Hasan Salama

Salama was born in the village Qula in 1913 during the Ottoman rule over Palestine.{{citation needed|date=February 2014}} He was one of the leaders of armed Arab groups who fought against British authorities and the Yishuv. He participated in the violent 1933 Jaffa demonstrations during the 1933 Palestine riots, and became a leader of the 1936–39 Arab revolt in Palestine.{{citation needed|date=February 2014}}

File:Hasan Salama on horseback, 1939.jpg

At the beginning of the Revolt in early May 1936 he was assigned to command the Lydda - al-Ramla - Jaffa area.{{citation needed|date=February 2014}} He planned and led a number of successful operations against the British mandatory forces and the Yishuv. These operations included blowing up railway tracks and electrical power poles, severing lines of communication, and burning Yishuv orchards. In 1938 Salama was wounded when he blew up a train on the Lydda-Haifa line.{{citation needed|date=February 2014}} Salama fought under nom de guerre Abu Ali.{{cite book|author1=Barry Rubin|author2=Wolfgang G. Schwanitz|title=Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UHe9AgAAQBAJ|date=25 February 2014|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=978-0-300-14090-3|page=153}}

After the Arab revolt collapsed in Palestine and the breaking of World War II, in October 1939, Salama fled via Beirut and Damascus to Baghdad, together with the mufti of Jerusalem Hajj Amin al-Husseini, Arab High Committee members Jamal al-Husayni, Rafiq al-Tamimi and the revolt military leaders Fawzi al-Qawuqji and Arif Abd al-Razzaq.{{cite book|author=Łukasz Hirszowicz|title=The Third Reich and the Arab East|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BTV6DQAAQBAJ&pg=PT101|date=10 November 2016|publisher=Taylor & Francis|isbn=978-1-315-40939-9|pages=101–102}} When he was in Damascus, Syria in 1939, according to British records, Salama "approached indirectly" the British and offered his services to round up his past comrades. The British declined.State of Israel's blog, June 3, 2015: http://israelsdocuments.blogspot.co.il/2015/06/british-reports-on-hassan-salameh-arab.html{{cite web |url=https://www.archives.gov.il/en/archives/#/Archive/0b07170680034dbf/File/0b071706806e2929 |title=Salameh; Sheik Hassan }} In Iraq Salama had graduated the Military College at Baghdad together with other Army of the Holy War commanders including Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni and 'Abd-al-Rahim Mahmud. The military training was possible due to the special relationship between the mufti and the Iraqi government.{{cite book|author=Yezid Sayigh|title=Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949-1993|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8vrRd33H4cAC&pg=PA697|date=11 December 1997|publisher=Clarendon Press|isbn=978-0-19-151354-1|page=697}} Salama supported Rashid Ali al-Gaylani and led a group of 165 Palestinian fighters. He participated in the Rashid Ali coup of 1941 and the subsequent Anglo-Iraqi War.{{citation needed|date=February 2014}}

