The Arab/Muslim Nazi Connection
Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin el-Husseini - A picture
taken in 1943 of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin el-Husseini
reviewing Bosnian-Muslim troops - a unit of the "Hanjar (Saber)
Division" of the Waffen SS which he personally recruited for Hitler.
http://www.cdn-friends-icej.ca/images/mufti.jpg
Arab leaders and media outlets have long been addicted to
comparing Israel to the Nazi regime, while at the same time demeaning
the extent of the Holocaust. This obsession with defaming and
antagonizing the Jewish people and state was on full display in recent
months and reached a crescendo - or rather nadir - the day before Pope
John Paul II visited the Temple Mount during his Holy Land pilgrimage.
The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Ekrima Sabri, just hours
before hosting the Pope, gave a series of press interviews, first
telling the AP: "The figure of 6 million Jews killed during the
Holocaust is exaggerated and is used by the Israelis to gain
international sup****t… It's not my problem. Muslims didn't do
anything on this issue. It's the doing of Hitler who hated the Jews,"
asserted the acid-tongued Mufti - a figure appointed by Palestinian
leader Yasser Arafat. "Six million? It was a lot less," Sabri
repeated for an Italian newspaper.
"It's not my fault if Hitler hated the Jews. Anyway, they hate them
just about everywhere." The Mufti finished the day with Reuters,
charging, "We denounce all massacres, but I don't see why a certain
massacre should be used for political gain and blackmail." However, as
a matter of record, there was a well-do***ented, thriving relation****p
between the Arab/Muslim world and Nazi Germany, with perhaps the most
significant figure linking Hitler to the Middle East being none other
Sabri's very own predecessor, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin
el-Husseini. Here is a brief review of that dark, overlooked chapter
in history.
The Führer's Mufti: After World War I, the Great Powers of Europe
jockeyed for influence in the Middle East's oil fields and trade
routes, with France and Britain holding mandates throughout most of
the region. In the 1930s, the fascist regimes that arose in Italy and
Germany sought greater stakes in the area, and began courting Arab
leaders to revolt against their British and French custodians. Among
their many willing accomplices was Jerusalem Mufti Haj Amin
el-Husseini, who fled Palestine after agitating against the British
during the Arab Revolt of 1936-39. He found refuge in Iraq - another
of Her Majesty's mandates - where he again topped the British most
wanted list after helping pull the strings behind the Iraqi coup of
1941. The revolt in Baghdad was orchestrated by Hitler as part of a
strategy to squeeze the region between the pincers of Rommel's troops
in North Africa, German forces in the Caucuses and pro-Nazi forces in
Iraq. However, in June 1941 British troops put down the rebellion and
the Mufti escaped via Tehran to Italy and eventually to Berlin.
Once in Berlin, the Mufti received an enthusiastic reception by
the "Islamische Zentralinstitut" and the whole Islamic community of
Germany, which welcomed him as the "Führer of the Arabic world." In an
introductory speech, he called the Jews the "most fierce enemies of
the Muslims" and an "ever corruptive element" in the world. Husseini
soon became an honored guest of the Nazi leader****p and met on several
occasions with Hitler. He personally lobbied the Führer against the
plan to let Jews leave Hungary, fearing they would immigrate to
Palestine. He also strongly intervened when Adolf Eichman tried to cut
a deal with the British government to exchange German POWs for 5000
Jewish children who also could have fled to Palestine. The Mufti's
protests with the SS were successful, as the children were sent to
death camps in Poland instead. One German officer noted in his
journals that the Mufti would liked to have seen the Jews "preferably
all killed." On a visit to Auschwitz, he re****tedly admonished the
guards running the gas chambers to work more diligently. Throughout
the war, he appeared regularly on German radio broadcasts to the
Middle East, preaching his pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic message to the Arab
m***** back home.
To show gratitude towards his hosts, in 1943 the Mufti travelled
several times to Bosnia, where on orders of the SS he recruited the
notorious "Hanjar troopers," a special Bosnian Waffen SS company which
slaugh-tered 90% of Bosnia's Jews and burned countless Serbian
churches and villages. These Bosnian Muslim recruits rapidly found
favor with SS chief Heinrich Himmler, who established a special Mullah
Military school in Dresden.
