EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Legacies of Hajj Amin
al-Husseini’s work are still with us. The broadcasts of Radio Zeissen,
the Mufti's propaganda station, resonate in the 1988 Hamas covenant, and
indeed still reverberate throughout our region. So do the recurrent
references to Nazi imagery and texts in the Palestinian public domain. To
demand a proper historical reckoning is therefore not to
"demonize" the Palestinian people but to treat them, for a
change, as adults capable of coping with a culture of
responsibility.
Amidst the controversy and the invective, an opportunity
has now arisen to set the record straight as to Hajj Amin al-Husseini and
his role in Berlin. True, he was not the instigator of the extermination:
and the record of his meeting with Hitler in November 1941 does not
support Prime Minister Netanyahu's colorful depiction of it. Hitler spoke
of "Vernichtung" as early as January 1939, and his troops
implemented it well before Wannsee. But it is equally misguided to depict
the Grand Mufti as a marginal player, or to describe the effort to bring
him to justice – dating back to 1946 - as yet another Zionist propaganda
ploy. A broad body of evidence, including several significant
contributions in recent years by German scholars, proves otherwise.
The leader of the Palestinian people – still venerated
today, and his creed still followed by many - was a promoter, a planner
and an indirect perpetrator in mass murder. The evidence for that rests
on much more than Dieter Wisliceny's story. To dismiss or diminish his
role is not only historically wrong: it is ultimately harmful to the
prospect of clarity, and perhaps reconciliation, as to the origins of the
conflict. It helps sustain a narrative of victimhood about 1948 which ignores
the Palestinian leadership's overt intentions, and the Mufti's role in
bringing about the fate that befell his people.
In a discourse dominated by "narratives" – which
are all too often veiled diatribes, wrapped carefully in subjective
pseudo-historical interpretations – it is more important than ever to
stay as close as possible to the actual historical record. Not everything
is in the eyes of the beholder. Some things actually happened, were
documented, and should serve as the necessary foundation for intelligent
discussion. All the more so when the impact of the past is still very
much with us, as is the case with Hajj Amin al-Husseini's activities in
Nazi Germany from November 1941 onwards, as well as his earlier support
for the Axis cause.
It is regrettable that Prime Minister Netanyahu chose to
offer, in his speech to the 37th World Zionist Congress on October 20, a
highly colorful but historically unfounded depiction of the Grand Mufti's
audience with Hitler on November 28 1941. But it is equally tragic, even
grotesque, that this is being used to ignore, once again, the broad body
of evidence on Hajj Amin's complicity in Nazi policy. All too often, even
in Israel, this aspect of history has been cast aside – making it easier
for the Arab side to advance a version of history in which the
Palestinians were the innocent victims of a Jewish onslaught.
The implications of this tendency to dismiss or at least
diminish the Mufti's role (even in the new Yad va-Shem Museum, it is
given a distinctly marginal place, certainly in comparison with its
setting in the previous exhibit) are often overlooked. After all, Hajj
Amin – unlike his fellow guest in Berlin, and later Tokyo, Chandra Boze,
who broke with Gandhi and urged the Indian national movement to side with
the Axis – was not a minor figure in the history of the Palestinian
people: he was their predominant leader for more than a generation. His
aggressive incitement as to Jewish designs on the Temple Mount still
reverberates today; and his party's brutal repression of the more
moderate Opposition (Mu'aradah) in the late 30's sealed off any prospect
of a compromise based on partition, and set the stage for the tragedies
which followed.
He was also unique in retaining his position of leadership
after 1945, despite his well-known association with the Nazis. This sheds
a distinct light on the circumstances of the war of 1948, and on the
innate realization for the Jewish population and leadership, at the time,
that this was in some ways the last great battle of World War Two: Jews,
some of them survivors, defending themselves against a Palestinian leader
(and soldiers, like Kawukji) who came directly from the Nazi side. To say
this is not to "attack" the Palestinians – it is simply to
invite them to take a deeper look into their own history.
The Mufti's specific role in Berlin, therefore, needs to
be addressed: and while any exhaustive study of the issue – based upon
the impressive volume of recent well-documented studies, many of them by
German scholars, from Matthias Kuntzel onwards – lies outside the scope
of this paper, some points must be made. Indeed, the present debate
should be seized upon as an opportunity for historical clarity.
