Amin al-Husseini

Mohammad Amin al-Husayni
Grand Mufti of Jerusalem
In office 1922–1937
Preceded by	Kamil al-Husayni
Succeeded by	Husam Al-din Jarallah
President of Supreme Muslim Council
In office 1922–1937
Personal details
Born	1895 Jerusalem, Ottoman Palestine
Died	(1974-07-04)4 July 1974 Beirut, Lebanon
Political party	Arab Higher Committee

Mohammad Amin al-Husayni (Arabic: محمد أمين الحسيني, properly transliterated al-Husseini, 1895 - July 4, 1974), a member of the al-Husayni clan of Jerusalem, was a Palestinian Arab nationalist and a Muslim leader in the British Mandate of Palestine. From 1922 to 1937, he was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, and played a key role in resistance to Zionism. Historians debate to what extent his fierce opposition to Zionism was grounded in nationalism or anti-Semitism or a combination of both.

As early as 1920, he was active in both opposing the British in order to secure the independence of Palestine as an Arab State and opposing Jewish immigration and the establishment of their National home in Palestine. His oppositional role peaked during the 1936-1939 Arab revolt in Palestine. In 1937, wanted by the British, he fled Palestine and took refuge successively in Lebanon, Iraq, Italy and finally Nazi Germany where he met Adolf Hitler in 1941. He asked Germany to oppose, as part of the Arab struggle for independence, the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine. During the 1948 Palestine War he represented the Arab Higher Committee and opposed both to the 1947 UN Partition Plan and to King Abdullah's ambitions for expanding Jordan by capturing Palestinian territory.

After being sidelined successively by the Arab Nationalist Movement and the Palestine Liberation Organization, he lost most of his remaining political influence. Al-Husayni died in Beirut, Lebanon in 1974.

Early life

Amin al-Husayni was born in 1895 in Jerusalem, the son of the then mufti of that city and prominent early opponent of Zionism, Tahir al-Husayni. The al-Husayni clan consisted of wealthy landowners in southern Palestine, centred around the district of Judea. Thirteen members of the clan had been Mayors of Jerusalem between 1864 and 1920. Another member of the clan and Amin's brother, Kamal al-Husayni, also served as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. In Jerusalem Amin al-Husayni attended a government school, and studied French at the Alliance israélite universelle with its anti-Zionist Jewish director Albert Antébi. He then went to Al-Azhar University in Cairo,, where he studied Islamic law for about one year, without completing his course. In 1913 at the age of 18, al-Husayni went to Mecca and received the honorary title of Hajj. Prior to World War I, he studied at the School of Administration in Istanbul.

With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, al-Husayni joined the Ottoman Turkish army, received a commission as an artillery officer and was assigned to the Forty-Seventh Brigade stationed in and around the predominantly Greek Christian city of Smyrna. In November 1916 he left the Ottoman army on a three month disability leave and returned to Jerusalem where he remained for the duration of the war. The British and Sherifian armies conquered Ottoman-controlled Palestine and Syria in 1918, with Palestinians taking part in the offensive against the Turks. The Palin Report noted that Captain C. D. Brunton, who recruited them, acted in cooperation with a 'Sherifian officer named Hagg Ameen el Husseini, who was described at the time as being very pro-English'. Husayni was employed in various positions by the British military administration in Jerusalem and Damascus, including one where he recruited soldiers to serve in Faisal bin Al Hussein Bin Ali El-Hashemi 's army during the Arab Revolt.

Early political activism

After World War 1 high expectations were held by Arabs throughout the Middle East for the establishment of national independence, on the basis of assurances they thought had been made in 1915 in the McMahon-Hussein Correspondence. Similar hopes were entertained by the Jews, who had been promised a national homeland in Palestine, with the Balfour Declaration of 1917. In 1919, al-Husayni attended the Pan-Syrian Congress held in Damascus where he supported Emir Faisal for King of Syria. That year al-Husayni joined the pro-British 'Arab Club' (El-Nadi al-Arabi), a Jerusalem-based wing of an homonymous Syrian club, which vied with the Nashashibi-sponsored 'Literary Club' (Al-Muntada al-Adabi) for influence over public opinion, and he soon became its President. At the same time he wrote articles for the Suriyya al-Janubiyya (Southern Syria). The paper was published in Jerusalem beginning in September 1919 by the lawyer Muhammad Hassan al-Budayri, and edited by Aref al-Aref, both prominent members of al-Nadi al-'Arabi.

