Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is being denounced worldwide for noting that the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who lived in Berlin during World War II and recruited a Muslim SS division for Hitler, had a role in inciting the Nazis to murder six million Jews.
Aside from the outrageous fact that Netanyahu is drawing much more fire for this than Mahmoud Abbas ever does for his praise for the murderers of Jews and calls to kill more, there is one central problem with the denunciations: Netanyahu was right.
Netanyahu told the Zionist Congress last Tuesday that “Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time, he wanted to expel the Jews.” That is quite right: the Nazis originally pursued a policy of exiling Jews to Eastern Europe, and even to Palestine – until the Mufti protested that they must not be sent there. Netanyahu quoted Hitler asking the Mufti, “So what should I do with them?” The Mufti responded, according to Netanyahu, “Burn them.”
The condemnations have been way over the top, as you might expect, with the most egregious one coming from Moshe Zimmermann, a professor at Hebrew University: “With this, Netanyahu joins a long line of people that we would call Holocaust deniers.”
Netanyahu is now a Holocaust denier because he noted the Mufti of Jerusalem’s role in the Holocaust? Moshe Zimmermann may teach at Hebrew University, but clearly he can’t think straight.
Netanyahu was right, and it is good to see that he is not backing down. He called the criticism of his remarks “absurd,” which it is: Netanyanhu’s remarks mirror my ads highlighting the role of the Muslim world during the Holocaust, and Netanyahu is experiencing the same blowback from Islamic supremacists and Islamic apologists that I got.
Daniel Pipes, the premier front man for the failed idea that we should place all our hope in “moderate Islam,” claimed that our ad campaign in Philadelphia calling attention to the Mufti’s relationship with Hitler was a failure. He took issue with our factual assertions, claiming that the Mufti’s meeting with Hitler was a “one-time, opportunistic consultation.” Really? Tell that to the 400,000 Jewish women and children Husseini sent to their deaths at Nazi concentration camps. Tell that to the victims of the Muslim armies in Bosnia that Husseini raised for Hitler.
Mufti al-Husseini lived in Berlin from 1941-1945 on Hitler’s dime and made weekly radio addresses from Berlin to the Axis power nations and the Muslim world. In one, he screamed: “Arabs, rise and fight as one for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases Allah, history and religion. This saves your honor, Allah is with you.”
This and similar appeals using the Quran reoccurred time and time again in the Mufti’s broadcast addresses during the war. He organized propaganda services to the Muslims of the world from Berlin. He used Axis radio stations calling Muslims to arms in a holy war against the Allies. He aided the Nazi espionage service. He raised Muslim parachute groups for sabotage in the Middle East. He raised Muslim formations to fight the allies. He helped in the Nazi plan to exterminate nearly 6,000,000 Jews.
Netanyahu also said: “Hitler was responsible for the Final Solution to exterminate six million Jews; he made the decision. It is equally absurd to ignore the role played by the Mufti, Haj Amin al -Husseini, a war criminal, for encouraging and urging Hitler.”
Exactly. At my website, PamelaGeller.com, I have been calling attention to this for years.
SS Hauptsturmfuehrer Dieter Wisliceny, a close collaborator of Adolf Eichmann, testified that:
The grand Mufti, who had been in Berlin since 1941, played a role in the decision of the German government to exterminate the European Jews the importance of which must not be disregarded. He had repeatedly suggested to the various authorities with whom he had been in contact, above all before Hitler, Ribbentrop and Himmler, the extermination of European jury. He considers this as a comfortable solution of the Palestine problem. In his messages broadcast from Berlin, he surpassed us in anti-Jewish attacks. He was one of Eichmann’s best friends and has constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures. I heard say that, accompanied by Eichmann, he has visited incognito the gas chamber it Auschwitz.
The statement referred to in the affidavit was made by Eichmann in his office in Budapest on June 4, 1944; the confirmation by Wisliceny was given some days later also in Budapest.
Further, according to testimony at the Nuremberg trials, “[T]he Mufti was a bitter arch enemy of the Jews and had always been the protagonist of the idea of their annihilation. This idea the Mufti had always advanced in his conversations with Eichmann.”
There has been a coverup of the Mufti’s role in the Holocaust. The New York Post reported back in 1948 that “on Aug. 28, 1946, Dean Acheson, then Acting Secretary of State, announced that ‘the State Dept. is preparing a White Paper concerning the activities of the ex-Mufti of Jerusalem.’ Acheson said the publication would be in the form of a book, which would cover all the documents concerning the ex-Mufti seized from German files. This While Paper has not yet been published, although 17 months have passed. What keeps the State Dept. from publishing it? Who is interested in the delay? Are all the documents safe?”
That white paper was never published. I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request several years ago, asking for a copy of it, as well as of all State Department correspondence relating to it. The State Department responded that such a white paper did not exist and had never existed, and that there was no correspondence about it.
What, then, happened to the publication Dean Acheson promised? Under whose auspices, and for what reason, has the Mufti’s role in the Holocaust been shrouded in silence?
Benjamin Netanyahu did the world a great service by calling attention to this. The intensity of the attacks against him only testifies to how much he struck a nerve. In the mainstream media, Islam and Muslims must never, ever be criticized. We may only hope that the controversy will lead to some of the truth coming to light about the extent of the Mufti’s role in killing Jews.
Pamela Geller is the President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of PamelaGeller.com and author of The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. Follow her on Twitter here. Like her on Facebook here.
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