Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917–1948

by Hillel Cohen

Inspired by stories he heard in the West Bank as a child, Hillel Cohen uncovers a hidden history in this extraordinary and beautifully written book—a history central to the narrative of the Israel-Palestine conflict but for the most part willfully ignored until now. In Army of Shadows, initially published in Israel to high acclaim and intense controversy, he tells the story of Arabs who, from the very beginning of the Arab-Israeli encounter, sided with the Zionists and aided them politically, economically, and in security matters. Based on newly declassified documents and research in Zionist, Arab, and British sources, Army of Shadows follows Bedouins who hosted Jewish neighbors, weapons dealers, pro-Zionist propagandists, and informers and local leaders who cooperated with the Zionists, and others to reveal an alternate history of the mandate period with repercussions extending to this day. The book illuminates the Palestinian nationalist movement, which branded these "collaborators" as traitors and persecuted them; the Zionist movement, which used them to undermine Palestinian society from within and betrayed them; and the collaborators themselves, who held an alternate view of Palestinian nationalism. Army of Shadows offers a crucial new view of history from below and raises profound questions about the roots of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Genres: History, Israel, Middle East

352 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2007

About the author

Hillel Cohen-Bar (Hebrew: [הלל כהן|21024156]) is an Israeli scholar who studies and writes about Jewish-Arab relations in Palestine/Israel. He is an associated professor at the Department of Islam and Middle East Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the head of the Cherrick Center for the Study of Zionism and the State of Israel at that university.

Reviews

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Offers a more nuanced view of Arab-Israeli cooperation during the Mandate era. Cohen has been accused of his biases although I didn't quite see it on first glance. Ideology aside, the book covers a much needed topic and erases black and white views on Arab and Jewish cooperation.

[Phoenix · Rating 5 out of 5]

Impressive, Detailed, Scholarly

This is a must read book on the history of the Arab/Israeli conflict. Cohen educates his readers with an absolutely riveting account of the rivalry and tensions between various clan factions in Mandatory Palestine dating from the collapse of Ottoman rule to the Israeli declaration of independence. [ Instead he names local Arab clan leaders and land brokers who willingly sold lands to Jews and to the Jewish Agency. ]

The word "collaborator" in the context of conflict is often taken negatively. Yet in business one collaborates all the time - its how we get things done. When I collaborate with others it is in order to get more accomplished collectively that could be done by individually. In Palestinian society "collaboration" was viewed as pejorative, and therein lies the problem. The main branch of Palestinian nationalism today rejects the notion of collaboration and by examining history we can uncover the origin of this school of rejectionist thought.

I recently wrote the author of a history of the Middle East why he didn't cover the story of the minority view of Arab sympathizers to Jewish migration. He had considered contrary movements in Egypt and in Iran. He dismissed it as the story of the dog that didn't bark, implying that it wasn't very relevant. Yet in the Sherlock Holmes story of the same name the fact that the dog did not bark was the clue that solved the case!

Paragraph by paragraph Cohen clearly outlines of the events of the day backed by newspaper articles of the day, interviews, reports and archived correspondence. He also looks at the campaign of intimidation backed by the Mufti Haj Amin Husseini against those in the Arab community who were friendly towards Jews. What began as threats by 1936 had turned to bombs and and assassination of rivals and members of their families for selling land and doing business with Jews. (There was no refinement of the notion of Jew vs. Zionist shown.) Yet due to the nature of clan rivalry one of the effects was to drive some of the opposing clans such as Abu Gosh into a positive relationship with the Zionist camp.

The book shatters the Palestinian mythologies that Jews stole land, that the land sales were largely from foreigners or even that there was a coherent Palestinian polity, or that the British were on the side of the Jews or Arabs. It's an honest book in that he shows that the Arab land brokers were in some cases motivated by greed to sell land to Jews at high prices and were not adverse to questionable practices in amassing their holdings for resale. Some would squander the profits while others were interested in modernization and reinvestment for the benefits of their families or clans. Cohen establishes a realistic picture of a proto-Israeli polity that was organized for mutual benefit that made sure that it was as well informed as it could be about the sympathies and antipathies that it faced and this was both the purpose and beginnings of Israeli intelligence.

Overall I was spellbound with Cohen's ability relate the past. Credit should also go to his translator Haim Watzman. The book has a multitude of interesting details of which I was completely unaware and it certainly changed my perspective on this period of history. I've followed this up with Cohen's next book Good Arabs: The Israeli Security Agencies and the Israeli Arabs, 1948-1967. Highly recommended!

