Pro Palestinian spokespeople play bait-and-switch to the charge of Jew-hatred as the motivating factor behind suicide bombings with sanctimonious stock lectures on Christian complicity in the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews. They blame Israel for “occupation” without explaining why Muslims, where they maintain substantial populations, seem incapable of living peacefully in countries they don’t control.
These premises are false on three counts: Nazism was not “Christian” but neo-Pagan; Moslem imperialism today echoes Nazi aggression; and Arabs share a historic complicity in the Nazi Holocaust. In fact, understanding Arab support for Nazism places the present Israel-Arab conflict in its proper context.
Britain was so concerned with Nazi inroads into the Arab world in 1938, the eve of World War II, that it issued the infamous White Paper limiting Jewish immigration to Palestine, contributing to a locking of Jews into a Europe that was being overrun by Hitler.
Former British Prime Minister Lloyd George, in a 1939 address, called the White Paper “An act of national perfidy that will dishonor the name of Britain.” The White Paper violated international law as established by the Balfour Declaration and the Faisal-Weitzmann agreement of 1919. These agreements, recognized by the world community, supported the creation of a Palestinian Jewish State and encouraged Jewish immigration.
Emir Faisal, heading the Arab delegation to the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, had formally recognized the future Jewish state in a signed document that explicitly called for Jewish immigration to Palestine. Nevertheless, the British gave in to pressure from the anti-Jewish faction led by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini.
The Grand Mufti was a major participant in the Holocaust. On July 1, 1937, the British-appointed Mufti asked the German Consul-General of Palestine “to what extant the Third Reich was prepared to support the Arab movement against the Jews.” Following this meeting the Mufti was visited in Palestine by Adolf Eichmann who was getting “acquainted with the country and the life and to establish contact with people.” Around the time of Eichmann’s visit, a prolonged and organized campaign of atrocities against the Jews of Palestine was launched.
Around this time, the Mufti became a paid agent of the Nazi Abwehr and was put in charge of counterintelligence and sabotage. When the British stopped a shipment of arms to the Mufti in Palestine through Saudi Arabia and Iraq, the Mufti re-located to Baghdad where he directed Arab and Nazi finance, diplomacy, and propaganda.
In 1941, the Mufti inspired a pro-Nazi coup in Iraq led by General Rashid Ali. Collaborating with his masters in Berlin, he declared a Jihad against Britain, which he called “the greatest foe of Islam.” The British backed a successful counter-coup and the Mufti proceeded on to Berlin where he was appointed by the Nazis as titular head of a Nazi-pan Arab government in exile.
On November 21, 1941 the Mufti met with Hitler and recorded the following in his diary:
“The Arabs are Germany’s natural friends… They are therefore prepared to cooperate with Germany with all their hearts and stood ready to participate in a war, not only negatively by the commission of act of sabotage and the instigation of revolutions, but also positively by the formation of an Arab Legion. In this struggle, the Arabs were striving for the independence and the unity of Palestine, Syria and Iraq. …Germany was resolved, step by step, to ask one European
nation after the other to solve its Jewish problem, and at the proper time direct a similar appeal tonon-European nations as well. Hitler. Germany’s objective would then be solely the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere under the protection of British power. The moment that Germany’s tank divisions and air squadrons had made their appearance south of Caucasus, the public appeal requested by the Grand Mufti could go out to the Arab world.”
Hitler and the Mufti were planning to first exterminate the Jews of Europe and then the Jews of the Middle East. The Mufti, who visited Nazi death camps several times, organized support for the Nazis among Muslims in Russia, the Balkans, and the Middle East. He headed the “Arab Bureau” in Berlin where he directed a massive network of Arab-Nazi collaborators; organized tens of thousands of Bosnian and Albanian Muslim into military units known as Handschar divisions which carried out atrocities against Yugoslav Jews, Serbs and Gypsies; and attempted to organize an Arab-Nazi Legion. (Handschar fighters would be discovered battling against Israeli independence in 1948.)
In 1943, in a speech in Berlin, the Mufti stated:
“The Treaty of Versailles was a disaster for the Germans as well as for the Arabs. But the Germans know how to get rid of the Jews….”
On 1 March 1944, in a radio broadcast to the Arab people from Berlin, the Mufti stated:
“Arabs! Rise as one and fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history, and religion. This saves your honor.”
Declared a war criminal at Nuremberg, the Mufti would spend the rest of his life living in opulence in Cairo. His broadcasts, pamphlets, intelligence network and sabotage against Israel would continue on even after his death in 1974.
In his memoirs, he wrote: “Our fundamental condition for cooperating with Germany was a free hand to eradicate every last Jew from Palestine and the Arab world. I asked Hitler for an explicit undertaking to allow us to solve the Jewish problem in a manner befitting our national and racial aspirations and according to the scientific methods innovated by Germany in the handling of its Jews.
“The answer I got was: “The Jews are yours.’ “
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