Not content with describing Israel as a “fascist state,” the 26 “Muslim scholars” in the U.K. made the following claim: “Palestinians have no link to the holocaust [sic] and the crimes of the Second World War against the Jewish people.”
“Palestinians have no link to the holocaust”? Let’s see. The indisputable leader of the “Palestinians” in the inter-war period and during World War II was Haj Amin el Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem. He was in up to his neck in collaborating with, approving of, even encouraging, the Nazi mass-murder of Jews; he urged the Nazis to prevent any Jews from escaping to Palestine from Europe. A friend of Eichmann and Himmler, el-Husseini helped to plan the Nazi genocide. Robert Spencer has the horrifying details, of which very few in the West seem aware:
From 1941 to 1945, al-Husseini lived in Berlin, where he became close friends with Adolf Eichmann and Heinrich Himmler, and met with Adolf Hitler. Eichmann’s assistant, Dieter Wisliczeny, testified at the Nuremberg Trials that the mufti had been a central figure in the planning of the genocide of the Jews:
The Grand Mufti has repeatedly suggested to the Nazi authorities—including Hitler, von Ribbentrop and Himmler—the extermination of European Jewry. He considered this a comfortable solution to the Palestine problem….The Mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and had been a collaborator and adviser of Eichmann and Himmler in the execution of this plan. He was one of Eichmann’s best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures. I heard him say, accompanied by Eichmann, he had visited incognito the gas chambers of Auschwitz.”
Eichmann denied this, but in any case, there is no doubt of the fact that the mufti was openly calling for the mass murder of Jews. In a broadcast on July 7, 1942, the mufti exhorted Muslims in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Palestine to kill Jews, basing his exhortation on a flagrant lie:
A large number of Jews residing in Egypt and a number of Poles, Greeks, Armenians and Free French, have been issued with revolvers and ammunition in order to help them against the Egyptians at the last moment, when Britain is forced to evacuate Egypt….
The Mufti’s broadcast continued:
You must kill the Jews, before they open fire on you. Kill the Jews, who have appropriated your wealth and who are plotting against your security. Arabs of Syria, Iraq and Palestine, what are you waiting for? The Jews are planning to violate your women, to kill your children and to destroy you. According to the Muslim religion, the defense of your life is a duty which can only be fulfilled by annihilating the Jews. This is your best opportunity to get rid of this dirty race, which has usurped your rights and brought misfortune and destruction on your countries. Kill the Jews, burn their property, destroy their stores, annihilate these base supporters of British imperialism. Your sole hope of salvation lies in annihilating the Jews before they annihilate you.
Al-Husseini also actively intervened on numerous occasions to ensure that Jews were not deported from Europe—thereby ensuring that extermination was the only option left for the fanatical Nazi Jew-haters. As late as July 25, 1944, al-Husseini wrote to Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German minister for foreign affairs:
I have previously called the attention of your Excellency to the constant attempts of the Jews to emigrate from Europe in order to reach Palestine and asked your Excellency to undertake the necessary steps so as to prevent the Jews from emigrating. I had also sent you a letter, under date of June 5, 1944, in regard to the plan for an exchange of Egyptians living in Germany with Palestinian Germans, in which I asked you to exclude the Jews from this plan of exchange. I have, however, learned that the Jews did depart on July 2, 1944, and I am afraid that further groups of Jews will leave for Palestine from Germany and France to be exchanged for Palestinian Germans….It is for this reason that I ask your Excellency to do all that is necessary to prohibit the emigration of Jews to Palestine, and in this way your Excellency would give a new practical example of the policy of the naturally allied and friendly Germany towards the Arab Nation.
Al-Husseini was a committed collaborator with the Nazis, traveling from Berlin to Bosnia in 1943 to raise up a Muslim SS company, which was responsible for killing ninety percent of the Jews in Bosnia, as well as for the burning of numerous Serbian churches. He noted the convergence of the goals of Islamic jihad and those of the Nazis. “It is the duty of Muhammadans in general and Arabs in particular to…drive all Jews from Arab and Muhammadan countries…. Germany is also struggling against the common foe who oppressed Arabs and Muhammadans in their different countries. It has very clearly recognized the Jews for what they are and resolved to find a definitive solution [endgültige Lösung] for the Jewish danger that will eliminate the scourge that Jews represent in the world.”
