Aren’t Palestinians as responsible as their leader al Hajj Amin Hussieni who collaborated with the Nazis during WW II?
Intro
Unfortunately, to the Palestinian people this question implies that they should pay the price for the collaboration of a single person with the Nazis at time of war, only to protect his homeland from theft and his people from oppression conducted by British and Zionist colonialism.
Evidence
Although there were a very small minority of Palestinians who collaborated with the Nazis for national purposes and at times of war , a whole nation cannot pay the price for the choices of a few. It’s not just that the Palestinian people (and most of the Arab countries as well) aided the allies with men and logistical support, they also ignored the call for Jihad against the Allies, that was declared by al-Hajj Amin in April,1941 (Righteous Victims, p.165).
Since the Palestinian people were fooled by the British and were promised full independence by 1949, and strict limitation on Jewish illegal immigration to Palestine, based on the 1939 White Paper(many loopholes were present that Zionists used for illegal immigration and it was intentionally overlooked by the Brits in some instances ,it shall be discussed in later sections) though, the Palestinian people had an incentive , at that time to help the Allies win the war to stop Zionist settler colonialism and the establishment of a Jewish state in their homeland . It should be noted that many Palestinian brigades were enlisted into the British Army (more than 12000 men according to Israeli media! ), and the Palestinian resistance to the brutal British occupation almost completely ceased during and after WWII.
Ironically enough , the same Palestinian men who fought against Nazi Germany , are the same who fought against the British occupation and Zionist terror gangs , but unfortunately Israel likes to ignore this undeniable fact to push its colonial apartheid regime.
The views about Husseini were controversial among historians including mainly Israeli historians , scholarly opinion is divided on the issue, with many scholars viewing him as a antisemite while some deny the appropriateness of the term, or argue that he became antisemitic due to a constellation of many factors including the actions of Zionists in Palestine and their call for an establishment of a Jewish state on Its soil. Al-Husseini’s first biographer, Moshe Pearlman, described him as virulently antisemitic, as did, a decade and a half later, Joseph Schechtman. Both have been accused by Philip Mattar of relying on press reports and lacking sufficient background understanding. Peter Wien judges that his behavior in World War II deserved the image among Zionists of him as an ‘arch villain’, but adds that Israeli and Zionist leaders have long since used this to denigrate the Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation as inspired by Nazism from the beginning and thus fundamentally anti-semitic. Robert Kiely sees Husseini as moving incrementally toward anti-Semitism as he opposed Jewish ambitions in his homeland.
Philip Mattar states the overriding cause behind the dispossession of Palestinians lay in the Balfour Declaration, British policies and the combined military superiority of Yishuv forces and the Mandatory army. Husseini’s initial moderation and then failure to compromise was a contributory factor, but not decisive. Zvi Elpeleg on the other hand compares him to Chaim Weizmann, David Ben-Gurion, and even to Theodor Herzl.
Robert Fisk, discussing the difficulties of describing al Husseini’s life and its motivations, summarized the problem in the following way:
Merely to discuss his life is to be caught up in the Arab–Israeli propaganda war. To make an impartial assessment of the man’s career—or, for that matter, an unbiased history of the Arab–Israeli dispute—is like trying to ride two bicycles at the same time.
The mufti’s meeting with Hitler was mostly about Husseini’s own desire to secure national status for his people and be recognized as a future Arab leader. On both counts, he would be disappointed, as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum itself explains: He also sought public approval from the Axis powers for an independent Arab state or federation to “remove” or “eliminate” the proposed Jewish state in Palestine. He made this declaration a condition for the awaited general uprising in the Arab world. The Germans, and Hitler in particular, repeatedly denied al-Husseini’s request for legitimization.They were reluctant to initiate unnecessary disputes with Italy or Vichy France, harbored doubts about the extent of al-Husseini’s actual authority in the Arab world, and had reservations about making long-term statements regarding areas of the world beyond the reach of German arms. As the Israeli historian Tom Segev writes, Husseini wanted a “Kind of German Balfour declaration for the Arabs,” referring to the 1917 British decree that sanctioned the creation of “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. “Hitler refused to sign such a document. Foolishly, Husseini agreed to have his picture taken with Hitler, which has haunted the Palestinian cause ever since,” Segev concludes.
Additionally, the conversation that went between the Mufti and Himmler was as follows:
Himmler asked him on the occasion: “How do you propose to settle the Jewish question in your country?”I replied: “All we want from them is that they return to their countries of origin. “ He (Himmler) replied: “We shall never authorize their return to Germany”.
The mufti didn’t want the establishment of a Jewish state on his homeland. He didn’t want Zionist colonialism to expand ,and was aware of the Zionist meetings that called for the ethnic cleansing of his people.He had a right to oppose such racist, and colonial movement that wants to take over and steal Palestine.
