Executive Summary:
USHMM Whitewashes The Mufti of Jerusalem
The new Haj Amin-al Husayani- the Mufti of Jerusalem- website entry of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is a meretricious concoction of half-truths, distortions and outright falsehoods. Desrcibed as a moderate supporter of non-violence in the 1920’s and 1930’s, the Museum’s account apparently seeks to exonerate him from charges of being a Nazi collaborator and war criminal during the Holocaust. In the following, each of the Museum’s various claims about the Mufti are first cited and then compared to the historical record.
1 .The Museum website calls the Mufti a Moderate Voice for Peace:
“He helped organize demonstrations in early 1920 throughout Palestine…Conflicting interpretations of al-Husayni’s role have portrayed him as an instigator against the Jews and British or as an opponent of violence as a means of achieving Arab aims. Between his elevation to the office of Mufti in 1921 and the outbreak of the Arab revolt in 1936, he discouraged violence and encouraged cooperation with the British authorities...”
The Facts:
a) In 1920 a British court convicted and sentenced the Mufti to 15 years of hard labor for his part in a murderous rampage in which five Jews were killed and 211 wounded.
b) Within two months of his appointment as Mufti, his propaganda included a new translation into Arabic of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion., which precipitated a second anti-Jewish riot.
c)In 1929, the Mufti instigated a pogrom against the Jews by falsely accusing the Jews of endangering local mosques, including al-Aqksa. The call went out to the Arab masses-“Izbah al-Yehudi!- Slaughter the Jews!” The Mufti even disseminated pictures of the slaughtered Jews but claimed that they were Arabs killed by Jews. Hussayni’s actions sparked pogroms in which 60 Jews in Hebron and 45 in Safed were murdered.
d) Riots did not just break out in 1936-39: the Mufti instigated them with using funds and munitions supplied by the Nazis. “In April 1936 the Mufti called for an Arab general strike…”(Kuntzel, Jihad and Jew-hatred, p.21) “The Mufti himself acknowledged that at that time it was only due to the German funds he received that it had been possible to carry through the uprising in Palestine.” (op. cit. p.31) Eichmann himself came to Palestine to deliver funds to the Mufti in 1937. By 1938, he was on the payroll of Abwehr II, the German counterintelligence and sabotage division.
e) Using the turmoil of the Arab revolt as cover, al-Husayni orchestrated a campaign of murder against Jews and moderate Arabs. His involvement in murdering moderate Arabs and attacking British officers that forced him finally to flee British controlled Palestine.
2. The Museum raises questions whether the Mufti really was a Nazi collaborator and believer in the Final Solution
The website: “The most controversial part of al-Husayni’s life was his relationship with Hitler’s government….This relationship,…has led some to label him a Nazi collaborator and war criminal….”
The Facts:
a) The Jerusalem court that tried Eichmann found in its Judgments, Part 50: “ It has been proved to us that the Mufti, too, aimed at the implementation of the final solution, viz. the extermination of European Jewry.”
b.)Adolf Eichmann’s deputy, Dieter Wisliceny, stated at his Nuremberg trial said that the Mufti’s importance “must not be disregarded…the Mufti had repeatedly suggested to…Hitler, Ribbentrop and Himmler , the extermination of European Jewry…The Mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and had been a collaborator and advisor of Eichmann and Himmler in the execution of the plan.”
c) The Museum’s website erroneously gives the impression that the Mufti’s conversation with Hitler on 11/28/41 was limited to gaining German backing for the Arab nationalist goals. But the Mufti specifically asked Hitler to assure him that Hitler would treat Palestine’s Jews in the same way he was treating European Jews, i.e. extermination. Al-Husayni obtained a statement from Hitler that “Germany’s objective [is]…solely the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere. “The phrase used in this conversation, ‘Vernichtung des…Judentums’ is one that was used in connection with the Holocaust.” (quoted in interview of Walter Reich, former director of the USHMM in Haaretz 1/17/06)
3. The USHMM website deems the Mufti’s role in the final solution “ineffective”
Facts:
a)The website opines that the “Handschar divisions of the Waffen SS’ , the 20,000 Muslims recruited by the Mufti were “ineffective”: indeed, so ineffective, they managed to annihilate 90% of Bosnia’s Jews.
b)The website completely ignores the Mufti’s success in blocking the emigration of Jewish children from Hungary and Romania. “It would be more appropriate” he wrote in letters to the foreign ministers of these countries, “to prevent the Jews from emigrating from your country and to send them somewhere they will be under strict control, for example to Poland.” The children were sent to the death camps. (copies of these letters in Jennie Lebel, The Mufti of Jerusalem:Haj Amin el Huseini and National Socialism)
c)The website glosses over attempts to try the Mufti for war crimes at Nuemberg. “Although there was ample proof to arrest him as a war criminal after the war, the Allies made no effort to do so. They were deterred by Husseini’s prestige in the Arab world. In 1946, Yugoslavia indicted him for war crimes and asked for his extradition, but the Allies were afraid of the storm in the Arab world if the hero of Arab nationalism was treated as a war criminal.” (Encyclopedia of the Holocaust).
3. The Website portrays the mufti in the post-war period transformed into a benign figure
“ He gradually lost his political clout, settled in Beirut, and restricted his activities to those of a religious leader…”
The Facts: The Mufti never abandoned politics terrorism and murder.
a) The Mufti brought former Nazi commandos to Egypt to teach Yassir Arafat, his devoted protégé, and others how to fight the Jews.
b) Fatah’s founding in the early 1960’s as a terrorist organization was financed primarily by funds supplied by the Mufti. (Zvi Elpeleg, The Grand Mufti, p.147)
c) In 1947, Hussayni headed the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine and became a deputy to al-Banna, the head and founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
d) Husayni arranged for the assassination of King Abdullah of Jordan in 1951 because the latter was willing to deal with the Israelis.
The Mufti’s Lasting Legacy Ignored by Museum
As Robert S. Wistrich and others have detailed significant elements of the new Muslim-inspired anti-Semitism were inspired by Haj Amin al-Hussayni. This unholy alliance of anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish terrorism has been the enduring legacy of Husayni, yet rather than help publicize it, the Holocaust Museum paradoxically chooses to censor it. Because the Museum has preferred to be silent about current Muslim anti-Semitism, it has been obliged to excise any mention of its historical roots in the Mufti’s biography. Accordingly, it chose an academic well known for denying any link between Nazism and the current Islamic anti-Semitism to whitewash the genocidal activities of the Mufti.
Why does the Museum continue to be afraid to reveal the truth about the Mufti of Jerusalem?