During the annual Nabi Musa procession in Jerusalem in April 1920, violent rioting broke out in protest at the Balfour Declaration's implementation. Much damage to Jewish life and property was caused. The Palin Report laid the blame for the explosion of tensions on both sides. Ze'ev Jabotinsky, organiser of Jewish paramilitary defences, received a 15-year sentence. Al-Husayni, then a teacher at the Rashidiya school in Jerusalem, was charged with inciting the Arab crowds to violence and sentenced to ten years imprisonment in absentia, since he had already fled to Transjordan.. One result of the April riots was that the presiding Husayni major was replaced by a major chosen from the Nashashibi clan, namely Raghib al-Nashashibi, and the old rivalry between the two clans broke out into a serious rift that was to have long-term consequences for al-Husayni and Palestinian nationalism.

Until late 1921, al-Husayni focused his efforts on Pan-Arabism and the ideology of the Greater Syria in particular, with Palestine understood as a southern province of an Arab state whose capital was to be established in Damascus. Greater Syria was to include territory now occupied by Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Israel. The struggle for Greater Syria collapsed after Britain ceded control over present day Syria and Lebanon to France in July 1920 in accordance with the prior Sykes-Picot Agreement. The French army entered Damascus at that time, overthrew King Faisal and put an end to the project of a Greater Syria.

Al-Husayni, like many of his class and period, then turned from Damascus-oriented Pan-Arabism to a specifically Palestinian ideology centered on Jerusalem, which sought to block Jewish immigration to Palestine. The frustration of pan-Arab aspirations lent an Islamic colour to the struggle for independence, and increasing resort to the idea of restoring the land to Dar al-Islam. From his election as Mufti until 1923, al-Husayni exercised total control over the secret society, Al-Fida’iyya (The Self-Sacrificers), which, together with al-Ikha’ wal-‘Afaf (Brotherhood and Purity), played an important role in clandestine anti-British and anti-Zionist activities, and, via members in the gendarmerie, had incited riotous acts early as April 1920.

Mufti of Jerusalem

Following the death of Amin's brother Kamîl al-Husayni, the former Mufti, in March 1921, the British High Commissioner Herbert Samuel pardoned Amin al-Husayni. Al-Husayni and another Arab had been excluded from an earlier general amnesty because they had fled before their convictions had been passed down. Elections were then held, and of the four candidates running for the office of Mufti, al-Husayni received the least number of votes. Nevertheless, Samuel, anxious to keep a balance between al-Husaynis and their rival clan the Nashashibis, who now had a senior representative appointed to the office of Mayor of Jerusalem, decided to appoint Amin al-Husayni Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, a title invented by Samuel.

In 1922, al-Husayni was elected President of the Supreme Muslim Council which had been created by Samuel in 1921.The Council controlled the Waqf funds - worth annually tens of thousands of pounds - and the orphan funds - worth annually about 50,000 pounds, as compared to the £600,000 in the Jewish Agency's annual budget. In addition, he controlled the Islamic courts in Palestine. Among other functions, these courts were entrusted with the power to appoint teachers and preachers.

Al-Husayni launched an international Muslim campaign to improve and restore the mosque known as the Dome of the Rock. Indeed, the current landscape of the Temple Mount was directly affected by constructions built, as a result, of al-Husayni's fund raising activities. Al-Husayni also served as president of the World Islamic Congress, which he founded in 1931.

The British initially balanced appointments to the Supreme Muslim Council between the Husaynis and their supporters (known as the majlisiya, or council supporters) and the Nashashibis and their allied clans (known as the mu'aridun, the opposition). For example the British replaced Musa al-Husayni as Mayor of Jerusalem with Ragheb al-Nashashibi. The mu'aridun, were more disposed to a compromise with the Jews, and indeed had for some years received annual subventions from the Jewish Agency. During most of the period of the British mandate, bickering between these two families seriously undermined any Palestinian unity. In 1936, however, they achieved a measure of unity when all the Palestinian groups joined to create a permanent executive organ known as the Arab Higher Committee under al-Husayni's chairmanship.

