George Antonius

George Habib Antonius, CBE (hon.) was a Lebanese author and diplomat who settled in Jerusalem. He was one of the first historians of Arab nationalism. Born in Deir al-Qamar to a Lebanese Eastern Orthodox Christian family, he served as a civil servant in the British Mandate of Palestine. His 1938 book The Arab Awakening generated an ongoing debate over such issues as the origins of Arab nationalism, the significance of the Arab Revolt of 1916, and the machinations behind the post-World War I political settlement in the Arab world. In the book, he raised concern about the fate of religious coexistence in Palestine in the face of Zionist settlement, while also recognizing the horror of anti-Jewish Nazism.