The Beirut centre that helped the PLO understand Zionism

US academic Jonathan Gribetz asks why Palestinian nationalists in Lebanon set up a research centre on Zionism, why it was important, what fate had in store for it, and what lessons can be drawn

The Beirut centre that helped the PLO understand Zionism

Emad al-Ahmad

last update on 03 Oct 2024

Around 2,500 years ago, Chinese military leader and strategist Sun Tzu wrote The Art of War. It was so influential that even today, most generals have a copy. In it, he said: “If you know yourself and know your enemy, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”

In the 1960s and 70s, when the Palestinian nationalist movement was waging war against the relatively new State of Israel, its leaders were keen to know their enemy.

Now, a deeply researched book by Professor Jonathan Marc Gribetz sheds light on how the Palestinian Liberation Organisation set up a unique archive and research centre on Zionism and what happened to it during Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon.

Reading Herzl in Beirut: The PLO's Effort to Understand the Enemy reveals how the group sought to understand Zionism in the early struggle against Israeli occupation.

Gribetz, a Jewish-American professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, examines the epicentre of this effort: the PLO’s Research Centre, an archive in Beirut where fighters and scholars could study their adversaries.

Handout/Jonathan Marc Gribetz — US academic Jonathan Gribetz

Research and questions

He visited Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Berlin to interview Palestinians, Israelis, Lebanese, and Syrians, unravelling the PLO’s interest in the origins of Zionist thought and its history to understand why, for instance, they translated early Zionist works.

His book on the centre looks at its functioning, resources, and original motivation. Its importance was highlighted by Ahmad Shukeiri, the first PLO chairman, who called the centre the “mind of the organisation”.

After the Israeli army looted it during the invasion of Beirut, Gribetz asks whether the entirety of the archive was returned by looking in the Israeli archive and the documents housed in the Israeli National Library.

The book draws a subtle parallel to Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran, which invites readers to evade censorship by embarking on a secret literary journey through the masterpieces of Vladimir Nabokov, Henry James, and Jane Austen.

The insight he provides even points to how similar institutions may help the world forge a path out of the legacy of colonialism, with which it still struggles.

Reading Herzl in Beirut is written in three parts, the first of which covers the motivation to set up the centre in Beirut in 1965, when Palestinian academic Fayez Sayigh took the initiative after the Institute for Palestine Studies declined to operate under a PLO umbrella, to preserve its independence.

Ahmad Shukeiri, the first PLO chairman, called the research centre in Beirut the "mind of the organisation"

Beginning with Herzl

The father of modern political Zionism was the 19th-century journalist and lawyer Theodor Herzl, whose 1896 publication Der Judenstaat elaborated his vision of a Jewish homeland.

An Austro-Hungarian who is mentioned in Israel's Declaration of Independence, Herzl formed the Zionist Organisation, convened the first Zionist Congress, and promoted migration to Palestine. He died in 1904 at the age of 44. In 1969, Hilda Shaaban Sayigh translated portions of his diaries into Arabic in collaboration with the centre.

The centre also published books on aspects of Israel, along with poetic, visual, and scientific research works such as by prominent late Palestinian figures like Aref al-Aref and Awni Abd al-Hadi, with contributions from Palestinian writers who had a significant impact on the Arab world, like esteemed poet Mahmoud Darwish.

In 1971, the centre launched Palestinian Affairs, a periodical designed to promote a diverse range of ideas, opinions, and perspectives, with a focus on Palestinian issues past, present, and future.

Attracting attention

Darwish joined the magazine's staff in 1973 and in 1977 he succeeded Fayez Sayigh as its editor-in-chief. Elias Khoury and Faisal Hourani also served on its editorial board. The magazine gained popularity across the Arab world, while Palestinian and Arab readers and Western decision-makers soon picked up the centre's other publications.

Yet, according to Gribetz, the most significant audience for the centre's work was Israeli intelligence analysts. In 1977, Israel's military censor banned numerous Arab publications, including several produced by the PLO Research Centre.

These banned works included titles like The Diaries of Theodor Herzl, State and Religion in Israel, Greater Israel, and Spotlights on the Israeli Media. When Israeli forces looted the centre during their invasion of West Beirut in 1982, they were already familiar with the titles and their content.

Understanding Israel

Gribetz begins by exploring the establishment of the State of Israel, the formation of Fatah, and the creation of the PLO before reflecting the centre's primary objective. The centre published studies on various aspects of Israeli society, such as the kibbutzim, tourism to Israel, its unemployment rates, the Herut party led by Menachem Begin, the Mapai party founded by David Ben-Gurion, and trade unionism in Israel.

AFP — Irgun leader Menachem Begin in a 1948 photo taken somewhere in Israel, addressing activists of his terrorist organisation.

Its papers also offered in-depth explorations of the origins of Zionism and its foundational writings, including The Zionist Idea: Basic Texts (published in English), from the writings of the 19th century Rabbi Judah Alkalai to those of Ben-Gurion.