File:Hasan Salama Reward Poster.webp

Salama followed the grand mufti al-Husseini to Nazi Germany and became his senior aid and a virtual covert operative of the Germans."{{cite book|author=Kai Bird|title=The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SjctAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT104|date=20 May 2014|publisher=Crown/Archetype|isbn=978-0-307-88977-5|pages=104–}} Salama fled to Berlin from Iraq as a member of the mufti's entourage which included also Fawzi al-Qawuqji. The mufti and his aids were put on payroll by Nazis and were provided with office and living space for the duration of the war.{{cite journal |last1= Medoff |first1=Rafael |date=1996 |title=The Mufti's Nazi years re-examined |journal=Journal of Israeli History |volume= 17 |issue=3 |page=317 |doi=10.1080/13531049608576090 }} Salama took a German wife{{cite book|author=Uri Milstein|title=History of the War of Independence: The first month|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CviXmYN64xQC&pg=PA65|year=1997|publisher=University Press of America|isbn=978-0-7618-0721-6|page=65}} and went through commando and sabotage training,{{cite book|author1=Barry Rubin|author2=Wolfgang G. Schwanitz|title=Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UHe9AgAAQBAJ|date=25 February 2014|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=978-0-300-14090-3|page=241}} and served a member of a special commando unit of the German foreign intelligence organization Amt VI. He participated in Operation ATLAS: on the night of October 6, 1944, Salama and four other commandos (three German Templars and one Palestinian Arab) parachuted from a German Heinkel HeS 3 into mandatory Palestine over Wadi Qelt. Their equipment reportedly included explosives, submachine guns, dynamite, radio equipment and 5,000 Pound sterling. They had some poison capsules intended to liquidate locals believed to be collaborating with the mandatory authoritiesChristian Destremau, [https://books.google.com/books?id=iXGRw65lFBgC&pg=PT149 Le Moyen-Orient pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale], Perrin, 2011. One of the Germans and Salama evaded capture, and he took refuge in Qula, where a physician treated his injured foot.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 The operation was intended to supply local Palestinian Arab resistance groups with resources and arms, and to direct sabotage activity primarily at Jewish (rather than British) targets.[http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/displaycataloguedetails.asp?CATLN=6&CATID=8095616&j=1 The National Archives | The Catalogue | Full Details | KV 2/401] "...The object of the 'Commando', jointly operated by German Intelligence and their protege, the Berlin-based Mufti of Jerusalem, was, through contact with local Palestinians and the supply of cash and arms, to organise local resistance activity, including sabotage. This was to be directed against Jewish rather than British targets...."

File:Hassan_Salame_Headquarters_(1948).JPG in 2015]]

In 1947 Salameh re-emerged as second-in-command of the Army of the Holy War, a force of Palestinian irregulars in the 1947–48 Civil War associated with Grand Mufti al-Husseini.{{cite book|title=The Modern Middle East: A Reader|author=Albert Habib Hourani, Philip S. Khoury and Mary C. Wilson|date=2004-03-04|location=London|publisher=I.B. Tauris |isbn=978-1-86064-963-9|page=537}} The force has been described as Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni's "personal" army.{{cite book|title=The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1947-51|author=Ilan Pappé|date=1994-08-15|location=London|publisher=I.B. Tauris|isbn=978-1-85043-819-9|page=65}} Salama had retrieved Nazi arms that had been hidden in the Egyptian desert during WWII, and on December 8, 1947, used them to attack Tel Aviv's Hatikva Quarter.{{cite book|author1=Barry Rubin|author2=Wolfgang G. Schwanitz|title=Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UHe9AgAAQBAJ|date=25 February 2014|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=978-0-300-14090-3|page=199}} Haganah had prior information and were expecting the attack. After three-hour battle Palestinians retreated, Salama lost about one hundred men killed.{{cite book|author=David Tal|title=War in Palestine, 1948: Israeli and Arab Strategy and Diplomacy|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Vs2PAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA52|date=24 June 2004|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-135-77513-1|pages=52–53}} The mufti assigned Salama to the Lydda district, the appointment acknowledged by the Military Committee of the Arab league, however after Jaffa's commander Al-Hawwari, who was appointed at December 1947, had openly met with Haganah intelligence service officers to discuss cease-fire, Al-Hawwari was abolished from Jaffa.{{cite book|author=Itamar Radai|title=Palestinians in Jerusalem and Jaffa, 1948: A Tale of Two Cities|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tKY0CwAAQBAJ&pg=PA186|date=14 December 2015|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-317-36806-9|page=186}} At January 22, Salama had arrived at Jaffa commanding forty Bosnian Yugoslavian troops, who were experienced soldiers familiar with preparing, using explosives and building fortifications, probably veterans of the Muslim division of Waffen SS recruited by the mufti for Nazis. Salama remained in Jaffa for ten days.{{cite book|author=Itamar Radai|title=Palestinians in Jerusalem and Jaffa, 1948: A Tale of Two Cities|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tKY0CwAAQBAJ&pg=PA160|date=14 December 2015|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-317-36806-9|page=160}} Salama was partially successful in organizing militia of five hundred men from the armed groups active in Jaffa, though some joined "only nominally". At a meeting held in Damascus on 5 February 1948, Salama was removed from Jaffa by the Military Committee of the Arab league and his assignment to the Lydda district was reconfirmed.{{cite book|author=Itamar Radai|title=Palestinians in Jerusalem and Jaffa, 1948: A Tale of Two Cities|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tKY0CwAAQBAJ&pg=PA187|date=14 December 2015|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-317-36806-9|page=187}}{{cite book|title=Military Preparations of the Arab Community in Palestine: 1945-1948|author=Haim Levenberg|date=1993-09-01|location=London|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-0-7146-3439-5|page=198}} As a regional commander Salame organised activity along the roads in his region{{cite book|author=David Tal|title=War in Palestine, 1948: Israeli and Arab Strategy and Diplomacy|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Vs2PAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA68|date=24 June 2004|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-135-77513-1|page=68}} along Al-Ramla - Jaffa road.{{cite book|author=David Tal|title=War in Palestine, 1948: Israeli and Arab Strategy and Diplomacy|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Vs2PAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA63|date=24 June 2004|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-135-77513-1|page=63}} About five hundred Bosnian volunteers joined Salama and Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni ranks.{{cite book|author=David Tal|title=War in Palestine, 1948: Israeli and Arab Strategy and Diplomacy|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Vs2PAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA20|date=24 June 2004|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-135-77513-1|page=20}} Salama may have known Bosnian Waffen S. S. 13th Handžar (’Knife’) veterans who joined from his training in Germany during World War II.{{cite journal |last1= Frantzman |first1=Seth J |last2=Culibrk |first2= Jovan |date=2009 |title=Strange Bedfellows: The Bosnians and Yugoslav Volunteers in the 1948 War in Israel/Palestine |journal=Istorija 20. Veka, 1/2009 }} Foreign volunteers were important part of Salama force, since local Arabs avoided taking part in fighting. For instance, Salama had to use foreign volunteers to carry out an attack he planned on Jewish transport to Rishon Letzion, since Bayt Dajan residents refused to help him.{{cite book|author=David Tal|title=War in Palestine, 1948: Israeli and Arab Strategy and Diplomacy|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Vs2PAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA46|date=24 June 2004|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-135-77513-1|page=46}} During March 1948 Haganah intelligence had learned that Salama together with Iraqi commander of Al-Ramla established command headquarters in a four-storey building near al-Ramla. On April 5, Givati Brigade's company infiltrated and destroyed the compound, 25 Arabs were killed. Salama was not harmed, however his escape was deemed "disgraceful". However Salama returned to the destroyed building, retrieved the equipment and established his new command headquarters at Yehudia village.{{cite book|author=David Tal|title=War in Palestine, 1948: Israeli and Arab Strategy and Diplomacy|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Vs2PAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA93|date=24 June 2004|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-135-77513-1|page=93}} There are reports that Salama used ex-Nazi advisors in his fight in Palestine.{{cite book|author1=Barry Rubin|author2=Wolfgang G. Schwanitz|title=Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UHe9AgAAQBAJ|date=25 February 2014|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=978-0-300-14090-3|page=200}}