1929 Palestine riots

After his appointment, al-Husayni sought to transform the Haram into a symbol of pan-Arabic and Palestinian nationalism, to rally support against Jewish immigration that followed on the Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate for Palestine. Al-Husayni often accused Jews of planning to take possession of the Western Wall of Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple over the Al-Aqsa Mosque. He took certain statements, for example, by the Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Palestine, Abraham Isaac Kook regarding the eventual return in time of the Temple Mount back to Jewish hands, and turned them to a concrete political plot to seize control of the area.. Al-Husayni's intensive work to refurbish the shrine as a cynosure for the Muslim world, and Jewish endeavours to improve their access to, and establish a ritually appropriate ambiance on the plaza by the Western Wall, led to increased conflict between the two communities, each seeing the site only from their own traditional perspective and interests. Each attempt to make minor alterations to the status quo was bitterly protested before the British authorities by the Muslim authorities. On September 28 1928, British constables, acting on Muslim protests. used force to remove a screen set up to separate male and female worshippers. The use of force created an outcry throughout the diaspora. Al-Hussayni organized in turn a series of noisy disturbances, including offensively parading donkeys through the area, in order to disturb prayer and harass Jewish worshippers. In a memorandum presented to the Administration a few days after this incident, the Supreme Moslem Council declared their belief ‘that the Jews' aim (wa)s to take possession of the Mosque of Al-Aqsa gradually, on the pretence that it is the Temple, by starting with the Western Wall of this place'.. Worldwide Jewish protests remonstrated with Britain for the violence exercised at the Wall. The Jewish National Council Vaad Leumi ‘demanded that British administration expropriate the wall for the Jews’ but in November, in an open letter to the Muslim community, the Council denied that they had any intention of encroaching on Muslim rights at their holy places..

Incidents recurred in the following year. The offensive noise and traffic aimed to disrupt Jewish prayers. Betar also organised a demonstration where the slogan 'The Wall is Ours' was chanted. Claim and counter-claim escalated in a spiral of heated rhetoric and violence, and, a series of massacres then ensued after fiery speeches by al-Husayni, insinuating that the Jews were intent on taking over Muslim holy places, inflamed local passions.

Despite the protests of Jewish authorities that they had no intention of encroaching on Muslim places of worship, but merely to secure their rights to worship at the wall, Al-Husayni remained sceptical. Those acts which Al-Husayni read as betraying signs of such an intent were committed by a small, radical and secular minority, whose ideas and behaviour were often opposed to the views and politics of mainstream Zionists. However, al-Husayni firmly believed a conspiracy was afoot, (indeed, before the Shaw Commission, he held a copy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in his hand). Violence eventually broke out, any Jewish communities were subject to violent assaults which, in several cases, at Hebron and Safed finished with massacres.

In the aftermath, the Jewish Agency charged al-Husayni personally with responsibility for inciting the violence. While rejecting by a majority of two to one the view that the riots were carefully premeditated, the Shaw Report apportioned 'a share in the responsibility for the disturbances' to al-Husayni. In a minority opinion, Mr. Harry Snell insisted on al-Husayni's responsibility, in that he was fully aware of the dangers of incitement in religious propaganda and failed to exercise his authority as a religious leader in restraining outbreaks of violence. The League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission also found that al-Husayni's accusations against the Jews were both untruthful and incendiary, basing its judgment on evidence in the Shaw Report. The Commission concluded that al-Husayni’s incitement had exacerbated the situation.

