76 years ago, on July 8, 1949, a Lebanese court, in collusion with Husni al-Zaim, issued a death sentence by firing squad against Antoun Saadeh, the founder of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, The trial was without a lawyer, and the sentence was carried out within 24 hours, Most of what was written after this judicial farce considered the execution of Antoun Saadeh an attempt to eradicate the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, And who had an interest in eradicating this party?
Saadeh’s ideas about the Syrian nation, which includes present-day Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, and Jordan, and its unification into a secular state, the separation of religion from the state, preventing religious figures from interfering in political and judicial affairs, and removing barriers between different sects and doctrines, had enemies and opponents who panicked after seeing the rapid spread of the party, which is increasing at this particular time as well, Fear even afflicted Israel, and afflicted the same parties that are struggling these days against secularism, These were primarily the Arabists and the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Syrian Social Nationalist Party found that the salvation of this region, characterized by religious, national, and political pluralism, would not come through religion or Arab nationalism, but rather through its belonging to its geographical and historical unity, its secularism, its scientific nature, and even its ancient cultural heritage, The Syrians established a civilization older than the Roman and Greek civilizations, and no less great than these civilizations.
Everything we are experiencing in this region, from sectarian wars and the disintegration of Arab religious thought and fragmentation at the hands of Arab racism, confirms the necessary need for these ideas. There is no effective and organized party force on Syrian soil except for what remains of the Syrian National Party, primarily after it was subjected to multiple attempts at annihilation. France pursued the party and forced its founder to flee into exile. The blow that should have been fatal, namely the execution of Saadeh, weakened the party and created a great void in the development of its thought and leadership. The magnitude of Saadeh’s thought made developing his ideas or continuing the intellectual construction that he started a difficult process for those who remained of the Syrian nationalists.
The barbaric execution of Saadeh failed to eliminate the party completely, so another attempt was necessary, This attempt involved the assassination of Colonel Adnan al-Malki, It is important to note some of the circumstances surrounding this case and the stupidity of those who carried it out, The accused, Sergeant Younis Abdul Rahim, carried a 9mm pistol, while the bullets that pierced Adnan al-Malki’s body were 7mm. Abdul Karim al-Nahlawi, Akram al-Diri, and Munir al-Fatouhi all carried 7mm pistols, Some, including Akram al-Diri and Abdul Hamid al-Sarraj (appointed in 1955 as head of intelligence and responsible for investigating al-Malki’s murder), fabricated a story about hearing three shots: two at Adnan al-Malki and the third at the “suicide” Younis Abdul Rahim! However, the forensic report on the body of the murdered Younis Abdul Rahim stated that he had been shot three times with a 7mm pistol, with two shots to the head, A shot in the thigh (the report of the investigating judge, Major Salah Youssef Agha, confirms every word of what was written), and thus Younis Abdul Rahim was able to commit suicide with two shots to the head, according to the opinion of Al-Nahlawi and his partners, What was the necessity of the third shot in the thigh? Is it conceivable that a person would commit suicide with several shots to the head? And how similar is the method of Younis Abdul Rahim’s suicide to the method of Ghazi Kanaan’s suicide with several shots to the head? There is no need to elaborate on the circumstances of the fabrication of the assassination of Colonel Al-Maliki, Whoever wants to know more details should refer to what Riyad Al-Maliki wrote about the treachery against his brother Adnan Al-Maliki.
After the killing of Adnan al-Malki, the enemies of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, including Baathists, Brotherhood members, and Nasserists, turned against the party and all its members, Even those who had no connection to the incident, such as Badi’ Makhlouf and Abdul-Mun’im Dabbousi, were executed, In addition, there was imprisonment and torture by the specialist Abdul-Hamid al-Sarraj, displacement, dismissal from work, and the seizure of houses to house paratroopers in them, as was done by Captain Abdul-Halim Khaddam and other military personnel, who later turned to serving Nasserism and then Assadism.
The penultimate attempt to destroy the Syrian Social Nationalist Party was based on Hafez al-Assad, and its starting point was divide and rule, Here, Hafez al-Assad succeeded in splitting the party into several parts, but despite that, he was unable to eliminate the Syrian Social Nationalist Party as he was able to eliminate the Baath Party, The party remained as remnants, persecuted and banned from party work for a period between 1955 and approximately 2005, that is, more than 35 years of the rule of the Assad family.
The latest attempt after 2000 differs from previous attempts, which were characterized by persecution, killing, banning, fragmentation, and abuse under the supervision of Nasserist Abdul Hamid al-Sarraj and later under the direct supervision of Egyptian intelligence, in that it did not want to eradicate the party, but rather to fatten it, feed it, and inoculate it with Ba’athist bait so that it would turn into a Ba’athist mule, which they would ride and drag to the pitfalls, which would turn it in the eyes of the people into the heir of the Ba’ath, We do not know much about the results of this hypothetical operation, Has the Assad regime not been able to swallow the Syrian Social Nationalist Party as it swallowed the Ba’ath and the state in its entirety? The party was difficult to swallow up, and the Syrian National Party remained immune to complete eradication, The history of the party, which is now about a century old, confirms this assessment, After the demise of the Ba’ath, there is no longer on the Syrian scene except the Syrian National Party as an organized party, There is no Nasserist Socialist Union, nor are there any Arab parties, because Arabism is dead, The muslim Brotherhood or ISIS do not represent parties, but rather religious groups whose practices have been limited to assassinations and terrorist bombings.
