An inconvenient history: The Grand Mufti, Hitler and the “Knife Intifada”
Let’s talk about the history – it adds to our understanding of the “Knife Intifada” and BDS
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a controversial statement as he was leaving for Germany on the role of Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. Netanyahu’s statement suggesting that the idea of genocide against the Jews of Europe originated with the Mufti and not Hitler was overstatement, and quickly walked back by Netanyahu (but not before Netanyahu’s political enemies had a field day with it).
But there is a silver lining in Netanyahu’s political gaffe — people now are talking about the role of the Grand Mufti in the European genocide.
We have discussed the Mufti’s Nazi-sympathies and assistance here before, so it’s not new to us.
But given the current “Knife Intifada,” in which the agitation to kill Jews is pervasive in Palestinian culture, it’s clear that there is a direct line from the Mufti’s Nazi-affiliation to the Jew hatred that motivates the current conflict.
Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic tweeted out a link to this study from 2005, National Socialism and Anti-Semitism in the Arab World. It’s very lengthy, so read the whole thing. Here is an excerpt:
Nobody had a greater influence on the early history of the Middle East conflict than the Mufti, who as president of the Supreme Muslim Council was not only the supreme religious authority but also the central figure in Palestinian nationalism. In the 1930s, there were countless Arab nationalists who viewed Germany as an ally against the British without concerning themselves with the nature of the Hitler regime. Things were different where the Mufti was concerned: he knew what the regime was about and was attracted to it for that very reason.
[November 1943 – al-Husseini greeting Bosnian Waffen-SS volunteers with a Nazi salute.]
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went too far in recent comments that Nazi collaborator Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem before and during World War II, played a “central role in fomenting the Final Solution” by trying to convince Hitler to destroy the Jews during a 1941 meeting in Berlin. But Netanyahu was right on when he emphasized the Mufti’s Holocaust complicity and activities before, during, and after the war when the Mufti lied about alleged Jewish intentions to expel Muslim and Islam from Jerusalem’s Temple Mount—the same lie that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas repeats today in support of the current “knife Intifada.” …
Who was Haj Amin al-Husseini and what was his historical significance? A relative of Yasser Arafat as well as ally of Hassan al-Banna, originator of Hamas’ parent organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Grand Mufti was a moving force behind Palestinian Jew hatred, from the riots of 1920 and 1929 through the 1936-1939 bloody Arab Uprising against the Holy Land’s Jewish community, long before his WWII support of Nazi Germany.
According to Historian Robert Wistrich’s Hitler and the Holocaust (2001), the Mufti escaped British scrutiny in Jerusalem after the war’s outbreak for the more friendly confines of Berlin, where, in November, 1941, he had tea with Hitler who asked him “to lock in the innermost depths of his heart” that he (Hitler) “would carry on the battle to the total destruction of the Judeo-Communist Empire in Europe.” In 1942, Fred Grobba wrote approvingly of the Mufti’s visit with members of the Nazi elite to “the concentration camp Oranienburg . . . . The visit lasted about two hours with very satisfying results . . . . the Jews aroused particular interest among the Arabs. . . . It [the visit] . . . made a very favorable impression on the Arabs.”
In 1943, the Mufti extended his relations with the German Foreign Office and Abwehr directly to the SS Main Office. Gottlob Berger arranged a meeting between al-Husayni and SS chief Heinrich Himmler on July 3, 1943. Al-Husayni sent Himmler birthday greetings on October 6, and expressed the hope that “the coming year would make our cooperation even closer and bring us closer to our common goals.” The Grand Mufti also helped organize a Muslim Waffen SS Battalion, known as the Hanjars, that slaughtered ninety percent of Bosnia’s Jews, and were dispatched to Croatia and Hungary. The Mufti also made broadcasts to the Middle East urging Arabs and Muslims to honor Allah by implementing their own Final Solution.
The Times of Israel has historical documentation of the Grand Mufti’s meeting with Hitler.
