Syrian Social Nationalist Party

Syrian Social Nationalist Party
الحزب السوري القومي الاجتماعي
Founder Antun Saadeh
Founded 1932
Headquarters Beirut, Lebanon
Newspaper Al-Binaa
Ideology Syrian Nationalism
Left-wing nationalism
Pan-Syrianism
Anti-Zionism
Secularism
(see "ideology" section)
Colours              Black, Red, White
People's Council
4 / 250
Cabinet of Syria
2 / 35
Party flag
Website
www.ssnp.net
www.esaadah.com
www.alqawmi.info

The Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) (Arabic: الحزب السوري القومي الاجتماعي‎, transliterated: Al-Ḥizb Al-Sūrī Al-Qawmī Al-'Ijtimā'ī, often referred to in French as Parti populaire syrien or Parti social nationaliste syrien), is a nationalist political party operating in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Palestine. It advocates the establishment of a Syrian nation state spanning the Fertile Crescent, including present day Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan, Palestine, Cyprus, Sinai, southeastern Turkey (Alexandrette and Cilicia) and southwestern Iran (Al Ahwaz), based on geographical boundaries and the common history people within the boundaries share.[1]

With over 100,000 members,[2] it is the second largest legal political group in Syria after the ruling Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party,[3] In Lebanon, it has been a major secular and highly organised elite party in the political history of the country for over 80 years. Until recent times it was a key group in the March 8 Alliance.

Founded in Beirut in 1932 as an anticolonial and national liberation organization hostile to French colonialism, the party played a significant role in Lebanese politics and was involved in attempted coup d'etats in 1949 and 1961 following which it was thoroughly repressed. It was active in resistance against the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the subsequent occupation of southern Lebanon until 2000 while continuously supporting the Syrian presence in Lebanon out of belief in national unity across the 'Greater Natural Historical Syria'. In Syria, the SSNP became a major political force in the early 1950s, but was thoroughly repressed in 1955. It remained organised, and in 2005 was legalised and joined the Ba'ath Party-led National Progressive Front. From 2012 to 6 May 2014,[4][5] the party was part of the Popular Front for Change and Liberation.[6]

During the course of the Syrian Civil War the party has seen its relevance increasing in Syria.[7]

Background

The Early Syrian Nationalists

In the mid Nineteenth Century Butrus al-Bustani was one of the first to assert the existence of a Natural Syrian nation that should be accommodated in a reformed Ottoman Empire.[8] He belonged to the Nahda, thinkers influenced by the Arabic Literary Renaissance and the French Revolution[9] and who wished to shape the Tanzimat reforms, which were an attempt to introduce a constitutional monarchy with religious freedom to reverse the Ottoman state's creeping economic marginalisation[10] and which would lead to the Young Turks and the Second Constitutional Era.

An influential follower of al-Bustani was the Belgian Jesuit historian, Henri Lammens, ordained as a priest in Beirut in 1893, who claimed that Greater Syria had since ancient times encompassed all the land between the Arab peninsula, Egypt, the Levantine corridor and the Taurus Mountains, including all the peoples within the Fertile Crescent.[11]

"Syria is the Tunic of Christ" - Henri Lammens.

