Clifford D. May: From Berlin to Jerusalem
[Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism and Islamism.]
Last month, Sheikh Muhammad Hussein, the mufti of Jerusalem, called on Palestinians to defend the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which he said was “threatened by the plans of the enemies of God,” by which he meant Israelis.
It should go without saying that this is a lie. Israel poses no threat to Al-Aqsa, now or ever. On the contrary, Israelis have always recognized and respected Islamic sovereignty over Islamic religious sites within Israel — despite the fact that Jewish holy places have been desecrated byPalestinians , Jordanians, and others. The notion that the Israelis would raze Al-Aqsa to build a temple on its ruins — as the mufti has also claimed — is a ludicrous slander....
Also overlooked is the historical context. In the 1930s, the mufti of Jerusalem was Haj Amin el-Husseini. He, too, despised Jews — there was not yet a state of Israel to despise. After participating in a pro-Nazi coup in Iraq in 1941, Husseini moved to Berlin. There he became Hitler’s ally, the “most important public face and voice of Nazi Germany’s Arabic-language propaganda,” in the words of historian Jeffrey Herf, who adds: “Husseini was a key figure in finding common ideological ground between National Socialism, on the one hand, and the doctrines of Arab nationalism and militant Islam, on the other.”
Herf’s groundbreaking study, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World, draws on archival resources not previously mined to explore the extent and significance of this collaboration. His nuanced conclusion: “Nazi Germany’s Arabic-language propaganda was neither an imposition of a set of hatreds previously unknown to the traditions of Islam nor a matter of simply lighting the match to long-standing but suppressed anti-Jewish hatreds.” Rather, the Nazis and their Arab partners drew on and emphasized “the most despicable and hate-filled aspects of the cultures of Europe and of Islam.”...
Read entire article at National Review
Last month, Sheikh Muhammad Hussein, the mufti of Jerusalem, called on Palestinians to defend the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which he said was “threatened by the plans of the enemies of God,” by which he meant Israelis.
It should go without saying that this is a lie. Israel poses no threat to Al-Aqsa, now or ever. On the contrary, Israelis have always recognized and respected Islamic sovereignty over Islamic religious sites within Israel — despite the fact that Jewish holy places have been desecrated byPalestinians , Jordanians, and others. The notion that the Israelis would raze Al-Aqsa to build a temple on its ruins — as the mufti has also claimed — is a ludicrous slander....
Also overlooked is the historical context. In the 1930s, the mufti of Jerusalem was Haj Amin el-Husseini. He, too, despised Jews — there was not yet a state of Israel to despise. After participating in a pro-Nazi coup in Iraq in 1941, Husseini moved to Berlin. There he became Hitler’s ally, the “most important public face and voice of Nazi Germany’s Arabic-language propaganda,” in the words of historian Jeffrey Herf, who adds: “Husseini was a key figure in finding common ideological ground between National Socialism, on the one hand, and the doctrines of Arab nationalism and militant Islam, on the other.”
Herf’s groundbreaking study, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World, draws on archival resources not previously mined to explore the extent and significance of this collaboration. His nuanced conclusion: “Nazi Germany’s Arabic-language propaganda was neither an imposition of a set of hatreds previously unknown to the traditions of Islam nor a matter of simply lighting the match to long-standing but suppressed anti-Jewish hatreds.” Rather, the Nazis and their Arab partners drew on and emphasized “the most despicable and hate-filled aspects of the cultures of Europe and of Islam.”...