Ruba  mansour ,George Banna

Even eight decades ago, Saadeh clearly distinguished between Judaism and Zionism. It was a matter of confusion, even in the past, especially for some partisans. In 2000, his daughter, Safia, gave a lecture on the subject and presented evidence in this regard. The evidence was included as an appendix to her book, “Antun Saadeh and Democracy in Natural Syria.” From the beginning of his writings, Saadeh emphasized that it was not a matter of Jews wanting to live in Palestine, but rather a colonial settlement movement like the one in South Africa. The motivation was, on the one hand, oil, and, on the other, Britain’s commitment to the Zionists, who had provided Britain between 1914 and 1918 with loans and financial aid from the Rothschilds and the Sassoons, in addition to a return of the favor due to the contribution of the so-called Jewish “Legion,” which fought alongside the Allies in World War I.

Saadeh viewed the Palestinian issue from the perspective of Western colonialism and its goals. He did not say that the Palestinian issue was a Jewish issue, but rather emphasized that it was a “global” issue par excellence, that it was a national confrontation, and nationalism is not based on religion (lecture seven of the ten lectures). The Palestinian issue is not a religious issue, and therefore religious jihad only leads to more losses. Zionism is not a religion, but rather a colonial nationalist movement within a global framework that has ambitions in this East. Saadeh saw that Christian Zionists are more Zionist than Jewish Zionists, and their number in America is more than 40 million Christian Zionists.

Saadeh’s thought could not be both religious and secular. He said, “The Palestinian question is not a question of Islam and Judaism, but a national question of the first order” (Collected Works, Vol. 15: 145). “During his stay abroad, he wrote his book on Islam in his two letters, Muhammadan and Christian. In the book, he dealt with Judaism and did not take any position hostile to Judaism as a religion. Saadeh rejected all forms of discrimination between the citizens of natural Syria on the basis of race or religion.” “The Syrian movement, aiming to unify the ranks of the Syrian nation, resisted all religious policies in Syrian national affairs, in accordance with its first reformist principle, which is the separation of religion from the state and the establishment of the latter on the rights and duties of the individuals of the nation, regardless of their religious sects, which should remain a private individual affair” (Collected Works, Vol. 6: 8).”

  Saadeh understood and grasped secularism in a surprising way at a time when the concept of secularism was vague, as he said: “We cannot, while seeking the truth, look at religion from a political perspective, nor at politics from a religious perspective” (Collected Works, Vol. 11: 65). Saadeh also rejected the principle of xenophobia on racial grounds: “In our movement there are no principles of xenophobia, nor the principle known in the world as chauvinism” (Collected Works, Vol. 2: 11).

Some people repeat the following sentence: “We have no enemy fighting us for our religion, our rights, and our homeland other than the Jews.” There are those who distorted this phrase to “We have no enemy but the Jews.” In this way, the phrase was turned upside down. He said that the Jews are the ones who fight us for our rights and they are the racists. In the last year before his death, in 1948, he said, “We do not want to liberate Palestine from the Jews, just to liberate it from the Jews. It may be liberated from the Jews and remain for the British, or it may remain for another group. We want to liberate Palestine because it is part of us, and when we care about the fate of Palestine, we do not care about one point, which is just the Jews. Let the monkeys take it after the Jews!” We say that the aggressors must leave our land so that our land remains ours. (Complete Works, Vol. 8: 132, Lecture 10).

Antoun Saadeh was not fighting religions, nor was he fighting races of people, but rather he simply fought the enemies who wanted to occupy parts of Syria. Saadeh denounced the newspaper “Syria Al Jadida”, which was published by Syrian nationalists in Brazil, because it was more interested in fighting the Jews in the world than in the issue of the Syrians and Syria. He also denounced the newspaper’s support for the German Nazi movement and the Italian Fascist movement, as the goal was to fight the occupying Zionism, not to fight the Jews from a religious background.