Musa Alami: The Worst Public Servent Ever

Musa Alami is most famous for his book The Message of Palestine: "If ultimately the Palestinians evacuated their country, it was not out of cowardice, but because they had lost all confidence in the existing system of defense. They had perceived its weakness, and realized the disequilibrium between their resources and organization, and those of the Jews. They were told that the Arab armies were coming, that the matter would be settled and everything return to normal, and they placed their confidence and hopes in that. - The Message of Palestine, Musa Alami, The Middle East Journal, Volume 3, No. 4, October 1949, pp. 373-405

Alami and all the others of his class left Palestine before the fighting began. He was one of the Palestinian and and Arab leadership. Arab intellectuals of the day shared some common misconceptions: that the Arabs are special, they are noble, they have an illustrious history, they have suffered more than other and theat there is a kinship and unity amongst them

Musa Alami was from a very prominent 'notables' family. He was "a Cambridge graduate, he had the rare distinction of enjoying near-universal affection and esteem from Arabs, Britons, and Jews alike. He had an unusual ability to draw close to nodes of power and influence while also preserving his own independence of mind. And though widely praised as a moderate, he cultivated bonds with hardliners-not least of them the mufti-and engaged in clandestine actions that, were they known, would have stunned his Western admirers." - Palestine 1936: The Great Revolt - Oren Kessler

He must have been the worst ever employee of the Mandate Government. Not only did he actively seek to bring down the government by revolution and traiterous liaisons with the enemy but he did some of this activity while on sick leave. He took inordinate amounts of sick leave: "A doctor's note from 1925 shows him with colitis; another one says gastritis. In 1926 it was hives, in 1927 bronchitis, then fever and acute cold. The following year a doctor diagnosed him with incipient pulmonary tuberculosis and recommended he travel to Syria for treatment. He took three months' sick leave, then another six."

Alami had spent nearly the entire six months of revolt in Europe. A day after the Bloody Day in Jaffa, he secured 100 days' leave on full pay for travel to Switzerland. Shortly thereafter, he took another 107 days' leave, again on full pay, then another 10. Permission came from the aptly named Harry Trusted, Palestine's chief justice, who presumed the trip was related to Alami's perennially failing health. He even threw in two first-class rail tickets to the port of departure on the Suez Canal.1
In early September he crossed from Switzerland into Italy. In a town on Lake Como, he proffered a letter from Hajj Amin to an envoy of Benito Mussolini. The mufti appealed for Italian aid, without which the Arab cause in Palestine might not last another two weeks. "Alami seems to me a very serious person," the Duce's emissary recorded, noting that his decade-long career in the Mandate's justice system meant he aroused little British suspicion.
The visitor's request was precise: ten thousand rifles with one thousand cartridges each, five thousand grenades, twenty-five light machine guns and twelve heavy ones, and some mortars. And he wanted Italian help in sabotaging the pipeline carrying Iraqi oil to Haifa.2
The next day in Geneva, a courier gave Alami 13,000 pounds and promised another 75,000. Two weeks later he met Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini's foreign minister and son-in-law, in Rome. They arranged an elaborate system involving double envelopes and a go-between at the American University of Beirut. Alami's codename was George, Ciano's was Charles, and Mussolini's was Charles's "father." Ten yards of silk was 10,000 pounds. Alami met the courier twice more over the coming months, accepting another 20,000 pounds-all told, worth 1.6 million pounds today.3
Three months earlier Alami had rebuked Moshe Shertok for suggesting the Arabs were Fascist-funded; now he was the mufti's point man for just such a scheme. It was a remarkable turnaround for a man universally hailed as a moderate. - Palestine 1936: The Great Revolt - Oren Kessler

Musa Alami is usually portrayed as an honest broker, the independant but in fact he secretly worked for Hajj Amin Al-Husayni travelling to Europe, arranging secret donations of money and arms and propaganda and collecting funds from the Italian government. The Italian Fascists aiming to weaken British influence in the Middle East, provided funding, arms, and logistical support to the rebels through various channels, including connections with the Mufti. Following the 1936 Arab Revolt, this cooperation evolved into a closer alliance between the Mufti and Axis powers, culminating in his meetings with both Mussolini and Adolf Hitler.