"War also was a mighty purveyor of human chattels. When we remember that Titus, in a single campaign in Judæa (70 A.D.), reduced to slavery 90,000 Jews, our imagination becomes appalled at the multitudes of captives that the incessant struggles with the Parthians, and particularly the conquests of Trajan, must have thrown on the markets of the Occident.
But whether taken en masse after some great victory, or acquired singly by the professional traffickers in human flesh, these slaves were particularly numerous in the maritime towns, to which their transportation was cheap and easy." - Franz Cumont, "The Mysteries of Mithra" 1903, Pg. 64.
What the dishonourable King of Morocco did the other day, weaponizing his subjects and using them as precision guided human missiles against the territory of Spain, was an act of war.
Spain is fully in the right to throw out the Moroccan ambassador and declare war on Morocco.
This act must not go unpunished or else it will continue.
The King of Morocco received bad advice from the lunatics governing Washington and Tel Aviv. He mistakenly believes Spain won't act to defend its interests and its historic territory.
Spain has to remind Mohammed VI he's a corrupt playboy King, not a warrior.
II.
An excerpt from, "Europe and the Islamic World: A History" By John Tolan, Gilles Veinstein, and Henry Laurens; Translated by Jane Marie Todd, Princeton University Press, 2013, Pg. 387 - 391:
The French and British sought to draw Turkey into their camp by providing it with major benefits. France completely ceded the sanjak of Alexandretta, part of its mandate in the Levant, leading to lasting resentment among the Syrians. The German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact changed the situation. Moscow called on the Ankara regime to remain neutral. It complied, even after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, In 1943-1944, the English-speaking countries tried to persuade Turkey to join the war on their side, but Ankara quietly refused using as a pretext the weakness of its army, which lacked modern materiel, and the geographical vulnerability of its territory. (The Axis powers controlled all of Greece. the Balkans, and the islands in the Aegean Sea.
Turkev was the chief Muslim country to be spared by the new war that had begun in Europe. The populations of the French and British colonial empires were not consulted when the European countries joined the war in September 1939. The Indian nationalists protested the decision, which called into question the dyarchy of the previous years. With the Japanese invasion of 1942, military operations reached the borders of India. The Congress Party actively opposed the war and was subjected to harsh repression. The Indian Muslims, by contrast, were patently "loyal." In a context where the British were compelled to draw on India's resources to the maximum extent, and to promise the status of Dominion or even complete independence after the war, the Muslims obtained a true veto right over the future. In those terrible years, the idea developed of constituting a "Pakistan," a "Muslim nation" uniting northern India into a federation with rather loose ties to the rest of the subcontinent.
The war in North Africa began in June 1940. The French possessions fell under the provisions of the Armistice agreement, later constituting, under Maxime Weygand's command, the sole instance of unified management of the Maghreb. In 1943, the "Western Desert," covering Libya and Egypt, became one of the main battlefields. For a year, the British Empire fought the Axis Powers with almost absurdly inadequate means, but also with unflagging resolve. The conquest of the Balkans, then of Crete, by the German forces in spring 1941 brought the threat dangerously close. The Arab nationalists in Iraq staged a coup détat and made contact with the Germans. The British counterattack was swift. With rough-and-ready forces, they reoccupied Iraq in May 1941. Because Vichy France had authorized the Germans to use the Levantine airports to bring aid to the Iraqis, the British imperial troops, while they were at it, penetrated the French Mandate, with the cooperation of the Free French Forces and a contingent of Zionists. That miniwar, which on the French side took on the aspect of a civil war, also created the oddity of Arab nationalists fighting on Vichy's side. In mid-July, the Vichy forces obtained an armistice that allowed them to return to metropolitan France on a voluntary basis.
To calm tensions, on May 29, 1941, Anthony Eden, British secretary of state for foreign affairs, made a declaration expressing his country's sympathy for the cause of Arab unity, without mentioning Zionism. On June 8, 1941, the French general Georges Catroux announced, in General de Gaulle's name, the principle of independence for Syria and Lebanon, based on treaties to be concluded.
The German invasion of the Soviet Union changed the strategic game. The Iran of Reza Shah seemed to have moved too close to Germany. The Soviets and the British called on Tehran to expel the Germans present in Iran and jointly invaded the country in late August 1941. Reza Shah was deposed and replaced by his son. The imperial regime seemed on the point of collapse, but above all, the country was for the first time under complete occupation.
In early 1941, the Italo-German threat to Egypt became more acute. King Farouk and his entourage attempted to make contact with the enemies of the British. On February 4, 1942, the British staged a true coup ďétat, which forced Farouk to recall the Wafd to power. The Egyptian public felt a real nationa humiliation. On June 27, 1942, the Italo-German forces entered Egyptian territory. They arrived on July 1 in El Alamein, sixty kilometers from Alexandria. Simultaneously in Russia, the Germans took Crimea and proceeded toward the Caucasus. With the Japanese advance in the Pacific, the Middle East seemed to be the point of convergence for the three major offensives of the Axis Powers.The British mobilized the entire economic potential of the Middle East to sustain the rising power of their war machine in the Western Desert. They would soon have at their disposal more than a million soldiers, from Iran to Libya, restoring the illusion of power that had existed in 1918. That war effort was financed on credit and favored the industrialization of the region as a whole. Great Britain rapidly went into debt, with hundreds of millions of pounds sterling owed to every country between India and Egypt. Inflation was high, which worked to the advantage of all debtors. Rural debt, the traditional scourge of the Arab countryside, was practically liquidated. Although, overall, the Middle East enriched itself during these war years, food rationing was imposed. It was substantially less restrictive than that existing in Europe at the same time and far from the famine conditions experienced during World War I.