Gribetz wonders whether the Christian backgrounds of some senior figures at the centre might have influenced their emphasis on the religious origins of the Zionist idea, unlike other academic studies undertaken in the US and Europe.

Elsewhere, Gribetz discusses As'ad Razzouk's 1970 book The Talmud and Zionism, which argued against using anti-Semitism as a tool in the fight for Palestine, and suggested that Arabs inadvertently weakened the Palestinian cause by uncritically adopting traditional European views without studying the Talmud.

The American Council for Judaism, founded in 1942, is also covered. This comprised American Jews who rejected Jewish nationalism, saw Judaism as a religion (not a nation), and opposed the establishment of the State of Israel.

The most significant audience for the centre's work were Israeli intelligence analysts

The Jewish experience

The centre also produced numerous studies on Jewish women in Israel and the false Arab history taught to Israeli military personnel and citizens, which was intended to help shape an expansive Jewish nationalist ideology.

Gribetz looks at Jews living in Arab countries and the Zionist notion that they needed rescuing. He also highlights Adib Qawar's 1968 book The Jewish Woman in Occupied Palestine, which, along with other studies published by the centre, examined Zionist racism against non-Jews and Zionist racism against non-European Jews.

Gribetz gives a chapter on the violent formation of the State of Israel, cataloguing several books published by the Centre on Zionist terrorism and Zionist gangs. He focuses on the 1969 book The Role of Zionist Terrorism in the Creation of Israel, highlighting how this impacted Palestinians and influenced their attempts to respond, at times by emulating the tactics.

Seizure during invasion

Latterly, Gribetz examines Israel's invasion of Lebanon and the role of the PLO in Beirut. He details how members of Israel's Golani Brigade, led by Baruch Spiegel, went door-to-door in the Hamra area of Beirut, searching for the location of the centre.

Finally, members of a unit responsible for collecting documents and technical matters found it and stormed the building, loading material onto trucks bound for Tel Aviv.

An expert on contemporary Palestinian national thought, Professor Matti Steinberg served in Israeli army intelligence in the 1970s and 1980s and outlined the archive's importance to Gribetz. "If you want to understand the major changes and trends in PLO thinking, you must follow the PLO Research Centre's publications," he said.

After spending more than two decades monitoring the centre's output from a distance, Steinberg finally had the opportunity to examine its archive and materials directly. Gribetz eventually gained access to the reports and lists detailing the materials seized from Lebanon during the invasion.

These included documents from the 'Western Sector' covering the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the 'Planning Centre' affiliated with the PLO, and issues of Al-Hadaf magazine, linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

Intelligence analysts said most documents contained no sensitive information and suspected that the PLO had disposed of any secret papers before the invasion.

Getty — Yasser Arafat and his military aides look at a military map in one of the secret bunkers in Beirut during the Israeli invasion of the Lebanese capital in 1982.

Sabri Jiryis, the centre's director, confirmed as much in a later interview. Jiryis told Gribetz that he personally took two bags out containing a significant amount of sensitive information, before sending them to "where they should be".

International echoes

The Israeli looting of the PLO Research Centre made international news. In The New York Times, Palestinian-American philosopher Edward Said condemned it, writing that the centre's looting was more than just violence—it was an assault on Palestinian culture aimed at destroying the fabric of a struggling, displaced people.

Press reports drew a parallel between this act and the broader instances of Israeli soldiers looting homes and seizing TVs, radios, jewellery, and other valuables.

In October 1982, the United Nations' cultural organisation condemned Israel's seizure of the centre's archive. UNESCO's general secretariat called it a "serious violation of human rights". The American Archivists Association also urged Israel to safeguard the centre's records, encouraging neutral access of materials, and calling for their return.

In Sweden, foreign minister Lennart Bodström said Israel's seizure of the archive was contrary to international law. The Swedish government called for Israel to return the materials and compensate for the losses.

The book's concluding chapter notes that the archive was returned to the PLO after being held by Israel, but there has been significant debate over whether it was returned in full.

Members of Israel's Golani Brigade went door-to-door in the Hamra area of Beirut, searching for the centre'

Gribetz mentions several Palestinian magazines and documents, believed to have been taken from the centre's archive, that he heard were being held at the Moshe Dayan Centre and the African Studies Department at Tel Aviv University.

Lessons from history

Hamid Dabashi, a professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, says think-tanks have supplanted universities in the production of knowledge that serves the interests of colonial forces.

For countries still grappling with the lingering effects of the last round of settler colonialism in the world, the path forward could be familiar to the PLO of the 1960s. To move on, a growing number of research centres (strategic, cultural, media, and documentation institutions) could be set up to actively combat Zionism, racism, occupation, and genocide.

Ultimately, these centres would then serve as an intellectual counterweight to the brute force that seeks to erase their history, culture, and humanity.

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