An Introduction by John R. Houk
© October 31, 2015
About a week ago in Jerusalem Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at the World Zionist Organization’s 37th Zionist Congress. At the Congress the Prime Minister spoke of the Jerusalem Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini’s participation in Hitler’s Holocaust against the Jews which resulted in their brutal murders to the tune of about SIX MILLION human beings by the end of 1945.
It boggles my mind that the Leftist media has joined in a chorus of heated criticism of Netanyahu’s finger-pointing at al-Husseini as a joint Holocaust instigator with Hitler. SO WHAT if Netanyahu was off about the degree of pivotal involvement in convincing Hitler to cleanse Europe of Jews rather than deport them?
The real point should be that al-Husseini cooperated so much with Hitler’s Final Solution against European Jews that he brought the Nazi Jew-hatred ideology back to Muslim dominated areas inspiring genocidal concepts against Jews that continue to this very day. This is evidenced in particular by the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians current murder spree against Jews in Israel.
Below is a Middle East Forum backgrounder on al-Husseini followed by a more in depth look at the dead Jew-hater by Pamela Geller.
JRH 10/31/15
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Backgrounder: Hajj Amin al-Husseini
Compiled by Gary C. Gambill
October 30, 2015
Middle East Forum
MEF backgrounders highlight select news-relevant research and analysis from Middle East Forum staff, fellows, and publications. Sign up to the MEF mailing list to stay abreast of our work.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu caused a storm of controversy on October 20 by quoting Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the infamous grand mufti of Jerusalem during the interwar years, as having told Adolf Hitler in 1941 to "burn" rather than deport the Jews of Europe, insinuating that this influenced the unfolding Nazi genocide.
While the veracity of this quote is in question, few dispute that Husseini could well have said something to this effect given his genocidal hatred of Jews, penchant for blood-curdling rhetoric, and determination to prevent Jewish immigration to Palestine. However, opinions differ sharply, even among MEF staff and fellows, as to the degree of Hussein's influence, both in Nazi Germany and the Middle East.
MEF Hochberg Family Writing Fellow Wolfgang G. Schwanitz, coauthor of Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East (2014), argues that two components of this question are unmistakably clear. First, Husseini's overarching goal prior to and during Hitler's reign, he notes, was that "whatever happens with Jews under Hitler's reign in Europe, they should not come to the Middle East." At the very least, the Germans understood that deportation as a solution to Europe's "Jewish Question" risked alienating their top protégé in the Arab world – a region they expected in 1941-42 to be invading soon.
Second, Schwanitz notes that the historical record shows the mufti to be unquestionably the "foremost extra-European adviser in the process to destroy the Jews of Europe." Adolf Eichmann and his subordinates frequently briefed Husseini as the genocide unfolded, "as if to reassure him that Hitler had not changed his mind," he writes in a forthcoming article.
In contrast, MEF fellow Jeffrey Herf, author of Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (2010), contends that the Husseini's "importance in Nazi Berlin lay far more in assisting the Third Reich's Arabic language propaganda ... and in mobilizing Muslims in Eastern Europe to support the Nazi regime." Although these achievements surely facilitated Nazi atrocities, Hitler "made the decisions to implement the Final Solution and had communicated those decisions to key actors in the Nazi regime at the latest a month before his [1941] meeting with Husseini."
Whatever his role in the Holocaust, MEF staff and fellows widely agree that Husseini was a critical ideological progenitor of Middle Eastern extremism today. The mufti was among the first to "exploit the draw of the Islamic holy places in Jerusalem to find international Muslim support" for the anti-Zionist cause, notes MEF President Daniel Pipes, a theme very much in evidence today among Palestinian Islamists.
Moreover, Husseini "can be largely held responsible for the Middle East's endemic antisemitism," writes Daniel Pipes in a recent Washington Times op-ed, pointing to his postwar tutelage of Yasser Arafat and other rising Palestinian figures, as well the Muslim Brotherhood during his stay in Egypt after the Nazi defeat.
