Blame It On The Mufti!

The award-winning Israeli novelist David Grossman has castigated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for recent statements about Hitler, calling his comments “a near monstrous failure” in an op-ed in the British daily The Guardian.

It also involves a good deal of Holocaust denial. Haman in Persia? The Arab leader, the Mufti of Jerusalem? The Jewish State is, accordingly, the only embodiment of modernity in the region and it fights the violent pathology of primordial forces which are so widespread there. “It is equally absurd to ignore the role played by the mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini, a war criminal, for encouraging and urging Hitler”.

What he said was this: “He [Husseini] flew to Berlin”.

“Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time [of the meeting between the mufti and the Nazi leader]”.

Born in the mid-1890s, and appointed Mufti of Jerusalem in 1921 (Grand Mufti in 1922), Haj Amin al-Husseini was one of the most prominent nationalist Arab figures in Palestine during the time of the British Mandate.

Although Hitler did once meet with the Nazi leader in November 1941 by then, as my colleague Ali Abunimah notes, “by then, Hitler’s plans to exterminate the Jews were already well under way”.

There were many Hitler admirers, both inside and outside of Germany (including Canada’s own Prime Minister Mackenzie King) who became uneasy with his treatment of the Jews, especially when news of mass killings emerged, even before the Final Solution was under way, and certainly afterward.

She adds: “In the late summer of 1941, addressing the assembled men of the Einsatzkommandos at Nikolayev, he [Himmler] ‘repeated to them the liquidation order, and pointed out that the leaders and men who were taking part in the liquidation bore no personal responsibility for the execution of this order. The responsibility was his alone, and the Führer’s'”. Yet Netanyahu was correct in focusing renewed attention on al-Husseini’s complicity in the extermination.

Sadly, German publishers have refused to translate Herf’s groundbreaking 2009 work, “The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust”, which devotes considerable attention to the mufti, into German.

Based in Berlin throughout the Holocaust years, and working closely with Joseph Goebbels, the Third Reich’s propaganda minister, the mufti organized propaganda broadcasts throughout the Arab world.

During an address last Tuesday, Netanyahu posited that Hitler did not initially intend to annihilate the Jews but rather sought to expel them from Europe.

Hitler in return confirmed that “Germany stood for uncompromising war against the Jews”, including “active opposition to the Jewish national home in Palestine”. Did, however, the mufti subsequently encourage and participate in the extermination of the Jews?

The irony, of course, or perhaps it’s no coincidence, is that for so long, it has been a truism that one is simply forbidden to raise any comparison whatsoever between Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and the Nazis’ treatment of the 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”.

Ultimately, said Grossman, this approach will lead to an Israel ruled by the threat of perpetual dangers, real or imagined, instead of having the courage to face its challenges.

All that was before Hitler met the Mufti. “So what should I do with them?” asked Hitler.

“Al-Husseini was an enthusiastic Nazi supporter who helped recruit Bosnian Muslims to their side and whose anti-Semitism was well documented”, the AP reports.

The Arab-Nazi movement in Iraq launched an uprising against the British, which was defeated. Most observers believe that the phenomenon is mainly driven by the despair of young Palestinians who see their land slipping away and don’t believe that Netanyahu will ever let the Palestinians have their own state in the occupied territories. “He stressed that the struggle against the Jews was not of a religious nature, but for Palestinian existence and for an independent Palestine”. Undeniably they do. Does the Israeli government, like the Nazi policy of Liebensraum, also have a policy of making Palestinian land what they call “sterile”, or Palestinian-free, so that Jews can move onto it?

Given all this evidence, the reaction to Netanyahu’s remarks demonstrates historical ignorance, venom toward Israel and particular malice toward Netanyahu himself – not least amongst Israeli Jews. But Benjamin Netanyahu’s shameless manipulation of fears and even historical facts can, in addition to his policies, only make the emotions that surround the unresolved conflict between his country and the Palestinians even worse.

Ali Abunimah is Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of The Battle for Justice in Palestine, now out from Haymarket Books.