Israel Matzav

'Our friend the Mufti'

I've written before about the relations between Adolph Hitler and Yasser Arafat's uncle, the Mufti Haj al-Amin al-Husseini (may both of their names be obliterated). The New York Times discloses that it wasn't just Adolph Hitler who was enamored with the Mufti. Britain and France were also fans (Hat Tip: Daled Amos).

The report details how Mr. Husseini himself was allowed to flee after the war to Syria — he was in the custody of the French, who did not want to alienate Middle East regimes — and how high-ranking Nazis escaped from Germany to become advisers to anti-Israeli Arab leaders and “were able to carry on and transmit to others Nazi racial-ideological anti-Semitism.”

“You have an actual contract between officials of the Nazi Foreign Ministry with Arab leaders, including Husseini, extending after the war because they saw a cause they believed in,” Dr. Breitman said. “And after the war, you have real Nazi war criminals — Wilhelm Beisner, Franz Rademacher and Alois Brunner — who were quite influential in Arab countries.”

In October 1945, the report says, the British head of Palestine’s Criminal Investigation Division told the assistant American military attaché in Cairo that the mufti might be the only force able to unite the Palestine Arabs and “cool off the Zionists. Of course, we can’t do it, but it might not be such a damn bad idea at that.”

And lest you think that the British and the French can be excused, because they didn't know what we know about Husseini today...

“We have more detailed scholarly accounts today of Husseini’s wartime activities, but Husseini’s C.I.A. file indicates that wartime Allied intelligence organizations gathered a healthy portion of this incriminating evidence,” the report says. “This evidence is significant in light of Husseini’s lenient postwar treatment.” He died in Beirut in 1974.

By the way, the Americans shielded plenty of Nazis too. I picked on the British and the French because they were the rulers in this region and because of their relationship to Husseini (with whom the Americans also had a relationship). Read the whole thing.

Labels: Adolph Hitler, Central Intelligence Agency, escaped Nazis, Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:21 AM