Political Activities 1930-1935

Shai Lachman suggests the Mufti may have helped finance attacks by Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, leader of a clandestine guerilla movement, who had, years before, been appointed, with Al-Husayni's approval, imam of the al-Istiqlal mosque in Haifa. Whatever their relations, a rupture seems to have coincided with al-Qassam's more subversive activities, apparently over the latter's independant activism. . By 1935 al-Husayni took control of a clandestine organization, of whose nature he had not been informed until the preceding year , which had been set up in 1931 by Musa Kazim al-Husayni's son, Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni and recruited from the Palestinian Boy Scout movement, called the 'Holy Struggle' (al-jihad al-muqaddas). This and another paramilitary youth organization, al-Futuwwah, paralleled the clandestine Jewish Haganah. Rumours, and occasional discovery of caches and shipments of arms, strengthened military preparations on both sides.

Arab revolt of 1936-1939

On April 19 1936, a wave of Arab violence against the Jews broke out in Palestine. Initially, the riots were led by Farhan al-Sa'ada, a militant sheik of the northern al-Qassam group, with links to the Nashashibis. After Farhan's arrest and execution, al-Husayni seized the initiative by negotiating an alliance with the al-Qassam faction. Apart from some foreign subsidies, including a substantial amount from Italy, he controlled waqf and orphan funds, which generated annual income of about 115,000 Palestinian pounds; after the start of the revolt, most of that money was used to finance the activities of his representatives throughout the country. To Italy's consul-general in Jerusalem Mariano de Angelis, he explained in July that his decision to get directly involved in the conflict arose from the trust he reposed in Mussolini's backing and promises. The guerillas recruited by al-Husayni's men were responsible for most attacks on Jews during the first months of the revolt; later, they were joined by volunteers from the neighboring Arab lands led by Fawzi al-Qawuqji. Upon al-Husayni's initiative, the leaders of Palestinian Arab clans formed the Arab Higher Committee under the mufti's chairmanship. The Committee called for nonpayment of taxes after May 15 and for a general strike of Arab workers and businesses, demanding an end to the Jewish immigration. The British High Commissioner for Palestine Sir Arthur Wauchope responded by engaging in negotiations with al-Husayni and the Committee. The talks, however, soon proved fruitless. The mufti issued a series of warnings, threatening the 'revenge of God Almighty' unless the Jewish immigration were to stop, and the general strike began, paralyzing the government, public transportation, Arab businesses and agriculture.

As the time passed, it turned out that those were the Arabs deprived of their usual sources of income who bore the brunt of the cost of the strike. Under these circumstances, the Mandatory government was looking for an intermediary who might help persuade the Arab Higher Committee to end the rebellion. Al-Husayni and the Committee rejected King Abdullah of Transjordan as mediator because of his dependence on the British and friendship with the Zionists, but accepted the Iraqi foreign minister Nuri as-Said. As Wauchope warned of an impending military campaign and simultaneously offered to dispatch a Royal Commission of Inquiry to hear the Arab complaints, the Arab Higher Committee called off the strike on October 11. When the promised Royal Commission of Inquiry arrived in Palestine in November, al-Husayni testified before it as chief witness for the Arabs.

In July 1937 British police were sent to arrest al-Husayni for his part in the Arab rebellion, but, tipped off, he managed to escape to the Haram where the British deemed it inadvisable to touch him. He stayed there for three months, directing the revolt from within. In September, after the assassination of Commissioner Andrews, al-Husayni was subject to an arrest warrant and removed from the presidency of the Muslim Supreme Council. The Arab Higher Committee was declared illegal, and many of its leaders sent into exile. In mid-October, after sliding under cover of darkess down a rope from the haram's wall, al-Husayni himself fled to Lebanon, disguised as a woman, where he reconstituted the committee under his leadership. Al-Husayni retained the support of most Palestinian Arabs and used his power to punish the Nashashibis. He remained in Lebanon for two years, but his deteriorating relationship with the French and Syrian authorities led him to withdraw to Iraq in October 1939.