As Boris Havel illustrates in a recent Middle East Quarterly article, Husseini's propaganda traced "alleged Jewish power and ambitions" in the here and now "to supposed Jewish activities at the time of Muhammad," a theological innovation that is today a staple of Islamist discourse.
Because of Husseini, there remains an "inescapable and inextricable connection between Islamists ... and the Nazi movement" today, MEF Director Gregg Roman told Al-Jazeera English on October 22. In an early Middle East Quarterly article, famed Princeton University historian Bernard Lewis notes (without specific reference to Husseini) the "astonishing degree" to which "the ideas, the literature, even the crudest inventions of the Nazis and their predecessors have been internalized and Islamized" in the Middle East.
At the same time, it is important not to overstate Husseini's influence. When the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) placed ads on Philadelphia buses displaying a photo of Husseini and Hitler with a caption reading "Adolf Hitler and his staunch ally, the leader of the Muslim world," Daniel Pipes cautioned that the "text is factually inaccurate," calling Husseini "a British appointee in the Mandate for Palestine, where Muslims constituted less than 1 percent of the total world Muslim population."
Compiled by Middle East Forum web editor Gary C. Gambill
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Pamela Geller, WND Column: Netanyahu tells truth about mufti’s role in Holocaust
October 29, 2015
If case you missed my column at WND this week:
Exclusive: Pamela Geller defends Bibi against onslaught of media attack
The condemnations have been way over the top: Benjamin Netanyahu is being denounced by the media and political elites all over the world, in a way that the openly genocidal jihadist Mahmoud Abbas never has been. Netanyahu’s crime? He told the Zionist Congress last Tuesday, “Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time; he wanted to expel the Jews.” Netanyahu quoted Hitler asking the mufti, “So what should I do with them?” The mufti responded, according to Netanyahu, “Burn them.’”
Those who are excoriating Netanyahu for this are overlooking one fact: Netanyahu was right.
The mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, lived in Berlin from 1941 to 1945 and recruited a Muslim SS division for Hitler. And Netanyahu was correct: The Nazis originally pursued a policy of exiling Jews to Eastern Europe, and even to Palestine – until the mufti protested that they must not be sent there. The decision to exterminate the Jews came soon after that.
It is good to see that Netanyahu is not backing down. He called the criticism of his remarks “absurd,” which it is: Netanyahu’s remarks mirror my ads highlighting the role of the Muslim world during the Holocaust, and Netanyahu is experiencing the same blowback from Islamic supremacists and Islamic apologists that I got.
The premier front man for the failed idea that we should place all our hope in “moderate Islam,” Daniel Pipes, claimed several months ago that our ad campaign in Philadelphia calling attention to the mufti’s relationship with Hitler was a failure. Pipes took issue with our factual assertions, asserting that the mufti’s meeting with Hitler was a “one-time, opportunistic consultation.” Really? Tell that to the 400,000 Jewish women and children Husseini sent to their deaths at Nazi concentration camps. Tell that to the victims of the Muslim armies in Bosnia that Husseini raised for Hitler.
Al-Husseini lived in Berlin during World War II on Hitler’s dime and made weekly radio addresses from Berlin to the Axis power nations and the Muslim world. In one, he screamed: “Arabs, rise and fight as one for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases Allah, history and religion. This saves your honor, Allah is with you.”
The mufti made similar appeals, always pointing to the Quran, time and time again in his radio addresses during the war. He organized propaganda services to the Muslims of the world from Berlin. He used Axis radio stations calling Muslims to arms in a holy war against the Allies. He aided the Nazi espionage service. He raised Muslim parachute groups for sabotage in the Middle East. He raised Muslim formations to fight the allies. He helped in the Nazi plan to exterminate nearly 6 million Jews.
“Hitler,” Netanyahu said in further remarks after the media firestorm began, “was responsible for the Final Solution to exterminate six million Jews; he made the decision. It is equally absurd to ignore the role played by the mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini, a war criminal, for encouraging and urging Hitler.”