Caught up in a fight to the death with Nazism, Great Britain proved steadfast in its opposition to all forms of nationalism (Zionism included) suspected of serving German interests, whether intentionally or unintentionallv. The British violated all the political compromises of the interwar period. For the time being, they seemed to have an overpowering force at their disposal, but in practice they destroyed any possibility for political collaboration in the following period. They did try to conduct an ideological war of propaganda against Fascism, but any discourse promoting the defense of human freedoms could only turn against their colonial practices.With the fall of France, emotion ran high in North Africa. A real feeling of unity briefly brought together Europeans and Muslims. But the Vichy regime abolished democratic freedoms and proved particularly paternalistic toward the indigenous Arabs. It applied the anti-Semitic laws with particular rigor (the Algerian Jews lost their status as French citizens), without even the excuse of pressure from the Occupation forces. In Algeria as in the two protectorates. the Muslims had a rather negative view of that state-sponsored anti-Semitism.Nazi Germany had no political ambitions in the Muslim world. The Mediterranean was supposed to be an Italian zone of influence. Germany was tempted to support Arab nationalist movements in Iraq. Paradoxically, the existence of the Vichy regime paralyzed the Nazis' actions in that direction. If German support of the Muslims were too overt, it would risk pushing all of North Africa into the camp of de Gaulle and the Allies (the United Nations, as of 1942). The Arab nationalists who had taken refuge in Nazi-dominated Europe attempted to obtain a clearer declaration than that of the Allies in World War I, but Hitler and Mussolini equivocated. The best they could offer was a secret declaration, dated April 28, 1942, recognizing the sovereignty and independence of the Arab countries of the Near East and accepting their union, insofar as it was desired by the countries concerned, and the destruction of the Jewish national homeland in Palestine.Fascist and especially Nazi propaganda broadcast over the radio waves elaborated anti-Semitic themes and pointed out the contradiction between the proclaimed doctrine of the United Nations and their colonial policy. It had a clear impact in the Middle East but did not lead to political mobilization. The Muslim countries from Iran to Egypt, legally independent or under mandate, did not take part in combat. Their military potential was low and their loyalty dubious. Some volunteered, but they primarily served in logistical positions for the Allied forces. (A few Syrians and Lebanese joined the French Free Forces.)It was the British who, during the crucial year of 1941, made the United States aware of the strategic importance of the Middle East. Desperately lacking in means, they insisted on the direct delivery of American war materiel to the forces engaged in the Western Desert. When Saudi Arabia appeared at risk of collapse because of the drop in its revenues (resulting from the de facto suspension of the Muslim pilgrimage), Great Britain asked the U.S. government to grant the kingdom financial aid. After the Soviet Union entered the war, the Americans took direct control of the "Persian corridor," supplying materiel to the Red Army from the Gulf ports. More than twenty thousand American soldiers participated in that vast logistical operation, which in September 1942 became the Persian Gulf Command. The Americans became involved in the overall economic management of the Middle East.In summer 1942, the American military realized that if the Egyptian and Caucasian fronts collapsed, the deciding battle would unfold in southern Iraq, near Basra, and the U.S. army would be part of it. The Allies made the decision to proceed to a North African rear landing. This was Operation Torch, which took place on November 8, 1942.Franklin Delano Roosevelt was firmly opposed to European colonialism. In his view, the aim of the war for the United States was not only the liberation of the European peoples from Nazi domination but the general application of the right to self-determination. He recognized that the colonized peoples were not immediately ready for independence and considered setting in place a system of international trusteeship for the interim period. Its application was supposed to be more rapid for peoples of the "brown or "yellow" races than for those of the black race. Roosevelt had to take into account the exigencies of the war, to the point of accepting the "temporary expedient" of maintaining the Vichy regime in North Africa under the leadership of Jean-Louis Darlan and then Henri Giraud. The war spread to Tunisia until the surrender of the German forces on May 13, 1943. Once French reunification had occurred with the constitution of the "government of Algiers" and de Gaulle's victory, the Americans did not interfere in North African affairs, but their show of force had been overwhelming.Once the war had shifted away from the Muslim world, politics returned. The Americans pushed for the rapid independence of Syria and Lebanon, despite the resistance of the Free French Forces and then of the Provisional Government of the French Republic.The war demonstrated the strategic importance of Middle Eastern oil, especially since the reserves on the American continent were expected to be exhausted over the medium term. Saudi Arabia, defined as an American "nationa interest," became the privileged partner of the United States in the Middle East. The kingdom took the opportunity to emancipate itself from British influence.Everywhere, the Americans opposed maintaining the economic and honorific privileges of the British in the Middle East. American-Arab relations were defined in terms of cooperation and fraternity, in contrast to the hierarchical view held by the British.But the Palestine question was still not settled. The British had in mind a new partitioning, with an Arab part based in a future "Greater Syria." They gave up that idea in late 1944. In the United States, the question had become an internal policy issue. Roosevelt envisioned making Palestine the testing ground for the new policy of trusteeship, but his premature death kept him from carrying out his intentions.In 1945, all the Middle Eastern states declared war on the Axis Powers, the price of admission for participating in the constitution of the United Nations. The prestige of the United States was at its height in the Muslim world, whereas the European powers seemed to belong to the past.