The rebellion itself lasted until 1939, when it was finally quelled by British troops. It forced Britain to make substantial concessions to Arab demands. Jewish immigration was to continue but under restrictions, with a quota of 75,000 places spread out over the following five years. On the expiry of this period further Jewish immigration would depend on Arab consent. Besides local unrest, another key factor in bringing about a decisive change in British policy was Nazi Germany's preparations for a European war, which would develop into a worldwide conflict. In British strategic thinking, securing the loyalty and support of the Arab world assumed an importance of some urgency. While Jewish support was unquestioned, Arab backing in a new global conflict was by no means assured. By promising to phase out Jewish immigration into Palestine, Britain hoped to win back support from wavering Arabs.. Al-Husayni nonetheless felt that the concessions did not go far enough, and he rejected the new policy. See also Peel Commission, White Paper of 1939.

Political opposition

Although no Palestinians supported Zionism, not all Palestinians supported al-Husayni. In his review of Hillel Cohen's Army of Shadows, Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917-1948, Neve Gordon writes that al-Husayni

'defined all competing nationalist views and actions as treasonous… Patronizing a Jewish doctor, employing a Jewish worker or being employed by a Jew--all became illegitimate. Thus, Husseini's uncompromising maximalist positions, alongside his camp's unwillingness to tolerate the views of its opponents, paradoxically ended up expanding the definition of traitor and collaborator.'

. This resulted in opposition to al-Husayni from the 1930’s and continuing up to 1948. According to a member of the Darwash family, considered traitors by al-Husayni,

'The mufti and his men said that my father was a traitor. But my father tried to prevent the war. He said to the mufti (al-Husyani): The war you are declaring will lead to the loss of Palestine. We need to negotiate. The mufti said idha takalam al-seif, uskut ya kalam – when the sword talks, there is no place for talking. They say that my father sold land and that makes him a traitor. He didn’t sell. But tell me this, if a man who sold 400 dunams to the Jews is a traitor, what would one say of a man whose policies let to the loss of Palestine? Isn’t he the biggest of traitors?”

Many Palestinian Arabs refused to fight in 1948 because of their hatred for al-Husyani. One recounted that

'when Abd al-Qader appeared in the village of Surif, in the Hebron district, to speak before the village elders, there were some who said to him: 'You murdered eighty mukhtars and you should be fought before we kill the Jews'. Abd al-Qadar replied that he killed traitors. He was told: 'You are a criminal and you uncle (Hajj Amin) is a criminal and you are all an assembly of traitors'.'

Nazi ties and activities during World War II

Pre-war

File:Himmler to Mufti telegram 1943.png

November 2, 1943 Himmler's telegram to Mufti: 'To the Grand Mufti: The National Socialist movement of Greater Germany has, since its inception, inscribed upon its flag the fight against the world Jewry. It has therefore followed with particular sympathy the struggle of freedom-loving Arabs, especially in Palestine, against Jewish interlopers. In the recognition of this enemy and of the common struggle against it lies the firm foundation of the natural alliance that exists between the National Socialist Greater Germany and the freedom-loving Muslims of the whole world. In this spirit I am sending you on the anniversary of the infamous Balfour declaration my hearty greetings and wishes for the successful pursuit of your struggle until the final victory.' Reichsfuehrer S.S. Heinrich Himmler

In 1933, within weeks of Hitler's rise to power in Germany, the German Consul-General in Palestine, the pro-Zionist Heinrich Wolff, sent a telegram to Berlin reporting al-Husayni's belief that Palestinian Muslims were enthusiastic about the new regime and looked forward to the spread of Fascism throughout the region. Wolff met Al-Husayni and many sheiks again, a month later, at Nabi Musa. They expressed their approval of the anti-Jewish boycott in Germany and asked Wolff not to send any Jews to Palestine.. Wolff subsequently wrote in his annual report for that year that the Arabs' political naïvity led them to fail to recognize the link between German Jewish policy and their problems in Palestine, and that their enthusiasm for Nazi Germany was devoid of any real understanding of the phenomenon.. The various proposals by Palestinian notables like al-Husayni were rejected consistently over the years out of concern to avoid disrupting Anglo-German relations, in line with Germany's policy of not imperilling their economic and cultural interests in the region by a change in their policy of neutrality, and respect for English interests. Hitler's Englandpolitik essentially precluded significant assistance to Arab leaders . Italy also made the nature of its assistance to the Palestinians contingent on the outcome of its own negotiations with England, and cut off aid when it appeared that the English were ready to admit the failure of their pro-Zionist policy in Palestine.

