Jerusalem: The Biography

* When the Protocols was published in English, it became influential in Britain and America (backed by Henry Ford), until in August 1921 the London Times exposed it as a forgery. It had been published in German in 1919, and Hitler believed that it contained the truth about the Jews, explaining in Mein Kampf that the forgery claim ‘is the surest proof they are genuine’. When it was published in Arabic in 1925, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem recommended the book to his congregants.

† The Greeks argued with the Armenians over the division of the Virgin’s Tomb. The Armenians feuded with the Syriac Jacobites over the cemetery on Mount Zion and ownership of the St Nicodemus Chapel in the Church, where the Orthodox and Catholics fought over the use of the northern staircase at Calvary and ownership of a strip floor at the eastern arch between the Orthodox and the Latin chapels there. The Armenians fought the Orthodox over the ownership of the staircase on the east of the main entrance – and over the right to sweep it. The Copts fought the Ethiopians over the latter’s precarious rooftop monastery.

* Storrs called Rutenberg, a Russian Socialist Revolutionary whom Kerensky had in 1917 appointed Deputy Governor of Petrograd, ‘the most remarkable of them all’. He had commanded the Winter Palace before it was stormed by Trotsky’s Red Guards. Rutenberg was ‘thickset, powerful, dressed always in black, head strong as granite, utterances low and menacing, brilliant and fascinating’ but also ‘versatile and violent.’ In 1922, Churchill supported Rutenberg, an engineer, in his bid to found the hydroelectric works that powered much of Palestine.

* The word ‘Palestinian’ came to mean the Palestinian Arab nation, but for the first half of the twentieth century the Jews there were known as Palestinians or Palestinian Jews; the Arabs known as Palestinian Arabs. In Weizmann’s memoirs (published 1949) when he writes ‘Palestinian’ he means Jewish. A Zionist newspaper was called Palestine, an Arab one Filistin.

* The ageing Hussein became the King Lear of Arabia, obsessed with filial ingratitude and British perfidy. Lawrence, on his last mission, was sent to persuade the bitter king to compromise with Anglo-French hegemony or lose his British funding. He wept, raged and refused. Soon afterwards, Hussein was defeated by Ibn Saud and abdicated in favour of his eldest son, who became King Ali. But the Saudis conquered Mecca, Ali was ejected and Ibn Saud declared himself king of Hejaz, then of Saudi Arabia. The two kingdoms are still ruled by their families – Saudi Arabia and Hashemite Jordan.

* The twenty-five-year-old American Lowell Thomas of Colorado made his fortune launching Last Crusade, a travelling show that told the legendary adventures of ‘Lawrence of Arabia’. A million people saw it in London alone and even more in America. Lawrence despised and loved it, watching the show five times. ‘I saw your show and thank god the lights were out,’ he wrote. ‘He’s invented some silly phantom thing, a matinee idol in fancy dress.’ Lawrence finished his memoirs, using that old title, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, a creamily baroque yet poetical work that was a mix of history, confession and mythology – ‘I prefer lies to truth, particularly where they concern me,’ he joked. Yet for all its faults it is surely a masterpiece. Afterwards, Lawrence changed his name, joined the air force and retired into obscurity, dying in a motorcycle accident in 1935.

† Lord Randolph Churchill became friends with the Rothschilds and others when this was still risqué amongst aristocrats. When he arrived at a house party, an aristocrat greeted him, ‘What Lord Randolph, you’ve not brought your Jewish friends?’ at which Randolph replied, ‘No I didn’t think they’d be amused by the company.’

* The Nashashibis claimed descent from a thirteenth-century Mamluk potentate, Nasir al-Din al-Naqashibi, who had served as Superindentant of the Two Harams (Jerusalem and Hebron). In fact they were descended from eighteenth-century merchants who manufactured bows and arrows for the Ottomans. Ragheb’s father had made a huge fortune and married a Husseini.

* He was aided by von Papen, the officer who in 1917 had so wanted to save Germany’s reputation in Jerusalem. Papen, who had already served as chancellor, advised President Hindenburg to appoint Hitler, convinced he and his aristocratic camarilla could control the Nazis: ‘Within two months, we’ll have pushed Hitler so far in the corner, he’ll squeak.’ Papen became Hitler’s vice-chancellor but soon resigned, becoming German ambassador to Istanbul. He was tried at Nuremburg, served a few years in prison, and died in 1969.