Often you’ll hear Palestinians complaining that Israel was founded due to European guilt over the Holocaust, but since they had nothing to do with the Holocaust, why should the Jews be allowed to create a state that dispossesses them? The Holocaust was European and the Palestinians argue they’re paying the price.
While there were many forces at work to allow the return of the Jews to Israel and the (re-)creation of a Jewish state in the Middle East, certainly sympathy for the Jews after the Holocaust played a role. The status of the refugee demonstrated the need for a Jewish homeland. (A point that was emphasized by the expulsion of Jews from their homes in Arab lands after the UN approve the partition plan.)
The political leader of the Palestinians, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, lived in Nazi German during WWII, trying to enlist the Nazis to impose their final solution on Palestine once they swept through Africa.
Finally there’s proof that the Mufti not only wanted the destruction of the Jews of Palestine, but was fully aware of the destruction of the Jews of Europe.
According to Wisliceny, at the beginning of 1942 Eichmann made a detailed presentation to al-Husaini on the “solution of the European Jewish question.” The presentation took place in Eichmann’s “map room” in Berlin: “where he had collected statistical graphics on the Jewish population in the various European countries.” The Grand Mufti, Wisliceny recalls, was “very impressed.” Furthermore, al-Husaini is supposed to have put in a request to Himmler to have Eichmann send one of his assistants to Jerusalem after Germany had won the war. The representative of Eichmann was to serve as the Grand Mufti’s personal advisor: i.e. when the Grand Mufti would then set about “solving the Jewish question in the Middle East.”We can infer from other documentation that this was not just a vague idea. A declassified document on Nazi war crimes from the National Archives in Washington indicates that as of mid-1942 a special SS commando unit had plans to liquidate the Jews of Cairo following the capture of the city by German forces. (See detail below.) Gen. Erwin Rommel was supposedly disgusted by the proposition. The head of the SS unit, Walter Rauff, had earlier been involved in developing vans that served as mobile gas chambers. It should be noted that he was a German and not a Pole, as suggested in the U.S. government document.
In his memoirs, however, the Grand Mufti feigns astonishment at Himmler’s remark. On his account, Himmler asked him how he would solve the problem of the Jews in his country. Amin al-Husaini says that he answered that they should go back to where they came from. To which Himmler is supposed then to have replied: “Come back to Germany — we will never allow them to do that.” But the Grand Mufti is here white-washing his own role in history. After all, in Berlin on November 2, 1943, he publicly declared that Muslims should follow the example of the Germans, who had found a “definitive solution to the Jewish problem.”
So when the Mufti was enlisting Nazi help for the Middle East, he knew full well that they were capable of. His wasn’t just an idle dream.
When a Palestinian is accused of helping Israel he’s called a “collaborator.” Even though he’s been working to fight terror, the media uses the Palestinian term in order to cast a pall on his noble deed. The term “collaborator” is an obvious reference to those who helped the Nazis against their own countries.
This is more proof that the real Palestinian collaborator was the father of modern Palestinian nationalism. It is also revealing that despite the lofty rhetoric of independence and self determination, Palestinian nationalism is, at its root, a genocidal ideology.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.