Some assistance did however trickle through. On 21 July 1937, Al-Husayni paid a visit to the new German Consul-General, Hans Döhle, in Palestine. He repeated his former support for Germany and 'wanted to know to what extent the Third Reich was prepared to support the Arab movement against the Jews.' He later sent an agent and personal representative to Berlin for discussions with Nazi leaders.

In 1938, though Anglo-German relations were a concern, Al-Husayni's offer was accepted. From August 1938, al-Husayni received financial and military assistance and supplies from Nazi Germany and also from fascist Italy, with which his enemy, Jabotinsky's Irgun had just broken off ties. Though in the ensuing war, the Mufti was strongly pro-Axis, this did not reflect the position of the entire Palestinian leadership. Al-Husayni's cousin Jemal, for example, was in favour of cutting a deal with Britain for Palestine.

In May 1940, the British Foreign Office declined a proposal from the chairman of the Vaad Leumi (Jewish National Council in Palestine) that they assassinate al-Husayni, but in November of that year Winston Churchill approved such a plan. In May 1941, several members of the Irgun, (several members of which were themselves feeling out the Nazis in Beirut about a possible collaboration between the Jewish underground and Germany to throw the British out of Palestine), including its former leader David Raziel were released from prison and flown to Iraq on a secret mission which, according to British sources, included a plan to 'capture or kill' the Mufti. The Irgun version is that they were approached by the British for a sabotage mission and added a plan to capture the Mufti as a condition of their cooperation. The mission was abandoned when Raziel was killed by a German plane.

In the Middle East

In April 1941 the Golden Square pro-Nazi Iraqi army officers, led by General Rashid Ali, forced the Iraqi Prime Minister, the pro-British Nuri Said Pasha, to resign. From his base in Iraq, al-Husayni issued a fatwa for a holy war against Britain a month later, in May. Forty days later, British troops occupied the country, and al-Husayni fled to Iran where he was granted legation asylum first by Japan and then by Italy. On October 8, after the occupation of Iran by Britain and the Soviet Union and the severance of diplomatic relations with the Axis powers, al-Husayni fled to Italy with the Italian diplomats who provided him with an Italian service passport. To avoid recognition, al-Husayni changed his appearance by shaving his beard and dying his hair.

Throughout the war, al-Husayni repeatedly made requests in Berlin to 'the German government to bomb Tel Aviv.'

In Nazi-occupied Europe

Al-Husayni arrived in Rome on October 11 1941 and immediately contacted Italian military intelligence. The mufti claimed to be head of a secret Arab nationalist organization with offices in all Arab countries. On condition that the Axis powers "recognize in principle the unity, independence, and sovereignty, of an Arab state of a Fascist nature, including Iraq, Syria, Palestine, and Transjordan", he offered support in the war against Britain and stated his willingness to discuss the issues of "the Holy Places, Lebanon, the Suez canal, and Aqaba". The Italian foreign ministry approved the mufti's proposal, recommending to give him a grant of one million lire, and referred him to Benito Mussolini, who met al-Husayni on October 27. According to the mufti's account, the meeting went amicably with the Italian leader expressing his hostility to the Jews and Zionism.

Back in the summer of 1940 and again in February 1941, al-Hussayni submitted to the German government a draft declaration of German-Arab cooperation, containing a clause:

Germany and Italy recognize the right of the Arab countries to solve the question of the Jewish elements, which exist in Palestine and in the other Arab countries, as required by the national and ethnic (völkisch) interests of the Arabs, and as the Jewish question was solved in Germany and Italy.

Now, encouraged by his meeting with the Italian leader, al-Husayni prepared a draft declaration, affirming the Axis support for the Arabs on November 3. In three days, the declaration, slightly amended by Italian foreign ministry, received the formal approval of Mussolini and was forwarded to the German embassy in Rome. On November 6, al-Husayni arrived in Berlin, where he discussed the text of his declaration with Ernst von Weizsäcker and other German officials. In the final draft, which differed only marginally from al-Husayni's original proposal, the Axis powers declared their readiness to approve the elimination (Beseitigung) of the Jewish National Home in Palestine.