Colonialism, Zionism and Sectarianism

The late 1920s and the early 1930s were also a period of cultural and political effervescence that greatly contributed to the emergence of Syrian nationalism as a distinct ideology. In 1920, the French army toppled the first Arab Kingdom of Syria and the Hashemite King Faisal, who had been proclaimed "King of all-Syria" by the Syrian National Congress at the Battle of Maysalun. The British and the French dissected the region into spheres of influence in what later became known as the Sykes-Picot agreement, setting up colonial administrations throughout the Levant. The Great Syrian Revolt was brutally repressed in 1925 while a small clique of traditional landowners and notables coalesced around the newly founded administration of the French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon. Greater Lebanon was established on the ruins of the Mutasarrifiyya of Mount Lebanon with arbitrarily drawn borders and with a state structure largely dominated by the Christian Maronites, a community whose elite were historically well-disposed to the French, and who would ensure the French colonial empire a strong foothold in the Arab World. Jewish immigration to Palestine was increasing at an alarming speed, bringing to the shores of Palestine Zionist migrants who had little affinity to (Revisionist Zionism) or similarities with (Marxist and Labor Zionism) the local populace, be it the Palestinian Arabs or the traditional local Jewish communities. Class tensions sharpened as some Palestinian landowners sold their lands to the Jewish National Fund, with little regard to the national aspirations and plight of the peasantry. As the Balfour Declaration became public, fears in the Levant of the parceling out of the region along Colonial borders implied in the minds of many the need for concerted action throughout the Levant that would transcend traditional sectarian divides. Similarly, Communism, perceived by many as an alien ideology that did not resonate much with the socioeconomic conditions of the early 20th century Levant, was looked upon with suspicion, particularly since many Zionist migrants settling in Palestine were coming from the Soviet Union.

Many Syrian and Lebanese youth saw these events as omens of an ill future in which the Levant, which had until then been a single economic and social entity within the Ottoman Empire referred to as Bilad al-Sham, would be dismembered along religious, ethnic, and class lines. As the traditional elite stirred away from the people and slowly sought the good offices of the French High Commissioner, and given the repression with which the French Mandate was applied, Secret societies flourished in the late 1920s. Similarly, many begin to see the devastating effect that sectarianism was bringing upon the people of the region, be it pro-Christian Separatism in Lebanon or the radicalism of Islamist elements in Syria, which pitted each faction against the other and benefited no other than the colonial administration, and began to condemn the mixing of religion with politics. The path was hence laid down for the emergence of a political ideology that would simultaneously fight against the dismemberment of the region, Zionism, and Colonialism, through Anti-colonialism, Liberation War, and National Revival, while keeping communism in check. It also represented a clear departure from the Arab nationalist current that advocated the unification of the entirety of the Arab World, and which had implicit Islamic nationalist undertones. This ideology was to be that of a Romanticized Secular Greater Syria based upon the natural geographical boundaries that defined the region loosely dubbed as the Fertile Crescent, an ideology that Antun Saadeh would come to assert with the foundation of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, where it found its full expression.

Foundation and early years

Antun Saadeh

The SSNP was founded by Antun Saadeh, a Lebanese journalist and lecturer from a Greek Orthodox family who had lived in South America from 1919 to 1930[12]:43 who in November 1932 secretly established the first nucleus of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, which operated underground for the first three years of its existence,[12] and in 1933 started publishing the monthly journal Al-Majalla which was distributed in the American University of Beirut and developed the party's ideology. In 1936 the party's open hostility to colonialism led to the French authorities banning the party and the imprisoning Saadeh for six months for creating a clandestine party,[12] although an accusation of having been in contact with the German and Italian fascist movements was dropped after the Germans denied any relationship.[12] During his time in prison Saadeh wrote The Genesis of Nations to lay out the SSNP's ideology.

Saadeh emigrated again to Brazil in 1938 and afterwards to Argentina, only to return to Lebanon in 1947 following the country's independence from the French in 1943. On his way to Argentina, he visited Italy and Berlin, which increased the suspicions of the French that the SSNP might have been entertaining relations with the Axis. Coming back shortly to Lebanon in 1939, he was questioned by the French authorities who accused him of plotting with the Germans. The charge was dropped when no evidence of collaboration had been found and after that Saadeh declared that even the French rule to which he was vehemently opposed would be better than German or Italian rule. Having afterwards left for Argentina, Saadeh found out that the Argentinian branch of the SSNP newspaper had been voicing its outright support for Nazi Germany and to the Axis powers, which led Saadeh to issue a lengthy letter to the editor-in-chef, restating that the SSNP is not a National Socialist party and that no stance should be taken vis-à-vis the Allies or the Axis.[13] By that time, the SSNP had grown exponentially and had clashed on many occasions with its primary ideological rival, the Kataeb Party, a Spanish Fascist-Inspired party that had been founded by Pierre Gemayel, a pharmacist and athlete after his return from the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Being vehemently anti-communist in its early days, a position that would later change, it had also clashed with the Syrian-Lebanese Communist Party, the latter accusing the SSNP of Nazi sympathies.

Film in Arabic about Saadeh's return to Lebanon in 1947

While the Kataeb was committed to the notion of Lebanon as a nation state defined as an entity presiding over the borders outlined first by the Sykes-Picot agreement in 1916, and afterwards by the French administrative division of its mandate into six states including the state of Greater Lebanon, and had espoused a strong bond between the nation and the church as well as outright social ultraconservatism, the SSNP rejected these national claim on the basis that the borders outlining the newly created states were fictitious, resulting from colonialism, and do not reflect any historical and social realities. The party claimed that Greater Syria as defined by Saadeh represents the national ideal encompassing the historical people of Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent, bound together by a clearly defined geography and a common historical, social and cultural development path away from all sectarianism [14] Furthermore, and with the start of the Arab-Israeli conflict in 1948, Saadeh radicalized the party's Anti-Zionist stance by declaring that "Our struggle with the enemy is not a struggle for borders but for existence."

On July 4, 1949, a year after the declaration of the establishment of the state of Israel and the 1948 Palestinian exodus (the Nakba), and a response to a series of aggressions perpetrated by the Kataeb-backed central government, the SSNP attempted its first revolution. Following a violent crackdown by government forces, Saadeh traveled to Damascus to meet with Husni al-Za'im in an attempt to obtain his support. A decision taken by king Farouk, Riad el Solh and Husni al-Za'im to eliminate Antoun Saadeh under the patronage of British Intelligence and Mossad.[15] As a result, Al-Za'im handed Saadeh over to Lebanese authorities, who had him executed on July 8, 1949. It was the shortest and most secretive trial given to a political offender.[16]

The SSNP in Lebanon

Flags of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party in Beirut on May 9 during the 2008 conflict in Lebanon

After Saadeh was executed and its high-ranking leaders were arrested, the party remained underground until 1958 when it sided with then-president Camille Chamoun against the Arab nationalist rebels.[17]

In 1961 two SSNP members, company commanders in the Lebanese army, tried to carry off a lightning coup against Fouad Chehab and failed.[18] This resulted in a renewed proscription and the imprisonment of many of its leaders.[19] Most of the party's known activists remained in prison or exile until a general amnesty in 1969.[18]

With the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975, the SSNP formed a military squad that allied with the leftist Lebanese National Movement (LNM), against the Phalangists and their allies of the Lebanese Front. The SSNP saw the Lebanese Civil War as the inevitable result of the divisions of the Syrian nation into small states and away from a liberation war against Israel. After the defeat of leftist forces in the 1982 Lebanon War, the SSNP joined a number of the leftist organizations who regrouped to resist the Israeli occupation, including the killing of two Israeli soldiers in a Wimpy Cafe in west Beirut by party member Khalid Alwan. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation blames the SSNP for the assassination, in 1982, of Bachir Gemayel,[20] Lebanon's newly elected president supported by the Israelis besieging Beirut. In 1983 the party joined the Lebanese National Salvation Front. In 1985, a member of the party, Sana'a Mehaidli, detonated a car bomb next to an Israeli military convoy at Jezzin, South Lebanon. She killed two Israeli soldiers and become one of the first known female suicide bombers.

The SSNP participated in a number of general elections in Lebanon, winning six seats in 1992, although seeing a decline in subsequent elections winning two seats in both 2005 and 2009. The SSNP were involved in the 2008 conflict in Lebanon, with gunmen attacking an SSNP office.[21][22][23][24][25][26]

The SSNP in Syria

In Syria the SSNP grew to a position of considerable influence in the years following the country's independence in 1946, and was a major political force immediately after the restoration of democracy in 1954. It was a fierce rival of the Syrian Communist Party and of the radical pan-Arab Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, the other main ideological parties of the period. In April 1955 Colonel Adnan al-Malki, a Ba'athist officer who was a very popular figure in the Syrian army, was assassinated by a party member. This provided the Communists and Ba'athists with the opportunity to eliminate their main ideological rival, and under pressure from them and their allies in the security forces the SSNP was practically wiped out as a political force in Syria.

The SSNP's stance during the Lebanese civil war and in Lebanese politics –where it has become a close ally of Hezbollah–[7] was consistent with that of Syria, and that facilitated a rapprochement between the party and the Syrian government. During Hafez al-Assad's presidency, the party was increasingly tolerated. After the succession of his son Bashar in 2000, this process continued. In 2001, although still officially banned, the party was permitted to attend meetings of the Ba'ath-led National Progressive Front coalition of legal parties as an observer. In Spring 2005 the party was legalised in Syria, in what has been described as "an attempt to allow a limited form of political activity".[7] It is considered to be one of the largest political parties in the country, after the ruling Ba'ath Party, with perhaps 100,000 members.[27]

Over time, the SSNP and the Syrian Baathist regime experienced a dramatic turnabout in their historical relationship, from enemies to allies. The process started as the party reckoned that Hafez al-Assad regional goals such as consolidating Syria's control over Lebanon and the PLO were consistent with the SSNP's goal of establishing Greater Syria,[18] while the SSNP reciprocated acting as a Syrian proxy in Lebanon. The alliance has strengthened on the face of the Syrian Civil War.

In the 22 April 2007 election for the People's Council of Syria, the party gained 3 out of 250 in the parliament.

Notable SSNP politicians in Syria

The SSNP in Jordan

In 1966 King Hussein had his security services sent into action to eradicate the SSNP from Jordan. The party had been active among the Palestinian population.[18]

In 2013 followers of the party established the 'Tendency of Syrian Social Nationalists in Jordan'.[28][29]

Ideology

Political tenets

While in jail from early February to early May 1936, Saadeh completed The Genesis of Nations which he had started writing three months before the French authorities in Lebanon discovered the secret organization and arrested its leader and his assistants. In his book, Saadeh formulated his belief in the existence of a Syrian nation in a homeland defined as embracing all historic Syria extended to the Suez Canal in the south, and that includes modern Syria, Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and Kuwait. The boundaries of the historic environment in which the Syrian nation evolved went much beyond the scope usually ascribed to Syria, extending from the Taurus range in the north-east and the Zagros mountains in the north-west to the Suez Canal and the Red Sea in the south and includes the Sinai peninsula and the Gulf of Aqaba, and from the Mediterranean Sea in the west, including the island of Cyprus, to the arch of the Arabian desert and the Persian Gulf in the east.[14] According to Saadeh, this region is also called the Syrian Fertile Crescent, the island Cyprus being its star.

According to Saadeh, geographical factors play an important role in setting the parameters for the process of association and thus for the establishment of a nation. He held that the process of human evolution from hunter-gatherer to settled agriculture was among the most important factors that led to the creation of private property and the class system. Saadeh highlighted the role that the class system played in the flourishing of trade and commerce and the creation of wealth, ascribing it to be a characteristic of the Semitic peoples, namely the coastal Phoenicians. He also stressed the link between the economic modes of production and the establishment of cultural norms and values, a view he shared with Karl Marx.

However, Saadeh believed that while the economic modes of production can create culture, culture acquires a life of its own with time and eventually becomes embedded and perpetuated in its people, who come to recognize themselves as a living organism. Hence comes the importance of the state in serving the interest of the nation, and of national democracy as the legitimate source of political legislation.

The party's foundations were that this development pattern is exemplary to the Syrians and they came to constitute a complete nation and civilization throughout history. Saadeh advocated for all ethnoreligious groups to consider themselves as descendants of the pre-Christian era empires of Babylonia and Assyria, of the Hittites and the kings of Aram, then of the Islamic era, all the way up until the present.[18] The SSNP claimed that the Greater Syria is the natural home of the Syrian people with clearly defined geographic boundaries, yet that its people are suffering from an identity crisis due to Ottoman occupation, colonialism, and sectarianism. Saadeh claimed that the renaissance of the Syrian nation is inevitably linked to the purge of these "decadent" forces through the reinforcing of national solidarity, resistance against colonialism, and adoption of secularism.

In Saadeh's vision of "harmony" among the country's ethnic and religious communities through a return to a so-called Syrian "racial unity", neither Islam nor pan-Arabism was important, and therefore religion wasn't either.[18] Saadeh's concept of the nation was shaped mainly by historical concrete interactions amongst people over the centuries in a given geography, rather than being based on ethnic origins, race, language or religion. This led him also to conclude that the Arabs could not form one nation, but many nations could be called Arab.

Economic theory

While the core of the party's political theory revolves around the establishment of a Greater Syrian nation state, the economic theory upon which the state is to be organized remains a topic of contention. As a matter of fact, Saadeh did not elaborate a comprehensive economic theory, yet proposed a social nationalist model which can be considered to some extent as a distinctive form of socialism. As a matter of fact, among the key tenets of social nationalism figured the abolition of feudalism, the emancipation of the working class, the establishment of economic dirigisme and the welfare state, universal healthcare as well as universal education for the purpose of securing national solidarity. This remains a topic of debate, however, as the strongly pronounced nationalistic features of SSNP ideology would permit scholars to interpret social nationalism as a distinctive breed of National Syndicalism.

Organization

The SSNP was organised with a hierarchical structure and a powerful leader. Its ideology was an entirely secular form of nationalism; indeed, it posited the complete separation of religion and politics as one of the two fundamental conditions for real national unity. The other condition was determined economic and social reform.[30]

Greater Syria

Emblem and flag

The party's emblem is the whirlwind (in Arabic Zawba'a زوبعة). It was designed by the SSNP students at the American University of Beirut while the party was still clandestine and before the French authorities had uncovered it in 1936. The SSNP emblem is a combination of the Islamic crescent and the Christian cross.[31] The party flag features a red hurricane, called the "Zawba'a", within a white disc on a black background. Each arm symbolizes one of the four virtues of the party's mission: freedom, duty, discipline and power.[12]:45 According to SSNP lore, the black color symbolizes the Dark Ages of Ottoman rule, colonialism, sectarian division, national division, and backwardness. The "Zawba'a" allegedly represents the blood of the SSNP martyrs bound together as Muslims and Christians through freedom, duty, discipline and power as a hurricane to purge the Dark Ages and spark their nation's rejuvenation and renaissance. Critics claim that the symbol was modeled after the Nazi swastika[32][33][34][35][36][37] a claim that the party denies.[7]

Criticism

Ideological criticism

Despite Saadeh's claims, some authors state that when the party began overt activity, it was the object of many critiques due to having many ideological and organizational resemblances to European fascism, and due to the resemblance of its external symbols to those of German Nazism.[32][33][34] Such resemblances went against the idea that it was an authentic national ideology and couldn't be acknowledged by the party.[12] The party's founder Saadeh was aware of these accusations and he addressed them during his speech of 1 June 1935 (long before the events of World War II, and before the party was given publicity and the accusations started appearing in the press):

“ The system of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party is not a Hitlerite or a Fascist system, but that it is purely a Syrian system which does not stand on unprofitable imitation, but on basic originality which is one of the characteristics of our people. ”
— Antun Saadeh, June 1935.[12][38]

According to Reeva S. Johnson, Saadeh, the party's 'leader for life', was an admirer of Adolf Hitler influenced by Nazi and fascist ideology.[35][39] The party adopted a reversed swastika as the party's symbol, sang the party's anthem to Deutschland über alles, and included developing the cult of a leader, advocating totalitarian government, and glorifying an ancient pre-Christian past and the organic whole of the Syrian Volk or nation.[32][35]

Arab nationalist thinker Sati' al-Husri considered that Saadeh "misrepresented" Arab nationalism, incorrectly associating it with a Bedouin image of the Arab and with Muslim sectarianism. Palestinian historian Maher Charif sees Saadeh's theory as a response to the religious diversity of Syria, and points to his later extension of his vision of the Syrian nation to include Iraq, a country also noted for its religious diversity, as further evidence for this.[40] The party also accepted that due to "religious and political considerations", the separate existence of Lebanon was necessary for the time being.[30]

From 1945 on, the party adopted a more nuanced stance regarding Arab nationalism, seeing Syrian unity as a potential first step towards an Arab union led by Syria.[30]

Scholarly criticism

Lebanese historian Kamal Salibi gives a somewhat contrasting interpretation, pointing to the position of the Greek Orthodox community as a large minority in both Syria and Lebanon for whom "the concept of pan-Syrianism was more meaningful than the concept of Arabism" while at the same time they resented Maronite dominance in Lebanon. According to Salibi,

Saadeh found a ready following among his co-religionists. His idea of secular pan-Syrianism also proved attractive to many Druzes and Shiites; to Christians other than the Greek Orthodox, including some Maronites who were disaffected by both Lebanism and Arabism; and also to many Sunnite Muslims who set a high value on secularism, and who felt that they had far more in common with their fellow Syrians of whatever religion or denomination than with fellow Sunnite or Muslim Arabs elsewhere. Here again, an idea of nationalism had emerged which had sufficient credit to make it valid. In the Lebanese context, however, it became ready cover for something more archaic, which was essentially Greek Orthodox particularism.[41]

Prof. Salibi remarks on the beginnings of Saadeh's party in the 1930s: "[A]mong its first members were students and young graduates of the American University of Beirut." This early party was "mainly Greek Orthodox and Protestants with some Shi'ites and Druzes...." In Lebanon as a whole the party was not popular. "Christians were generally opposed to their Syrian unionism, while Moslems were suspicious of their reservations with regard to pan-Arabism. The Lebanese authorities were able to suppress them without difficulty."[42]

According to historian Stanley G. Payne, the Arab nationalism was influenced by European fascism, with the creation of at least seven Arab nationalist shirt movements similar to the brown shirt movement by 1939, with the most influenced ones being the SSNP, the Iraqi Futawa youth movement and the Young Egypt movement.[43] These three movements would share characteristics like being territorially expansionist, with the SSNP wanting the complete control of Syria, belief in the superiority of their own people (with Saadeh theorizing a "distinct and naturally superior" Syrian race), being "nonrationalist, anti-intellectual, and highly emotional" and "[emphasizing] military virtues and power [and stressing] self-sacrifice".[43] Also according to Payne, all these movements received strong influence from European fascism and praised the Italian and German fascism but "[they never became] fully developed fascist movements, and none reproduced the full characteristics of European fascism"; the influence in Arab nationalism remained long after 1945.[43] Also, Saadeh's superior race was not a pure one, but a fusion of all races in Syrian history.[43] The SSNP would be "[a] elite group, with little structure for mobilization".[43]

Role in the Syrian Civil War and revival

During the Civil uprising phase of the Syrian Civil War the SSNP participated in counter demonstrations in support of the government.[44] Once the war broke out, the Syrian government reciprocated providing weaponry and training.[7] In the meantime, SSNP officials had become a target for rebel militants and were kidnapped and assassinated.[44] Bashar al-Yazigi, head of the political SSNP bureau in Syria stated that the "opposition is seeking to create sharp sectarian rifts and fragment Syrian society"[44] with the party regarding both the ongoing Syrian Civil War and the Iraq War as attempts to partition those countries –and, eventually Lebanon– along ethno-sectarian lines.[7]

Estimates of the number of SSNP fighters in Syria range from 6,000 to 8,000.[7] Lebanese fighters are included in their ranks, even though the party claims that "their proportion within the group’s total fighting force has decreased steadily, as more Syrians sign up".[7] By February 2014, SSNP fighters were primarily deployed in the governorates of Homs and Damascus and were said to be the most formidable military force other than the Syrian Army in Suweida.[44] SSNP fighters have participated in the battles of Sadad, Ma'loula or al-Qaryatayn, among others.[44][45] Party officials say its membership has increased "by the thousands" since the start of the war as a result of its alleged "reputation as an effective fighting force in Syria".[7]

The party is taking on a larger role in Syria’s official political system and it will present 30 candidates for the parliamentary election scheduled for April 2016.[7]

See also

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Irwin, p. 24; ssnp.com "Our Syria has distinct natural boundaries…" (accessed 30 June 2006).
  2. ↑ "Social Nationalist Party mourns Two Fighters killed in Clash with Rebels SYRIA NEWS - ZAMAN ALWSL". SYRIA NEWS - ZAMAN ALWSL. Retrieved 11 April 2016.
  3. ↑ http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=5425 The SSNP is now Syria’s largest party after the ruling Ba'ath.
  4. ↑ http://sana.sy/eng/21/2014/05/06/542876.htm
  5. ↑ "Noticias de Prensa Latina". Retrieved 11 April 2016.
  6. ↑ "IDEOLOGY". Retrieved 11 April 2016.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 "The Eagles of Whirlwind-Foreign Policy".
  8. ↑ Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983) 100-102
  9. ↑ Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab, Contemporary Arab Thought, Cultural Critique in Comparative Perspective (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 20-21
  10. ↑ Paul Salem, Bitter Legacy: Ideology and Politics in the Arab World (Syracuse University Press, 1994)
  11. ↑ Asher Kaufman, "Henri Lammens and Syrian Nationalism," in Adel Beshara, The Origins of Syrian Nationhood: Histories, Pioneers and Identity (
  12. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Nordbruch Goetz (2009). Nazism in Syria and Lebanon: The Ambivalence of the German Option, 1933–1945. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9780203888568. (...) during his speech of 1 June 1935 (...) Antun Saadeh declared (...) "(...) The Syrian Social Nationalist Party is neither a Hitlerite nor a Fascist one, but a pure social nationalist one. It is not based on useless imitation, but is the result of an authentic invention. (...)"
  13. ↑ Nordbrush, Nazism in Syria and Lebanon, 85-87
  14. 1 2 A. Saadeh. The Genesis of Nations. Translated and Reprinted. Dar Al-Fikr. Beirut, 2004
  15. ↑ http://daharchives.alhayat.com/issue_archive/Hayat%20INT/2000/7/7/من-قتل-أنطون-سعاده-وثائق-جديدة-تكشف-خلفيات-انقلاب-حسني-الزعيم.html.
  16. ↑ Adel beshara (2010). Outright Assassination: The Trial and Execution of Antun Sa'adeh, 1949. Ithaca Press. ISBN 978-0-86372-348-3.
  17. ↑ Article on pro-SSNP website on the party's role in the 1958 civil war at the Wayback Machine (archived August 20, 2004) accessed 19 January 2006.
  18. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Behind the Terror". The Atlantic.
  19. ↑ U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States Volume 17, Near East,1961–1963, (Washington, DC: GPO 1993), 383-384.
  20. ↑ Neil A. Lewis (1988-05-18). "U.S. Links Men in Bomb Case To Lebanon Terrorist Group". The New York Times.
  21. ↑ "Aussie's death sparks Lebanon alert". The Sydney Morning Herald. 12 May 2008.
  22. ↑ Jackson, Andra (12 May 2008). "Melbourne man killed in Lebanon 'was on holiday'". The Age (Melbourne).
  23. ↑ "Australian killed in Lebanon: DFAT". The Hawkesbury Gazette. Archived from the original on 2008-08-02. Retrieved 2008-05-12.
  24. ↑ "Day 5: Lebanese dare to hope worst is over". Daily Star (Lebanon). Retrieved 2008-05-16.
  25. ↑ http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/melbourne-dad-mutilated-in-lebanon/story-e6frf7kx-1111116330346
  26. ↑ Chulov, Martin; Davis, Michael (13 May 2008). "Australian Fahdi Sheikh's body mutilated by Beirut mob". The Australian.
  27. ↑ Asia Times article by Syrian political analyst Sami Moubayed. Accessed 19 January 2006
  28. ↑ Ammon News. اطلاق تيار السوريين القوميين الاجتماعيين في الأردن
  29. ↑ Al-Hadath News. السوريون القوميون في الاردن يحتفلون بذكرى ميلاد انطون سعادة
  30. 1 2 3 Hourani, p. 326
  31. ↑ "SSNP website".
  32. 1 2 3 Ya’ari, Ehud (June 1987). "Behind the Terror". Atlantic Monthly. [The SSNP] greet their leaders with a Hitlerian salute; sing their Arabic anthem, "Greetings to You, Syria," to the strains of "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles"; and throng to the symbol of the red hurricane, a swastika in circular motion.
  33. 1 2 Pipes, Daniel (1992). Greater Syria. Oxford University Press. pp. 100–101. ISBN 0-19-506022-9. The SSNP flag, which features a curved swastika called the red hurricane (zawba'a), points to the party's fascistic origins.
  34. 1 2 Yamak, Labib Zuwiyya (1966). The Syrian Social Nationalist Party: An Ideological Analysis. Harvard University Press.
  35. 1 2 3 Johnson, Michael (2001). All Honourable Men. I.B. Tauris. p. 150. ISBN 1-86064-715-4. Saadeh, the party's 'leader for life', was an admirer of Adolf Hitler and influenced by Nazi and fascist ideology. This went beyond adopting a reversed swastika as the party's symbol and singing the party's anthem to Deutschland über alles, and included developing the cult of a leader, advocating totalitarian government, and glorifying an ancient pre-Christian past and the organic whole of the Syrian Volk or nation.
  36. ↑ Becker, Jillian (1984). The PLO: The Rise and Fall of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. ISBN 0-297-78547-8. [The SSNP] had been founded in 1932 as a youth movement, deliberately modeled on Hitler's Nazi Party. For its symbol it invented a curved swastika, called the Zawbah.
  37. ↑ Michael W. Suleiman (1965). Political parties in Lebanon. University of Wisconsin. p. 134. The flag of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party has a black background with a red hurricane (reversed swastika) in the middle, encircled by a white rim (...) also pages 111-112 in the edition of Cornell University Press, 1967 "Thus, the Syrian national anthem for the PPS sang "Syria, Syria uber alles" to the same familiar tune of "Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles"(176) The hand gestures in saluting and the "long live the leader" bore striking resemblances to the Nazi practice. The swastika was replaced with a hurricane as a PPS symbol,(177) while the storm or combat troops were present in both. Both Hitler and Saadeh, in addition to having the same title of 'the leader', held and exercised all legislative and executive authority."
  38. ↑ "Saadeh". Retrieved 11 April 2016.
  39. ↑ Simon, Reeva S. (1996). Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East. Macmillan Reference USA. ISBN 0-02-896011-4. The Syrian Social Nationalist party (SSNP) was the brainchild of Antun Sa'ada, a Greek Orthodox Lebanese who was inspired by Nazi and fascist ideologies.
  40. ↑ Charif, p. 216
  41. ↑ Kamal Salibi (1988, 1998), pp. 54-55
  42. ↑ K. S. Salibi, The Modern History of Lebanon (New York: Praeger 1965) at 180.
  43. 1 2 3 4 5 Stanley G. Payne (1996). A history of fascism, 1914–1945 (illustrated, reprint ed.). Routledge. pp. 352–354. ISBN 9781857285956.
  44. 1 2 3 4 5 "The SSNP 'Hurricane' in the Syrian conflict: Syria and South Lebanon Are The Same Battlefield". Al-Akhbar in English.
  45. ↑ Natalia Sancha (5 April 2016). "El Ejército sirio expulsa al Estado Islámico del desierto". EL PAÍS. Retrieved 11 April 2016.

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