Claims that Israel is intending to destroy the al-Aqsa mosque persist in Palestinian propaganda to incite violence — and have since before the current knife attacks, as David Horvitz writes in The Times of Israel:
The message that “the Jews are plotting against Al-Aqsa” has been pushed for months by Palestinian political chiefs, spiritual leaders, mainstream and social media: Mahmoud Abbas in speeches to his people (he finally lost the Israeli middle ground with his false accusation last week that Israel executed the teen Pisgat Zeev stabber); Fatah in leaflets and Facebook posts; Hamas in videos; the Islamic Movement agitating inside Israel; Arab Knesset members… all these and others have been throwing fuel onto the fire.
Professor Jeffrey Herf described the direct line from the Grand Mufti to modern propaganda, Hate Radio – The long, toxic afterlife of Nazi propaganda in the Arab world (2009)(h/t Elder of Ziyon):
Between 1939 and 1945, shortwave radio transmitters near Berlin broadcast Nazi propaganda in many languages around the world, including Arabic throughout the Middle East and North Africa, and Persian programs in Iran. English-language transcripts of the Arabic broadcasts shed light on a particularly dark chapter in the globalization of pernicious ideas. The transcripts’ significance, however, is not purely historical. Since September 11, 2001, scholars have debated the lineages, similarities, and differences between Nazi anti-Semitism and the anti-Semitism of Islamic extremists. These radio broadcasts suggest that Nazi Arabic-language propaganda helped introduce radical anti-Semitism into the Middle East, where it found common ground with anti-Jewish currents in Islam….
Many decades and events stand between World War II and contemporary expressions of radical Islam. Yet the transcripts of Arabic-language propaganda broadcasts offer compelling evidence of a political and ideological meeting of minds between Nazism and radical Islam. The toxic mixture of religious and secular themes forged in Nazi-era Berlin, and disseminated to the Middle East, continues to shape the extreme politics of that region.
It is a straight line from the anti-Semitic Palestinian violence of the 1930s and 1940s to the BDS movement, whose birth at the 2001 Durban conference was steeped in Nazi imagery, as the late Congressman Tom Lantos described:
Each day, these groups organized anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic rallies around the meetings, attracting thousands. One flyer which was widely distributed showed a photograph of Hitler and the question “What if I had won?” The answer: “There would be NO Israel…”
At a press conference held by Jewish NGO’s to discuss their concerns with the direction the conference was taking, an accredited NGO, the Arab Lawyers Union, distributed a booklet filled with anti-Semitic caricatures frighteningly like those seen in the Nazi hate literature printed in the 1930s. Jewish leaders and I who were in Durban were shocked at this blatant display of anti-Semitism. For me, having experienced the horrors of the Holocaust first hand, this was the most sickening and unabashed display of hate for Jews I had seen since the Nazi period.
Netanyahu, in his clarification of his original statements, pointed to the glorification of the Grand Mufti (video via Elder of Ziyon):
And a straight line to the blood libels that fuel hostility to Israel from groups like Hamas:
And the Jew hatred that is taught to the young:
It’s good that we are talking about this, because the current violence is not about borders or “occupation” of the West Bank.
[added] In a new article on October 22, 2015, considering the controversy over Netanyahu’s comments, Prof. Herf writes that Netanyahu is wrong about the influence of the Grand Mufti in instigating genocide, but completely correct as to the lasting anti-Semitic nature of the opposition to the Jews in Israel:
Prime Minister Netanyahu’s comments about Haj Amin al-Husseini’s impact on Hitler’s decision making about the Final Solution in Europe do not stand up to the consensus of historical research. Husseini’s importance in Nazi Berlin lay far more in assisting the Third Reich’s Arabic language propaganda toward the Arab world and in mobilizing Muslims in Eastern Europe to support the Nazi regime. That said, Netanayhu’s comments about Husseini’s lasting impact on Palestinian political culture are very much on the mark….
Here the Prime Minister is on rock solid ground. Far from denouncing Husseini for spreading lies, absurd conspiracy theories and radical anti-Semitism, he has remained a revered figure in Palestinian political memory. The absurdities for which Husseini became famous in the 1940s have continued to play a far too prominent role in the Palestinian political culture ever since. He did incite others to murder Jews. He did spread ridiculous conspiracy theories comparable to those of the Nazis. He did all that he could to help the Nazis in a failing effort to spread the Holocaust to the Middle East and to win the war in Europe. He left behind a legacy of hatred, paranoia, religious fanaticism and celebration of terror so long as it was aimed at Jews and Israelis. The Palestinian authority and Hamas even more so has kept that legacy is alive and well and fills the heads of Palestinian teenagers with rubbish that has led to the terror wave of recent weeks.
The Prime Minister has erred in his understanding of the timing of Hitler’s decision making but he is right about Husseini’s disastrous impact on Palestinian political culture. I hope that the discussion his comments have generated will draw more attention to the now abundant scholarship on Husseini’s role in collaborating with the Nazis in their failed efforts to murder the Jews of North African and the Middle East during World War II. We need more public discussion about the atrocious legacy he left behind that has been playing itself out, yet again, in the knife attacks on the streets of Israel’s cities….
More from David Horvitz:
This latest phase of terrorism and violence — like the conventional wars, and the suicide bomber onslaught, and the relentless campaign of misrepresentation and demonization and denial of Jewish history in the holy land — sends the opposite message to Israel. Much of the rest of the world — so short-sighted in viewing Israel as the Goliath when it’s a tiny, loathed sliver in a region seething with Islamist extremism — refuses to see it. But in bloody, unmistakable capital letters, the perpetrators of this new round of evil mayhem proclaim to Israelis: We don’t want to live alongside you. We want to kill you and force you out of here.
https://twitter.com/MsIntervention/status/656875226068885504
Netanyahu did himself some political damage by overstating the case, but he did us all a favor by focusing so much on the historical sources of anti-Semitism masquerading as anti-Zionism.
[Featured Image Haj Amin al-Husseini meeting with Adolf Hitler (December 1941) via Wikipedia]
[Title of post changed because I liked Leslie’s formulation better, and additional material added.]
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Comments
I hope Netanyahu doesn’t back down on this. Amr Husseini pushed Hitler and Himmler to allow him and the Arabs to slaughter Jews in Israel. Since Hitler distrusted Arabs, he ejected that request but consented to Husseini’s raising Bosnian troops to slaughter Jews in Europe. Husseini even implored Hitler and Himmler to kill Jews faster please.
The record is clear on this, and, as usual, the Arabs and Euro-Islamist-symps are lying. There is a clear line from Amr Huseeini to Yasser Arafat and the ongoing attempted genocide of the Jews in Israel. It is absolving Hitler and Himmler to state that. Rather, it is making the record of history more complete.
Correction: it is NOT absolving Hitler and Himmler to state that.
One of the things about history is that it requires people to have some sand if they’re going to deal with it with intellectual integrity. A LOT of history is almost too hard to deal with. So some people just don’t. They deny it, taking the easy way out.
The history of the last century has been denied by many…maybe most…historical intellectuals who have written about it. Some have taken some delight in villainizing the Nazis, but NEVER their cousins the Stalinists. Others can’t bring themselves to deal honestly with the Muslims. That’s still true today.
If we are to learn anything useful from history, we have to take it straight, with no palliatives, and we have to be brave. This, naturally, includes our own history, from which a lot of the darkest European ideas came.
Following Lenin’s lead from World War I, leftists always claim the Nazis were “right wing” (actually, “reactionary” as the right-left ideology axis wasn’t widely recognized a century ago). But it was just politics.
Socialism had its first major split over The Great War with Lenin and the “internationalists” eschewing patriotism and advocating socialists use the war to set the stage for revolution. Others like Mussolini were more “nationalistic” and supported their home countries. The Italian Socialists had a real split over it, with Mussolini and the nationalists expelled. He called his new party Fascist, but they and their National Socialist cousins in Germany after the war were still socialists.