It’s also important to note that Husseini was just one of many political figures from parts of the colonial world who saw political gain in allying with the Axis powers. In hindsight, World War II lends itself to a simple, stark binary as a conflict between genocidal fascists and their opponents. But for myriad communities that experienced the invasions of the Germans and Japanese, the war offered something else — the prospect of liberation from other occupying empires.This led to all sorts of brief alliances with the axis (the Palestinian nation didn’t participate in): Bosnian Muslim regiments in the Waffen SS; Romanians, Hungarians, Ukrainians and other Eastern European nationalists collaborating with the Nazis; Indian freedom fighters taking up arms against the British with Japanese aid.
Historians dispute whether Husseini’s fierce opposition to Zionism was grounded in nationalism or antisemitism or a combination of both. Opponents of Palestinian nationalism and calls for liberty have pointed to Husseini’s wartime residence and propaganda activities in Nazi Germany to wrongfully associate the just Palestinian national movement with European-style antisemitism. Regardless of the controversy , The Mufti of Jerusalem was never truly a leader of the Palestinian people and after the war and subsequent Palestinian exodus, his claims to leadership were wholly discredited and he was eventually sidelined by the Palestine Liberation Organization, losing most of his residual political influence. He died outside of Palestine, in Lebanon. Peter Novick has argued that the post-war historiographical depiction of al-Husseini reflected complex geopolitical interests that distorted the record:
“The claims of Palestinian complicity in the murder of the European Jews were to some extent a defensive strategy, a preemptive response to the Palestinian complaint that if Israel was recompensed for the Holocaust, it was unjust that Palestinian Muslims should pick up the bill for the crimes of European Christians. The assertion that Palestinians were complicit in the Holocaust was mostly based on the case of the Mufti of Jerusalem, a pre-World War II Palestinian nationalist leader who, to escape imprisonment by the British, sought refuge during the war in Germany. The Mufti was in many ways a disreputable character, but post-war claims that he played any significant part in the Holocaust have never been sustained. This did not prevent the editors of the four-volume Encyclopedia of the Holocaust from giving him a starring role. The article on the Mufti is more than twice as long as the articles on Goebbels and Göring, longer than the articles on Himmler and Heydrich combined, longer than the article on Eichmann—of all the biographical articles, it is exceeded in length, but only slightly, by the entry for Hitler.”
This manipulation by Zionist leaders was used so the world can turn an eye from the continuation of the Zionist colonial regime and was evident In October 2015 , when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that Hitler at the time was not thinking of exterminating the Jews, but only of expelling them, and that it was al-Husseini who inspired Hitler to embark on a programme of genocide to prevent them from coming to Palestine. Netanyahu’s remarks were broadly criticized, and dismissed by Holocaust scholars from Israel and Germany. Christopher Browning called the claim a “blatantly mendacious attempt to exploit the Holocaust politically”, “shameful and indecent” as well as fraudulent, aimed at stigmatizing and delegitimizing “any sympathy or concern for Palestinian rights and statehood”. The official German transcript of the meeting with Hitler contains no support for Netanyahu’s assertion.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9ZWyvK5Fqc
The Palestinian people are proud of the fact that they were among the few who did not collaborate with Nazis.On the other hand, the peoples and governments of France, Italy, Japan, Romania, Croatia, Chechnya, Bulgaria, Switzerland, … etc. , all collaborated with the Nazis. Tragically, many of these peoples and governments happily pointed out their Jewish citizens to the Gestapo. It’s unfair, if not outright criminal to exploit al-Hajj Amin’s national conduct against Zionist and British colonialism in his homeland at time of war, to protect it from theft ,colonialism and oppression that still lives on to this very day. It’s preposterous to try to eternally condemn the Palestinian people as Nazis, while overlooking the injustice that was happening in Palestine at the Mufti’s time. Unfortunately, neglecting and missing the whole picture of the colonial Zionist Jewish movement, that called for an establishment of a Jewish state , for one superior group of people, and on a land they don’t own. Unsurprisingly , the Palestinian natives logically rejected such racist, ludicrous and unjust foreign movement, the same Zionist movement that massacred and ethnically cleansed them.Yet, Israel unreasonably label Palestinians as antisemites for fighting this aggressive colonialism.In addition, Israel ignored many choices made by most European people and governments who openly collaborated with the Nazis.The Palestinian people did not harbor nor cover up for Nazi war criminals as the US have done for decades.
In that regard, it’s worth noting that Josef Stalin, the Soviet premier and dictator, forcibly transferred the people of the Caucasus to Siberia as a collective punishment for their collaboration with the Nazis during WWII. However, the same people were allowed to return to their homes in 1958 when the scale of the war crime became known to Khruschev, Stalin’s successor in the 1950s. If the people of the Caucasus were allowed to return to their homes under Communist rule, why can’t the Palestinian refugees who had nothing to do with the Holocaust or Nazi Germany whatsoever are prevented from returning to their homes or lands under Israeli rule?
IRONICALLY, the shocking truth is that it has been proven that the Zionist Jewish Stern gang received funding and arms from the Italian Fascists to resist the British Mandate in Palestine. In fact, the Stern gang’s collaboration with the Fascists and Nazis was going on while their Jewish brothers were being persecuted in Nazi concentration camps. It should also be noted that when the Americans, British, and their Arab allies were busy blocking the Desert Fox’s (Erwin Römmel) advances in north Africa, the Stern gang’s leader Yitzhak Shamir(later on 7th prime minister of Israel) and the terrorist Zionist Jewish Irgun gang’s leader Menachem Begin(later on 6th prime minister of Israel) were busy ambushing British soldiers, blowing up the vital Haifa-Cairo railroad supply line, and terrorizing British and Palestinian civilians (Righteous Victims, p.174). And when Yitzhak Shamir, Israel’s future Prime Minister in the 1980s, was asked to explain their collaboration with the Fascists, he replied:
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”(One Palestine Complete , p.464).
Since these findings have only have JUST started to surface lately (and are kept smothered in many Jewish communities), we feel it’s necessary to directly quote one of the MOST pro-Israel historians, Martin Gilbert, who wrote:
“Avraham Stern who had formed a breakaway ‘Irgun in Israel’ movement(also known as the Stern Gang), tried to make contact with Fascist Italy in the hope that, if Mussolini were to conquer the Middle East, he would allow a Jewish State to be set up in Palestine. When Mussolini’s troops were defeated in North Africa, Stern tried to make contacts with Nazi Germany, hoping to sign a pact with Hitler which would lead to a Jewish State once Hitler had defeated Britain. After two members of the Stern’s Gang had killed the Tel Aviv [British] police chief and two of his officers, Stern himself was caught and killed. His followers [chief among them Yitzhak Shamir who led the Stern Gang after Stern’s death] continued on their path of terror.” (Israel:A History, p.111-112)
For further reading on Zionist collaboration with Nazis and fascists , read from here (https://wiki.handala.info/en/Zionism_fascism_colonialism_antisemitism) It will also be discussed in further sections , but we don’t want to deviate a lot from the question posed above.
Mussolini’s fascist friend Ze’ev Jabotinsky was a Russian Jewish Revisionist Zionist leader, author, poet, orator, soldier, and founder of the Jewish Self-Defense Organization in Odessa. With Joseph Trumpeldor, he co-founded the Jewish Legion of the British army in World War I. Later he established several Jewish organizations in Palestine, including Betar and Irgun. The former currently has a football club that calls itself the most racist club in the world and the later was a Zionist Jewish terrorist organization that committed bombings and massacres against Palestinian civilians. Jabotinsky collaborated with the Italian fascist Benito Mussolini and both supported each others Ideologies.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betar_Naval_Academy
In conclusion , Zionism would begin to rewrite the Palestinian struggle against Jewish colonisation not as an anti-colonial struggle but as an anti-Semitic project. The story of the Palestinian Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini would become Exhibit A in the Zionist version of Palestinian history.Despairing from convincing Britain to stop its support of the Zionist colonial project and horrified by the Zionist-Nazi collaboration that strengthened the Zionist theft of his Palestinian homeland further, the Palestinian elitist and conservative leader Haj Amin al Husseini (who opposed the Palestinian peasant revolt of 1936 against Zionist colonization) sought relations with the Nazis to convince them to halt their support for Jewish immigration to Palestine, which they had promoted through there selective Transfer Agreement/Haavara agreement with the Zionists in 1933! It was the very same Zionist collaborators with the Nazis who would later vilify al Husseini, beginning in the 1950s to the present, as a Hitlerite of genocidal proportions, even though his limited role ended up being one of propagandising on behalf of the Nazis to East European and Soviet Muslims on the radio. The following picture below is a scanned copy of the document (dated January 1941) sent by the Stern Gang asking Nazi Germany for alliance between both groups.
Scanned from “The Stern Gang: Ideology, Politics, and Terror 1940-1949” by Joseph Heller who is a professor in the Hebrew University in Jerusalem
–OverDose
Links and References
- The last of the semites by Joseph Massad https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2013/5/21/the-last-of-the-semites
- Zionism , antisemitism and colonialism by Joseph Massad https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2012/12/24/zionism-anti-semitism-and-colonialism
- Dershowitz: Nazis OK; too bad the Mufti corrupted them -The Hasbara Buster
- NY Times: Nazis Were Given ‘Safe Haven’ in U.S., Report Says by Eric Lichtblau https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/us/14nazis.html?_r=1&ref=global-home&pagewanted=all
- Bush: US should have acted on Auschwitz by Aron Heller
- Merkel: Germans ashamed over Holocaust by Karin Laub
- The Untermensch Syndrome: Israel’s Moral Decay by Manuel Valenzuela https://www.palestineremembered.com/Articles/General/Story8589.html
- FDR, Gruber and me: Zionists stymie WWII rescue plan by Ronald Bleier
- The Zionist-Nazi Collaboration by William James Martin https://dissidentvoice.org/2012/07/the-zionist-nazi-collaboration/
- NYTimes: Book Tries for Balanced View on Roosevelt and Jews by Jennifer Schuessler