On November 20, al-Husayni met the German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and was officially received by Adolf Hitler on November 28. He asked Hitler for a public declaration that 'recognized and sympathized with the Arab struggles for independence and liberation, and that would support the elimination of a national Jewish homeland'. Hitler refused to make such a public announcement, saying that it would strengthen the Gaullists against the Vichy France, but made the following declaration, requesting al-Husayni "to lock it deep in his heart:

1. He (the Führer) would carry on the fight until the last traces of the Jewish-Communist European hegemony had been obliterated.
2. In the course of this fight, the German army would - at a time that could not yet be specified, but in any case in the clearly foreseeable future - gain the southern exit of Caucasus.
3. As soon as this breakthrough was made, the Führer would offer the Arab world his personal assurance that the hour of liberation had struck. Thereafter, Germany's only remaining interest there was "the destruction of the power protecting the Jews" (die Vernichtung der das Judentum protegierenden Macht).

The Holocaust

The Mufti was in Berlin during the war, but later denied knowing of the Holocaust. One of Adolf Eichmann's deputies, Dieter Wisliceny, stated after the war that he had actively encouraged the extermination of European Jews, and that he had had an elaborate meeting with Eichmann at his office, during which Eichmann gave him an intensive look at the current state of the “Solution of the Jewish Question in Europe” by the Third Reich. This testimony was denied by Eichmann at his 1961 trial in Jerusalem. Eichmann stated that he had only been introduced to the Mufti during an official reception, along with all other department heads. In the final judgement, the Jerusalem court stated: "In the light of this partial admission by the Accused, we accept as correct Wisliceny's statement about this conversation between the Mufti and the Accused. In our view it is not important whether this conversation took place in the Accused's office or elsewhere. On the other hand, we cannot determine decisive findings with regard to the Accused on the basis of the notes appearing in the Mufti's diary which were submitted to us.".

Jewish political theorist Hannah Arendt, who attended the complete Eichmann trial, concluded in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil: "The trial revealed only that all rumours about Eichmann's connection with Haj Amin el Husseini, the former Mufti of Jerusalem, were unfounded." Rafael Medoff concludes that "actually there is no evidence that the Mufti's presence was a factor at all; the Wisliceny hearsay is not merely uncorroborated, but conflicts with everything else that is known about the origins of the Final Solution." Bernard Lewis also called Wisliceny's testimony into doubt: "There is no independent documentary confirmation of Wisliceny's statements, and it seems unlikely that the Nazis needed any such additional encouragement from the outside."

Some recent research, however, apparently argues that al-Husayni did work with Eichmann for the dispatch of a special corps of Einsatz commandos to exterminate the Jews in Palestine, if Rommel managed to break through the British lines in Egypt. Husayni did intervene on May 13, 1943, with the German Foreign Office to block possible transfers of Jews from Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania, after reports reached him that 4000 Jewish children accompanied by 500 adults had managed to reach Palestine. He asked that the Foreign Minister 'to do his utmost' to block all such proposals and this request was complied with.. A year later, on the 25th July, 1944, he wrote to the Hungarian foreign minister to register his objection to the release of certificates for 900 Jewish children and 100 adults for transfer from Hungary, fearing they might end up in Palestine. He suggested that if such transfers of population were deemed necessary, then:-

'it would be indispensable and infinitely preferable to send them to other countries where they would find themselves under active control, as for example Poland, thus avoiding danger and preventing damage.'

Among the acts of sabotage al-Husayni attempted to implement, Michael Bar Zohar reports a chemical warfare assault on the second largest and predominantly Jewish city in Palestine, Tel Aviv. According to him, five parachutists were sent with a toxin to dump into the water system. The police caught the infiltrators in a cave near Jericho, and according to Jericho district police commander Fayiz Bey Idrissi, 'The laboratory report stated that each container held enough poison to kill 25,000 people, and there were at least ten containers.' [2].

He is also said to have requested that Jerusalem be bombed by the German air force, a request that puts doubts on his religiosity, since, in Walter Laqueur's words,'It is unlikely that a truly pious Muslim would have acted this way.'