Right again. At my website, PamelaGeller.com, I have been calling attention to this for years. SS Hauptsturmfuehrer Dieter Wisliceny, a close collaborator of Adolf Eichmann, testified that “the grand mufti, who had been in Berlin since 1941, played a role in the decision of the German government to exterminate the European Jews the importance of which must not be disregarded. He had repeatedly suggested to the various authorities with whom he had been in contact, above all before Hitler, Ribbentrop and Himmler, the extermination of European jury. He considers this as a comfortable solution of the Palestine problem. In his messages broadcast from Berlin, he surpassed us in anti-Jewish attacks. He was one of Eichmann’s best friends and has constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures. I heard say that, accompanied by Eichmann, he has visited incognito the gas chamber it Auschwitz.”
Eichmann made the statement referred to in the affidavit in his office in Budapest on June 4, 1944; the confirmation by Wisliceny was given some days later also in Budapest.
Not only that: According to testimony at the Nuremberg trials, “[T]he mufti was a bitter arch enemy of the Jews and had always been the protagonist of the idea of their annihilation. This idea the mufti had always advanced in his conversations with Eichmann.”
The mufti’s role in the Holocaust has been covered up. The New York Post reported back in 1948 that “on Aug. 28, 1946, Dean Acheson, then Acting Secretary of State, announced that ‘the State Dept. is preparing a White Paper concerning the activities of the ex-Mufti of Jerusalem.’ Acheson said the publication would be in the form of a book, which would cover all the documents concerning the ex-Mufti seized from German files. This White Paper has not yet been published, although 17 months have passed. What keeps the State Dept. from publishing it? Who is interested in the delay? Are all the documents safe?”
That delay has now continued for nearly seventy years. The white paper was never published. I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request several years ago, asking for a copy of it, as well as of all State Department correspondence relating to it. The State Department responded that such a white paper did not exist and had never existed, and that there was no correspondence about it.
So what did happen to that promised white paper? Under whose auspices, and for what reason, has the mufti’s role in the Holocaust been shrouded in silence?
Netanyahu did the world a great service by calling attention to this. The intensity of the attacks against him only testifies to how much he struck a nerve. In the mainstream media, Islam and Muslims must never, ever be criticized. We may only hope that the controversy will lead to some of the details being revealed about the mufti’s role in Hitler’s genocide.
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Genocidal Jew-Hater Amin al-Husseini
An Introduction by John R. Houk
© October 31, 2015
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Backgrounder: Hajj Amin al-Husseini
This text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete and accurate information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.
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Pamela Geller, WND Column: Netanyahu tells truth about mufti’s role in Holocaust
About Pamela Geller
Pamela Geller is the founder, editor and publisher of Atlas Shrugs.com and President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) and Stop Islamization of America (SIOA). She is the author of The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America, with Robert Spencer (foreword by Ambassador John Bolton) (Simon & Schuster) and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance (WND Books). She is also a regular columnist for World Net Daily, the American Thinker, Breitbart.com and other publications.
Geller’s activism on behalf of human rights has won international notice. She is a foremost defender of the freedom of speech against attempts to force the West to accept Sharia blasphemy laws, and against Sharia self-censorship by Western media outlets. Her First Amendment lawsuits filed nationwide have rolled back attempts to limit Americans’ free speech rights and limit speech to only one political perspective, and exposed attempts to make an end-run around the First Amendment by illegitimately restricting access to public fora. Her free speech event in Garland, Texas led to the capture or killing of several murderous jihadists, smoking out terror cells, leading to an increase in the threat level to BRAVO and to the consequent arrests of jihadists in several states.
Geller has also led awareness campaigns in U.S., Europe, and Israel on behalf of the victims and potential victims of honor killing, for the human rights of apostates from Islam, for the freedom of speech, and more. She has placed ads nationwide on … READ THE REST