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

AN ISRAELI SCHOLAR LOOKS AT EXAMPLES OF PRE-1948 COOPERATION

Hillel Cohen-Bar is an Israeli scholar who is a professor at the Department of Islam and Middle East Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

He wrote in the Introduction to this 2004 book (English edition, 2008), “From my in-depth study of they 1948 war… I have learned that … many regional leaders throughout Palestine who established ties with the … Jewish community of Palestine, during the period of the British Mandate and the war of 1948. Their view of the world was entirely different from that of the official Arab national institutions. They saw no problem in selling land to Jews, they opposed the Arab rebellion in the 1930s… and they did not take part in the attempt to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state in 1948… these regional leaders had considerable influence. It partly explains… the very low participation of Palestinian Arabs in the armed struggle against the Jews in 1948… only a few thousand Palestinians our of a population of 1.3 million volunteered for the Arab Liberation Army … that went by the name of Holy Jihad. It also helps explain the nonaggression pacts that were reached between Jewish and Arab villages throughout the country, in violation of the Arab national leadership’s orders… yet they have been expunged from Palestinian history---primarily because they acted on the local rather than the national stage… Most Palestinian historians … analyzed events solely according to the national paradigm… Oddly enough, early Israeli historiography ignored them as well… This book comes to fill that gap…” (Pg. 2-4)

He continues, “As an Israeli Jew, I have no standing to determine who is a traitor to the Palestinian cause. As a researcher, however, I can study the Palestinian discourse on treason and collaboration and find out which acts were defined as treason and by whom… Furthermore, I can relate how Palestinians actively aided the Zionist enterprise and what their motives were for doing so… In Palestinian society, to call someone a collaborator is to call him a traitor. But in this book the term is not judgmental… I examine so-called collaborators of all types---informers, weapons, dealers, pro-Zionist propagandists , political collaborators, and others---but leave the moral and political judgment to my readers… Personally, I do not see so-called treason as wrong by definition. Sometimes an act defined by one’s contemporaries as treason is the right thing to do.? (Pg. 5-6)

He goes on, “two camps or schools of thought were prevalent among the Arabs of Palestine at this period… The mainstream national movement… maintained that the Zionist movement had to be fought to the bitter end. The Zionists could never be a negotiating partner. The other camp, whose voice was less prominent… believed that the Zionists could not be defeated and that the common good of Palestinian Arabs demanded coexistence with Jew… this was a dispute between two camps, both of which were committed to doing … what was best for the Palestinian Arab public.” (Pg. 7)

He observes, “many Palestinian Arabs continued to sell land to Jews throughout the period of the Mandate. It seems that Palestinian Arabs throughout the period of the Mandate. It seems that Palestinian Arabs as a group accepted the nationalist ideas formulated by the national institutions, but that individually many of them put their personal interests before their political ideas.” (Pg. 35)

He states, “In politics, unlike in land sales and informing, the definition of treason was ambiguous, elusive, and a matter of dispute. Sometimes it is difficult to recognize when a person was reviled as a traitor only by a specific political group, and it is not always possible to distinguish between national interests and personal, political, and family interests when the label was applied.” (Pg. 51)

He asks, “Why did Arabs choose (or agree) to cooperate with the Zionist movement even before it reached the pack of its power? One major reason was the way they saw the three-way relationship among the British, Arabs, and Zionists. Many Arabs perceived the Zionists as part of the British administration… [Many] men viewed the Zionists as an arm of the British regime. In exchange for assistance, they were prepared to assist… Arabs who cooperated with the Zionists fell into four categories. The first were those who did to for personal gain… The second were those who acted in the name of communal interest … The third category consisted of those who had… nationalist motivations… A fourth group was made up of collaborators whose motives were ethical and humanist. They had Jews as friends and neighbors and were disgusted by the violence of the Palestinian national movement.” (Pg. 67)

He admits, “Arabs who helped promote the Zionist political agenda and served as informants also asked for compensation. Money was indeed an important motive for collaborators, but some had broader considerations… The fact that they also received money, and were sometimes blinded by bribes, does not mean the other motives were not real.” (Pg. 73)

He summarizes, “The growing willingness to help Jews can be seen as testimony to the opposition of individuals within Palestinian society to the militancy of the Arab national movement. It can also be taken as a portent of the increasing collaboration of later years. It was not the collaborators, however, who brought the strike to an end. The damage the rebellion did to the Palestinian Arab economy was a much more important factor…” (Pg. 120)

He says, “we must also seek to understand why many Arabs who were not routinely classified as traitors… did business with Jews. Such people sold land and traded with Jews even when this was defined as treason. Why did the national movement have such limited success in inculcating its public and nationalist norms? Even the Higher Arab Committee sensed that Arabs were, in their ineffective response to the threat they faced, proving the Zionist claim that the Jews had arrived in a ‘land without a people.’” (Pg. 223)

He notes, “On the eve of the war, the Palestinian national institutions were thus unable to unite the country’s Arabs. They were vulnerable to intelligence penetration by the Zionists, whom each faction and leader helped in his own way in order to harm his opponents. Terrorism and counterterrorism had taken the place of persuasion and national consensus. Many Arabs continued to maintain social and economic ties with Jews in violation of the Higher Arab Committee’s instructions. Zionist intelligence recruitment was becoming more and more sophisticated. And the Arabs of Palestine were facing a war that commenced immediately after their leadership announced its rejection of the UN General Assembly decision to partition Palestine into two countries.” (Pg. 229)