In a 1944 broadcast, he made that “definitive solution” explicit: “Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history, and religion.” His call was an echo of the Qur’an’s call to “kill them wherever you find them” (2:191, 4:89) and to “kill the idolaters wherever you find them.” (9:5)
When those 26 Islamic scholars claim that the Palestinians had nothing to do with the Holocaust, they are flatly, grotesquely, contradicting the facts. They have ignored the words and deeds of the most important Palestinian leader, Haj Amin el Husseini, the admirer of Adolf Hitler, the good friend of Adolf Eichmann and Heinrich Himmler, and a direct participant in the Final Solution, who raised an S.S. brigade responsible for killing 90% of the Jews in Bosnia. Identified by the Allies as a war criminal, El Husseini only escaped punishment by making it to Cairo, where he was protected by the Muslim Brotherhood, and continued to call for Jihad against the Jews. He died, unrepentant and unpunished, in Cairo in 1974. This leader of the “Palestinians” was not just “linked” to the Nazi murders, but was as significant a promoter of the Holocaust as any non-German.
Repeating their theme of Israel as a “fascist” state, the “26 Muslim scholars” in the U.K. who recently denounced Israel ended their letter with this :
We condemn the continued fascist Zionist oppression which has cost the Palestinian people their freedom, homeland and lives for over seventy years.
There has been “no Zionist oppression” of the Arabs in Israel. Israeli Arabs have full civil and religious rights. No one prevents them from their religious observances, or seeks to make the practice of their religion more difficult. Israeli Arabs vote, stand for election, belong to any party they choose, including an all-Arab party hostile to the state, and hold seats in the Knesset where they roundly criticize the government. Arab judges sit on Israel’s supreme court. Arabs serve as diplomats. Arabs are not subject to the military draft, but may serve as volunteers, if they wish, as ever more of them do.
As for the Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank, for 19 years, from 1948 to 1967, the Gazan Arabs endured Egyptian rule, which was far more oppressive than that of Israel between 1967 and 2005. Since 2005, when Israel left Gaza, the Gazan Arabs have again had to endure oppressive Arab rule, this time by the staggeringly corrupt Hamas, two of whose leaders — Mousa Abu Marzouk and Khaled Meshal — each stole at least $2.5 billion from the foreign aid meant for the people of Gaza. The Israelis did what they could to help the Gazans, transferring to them 3,000 greenhouses in perfect working order; it was the Palestinians in Gaza who destroyed those greenhouses. In the West Bank, similarly, Jordan’s rule over the local Arabs — the “Palestinians” — between 1948 and 1967, was more invasive and harsh than that of the Israelis since 1967. Israel’s policy was always to give the local Arabs in Judea and Samaria (a/k/a West Bank) as much autonomy as was consistent with Israeli security; it was the Palestinian terrorists themselves whose attacks triggered greater security measures by Israel. In times of quiet, the Israelis were not just willing but eager to leave the local Arabs alone.
The signatories insist that Islam “does not promote anti-Semitism and Arabs are also a Semitic people”, and claim that Islamic rulers treated Christians in the region with benevolence “until the Zionist occupation ended the mutual tolerance that had existed for over a millennium.”
We are expected to believe that Christians were treated by Islamic rulers “with benevolence” until the “Zionist occupation ended the mutual tolerance” between Christians and Muslims” that “had existed for over a millennium.” By “mutual tolerance” they are attempting to hide the reality of what Christians endured as dhimmis under Muslim rule: this “tolerance” — allowing them to live and to practice their religion — existed only insofar as the Christians accepted the many onerous conditions imposed on them as dhimmis, including most notably the Jizyah tax, which was paid — ideally in humiliating circumstances — by non-Muslims to the Muslim state. When the Caliph Al-Hamid in Cairo in 1009 ordered the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, was he treating the Christians “with benevolence”? Were the Muslim attacks on Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land, during the eleventh century, which helped to trigger the Crusades, an example of Muslims treating Christians “with benevolence”? Was the persecution of the Copts in Egypt under both the Umayyad and Fatimid caliphates an example of Muslim rulers treating Christians “with benevolence”? What about the persecution, and forced conversions, and murders, by Muslim Arab conquerors, of the Christian Berbers in North Africa? And in Andalusia, where we now know that the “convivencia” (co-existence) under benevolent Muslim rulers was a myth,the Christians so tirelessly waged their Reconquista, an 800-year-war to push out the Muslim invaders, precisely because there was no such “benevolence.”