It was more like the difference between Methodists and Baptists than a true opposition.
I’m with you until that last sentence.
Do you believe that a lot of Europe’s darkest ideas came from the United States? I think it’s the other way around.
Exactly correct.
Fascism in the U.S. did not originate here.
The modern eugenics movement began when Francis Galton – an Englishman – took the evolutionary ideas of his cousin, Charles Darwin, and ran with them. It was only later that the racist “mother” of Planned Parenthood began her effort to rid the U.S. of blacks and others she considered “unfit” for life.
A good thing is that the mainstream in the West is actually talking about it. Two days ago this was inside baseball knowledge.
I’m an atheist, but one needn’t be religious to be appalled and angered by the long history of persecution of the Jews.
When I’m elected president of the US – and we all agree that’s inevitable – the first thing I do is park our nuclear fleet in the eastern Mediterranean. The second thing I do is make Israel our 51st state.
Antisemitism is also one of the strangest prejudices in its pervasiveness and intensity. It must have something to do with the Jewish ability to turn lemons into lemonade.
While others have searched for different reasons for antisemitism, I’ve always felt there was a very simple reason behind this hatred: plain envy.
Bullseye!!!
Of course it’s envy. Who else on this God’s green earth has been persecuted for thousands of years and have risen above it to show compassion to their enemies?
I’ve long wished that American blacks were more like the Jews and less like the Muslims.
One of the great failures of the 20th Century was not trying the Mufti at Nuremberg and forever repudiating the Arab version of Jew hatred no less insidious as that of the Nazis.
A hanging of the old sod at Nuremberg would’ve been far better.
When Obama and Jarrett are alone in the White House, we can only wonder what those two grand traitors call their Intifada against the American way of life?
Some years ago I heard an interview with the author of a book on al-Husseini. He was being widely praised for looking forthrightly at the Muslim role in the Holocaust, but what struck me in the interview was how delighted he seemed in saying (claiming) that Muslims learned their Jew-hatred from Europeans. Of course he didn’t explain why Islamic Jew-hatred has outlived the Nazis by a long stretch.
I would add nor why it predated it.
While historically interesting, and therefore interesting to me, politically, walking forward Netanyahu’s gaffe isn’t going to help. This is why I never liked Netanyahu, even if I respected him on some level: he’s like a paratrooper who has a constant compulsion to open his parachute too low and take unnecessary risks. At any rate, all he can really do of any use is hope security services can contain the fantastical lie driven stabbing campaign and not let Abbas blackmail him into “grant me concessions and I’ll end this” (because, he probably can’t on his own at this point, anyway).
I don’t believe Netanyahu overstated anything–in fact he stopped short of documented history, and I’m disappointed he’s walking anything back.
Before the Mufti’s stay with Hitler, Hitler was content to expel the Jews from Germany (and the lands around it that Hitler coveted). At one point Hitler planned to ship Jews to Madagascar.
The Final Solution of killing Jews became policy only after the Mufti’s visit.
So why am I hearing from Jewish news sources that are not Haaretz that it became policy, on paper, prior to that visit?
I mean, just with what LI is quoting above, seems like Hitler made a point of telling the grand mufti they’re batting for the same team. Isn’t that enough? Apparently for Netanyahu and a speechwriter somewhere, no, it wasn’t. May I remind that there are ordinary people in the West Bank of a sincere belief that right now there are Jews going up and praying on the Temple Mount and as soon as Netanyahu stops this the violence will stop? Israel doesn’t need to give anyone freebies when it can’t make basic reality acknowledged.
Netanyahu was somewhat sloppy. He made a number of mistakes about the Mufti, including being wanted for the Nuremberg trials (he was actually warned to warned to leave France by people in the French government in 1946 before that could happen) and about him dying in Cairo, apparently shortly after the war, which is absolutely not true.
Haj Amin al Husseini continued as president of the Arab Higher Committee and the All-Palestine government (Albeit many Arab governments were not interested in him actually ruling anywhere) and was treated like an Arab head of state.
