On Al Husseini

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), May 10, 2007 at 16:12

Dear Seamus MacNemi ,

Thanks a lot for your valuable comments .

> Well. I think we're finally on the same page in the same book.

We share perhaps more things than we previously thought . You're no Moslem, nor am I . And I am in favour of kafir solidarity.

> Tell us more of what you know about Haj Mohamed Amin AlHusseini.

The story would be too long to tell as he deserves a more competent and critical biographer- on the par with his idol Hitler. Let me just refer a few things from a Nazi book published in 1942 : " The English , the Jews , the Arabs in Palestine" by Giselher Wirsing , where a whole chapter (p.141-151) is devoted to him .

He belonged to the powerful al-Husseini clan opposed by the Nashashibis . He virulently condemned in 1917 the Balfour declaration from the very moment he had learnt of it . In 1919 he went on his first pilgrimage (hence his title "Haj") to Mecca where he met the sheriff Hussein . He soon gained much esteem in Palestine for his radical views and Moslem piety.

Next year he organized the first major anti-Jewish riots which didn't prevent the British to appoint him soon the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem as at that point the Brits wanted to weaken the Nashashibi clan that seemed to powerful to them. That the conversation with Hussein were quite warm and friendly is demonstrated by the fact that he soon got 70 000 pounds from the sheriff "to reconstruct" the Al-Aqsa Mosque . But most probably he used a lot of that money to buy arms in Transjordan where free arms markets existed across the border , although the Grand Mufti was disliked by king Abdallah. He participated in both congresses of Cairo and Mecca that were summoned to re-establish the caliphate abolished by Mustafa Kemal Ghazi . Some even suggested his candidature for caliphate .

This idea didn't materialise but brought him much popularity as a saint hero of Islam in its struggle against the evil forces of "world Jewry". In 1931 he summoned a world congress to Jerusalem where 154 deputies participated. But he was not happy about it. He had hoped for many more. From outside Palestine and Transjordan only 66 deputies participated , whereas only the imam of Yemen sent an official governmental representative .

To make a virue of necessity he used the congress for the propaganda purposes. He had the remains of his old friend sheriff Hussein who had died in Cyprus under British custody and a Moslem saint from India - Muhammad Ali - solemnly buried within the precincts of the al-Aqsa mosque.

The brother of Muhammad Ali became a friend of his and so friendship with Indian Moslems was concluded with plans to use it aginst the infidel British . In the meantime Haj Amin al-Husseini organized the anti-Jewish riots of 1929 . In Hebron and Jerusalem Jews were slaughtered. 25 Arabs were sentenced to death but only 3 were executed. The British wanted visibly no Arab anger. Haj Amin al-Husseini was also involved in the riots of 1936. A memorandum was sent to the British High Comissioner "to form a government with an Arab majority as it was the case in Syria and Iraq" and "to stop any Jewish immigration whatsoever". The Arabs were promised a self-rule status in the future but it didn't satisfy them .

In April they began to shoot and kill Jews and declared a "general strike". "The Order of the Insurgent Sheikhs" played a prominent role in the massacres and assaults that followed . In this atmosphere the Grand Mufti founded the "Arab Higher Committee" as a sort of Arab government without British permission where also the Nashashibi clan was represented. The common enemy united all Arabs for some time at least. Many Arabs from outside Palestine joined armed Arab gangs in their anti-Jewish attacks . The most famous of them was Fauzi ed-Din el-Kaukyi from Syria. He was a former Turkish officer and organized Drus fighters against the French. As it became too hot for him in the French-controlled zone he fled to ibn-Saud where he reorganized his army.

Then , after Iraq had become independent , he came there and trained Iraqi officers. Some of them were involved in the failed pro-Nazi coup of 1941. In 1936 he turned up in Palestine as "commander-in-chief " of the brigands hunting Jews . To put down the riots the British had to concentrate in Palestine 10 000 soldiers under general Dill. The members of the Arab Higher Committee were arrested and exiled to the Seychelles Islands. But the Grand Mufti was not among them. He was hiding and then re-emerged in Saudi Arabia on another "hajj" to Mecca elaborating new plans on how to kick the Jews out of Palestine or kill them and promote the cause of Allah. But he saw that to that a better partner "partner" than ibn-Saud had to be found. And the obvious choice was Hitler.

> His name should be repeated long and often lest people forget and his heinous crimes be again swept under the rug and he be made a hero as he was in the last fifty years.

Right.

> The British knew all about him, but they did nothing. Nor did his name escape the notice ot the O.S.S., but somehow his name and a lot of others got shuffled in the deck of the game of international "catch me if you can" after the war and he disappeared from the scope. Personally, I fault the Arabists in the British Foreign Office and there were more than a few of those.

Opportunism and corruption and false hopes of the Brits helped the Grand Mufti a lot . The British reckoned that they will continue to rule in the Near East after the war , so they didn't want to anger the Arabs by persecuting their "saint".

> As well, It cannot be said that The American government was all that sympathetic to the plight of the Jews, even with the evidence of the concentration camps staring them in the face. There was a substantial cabbal of antisemites in the CIA which persisted up until the time of the Six Day War. After the war they began to lose favour as attitudes toward Israel changed and gradually they were phased into obscurity because they had become an embarrasment to the government. Some former CIA instrumentals were even later found to be training terrorists for the Libyan dictator Muhamar Khaddafi.

Absolutely right.

> It gets thicker and more tangled the more you look at it with the Russians. the Americans , the French and the British all playing a hand. At times it was difficult to see really who was doing what and to whom or why. The Americans seem to have a great knack for shooting themselves in the foot tactically when it comes to international relations. They turn potential allies into inimicable foes as the drop of a hat for reasons that are difficult to discern, by seeming to always chose the wrong side in a conflict.

Isn't it because the American political elite is so incompetent and corrupt ? Behind many an innocent mistake perhaps is hidden a bribe , a deceptive promise or simply a politician's hubris ? Comparing the incompetent and self-defeating American policy of today with the analogous policy of the British of yesterday a apt comment sent to a different forum comes to my mind :

" In fact, after a lifetime of studying the history of Europe during the 19th and 20th centuries, I have had to conclude, reluctantly, that the British political elite during the period from 1860 to 1950 was unquestionably the most incompetent (...) ignorant, deceitful (...) national leadership to afflict any people in modern times.

Imagine. In just two generations British politicians managed to destroy completely Great Britian's empire, squander the fabled wealth of the nation, and encompass the death of two millions of "England's finest"--all in the name of greatness, security, and peace, leaving Britain (forget the "Great") by 1950 a pitiable shadow of its former self. And by 1950 the bureaucratic, redistributionist socialists were in charge, 'national socialism! British variant. They still are."

> Had they been willing to recognise Ho Chi Minh, the war in Viet Nam would never have happened. But they shunned him and he turned to the Russians instead. So suddenly (one would suppose) they had a new communist insurgency to deal with. All Dr. Ho wanted was to liberate his country from the vice grip of French colonialism. After all. The Viet Namese people had been the allies of the British and Americans in the war with Japan. What was more natural than for them to wish to continue on the path to independent nation hood and recognition as a legitimate national entity. But the French would not have it, and so the war.

> But, I digress. Viet Nam is history and Israel is today, and it's the same old story with only slight variations on the theme. Many people think the world would be a much better place if the Jews would just disappear.

It's a mad idea ! The real problems will begin the moment Israel , the last outpost of the West in the Near East , disappears. Having got rid of Israel the rage of the Moslems will turn against the West with all its bloody might.

> But, since the Jews stubbornly refuse to oblige them, they hate the Jews. It's Difficult for me to imagine what goes on in the mind of an antisemite. Why all the fuss after all? What is it about a tiny nation of some six or seven million people in a world of billions that makes them stand out both for admiration and scorn.

Antisemitism can't be expalained without psychopathology , I think . Envy and hatred born out of inferiority complexes are extremely potent drives in human behaviour.

> Perhaps it's the impact their thinking has had on the world. After all both Christianity and Islam owe their very existences to the fact that the Jews went up to Sinai and recieved the Law of G-d to be given to mankind.

The conflict seems to have something of a civil war within the three monotheisms.

> Had it not been for Moses , there would never been either a Jesus or a Mohamed.

To digress a bit , Moses owes perhaps more to the Egyptian priests than Jesus or Mohammad to him.

> But perhaps thats the very crux of the matter. The nations of the world are simply jealous of the favour that G-d showed to the Jews and they all want to get in on the act. Like jealous children vying for the favour of a loving parent, evern body wants to be the first in the line of G-ds favour. Well, it's time for the children to grow up.

I agree with you , although I have never approved of the underlying idea of monotheism .

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