The only condition the Mufti set for his help was that after
Hitler won the war, the entire Jewish population in Palestine should
be liquidated. After the war, Husseini fled to Switzerland and from
there escaped via France to Cairo, were he was warmly received. The
Mufti used funds received earlier from the Hilter regime to finance
the Nazi-inspired Arab Liberation Army that terrorized Jews in
Palestine.
The Arab Embrace of Nazism: Husseini represents the prevalent
pro-Nazi posture among the Arab/Muslim world before, during and even
after the Holocaust. The Nazi-Arab connection existed even when Adolf
Hitler first seized power in Germany in 1933. News of the Nazi
takeover was welcomed by the Arab m***** with great enthusiasm, as the
first congratulatory telegrams Hitler received upon being appointed
Chancellor came from the German Consul in Jerusalem, followed by those
from several Arab capitals. Soon afterwards, parties that imitated the
National Socialists were founded in many Arab lands, like the
"Hisb-el-qaumi-el-suri" (PPS) or Social Nationalist Party in Syria.
Its leader, Anton Sa'ada, styled himself the Führer of the Syrian
nation, and Hitler became known as "Abu Ali" (In Egypt his name was
"Muhammed Haidar"). The banner of the PPS displayed the swastika on a
black-white background. Later, a Lebanese branch of the PPS - which
still receives its orders from Damascus - was involved in the
assassination of Lebanese President Pierre Gemayel.
The most influential party that emulated the Nazis was "Young
Egypt," which was founded in October 1933. They had storm troopers,
torch processions, and literal translations of Nazi slogans - like
"One folk, One party, One leader." Nazi anti-Semitism was replicated,
with calls to boycott Jewish businesses and physical attacks on Jews.
Britain had a bitter experience with this pro-German mood in Egypt,
when the official Egyptian government failed to declare war on the
Wehrmacht as German troops were about to conquer Alexandria.
After the war, a member of Young Egypt named Gamal Abdul Nasser
was among the officers who led the July 1952 revolution in Egypt.
Their first act - following in Hitler's footsteps - was to outlaw all
other parties. Nasser's Egypt became a safe haven for Nazi war
criminals, among them the SS General in charge of the murder of
Ukrainian Jewry; he became Nasser's bodyguard and close comrade. Alois
Brunner, another senior Nazi war criminal, found shelter in Damascus,
where he served for many years as senior adviser to the Syrian general
staff and still resides today.
Sami al-Joundi, one of the founders of the ruling Syrian Ba'ath
Party, recalls: "We were racists. We admired the Nazis. We were
immersed in reading Nazi literature and books... We were the first who
thought of a translation of Mein Kampf. Anyone who lived in Damascus
at that time was witness to the Arab inclination toward Nazism."
Arab Mufti Greets Nazis, 1944
http://www.cdn-friends-icej.ca/images/mufti2.jpg
These leanings never completely ceased. Hitler's Mein Kampf
currently ranks sixth on the best-seller list among Palestinian Arabs.
Luis Al-Haj, translator of the Arabic edition, writes glowingly in the
preface about how Hitler's "ideology" and his "theories of
nationalism, dictator****p and race… are advancing especially within
our Arabic States." When Palestinian police first greeted Arafat in
the self-rule areas, they offered the infamous Nazi salute - the right
arm raised straight and upward.
The PLO and notably Arafat himself do not make a secret of their
source of inspiration. The Grand Mufti el-Husseini is venerated as a
hero by the PLO. It should be noted, that the PLO's top figure in east
Jerusalem today, Faisal Husseini, is the grandson to the Führer's
Mufti. Arafat also considers the Grand Mufti a respected educator and
leader, and in 1985 declared it an honor to follow in his footsteps.
Little wonder. In 1951, a close relative of the Mufti named Rahman
Abdul Rauf el-Qudwa el-Husseini matriculated to the University of
Cairo. The student decided to conceal his true identity and enlisted
as "Yasser Arafat."
Writers: Paul Longgrear, Raymond McNemar
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