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Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Haj Amin al-Husseini, Part One

"The Mufti's close working relationship and friendship with Adolf Eichmann, as well as with Heinrich Himmler, is well documented and indisputable.  Following the capture of Eichmann in May 1960, the speculation about the relationship between these two men became a subject of active public discussion.  In a press conference held at the time of the Eichmann trial, on May 4, 1961, al-Husseini denied any connection with Adolf Eichmann during World War II.  Indeed, he claimed at this press conference that he did not even know who Eichmann was until he read about his capture in the newspapers.  In fact, the mufti and Eichmann not only knew each other, but collaborated actively in their years of service to the Third Reich.  At the Nuremberg trials, Dieter Wisliceny, one of Eichmann's senior deputies, would testify that the mufti "was one of Eichmann's best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures.  I heard him say that, accompanied by Eichmann, he had visited incognito the gas chamber of Auschwitz."  On this visit to Auschwitz, al-Husseini reportedly urged the guards in charge of the chambers to be more diligent and efficient in their efforts.
     One can only imagine how the mufti must have rejoiced as he toured the Auschwitz death camp complex.  What he witnessed was indeed, in his mind, the final solution to his Jewish problem.  With a sweeping audacity that was almost too bold to grasp, Hitler had determined simply to eliminate his perceived enemies.  As he examined the details of the process that led to extermination, al-Husseini realized that he would not have to transport his Jews anywhere.  The Jews were concentrated in the Tel Aviv/ Jaffa region of Palestine.  No railroad cars would be needed for transport.  No "selection" would be necessary.  No Jew would be needed to work or labor in any way for his Arab state of Palestine.  All that the mufti would need would be the technical assistance of his good friends Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Eichmann to construct factories of death to eliminate the Jews from Palestine once and for all.
     As the mufti left Aushwitz to return to Berlin, he could only marvel at Germany's ruthless efficiency in solving its Jewish problem.  With a smug certainty, he marveled at his good fortune in living at a time when he was blessed with such a superb ally and friend in the person of Adolf Hitler.
     Eichmann and al-Husseini admired each other tremendously.  Eichmann, as Dieter Wisliceny recalled in his testimony at Nuremberg, "was very strongly impressed with the Mufti."  The mufti, in turn, reciprocated this admiration.  When he spoke of Eichmann in the presumed privacy of his diary, al-Husseini observed that he was a "very rare diamond, the best savior of the Arabs(p51-52)." 
     "For the mufti, as for al-Gaylani, however, the common enemy was not just Great Britain, but the entire Allied cause.  The mufti often called upon the Muslims of the world to help Germany in the holy war it was waging against the British and their Western allies, especially the United States.  Some of his radio broadcasts were devoted specifically to condemning American policy in the Middle East.  In a radio broadcast from Berlin in March 1944, he denounced American policy with regard to the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine:  "No one {would have}ever thought," he thundered, "that 140 million Americans would become tools in Jewish hands. . . . How could the Americans dare to Judiaze Palestine?"
     Many of his most passionate radio broadcasts were classically anti-Semetic, designed to incite hatred and violence against radical Islam's greatest enemy, the Jews.  On November 2, 1943, at the public rally to protest the Balfour Declaration, al-Husseini used German radio to broadcast one of his most virulently anti-Semetic messages:  "The overwhelming egoism which lies in the character of Jews, their unworthy belief that they are God's chosen nation and their assertion that all was created for them and that other people are animals," al-Husseini declared, "makes them incapable of being trusted."  In this broadcast, which included an inflammatory tirade against both the Jews and the British, interspersed with citations of Koranic texts against the Jews, the mufti said of the Jews:  "They cannot mix with any other nation but live as parasites among the nations, suck out their blood, embezzle their property, corrupt their morals. . . . The divine anger and curse that the Holy Koran mentions with reference to the Jews is because of this unique character of the Jews(p53-54)."" Icon of Evil:Hitler's Mufti and the Rise of Radical Islam by David G. Dalin and John F. Rothmann 

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