It is certainly true that Hitler (and Himmler) needed no
goading in matters of murder, and in his Reichstag speech on January 31,
1939 – long before he met the Mufti – the Fuhrer openly warned that if
Jewish conspiracies do bring about another war, the result would be the
"Vernichtung der Judische Rasse in Europa". Wholesale slaughter
was already practiced by the Einzatsgruppen attached to the invading
forces in Poland in September 1939 and more systematically in the Soviet
Union right from the beginning of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941.There
is no record, moreover, of the purported exchange as depicted in
Netanyahu's speech.
None of this, however, should be used to erase the
detailed evidence of Husseini's complicity in the Holocaust – which
contrary to some recent assertions, goes well beyond the claims made on
this subject by Dieter Wisliceny as he awaited trial in Nuremberg (he was
ultimately executed in Bratislava in 1948). One of the most
extensive and documented studies of his actions, as well as of his
ambitions and petty quarrels, during his time in Berlin can be found in a
book privately published in Tel Aviv in 1996 by the former Yugoslav
partisan Jennie Lebel (jailed by Tito after the war, she made Aliyah in
1954). She obtained, among multiple other sources, the indictments for
war crimes which the post-war Yugoslav government prepared against the
Mufti. The book, "Haj Amin and Berlin", deserves greater
attention (and some better editing) than it received: it certainly serves
to counter any claims about the minor role played by him – and other Arab
collaborators with the Nazis – throughout these years of war and
extermination.
In several respects, the Mufti was an active participant
in the Nazi war against the Jews:
1.
As a promoter of the idea of extermination, including –
among many statements and speeches to this effect - his message to
Mussolini in the summer of 1940, in which he claimed the
"right" of the Arabs at large to solve the Jewish problem in
their own lands in line with Axis practices in Europe. This was later
translated into his active role in Iraq - where he was involved not only
in the Kailani coup but also in inciting for the "Farhud"
(pogrom) of June 1941.
2.
As a planner of further extermination, and specifically
that of the Jewish population of the Jewish community in pre-state
Palestine: specifically, through collaboration of his agents with
Einzatsgruppe Egypten, under Walter Rauff (considered to be the initiator
of mass killing by poison gas trucks; later charged with the destruction
of Tunisian Jewry), which sat in Athens vainly awaiting Rommel's conquest
of Egypt and of British Mandatory Palestine.
3.
As the perpetrator – through the active mobilization of
Balkan Muslims to three Waffen-SS divisions, including the
"Hanjar" (dagger) Mountain Division – of war crimes for which
he was later indicted by the Yugoslav government, and sought be the
British authorities (the French, as part of a pattern of provocative
actions designed to avenge what they saw as their humiliating removal from
Syria by British intervention, let him escape after the war through their
territory to Egypt, where King Faruq offered him asylum).
It is not some Zionist propagandists but two scholars of
American Arab origin, Youssef and Basil Aboul-Enein, in their fascinating
study of Axis and Allied intelligence operations during World War II, who
offer the following succinct summary: "With his introduction to
Himmler, [Hajj Amin] became actively involved in the grotesque campaign
against European and Slavic Jews in the Final Solution.”
The past will not go away. What makes this issue so
acutely relevant today is not only the incitement over Jerusalem, which
triggered the Prime Minister's outburst, but other legacies of the
Mufti's work which are still with us. Any reading of the Hamas Covenant,
for example – written in London in 1988 – and in particular Article 22,
"explaining" all of modern history as a reflection of devilish
Jewish designs, proves that the broadcasts of Radio Zeissen, the Mufti's
propaganda station (with its relay station in Bari) continued to resonate
almost fifty years later, and indeed still reverberate throughout our
region. So do the recurrent references to Nazi imagery and texts in the
Palestinian public domain.
To demand a proper historical reckoning is therefore not
to "demonize" the Palestinian people but to treat them, for a
change, as adults capable of coping with a culture of responsibility.
* Col. (res.) Dr. Eran Lerman recently joined the
Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies as a senior research associate.
For the past six years, he served as deputy for foreign policy and
international affairs at the National Security Council in the Israeli
Prime Minister's Office. For 20 years prior to that, he held senior posts
in IDF Military Intelligence, and also was Israel director of the
American Jewish Committee.
BESA Center Perspectives Papers are published through the
generosity of the Greg Rosshandler Family
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