you that we will reform our religious schools and we will form a cadre of knowledgeable clerics, God willing.  The students will learn the fundamentals of their religion but they will be immersed in the scientific spirit of the age.  In this way we will have a modern-minded religious class….”

Lawrence wrote of Faisal’s character:

“Very gentle you know, and very kind and very considerate and outrageously generous to friends and mild to his enemies and cleanly honest and intelligent and full of wild freakish humour though I suppose that is a little overlaid with kingliness now.  I wish you could have known him as I did when he was just Faisal.  One of the most attractive human beings I have ever met…meanwhile Faisal is serving his race as no Arab has served it for many hundred years.  His is my very great pride and it is my privilege to have helped him …”

Faisal’s only translator at the World Zionist Congress in January of 1919, was his friend Lawrence, when the Balfour Declaration was under discussion.  Faisal signed a document written in English which he did not understand, but whose contents were read to him by Lawrence.  To cover himself, Faisal wrote a codicil to the unreadable document stating that his consent was “Provided the Arabs obtain their independence, as demanded in my Memorandum dated 4^th of January 1919 to the Foreign Office of the Government of Great Britain, I shall concur to the above articles.  But if the slightest modification or departure were to be made I shall not be bound by a single word of the present Agreement which shall be deemed void and of no account or validity, and I shall not be answerable in any way whatsoever.

This agreement was not made public until 1936, when it was presented without Faisal’s codicil to the American delegation at the peace conference by the Zionists.

Faisal party at Versailles Conference. Left to right: Rustum Haidar, Nuri as-Said, Prince Faisal (front), Captain Pisani (rear), T. E. Lawrence, Faisal’s attendant (name unknown), Captain Hassan Khadri.

Ali A. Allawi has written an extensive book called ‘Faisal of Iraq‘, from which much of this information was taken.

Faisal:

Born: May 20, 1883, Mecca, Saudi Arabia

Died: September 8, 1933, Bern, Switzerland

Spouse: Huzaima bint Nasser(m. 1904–1933)

Parents: Abdiyya bint Abdullah, Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca