{{Short description|Syrian politician (1921–1995)}} {{Infobox officeholder | name = Sami al-Jundi | image = Zuayyin with Jundi and Makhous 1967 in Paris.jpg | image_size = 200px | caption = Sami al-Jundi second from the left, Paris 1967 | office = Member of the [[Regional Command of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party – Syria Region|Regional Command]] of the [[Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party – Syria Region|Syrian Regional Branch]] | term_start = 1 February 1964 | term_end = 4 April 1965 | office3 = [[Ministry of Culture (Syria)|Minister of Culture]] | term_start3 = 8 March 1963 | term_end3 = 12 November 1963 | predecessor3 = [[Rafik Gabriel Bashour]] | successor3 = [[Shibli al-Aysami]] | office4 = [[Ministry of Information (Syria)|Minister of Information]] | term_start4 = 13 May 1963 | term_end4 = 14 May 1964 | predecessor4 = [[Jamal al-Atassi]] | successor4 = [[Abdullah Abdel-Dayem]] | office5 = [[Embassy of Syria, Paris|Syrian ambassador in France]] | term_start5 = 11 July 1964 | term_end5 = 1 August 1969 | predecessor5 = [[Assaad Said Mahassen]] | successor5 = [[Kamel Hussein]] | birth_date = {{birth date|1921|12|15|df=yes}} | birth_place = [[Salamiyah]], [[French Mandate of Syria]] | death_date = {{death date and age|1995|12|14|1921|12|15|df=yes}} | death_place = [[Damascus]], [[Ba'athist Syria|Syrian Arab Republic]] | alma_mater = [[Damascus University]] | party = [[Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party – Syria Region|Syrian Regional Branch]] of the [[Ba'ath Party|Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party]] | relatives = [[Ali al-Jundi]] (brother)<br>[[Abd al-Karim al-Jundi]] (cousin) }} '''Sami al-Jundi''' ({{langx|ar|سامي الجندي}};{{lrm}} 15 December 1921 – 14 December 1995) was a Syrian [[Ba'athism|Ba'athist]] politician, and a follower of [[Michel Aflaq]].
==Life== Sami was born to a [[Sunni]] father, but hails from a family that is mixed [[Ismaili]]-Sunni.<ref>{{cite web |last1=منصور |first1=محمد |title=في ذكرى رحيله الـ18... سامي الجندي: أول بعثي هجا حزب البعث وتحدث عن المخطط الطائفي العلوي ! |url=https://www.zamanalwsl.net/news/article/44857 |website=www.zamanalwsl.net |language=ar}}</ref> An older cousin of [[Abd al-Karim al-Jundi]],<ref name="Rabinovič1972">{{cite book|author=Itamar Rabinovič|author-link=Itamar Rabinovich|title=Syria Under the Baʻth, 1963-66: The Army Party Symbiosis|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KqR5eFb3xGsC&pg=PA237|access-date=14 July 2013|year=1972|publisher=Transaction Publishers|isbn=978-1-4128-3550-3|page=237}}</ref> Jundi was born to a scholarly family in [[Salamiyah]].<ref name="Ajami2012">{{cite book|author=Fouad Ajami|title=The Syrian Rebellion|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Smc_kC5anMsC&pg=PT29|access-date=14 July 2013|year=2012|publisher=Hoover Press|isbn=978-0-8179-1506-3|page=29}}</ref> He studied [[dentistry]] at [[Damascus University]], graduating in 1944. Initially attracted to [[Arab nationalism]] by [[Zaki al-Arsuzi]], he joined the Ba'ath Party of [[Michel Aflaq]] and [[Salah al-Din al-Bitar]] in 1947. In the 1950s he joined [[Gamal Abdel Nasser]]'s Arab nationalist movement, and Nasser appointed him director of information and propaganda after Egypt and Syria merged as the [[United Arab Republic]] in 1958. After the [[1961 Syrian coup]] installed [[Nazim al-Qudsi]], Jundi lost his job, but after the [[1963 Syrian coup]] he became minister of information in [[Salah al-Bitar]]'s cabinet. He was also official spokesman for the [[Revolutionary Command Council (Syria)|Revolutionary Command Council]] (RCC).<ref name="Moubayed2006">{{cite book|author=Sami M. Moubayed|author-link=Sami Moubayed|title=Steel and Silk: Men and Women who Shaped Syria 1900-2000|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sC-xU8QHSooC&pg=PA264|access-date=14 July 2013|year=2006|publisher=Cune Press|isbn=978-1-885942-40-1|page=264}}</ref>
The RCC named Jundi [[Prime Minister of Syria|prime minister]], delegating him to form a cabinet on 11 May 1963, but he failed to do so and resigned three days later. He was minister of information, culture and national guidance in Prime Minister Bitar's second cabinet, and remained in government under President [[Amin al-Hafiz|Amin al-Hafez]] until October 1964. In 1964 he became ambassador to France.<ref name="Moubayed2006"/>
Jailed in Syria for some time in 1969,<ref name="Rabinovič1972"/> Jundi retired to [[Beirut]], writing his memoirs. After [[1982 Lebanon War|Israeli invaded Lebanon]] in 1982, he returned to Syria, but worked as a dentist and was not active politically.<ref name="Moubayed2006"/>
Jundi's account of the fate of the Ba'ath Party has been characterized as "an honest and sad portrayal of what has befallen many national anticolonial movements".<ref name="Ajami1992">{{cite book|author=Fouad Ajami|author-link=Fouad Ajami|title=The Arab Predicament: Arab Political Thought and Practice Since 1967|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ye5sewVWcTAC&pg=PA62|access-date=14 July 2013|year=1992|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-43833-9|pages=49–59}}</ref>
==Works== * ''Arab wa Yahud'' [Arabs and Jews], Beirut, 1968 * ''Sadiqi Ilyas'' [My friend Ilyas], Beirut, 1969 * ''Al Ba`th'' [The Ba`th], Beirut, 1969 * ''Athadda wa Attahim'' [I challenge and I accuse], Beirut, 1969
==Origins of the ''Ba'ath''== As a school student, al-Jundi attended political lectures of Arsuzi and became the secretary of a tiny group that called itself the Arab Resurrection (''Ba'ath'') Party.<ref name=Kedouri>{{cite book | author = Elie Kedourie | title = Arabic Political Memoirs and Other Studies | publisher = Frank Cass | place = London | year = 1974 | pages = 199–201}}</ref> Of that period he wrote: <blockquote>We lived through this hope, strangers in our society which gradually increased our isolation: rebels against all the old values, enemies to all the conventions of humanity, rejecting all ceremonies, relationships and religions. We sought the fight everywhere we were an unrelenting pickaxe. ...
We were racialists [’irqiyyin], admiring Nazism, reading its books and the source of its thought, particularly Nietzsche's ''[[Thus Spoke Zarathustra|Thus Spake Zarathustra]]'', Fichte's ''[[Addresses to the German Nation]]'', and H. S. Chamberlain's ''[[The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century|Foundations of the Nineteenth Century]]'', which revolves on race.<ref>According to Gilbert Achcar, The Arabs and the Holocaust (2010), p.69, "which revolves on race" is a mistranslation for "and Darré's ''The Race''".</ref> We were the first to think of translating ''Mein Kampf''.
Whoever has lived during this period in Damascus will appreciate the inclination of the Arab people to Nazism, for Nazism was the power which could serve as its champion, and he who is defeated will by nature love the victor. But our belief was rather different. ...<ref>This ellipsis appears in Kedourie's translation. Nordbruch provides a fuller translation: "But we were a different school [of thought]. Those who do not get deep into the principles of the Arab National Party – and these principles are the very principles of the Arab Ba‘th – might be misled [about the influence of Nazism]." {{cite journal | author = Götz Nordbruch | title = 'Cultural Fusion' of Thought and Ambitions? Memory, Politics and the History of Arab–Nazi German Encounters | journal = Middle East Studies | volume = 47 | issue = 1 | pages = 183–194}}</ref>
We were idealists, basing social relationships on love. The Master [Arsuzi] used to speak about Christ, and I think he was influenced by Nietzsche's ''The Origin of Tragedy''. He took the pre-Islamic period for his ideal, calling it the golden age of the Arabs.<ref name=Kedouri/></blockquote> Arsuzi's group disbanded in 1944, but most of the members belonged as well to [[Michel Aflaq]]'s group, also called the Ba'ath, that grew in the Syrian [[Ba'ath Party (Syrian-dominated faction)|Ba'ath Party]].<ref name=Kedouri/>
==References== {{Reflist}} {{Ba'ath Party}} {{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jundi, Sami al}} [[Category:1921 births]] [[Category:1995 deaths]] [[Category:Damascus University alumni]] [[Category:Members of the Regional Command of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party – Syria Region]] [[Category:Syrian Arab nationalists]] [[Category:Syrian politicians]] [[Category:Syrian socialists]] [[Category:Syrian dentists]] [[Category:20th-century dentists]] [[Category:Prime ministers of Syria]] [[Category:Ambassadors of Syria to France]] [[Category:Ministers of culture of Syria]] [[Category:Ministers of information of Syria]]