Hasan Salama حسن سلامة | |
---|---|
Born | 1912 Qula, Ottoman Syria |
Died | 1948 Ras al-Ein, Israel |
Allegiance |
|
Service/ | Army of the Holy War |
Years of service | 1936-1948 |
Battles/wars | 1936-1939 Arab revolt in Palestine Anglo-Iraqi War Operation ATLAS 1947-1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine |
Relations | Ali Hassan Salameh (son) |
Hasan Salama or Hassan Salameh (Arabic: حسن سلامة, Ḥasan Salāmah) (1912–1948) was a Nazi commando during WWII, and commander of the Palestinian Holy War Army (Jaysh al-Jihad al-Muqaddas, Arabic: جيش الجهاد المقدس) in the 1948 Palestine War along with Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni.
Biography
Salama was born in the Ottoman Syrian village Qula in 1912. He was one of the leaders of the armed Arab groups who fought against the Jews and British during the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine. After the Arab revolt in Palestine Salama fled to Lebanon, and then fled along with the Mufti of Jerusalem Hajj Amin al-Husseini to Iraq.[citation needed]
In Iraq Salama took a tank commander's course [1]. After the pro-Axis Rashid Ali al-Gaylani government was overthrown by the British in 1941 and the subsequent meeting between Adolf Hitler and Grtand Mufti Husseini, the Mufti arranged for Salama and other Arab fighters to be flown to Germany for military training. The Germans trained Salama to be a paratrooper.[2]
In October 1944 Salama parachuted into Palestine as a member of the five-man Operation ATLAS commando team. In this mission Salama was commanded by Kurt Wieland, a Palestine-born German from the Templers (religious believers) German community in Sarona, Mandatory Palestine who had been head of the Palestinian Hitler Youth in 1938, had joined the Brandenburg regiment in 1940, and in 1941 took part in the German--Arab military organization known as Special Staff F to support the Gaylani regime in Iraq, and served as a Major in a Waffen-SS special commando unit headed by Otto Skorzeny. Two other Palestinian German Templers took part in Operation Atlas, along with two Arabs associates of Haj Amin Husseini, Abdul Latif (who had edited the Mufti's Berlin radio addresses), and Hasan Salama himself. The Mufti personally briefed all five before they began their mission to Palestine. [3]
During the night of October 6, 1944, Salama and the other Operation ATLAS commandos parachuted from a German Heinkel HeS 3 airplane over the Jericho region in Wadi Qelt. Their equipment included explosives, submachine guns, and dynamite, radio equipment, 5,000 Pound sterling. Salama was injured in this parachute jump, and subsequently went to Jerusalem while his compatriots remained in the Wadi Qelt area, where the British captured three of them on October 16, 1944. Salam and one of the German Templers, Frederick Deininger, evaded capture. Salama took refuge in Qula, where a physician treated his injured foot. [4]
Historians are divided about one aspect of Operation ATLAS. Reportedly Mufti Husseini conceived of a plan to kill thousands of Tel Aviv Jews by poisoning the Rosh HaAyin springs that fed that city's water supply. This story is given credence by many historians, including Michael Bar-Zohar & Eitan Haber[5], Klaus Gensicke[6], and Calder Walton[7], among others. Wolfgang G. Schwanitz, however, has written that this story "is not substantiated in British or German sources" and that there is no definitive evidence that it is true. [8] and Norman Finkelstein similarly notes that several scholarly studies of Haj Amin Husseini do not mention this supposed Nazi plot to poison Tel Aviv's water supply.[9]
In 1947 Salameh re-emerged as the second-in-command of the Holy War Army was a force of Palestinian Arab irregulars in the 1947-48 Palestinian civil war.[10] The force has been described as Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni's "personal" army.[11] At the meeting held in Damascus on 5 February 1948, to organize the Palestinian Field Commands, Salama was allocated the Lydda district. [12] Salama commanded the forces in Jaffa, the coastal plain, Ramle, and Lod, and is credited with starting the hostilities that became the 1947–48 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine and which continued as the [1948 Arab-Israeli War]] by firing on a Jewish bus near Jerusalem on November 30, 1947.[13]
Salama was a member of the Palestine Arab Party.
Salama was killed by the IDF in the battle of Ras al-Ein on 2 June 1948.[14] He was the father of Ali Hassan Salameh, chief of Black September and the man chiefly responsible of the Munich massacre at the 1972 Olympics.
References
- ^ "Israel/Palestine and the Politics of a Two-State Solution" by Thomas G. Mitchell, (London: McFarland & Co., Inc.; 2013) p. 136
- ^ "Mitchell, Israel/Palestine", p. 136
- ^ "Nazi Palestine: The Plans for the Extermination of the Jews in Palestine", by Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cuppers, tran. by Krista Smith, (Enigma Books, published in association with the United States Holocaust Museum, NY; 2010) pp. 200--201
- ^ "Mallmann 2010", p.201"
- ^ "The Quest for the Red Prince", by Michael Bar-Zohar & Eitan Haber, (Weidenfeld and Nicolson; 1983)
- ^ "The Mufti of Jerusalem and the Nazis", by Klaus Gensicke, translated by Alexander Fraser Gunn (Vallentine Mitchell Publishers, 2011)
- ^ Empire of Secrets, by Calder Walton, (HarperCollins Publishers; 2012)
- ^ Wolfgang Schwanitz (2009). "A Mosaic on the Mufti's Islam". Jewish Political Studies Review. 21: 178–179.
- ^ "Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History", by Norman Finkelstein, (University of California Press; 2005)
- ^ Albert Habib Hourani, Philip S. Khoury and Mary C. Wilson (2004-03-04). The Modern Middle East: A Reader. London: I.B. Tauris. p. 537. ISBN 978-1-86064-963-9.
- ^ Ilan Pappé (1994-08-15). The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1947-51. London: I.B. Tauris. p. 65. ISBN 978-1-85043-819-9.
- ^ Haim Levenberg (1993-09-01). Military Preparations of the Arab Community in Palestine: 1945-1948. London: Routledge. p. 198. ISBN 0-7146-3439-5.
- ^ "Mitchell, Israel/Palestine", p. 136
- ^ "Alphabetical & Chronological listing of Palestinian Personalities". Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs.