Of all the articles dealing with the Netanyahu-Mufti controversy, this one by Melanie Phillips in the Jerusalem Post is possibly the best. She explains that Netanyahu was fundamentally right: it is thanks to the Mufti's intervention, that mass murder became genocide.
The Grand Mufti meets Hitler in November 1941
When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke about the role played
in the Holocaust by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini,
he cannot have imagined the reaction he would detonate.
What he
said was this: “He [Husseini] flew to Berlin. Hitler didn’t want to
exterminate the Jews at the time; he wanted to expel the Jews. And Haj
Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said, ‘If you expel them, they’ll
all come here.’ ‘So what should I do with them?’ he [Hitler] asked.
He [Husseini] said, ‘Burn them.’” In the subsequent global firestorm,
Netanyahu was denounced for exonerating Hitler. It was said he had
claimed the mufti had given Hitler the idea of exterminating the Jews
when the two met in November 1941; that he was cynically trying to
tarnish today’s Palestinians; even that he was a Holocaust denier.
His subsequent protest that he had no intention of absolving Hitler of
responsibility fell on deaf ears. Even those who acknowledged that the
mufti had allied with the Nazis insisted Netanyahu had turned history
back to front.
Most of this reaction, however, is at best wide of
the mark and at worst quite obscene. For Netanyahu was fundamentally
correct.
There can be no doubt he spoke too loosely. He has
provided no source for the words he quoted from both Husseini and Hitler
at that November 1941 meeting. And he should have acknowledged that the
mass murder of European Jews was already well under way, and that
Hitler had talked about exterminating the Jews since the 1920s.
But mass murder is not the same as genocide. And the precise moment when
Hitler decided to exterminate the whole of European Jewry – the “Final
Solution” – has long been disputed by historians.
For even while
the Nazis were rounding up Jews for slaughter they were also deporting
them – more than 500,000 between 1933 and 1941. And recently unearthed
documentary evidence suggests that the mufti and Hitler egged each other
on in a mutual genocidal frenzy.
A book published last year,
Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East, by Barry
Rubin and Wolfgang Schwanitz, argues that the mufti’s alliance with
Hitler turned the extermination of the whole of European Jewry into a
strategic imperative.
As late as July 1941, according to Hermann
Göring, Hitler thought the last of the Jews could be removed from
Germany by “emigration or evacuation.”
The authors write: “Yet
since other countries refused to take many or any Jewish refugees,
Palestine was the only possible refuge, as designated by the League of
Nations in 1922. If that last safe haven was closed, mass murder would
be Hitler’s only alternative.”
Rubin and Schwanitz make clear
that the November 1941 meeting between Hitler and Husseini merely
continued a dialogue that had started earlier that year about the
mufti’s opposition to Hitler’s deportation of European Jews.
“In
February 1941, Hitler had received al-Husaini’s proposal for an alliance
of which one condition – paragraph seven – was that Germany stop Jewish
emigration from Europe. After Hitler promised al-Husaini on March 11 to
do so, Germany’s expulsion of the Jews was impossible and only mass
murder remained.
“... After agreeing in early June to meet
al-Husaini to discuss the issue, Hitler ordered SS leader Reinhard
Heydrich on July 31, 1941 to prepare an ‘overall solution for the Jewish
question in Europe.’ On October 31, he ended the legal emigration of
Jews from German-ruled areas.
But the specific final decision had not yet been taken.”
On November 28, Hitler met the mufti in Berlin. “Behind closed doors,
Hitler promised al-Husaini that Arab aspirations would be fulfilled.
Once ‘we win’ the battle against world Jewry, Hitler said, Germany would
eliminate the Jews in the Middle East, too.” The following day, “he
ordered Heydrich to organise a conference within ten days to prepare
‘the final solution of the Jewish question.’” As the book also shows,
the mufti was making common cause with Hitler long before 1941. By 1936,
he was courting the Nazis for arms and money. In 1940, he sent Hitler a
nine-page letter detailing a proposed alliance. The Palestine question,
he said, united them in their joint hatred of the British and the Jews.
He proposed to make Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Transjordan a single
federated state with a Nazi-style system. In return, he wanted Hitler’s
help to wipe out all Jews in the Middle East.
Evidence that the
mufti played a key role in the Holocaust was provided at the Nuremberg
Tribunal by Eichmann’s close associate in the extermination program,
Dieter Wisliceny. He said: “The mufti was one of the instigators of the
systematic extermination of European Jewry and was a partner and adviser
to Eichmann and Hitler for carrying out this plan.”
This was
corroborated at the tribunal by two witnesses, Andrej Steiner and Rudolf
Kasztner, who confirmed that Wisliceny had talked about Husseini in
these terms during the war.
Read article in full
Leading German scholar: 'Mufti advised Nazis '
Some useful links:
Israel, Nazis and Palestinians by Francisco Gil-White
Netanyahu was right to draw parallels between Nazis and Arab leaders by Seth Lipsky (New York Post)
Dr Edy Cohen on Youtube (Hebrew)
The Mufti and the Holocaust revisited: Ben Cohen (Algemeiner)
Arabs and Nazis by Elliott Green (Think -Israel)
Mufti advised Nazis by Wolfgang Schwanitz (Middle East Forum)
Is Netanyahu really wrong? by Sheri Oz (Times of Israel)
Haj Amin al-Husseini and antisemitism in the Arab world by Sarah Levin (Times of Israel)
Mufti was an even greater Nazi criminal than Eichmann (Arutz Sheva)
Mufti's initiatory experience in the extermination of European Jewry by Rob Harris (Crethi Plethi)
La croix gammee et le turban (TV review by Veronique Chemla)
1935.
ReplyDeleteMarch, the Templars' 'Das Wort' reports that Istiqlal Party, which began to reorganize, also adopted Nazi ideas. Adding: "This party's publication shows a clear sympathy for Nazism and fights fiercely against the Jewish boycott of Germany."
The Hizb al-Istiqlal party was founded 3 years earlier by Shukeiri and others.
______
1939. Shukeiri helps Mufti murder his brother, a moderate, Dr. Anwar Shukeiri June 8, 1939.
('Maariv', Oct 21, 1949. p. 11).
[Mufti's men murdered upto (some estimate) 8,000 fellow Arabs, according to some estimates, during the 3 years uprising against the British].
______
1939.
Shukeiri's mentor/employer (Mattar 2005, 447) Auni Abd el-Hadi, as Istiqlal's president, traveled to Germany, met Nazi officials.
(Hirszowicz, Lukasz. "Nazi Germany and the Palestine Partition Plan." Middle Eastern Studies 1, no. 1, 1964: 40–65).
In the interview, he admitted proudly that while he was interned by the British he had thoroughly worked through the English translation of Mein Kampf. (Mallmann, Klaus-Michael., Cüppers, Martin. Nazi Palestine: The Plans for the Extermination of the Jews in Palestine. United Kingdom: Enigma Books, 2010. p.39).
______
1940. Shukeiri cheers and prays for Nazis (he bragged in his book that everyone [in Arab Palestine] did so too).
______
1941. Shukeiri actively helps Hitler.
(As testified in US House various times by separate representatives on: July 26, 1961; Feb 3, 1964; Feb 26, 1965 and Society for Prevention of WW3 wrote about it in NYTimes in qtd in Detroit Jewish News, Friday, February 03, 1967. p. 9. and in Hatzofeh, February 2, 1967).
_______
1946. Shukeiri justifies the Holocaust.
(As reported in B'nai B'rith, July 12, 1946).