French officials treated Zionism as a lever against Arab nationalism

Evidence

Two months before Clayton’s letter, the French Orientalist Louis Massignon, a second lieutenant working with the Franco-British–sponsored Arab Legion, wrote about the thirty-two ‘Israelite Arabs’ who had been recruited for that army in Baghdad. Such terminology could imply that Massignon conceived of an Arab–Jewish symbiosis. However, this was not the case. Instead, he doubted that it was possible to recruit ‘patriotic Israelite Arabs’ and that, as Zionism was opposed to the expansion of King Hussein into Syria, the movement was, ‘in this capacity, an agent of moderation in the sense of the inter-confessional balance’ in that country advocated by France. In other words, Massignon saw Zionism as a useful element to undermine Arab nationalism to further French imperial aims, rather than as its Semitic partner. — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 677

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader pattern in this book of imperial powers instrumentalizing Jewish-Arab relations — parallels Victorian-era British ‘Semitic partnership’ schemes and the divide-and-rule logic in colonial governance elsewhere.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in…, 677