He presided over a meeting of the World Islamic Congress held in Karachi, Pakistan and was presxent at the first “non-aligned” conference held in Bandung, Indonesia in 1955.
His bases were in Egypt and Syria but in Auguist 1959, which is after Nasser had formed the United Arab Republic uniting both Egypt and Syria under one government (it fell apart in 1961) he moved, with his headquarters to Beirut Lebanon.
Eichmann was interrogated about him but claimed that he met him only once, at a cocktail party. Followers of mufti, meanwhile, wrote articles prasiing Eichmann in newspapers published in Damascus, Beirut, Cairo and Amman. The Mufti, in his memoris, praised Eichmann as gallant and noble for having denied there had bene any connection between the two men (Icon of Evil citing Bernard Lewis 1999 book.)
It was only in the summer of 1963, after the Iraqi Prime Minister, a big supporter, was overthrown that the Arab League declared the seat of the Palestinian representative vacant. And instead, that September, Nasser appointed appointed Ahmed Shuqairy as the Palestinian represenative. (How Egypt gets to pick that remaisn unexplained) And in 1964, a new organiztion – the Palestine Liberation Organization – was created to replace the Arab Higher Committee. See March 28, 1964 New York Times.
Still, he was actually even in Jerusalem in early 1967, in March, sometime before the crisis, an honored guest of King Hussein.
And he died in Beirut Lebanon on July 4, 1974.
Shuqairy was forced to resign as head of the PLO on December 24, 1967. On February 9, 1969 Yasir Arafat, who is said to be Husseini’s nephew became the chairman. Actually he was a cousin, maybe a grand nephew. His original name was Muhammed Abdel-Raouf Arafat As Qudwa al-Husseini, according to Daniel Pipes, but he eliminated the al-Husseini to avoid the connection being noticed. The relationship is actually unclear.
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2008/01/update-on-yasser-arafat-and-grand-mufti.html
A comment there says the mufti started out as a Turkish agent against the Arabs before World War I, then later was a British agent during the Arab rebellion they sponsored.
Then he obtained a position in Jerusalem and tried to prevent Jews from coming to the country, as they would interfere with his ambitions.
All in all, all of of it stemmed from political ambition
This is inaccurate. The Final Solution was already in progress. Thus delighted the mufti so much that he implored faster please. He also wanted to send a battalion of Arabs to assist, but Hitler did not like Arabs. Hitler, Reinhardt Heydrich, Heinrich Himmler did not need outside help to devise the Final Solution. S great was their hatred that Madagascar or an other place was never a serious option.
Last night after reading this post about the mufti, I listened to a book about the WWII era, Albert Einstein at 112 Mercer Street in Princeton, is mentioned, as well as Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project.
This morning I woke up thinking, with gratitude, about those good men. And the fact that evil exists and seems to strive to prevail.
If Hitler had been unopposed by those who had the wit to see and the courage to act, he would have developed the bomb and used it to subjugate the whole human race.
I regret they seem to have been forgotten, and are not celebrated.
I figure the same demons that inspired the Nazis are still at work through other agents. I think that liberals are handicapped by an inability to accept the doctrine of human depravity – so the Palestinians (or whatever group acts depravely) must have some logical reason for what they do, and the victims must be somehow at fault.
Marxists, communists, socialists, fascists, dictators and other left-wing ideologues, while competing interests, are also allies of convenience.
The “Palestinian” people have been poorly served by their leadership. Perhaps a charismatic “Mandela” figure will arise among the Hamas leadership and depose his competitors. While an international leftist force lead by a Nobel Laureate will overcome the Jewish resistance.
You’re absolutely right.
This is the kind of error that correcting it only makes things worse for the people being talked about.
The Mufti did not persuade Hitler to kill all the Jews. Even if the Mufti or some Nazi had thought so or claimed so and I don’t know if that’s the case.
