Sykes’ Semitic-bond speech was covertly distributed across the Jewish diaspora and Arab press

Evidence

At a public meeting in Manchester to celebrate the Balfour Declaration, Sykes said of the Arabs, to a chiefly Jewish audience, ‘You know the Semite sleeps but never dies.’ The pamphlet in which the speech was published, printed by the Zionist organisation and circulated covertly by the British government across the Jewish diaspora, claimed that this statement was followed by ‘Loud cheers’. Sykes went on to say that it ‘was the destiny of the Jews to be closely connected with the Arab revival’, emphasised the need for ‘co-operation and goodwill from the first’ and ‘warned the Jews to look through Arab glasses’. ‘We will, we will!’ the audience were quoted as saying in response. Just over a week later, the day after British imperial troops occupied Jerusalem, this speech was cabled to Cairo and published in Arabic press. In Sharif Hussein’s paper, al-Qibla, produced in Mecca and disseminated by British agents, the comment about the undying Semite was printed in large font. — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 664

Categorization

• QUESTION: The pamphlet was printed by the Zionist organisation and circulated covertly by the British government — who were the intended audiences in the Jewish diaspora and why covertly? What resistance was anticipated?
• XREF: Sykes’ imperial PR operation resembles modern strategic communications; connects to the book’s theme of how officials deploy racial vocabularies to manage subject populations.
• SEED: An article angle: how a colonial official’s carefully staged racial rhetoric — the ‘Semite sleeps but never dies’ line, rehearsed for cheering Jewish audiences and re-printed in Arabic in Mecca — shows imperial powers marketing racial solidarity to manage post-war populations.