He points out, “Many Arabs refrained from taking part in the hostilities, but a small number went one step further and actively aided the Jewish war effort.” (Pg. 238) He adds later, “The fact that Arab collaborators were working alongside Jewish forces was an open secret in Arab Palestinian society. And… neither did it escape the eyes of Arab soldiers from outside Palestine… their very existence had a far-reaching impact on Arab morale. To enlist in a national struggle, a person must believe that he acts in the name of his nation and enjoys its backing. The absence of support from significant sections of the population is liable to make individuals… less willing to risk their lives. The very fact that collaborators were active served as a constant and sharp reminded that many Palestinian Arabs did not accept the nationalist ethos… It also implied that there were significant advantages in ceasing to fight and allying themselves with the Jews.” (Pg. 250)

He concludes, “So, while the Zionists established and reinforced networks of informers, broadened fissures n Arab society, built up their military strength, and expanded their holdings by purchasing land and establishing settlements, Palestinian society was preoccupied with internal battles and was unable to mobilize and unify behind a leadership that all were prepared to accept.” (Pg. 263) He adds, “This does not mean that the Palestinian public or its leadership ceased to be concerned about treason and collaboration or to fight them. On the contrary, the issues are very much alive today, and the fields of (and discourse about) collaboration did not change… the question ‘What is treason?’ … is another way of asking ‘What relations should we have with Israel?’ and ‘What does it mean to be a “good Palestinian”?” (Pg. 268)

This book will interest those studying the conflict in the Middle East.

[Rhuff · Rating 5 out of 5]

This forgotten history of both Arabs and Jews in Palestine challenges the standard tropes of both parties: that the "Palestinian masses" were as one resisting the Zionist intruder; and that "Arab terror" provoked Israeli self-defense in 1948. The truth was much more nuanced, of course. In Cohen's pages we see the real, unschematized processes of everyday life as people tried to co-exist with each other, profit from it, and maintain their own narratives against the grain.

The Arab side is a story of self-defeat as much as Zionist aggression. Arab elites put their own class interest above the national movement, selling off the land to Jewish brokers; while the movement sparked a civil war against "traitors" that dissipated unity against the British and later Zionism.

More to the point is that Arab diversity rendered Palestine impotent to resist a unified and violently determined Zionism. Far from being a phalanx of blood-thirsting anti-Semites "from time immemorial", per Israeli legend, provoking reprisal by anti-Jewish terror, many Arab leaders and villages in 1948 sought peace agreements with Jewish neighbors and often resisted the Arab League and the Grand Mufti's jihadists.

This availed them nothing when the Haganah and allies imposed themselves on the land as far their arms could fire. A case in point is the notorious and tragic example of Deir Yessin, which reached a peace agreement with a neighboring kibbutz; only to have this swept aside in the Lehi attack which slaughtered the inhabitants in cold blood. Thus there was no "necessity" to run off over three-quarter million people for real security reasons; Cohen exposes this pretext by his own evidence.

Though Cohen does not try to shame anyone here, the mutual co-operation demonstrated in the Mandate days - for all its opportunism and corruption - and the efforts to forestall communal war did point to an alternate path. Its travelers were run off the road, that path buried by promoters of myth and servants of power.

[Danilo Lipisk · Rating 5 out of 5]

I always give five stars to history books that completely renew my knowledge on a certain subject, in this case the more than century-old conflict between Arabs and Jews in Eretz Israel/Palestine.

This is the case with this brilliant book by Prof. Hillel Cohen, the second by this author that I have read (the first was 1929, the year zero of Arab Israeli Conflict) and I will certainly read his other books.

The controversial subject of Arab collaboration with the Zionist Enterprise is very little explored and is certainly one of the subjects that Palestinians (and their defenders) must be unaware of or try to erase from their collective memory.

Highly recommended book for those who really want to delve deeper into the topic of the main conflict in the Middle East.

[Saed Jaghoub · Rating 4 out of 5]

يشرح بداية الخيانة من عام 1917 الى 1948
اسباب الضعف في التصدي لمثل هذه المحاولات لاستدراج العملاء والية عمل العقلية في التنقيب عن سواد قلوب البعض

[Sameeha Atout · Rating 4 out of 5]

ما أشبه اليوم بالبارحة!
نفس التشرذم، نفس الفرقة، نفس الغباء!
لم نتعلم من أخطائنا وأشك أننا سنتعلم يوما ما!

[Steve Cran]

Arab collaboration with zionist forces. A well documented book written by Israeli author Hillel Cohen. Since the beginning the Zionists havee tried to influence Palestinian society in their favor. First theey tried political parties and newspaers but the zionistss were not successful their. They were successfull in getting Palestinian to buy land for them and spy the them. Smasirah or land dealeers used al sort of tricks to mkae arabs sell their land not all of them cool. THe book delineates which Palestinains helped Zionist forces and fighting unti comprised of Palestinian fighting on behalf of the zionist. It aalso dlves into reason why Palestinians chose to aid the zionist.