The Mufti knew all about it though, and I think the Mufti was also one of the few people that Hitler shared the details of his extermination.
What the Mufti may actually have done is persuade Hitler not to let any more Jews leave Europe for areas outside of his control.
This affected a very few people, but it did affect a few.
There were a few Jews in Germany who had some kind of permission to emigrate. At the same time many were being ordered east. For some there may have been apossibility of a choice where to go, if they left before they were supposed to be taken away.
Anyway, the Mufti, I think, is supposed to have persuaded Hitler not to let any Jews leave Germany for areas outside of his control, instead of being sent where he was sending them, and this did stop in the fall of 1941 or so. (There was a little bit of that maybe still going on when the Mufti met or was preparing to meet Hitler on November 28, 1941. I’m not sure really when the last Jews opermitted to emigrate emigrated.)
Note: The Nazis did not immediately kill Jews deported from Germany itself. The Nazis, it looks like, did not want news to filter back too soon that certain persons were no longer alive. Maybe this was because they didn’t want to alarm their neighbors, with whom contact had gradually broken off with, or maybe their signatures might be needed on some documents. I don’t know. Anyway, they were sent to the Lodz ghetto or Theresienstadt, and tghey lived there for at leasta few months. As I said, maybe this was to make sure all loose ends were taken care of.
Re: The Mufti knew all about it, though.
I remember reading that in some propaganda broadcast from Paris in 1944 he used a number for the number of Jews in the world that was 5 million less than the number used before the war. Five million Jews (“enemies of the Reich”) killed was also a figure used by Adolf Eichmann at about the same time, before he had murdered about 400,000 Hungarian (and ex-Romanian) Jews.
I don’t remember where I read about the Paris broadcast but I find in a book (Icon of Evil, citing another book) that a broadcast from Berlin by Haj Amin el Husseini on September 21, 1944 used eleven million as the number of Jews in the world.
The book doesn’t say what number the Mufti was using in 1939, but it says that the Israeli historian Moshe Pearlman, who may have been the first to call attention to the Mufti’s numbers, said it was known at the time the number of Jews was about 17 million. The World Almanac actually used a lower number, but I don’t know what if anything the Mufti himself used.
Based on the estimate in the pre-war World Almanac, eleven million would give a figure of about 4 1/2 million Jews killed.
By that time, the Mufti may have concluded it wasn’t really any secret any more that the Nazis had killed most of the Jews of Europe, with the Allies threatening to punish them and everything, and this even being mentioned on some BBC broadcasts, so he used updated figures.
He was, after all, interested in minimizing the number of Jews and aiming this at Jew-haters or people who were indifferent to Jews.
” Mufti Advised Hitler on Holocaust, Says Middle East Forum Scholar ”
http://www.meforum.org/5574/schwanitz-husaini
” Noted Middle East Forum scholar Dr. Wolfgang G. Schwanitz responds to criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Schwanitz, a leading expert on ties between Nazis and Islamists, says al-Hajj Amin al-Husaini was instrumental in the decision to exterminate the Jews of Europe. “
What the Mufti may possibly have done is persuade the Nazis to not let any Jews leave prior to being sent to be killed.
He wasn’t responsible for the whole thing.
By November 28, 1941 the murder of the Jews had started and had been going on in the areas conquered after June 22, 1941.
The decision to kill the Jews had actually been made in the spring of 1941, according to the best (second/third hand) sources, (from that time) and it began in earnest with the invasion.
The Rumanians also did it – in fact it was Rumanians who killed the Jews of Odessa. Rumanian participation abruptly stopped in June 3, 1942 with the first warning by the United States that they would be punished after the war, and Jews in Rumania remained completely safe in areas from which they had not been ordered to leave yet.. Also, part of Rumania had been transfered to Hungary and they remained safe there until 1944. In 1943, by the way, Jews (who were Hungaarian citizens) could leave Hungary, but few felt the neccesity to.
By November 28, 1941, the murder of the Jews had actually slowed down in the areas that were part of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941.
It had slowed down from its initial speed with the establishment of ghettos in those territories and the move to switch from execution by gunfire with mass graves to gas chambers.
It was beginning to move west into previously occupiesd sections of Poland (this is besides the 150,000 or so Jews killed in Poland between September 1939 and November 1939, mostly by being told to go into the local synagogue, and the doors locked and a fire started. This was in more rural areas and near the new border.)
Netanyahu also said that the Temple was built 3,000 years ago by King Solomon “1,500 years before the birth of Islam”
3,000 years is avery good and acceptable date – one calculation would give you this almost exactly – but this would place teh borth of Islam 1,500 years ago, while in reality it was someqhat less tahn 1,400 years ago.
I wish he had explained who the wroter Brenner was. I found out something about him and what happened to him: (in 1921 -it is not clear from netanyahu whether this wa sin 1920 or 1921)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaffa_riots
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yosef_Haim_Brenner
I don’t know all of the history of how many Jews were killed. I do remember Gen. Eisenhower saying ” Take many pictures of these Death Camps,” there will be people in the future who will renounce that it ever happened.
They also Took video, so one can hear and see those who discovered the slaughter; one can see how Ike made the local people go through the camps and see what they had supported. The mayor of a town near a camp, along with his wife, hanged himself after visiting the death camp.
If this:
http://www.pmo.gov.il/English/MediaCenter/Speeches/Pages/speechcongress201015.aspx
(the print version is better to read, but doesn’t have a separate URL. I only see about:blank)
…were a term paper, it wouldn’t get an A. It wouldn’t get a C either, but it wouldn’t get an A.
Benjamin Netanyahu has had years – no decades – to get his facts right.
I wonder how good his intelligence is on other, more contemporary matters.
He has the Mufti dying of cancer in Cairo (sounding like it was not too long after the war) instead of in Beirut in 1974.
He has him wanted by the Nuremberg tribunal, when that actually never came to pass. (In spite of things like the article by Edgar Answel Mowrer in the June 13, 1946 New York Post entitled “Official Documents Convict Mufti of Complicity in 6,000,000 Murders”)
He has him persuading Hitler to kill the Jews instead of exiling them (when at most the Mufti argued against letting any escape his rule for the time being)
He has Islam beginning 1,500 years ago, when it was less than 1,400 standard years ago, and still less than 1,500 Islamic years.
He has the Jewish community in Hebron massacred in 1921, when it was actually massacred in 1929.
But, actually, overall, it’s still pretty good.
Correction: Actually that New York Post article of June 13, 1946 came after the Mufti suddenly left France on or right before June 10, 1946. But there may have been articles before that.
On another blog, a commentator has this for what the Mufti did: [I don’t know the source(s) or the accuracy of these claims.]
o Interceded when Eichamn tried to exchange Jewish kids for German POWs’ with England.
o Travelled to Bosnia and helped setup the Hanjar troopers who were a special Bosnian Waffen SS corp. who exterminated 90% of Bosnian Jews.
o Personally lobbied against Jews leaving Hungary
o His one stipulation that he had about helping the Nazis was that once they won the war, the entire population of Jews in Palestine was to be killed.
This article is worth reading on the reasons behind the statement. http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-brilliance-of-bibis-big-lie-a-dramatization/
Interesting website:
http://www.israelhasbeenterrorattackfreefor.com/
At the moment, it is
15 hours, 31 minutes, 35 seconds.
It is now after midnight, so should continue for some time.
This only counts attacks wehere there are “innnocent casualties”
Failed attacks don’t count.
Amazing how the attacks ceased once the Arabs realized they were bringing knives to a gun fight.
Saw a screening of “My Italian Secret, The Forgotten Heroes”, followed by a panel discussion last night at Lehigh University. It was wonderful.
http://myitaliansecret.com/
The untold saga of Italians who rescued Jews and other refugees fleeing the Nazis in World War II. Featuring Gino Bartali, the charismatic Italian cycling hero who risked his life over and over to save innocent lives.