Salama was a member of the Palestine Arab Party.

Salama was injured in the battle of Ra's al-‘Ayn and died on 2 June 1948.{{cite web|url=http://www.passia.org/palestine_facts/personalities/alpha_s.htm#s11|title=Alphabetical & Chronological listing of Palestinian Personalities|publisher=Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131204220510/http://www.passia.org/palestine_facts/personalities/alpha_s.htm#s11|archive-date=2013-12-04}}{{cite journal |last1= Tauber |first1=Eliezer |date=2013 |title=Palestine 1948: the cryptography of the Arab volunteers |journal=Journal of Intelligence History |volume=12 |issue=1 |pages=36–48 |doi=10.1080/16161262.2013.755018 |doi-access=free }} 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.{{Cite news|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/this_world/4627388.stm|title=The hunt for Black September|date=January 24, 2006|via=news.bbc.co.uk}}

• Israel State Archives, [https://www.archives.gov.il/en/archives/#/Archive/0b07170680034dbf/File/0b071706806e2929 British police file on Hasan Salama].

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Category:1912 births

Category:1948 deaths

Category:Palestinian Arab nationalists

Category:Arab people in Mandatory Palestine

Category:German World War II special forces

Category:Arab collaborators with Nazi Germany

Category:Military personnel killed in action

Category:Palestinian people of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War

Category:Palestinian military personnel

Category:Rebel commanders of the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine