british are going to attack. what allenby does, rather than just smash up against the wall like happened twice before in gaza, he s going to go inland. he executed this brilliant that is still studied in military academies where he outflanked the ottomans and within weeks marched on jerusalem. djemal pasha, of course, was in overall command of the battle front. so the germans say to djemal pasha, look, you re out. and djemal pasha says, no, this is my army, this is my land. but germany being germany says, not only are you out, you will never see jerusalem again. and true to their word, djemal pasha never sees jerusalem again. he was eventually removed to the russian front and eventually
the 19th century had made a great deal about the crusading tradition. and you ll see it in certain of the propaganda posters, that a ghostly figure of crusader looms in the sky behind british soldiers in the judean hills. so the fall of jerusalem is playing really well in western capitals because, you know, this is finally after 700 years, the crusades have won. and the british media tried also to present it as such. so as allenby was advancing to jerusalem and he took the city, there were constant daily reports in british media comparing him to richard the lionheart. but the legacy of the crusades in the muslim near east is one of western people coming in, invading, conquering, killing people. and allenby knows to them, the word crusade has an incredibly
for the jews, jerusalem is where solomon built the holy temple. for christians, this is the place where jesus was crucified. for muslims, jerusalem is where the prophet muhammed made the night journey. people who are said to have conquered the world have swept through this city. no other individual changed the landscape in the way that herod the great did. saladin was determined to take on the christians and throw them out of jerusalem. at a time of ottoman/islamic rule, the british badly wanted to control the holy land. the main case of the arabs is against the british government policy in palestine. we are the only people in the world homeless and stateless. for israelis, the creation of the state of israel is seen as a miracle. and of course for the
725 years after passed since the end of the third crusade. by 1914, the world has undergone a drastic transformation. fueled by the rise of technology and industrialization. but world war i now threatens the entire globe, and jerusalem lies directly in its path. the time of the outbreak of the first world war, jerusalem was still occupied by the ottomans, also called the turks, who had been there for hundreds of years. the ottoman empire was controlling most of the what we call today the middle east. it had lost egypt because egypt had become part of the british empire. but they had turkey, some parts of southern bulgaria, eastern greece, and what is today palestine, jordan, the arabian
peninsula, lebanon, and syria. in world war i, the turks ended up siding with germany and austria/hungary. so they became really the third part of the axis at that time. allied with the germans, the turks send a strong military leader to protect the middle east. jamelle pshaw was sent by the ottomans to become the governor general of jerusalem, thinking that this would be an important battleground and that they needed a military man to be in charge. jamal pasha served a major part in the armenian genocide. he s known to be somebody with very little mercy and does not look favorably at any sort of dissent.