During World War II, he taught Arabic to servicemen at Princeton through the Army Specialized Training Program (including future Ambassador Rodger Paul Davies).
In 1944 before a U. S. House committee, Hitti gave testimony in support of the view that there was no historical justification for a Jewish homeland in the Palestine.
In response, Albert Einstein and his friend and colleague Erich Kahler jointly replied in the same newspaper with their counter-arguments.
[5] In 1945 Hitti served as an adviser to the Iraqi delegation at the San Francisco Conference which established the United Nations.
Bartley Crum, an American member of the committee, recalled: Hitti... explained that there was actually no such entity as Palestine - never had been; it was historically part of Syria, and "the Sunday schools have done a great deal of harm to us because by smearing the walls of classrooms with maps of Palestine, they associate it with the Jews in the minds of the average American and Englishman."