In his memoirs after the war, Husayni noted that "Our fundamental condition for cooperating with Germany was a free hand to eradicate every last Jew from Palestine and the Arab world. I asked Hitler for an explicit undertaking to allow us to solve the Jewish problem in a manner befitting our national and racial aspirations and according to the scientific methods innovated by Germany in the handling of its Jews. The answer I got was: 'The Jews are yours'.'

Wolfgang G. Schwanitz notes that in his memoirs Husayni recalled that Heinrich Himmler, in the summer of 1943, while confiding some German war secrets, inveighed against Jewish ‘war guilt’, and, speaking of Germany’s persecution of the Jews said that 'up to now we have exterminated (in Arabic, abadna) around three million of them'. In his memoirs, Husayni wrote he was astonished to hear this. Schwanitz doubts the sincerity of his surprise since, he argues, Husayni had publicly declared that Muslims should follow the example Germans set for a 'definitive solution to the Jewish problem'..

In September 1943, intense negotiations to rescue 500 Jewish children from the town of Arbe in Croatia collapsed due to the objection of the Mufti who blocked the children's departure to Turkey because they would end up in Palestine.

Recent Nazi documents uncovered in the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Military Archive Service in Freiburg [3] by two researchers, Klaus Michael Mallmann from Stuttgart University and Martin Cüppers from the University of Ludwigsburg, indicated that in the event of the British being defeated in Egypt by Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps the Nazis had planned to deploy a special unit called Einsatzkommando Ägypten to exterminate Palestinian Jews and that they wanted Arab support to prevent the emergence of a Jewish state. In their book the researchers concluded that, "the most important collaborator with the Nazis and an absolute Arab anti-Semite was Haj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem.'

Propaganda and recruitment

File:Grossmufti-inspecting-ss-recruits.jpg

Mufti Hajj Amin al-Husayni inspecting Waffen SS recruits from Bosnia.

Toward the end of the World War II, al-Husayni worked for Nazi Germany as a propagandist targeting Arab public opinion and a recruiter of Muslim volunteers for the German armed forces. Beginning in 1941, Al-Husayni visited Bosnia, and convinced Muslim leaders that a Muslim S.S. division would be in the interest of Islam. In spite of these and other propaganda efforts, only half of the expected 20,000 to 25,000 Muslims volunteered." Al-Husayni was involved in the organization and recruitment of Bosnian Muslims into several divisions of the Waffen SS and other units. The largest was the 13th "Handschar" division of 21,065 men, which conducted operations against Communist partisans in the Balkans from February 1944 and participated in the genocide of Yugoslav Jews.

On March 1, 1944, while speaking on Radio Berlin, al-Husayni said:

'Arabs, rise as one man and fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history, and religion. This saves your honor. God is with you.'

Activities after World War II

Arrest and trial

After the Second World War, al-Husayni fled to Switzerland, was detained and expelled back to Germany, was captured by the French and put under house arrest in France after he was sentenced by the Yugoslav Supreme Military Court to three years imprisonment and two years of deprivation of civil rights as convicted war criminal. During the Nuremberg Trials, Eichmann's deputy Dieter Wisliceny testified that The Mufti was one of the initiators of the extermination of European Jewry and a collaborator and adviser of Eichmann and Himmler in the initiation of the Final Solution. In 1946, Husayni escaped and was given asylum in Egypt. Jewish groups petitioned the British to have him indicted as a war criminal. The British declined because such a move would have added to their growing problems in Egypt and among Palestinians - where al-Husayni was still popular. Yugoslavia unsuccessfully sought his extradition. While in Egypt, Al-Husayni was hired by British intelligence as a propagandist for the Arab News Agency..

1948 Palestine War

See also: 1947-1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine

From his Egyptian exile, al-Husayni used what influence he had to encourage the participation of the Egyptian military in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. He was involved in some high level negotiations between Arab leaders - before and during the War - at a meeting held in Damascus in February 1948, to organize Palestinian Field Commands and the commanders of the Holy War Army. Hasan Salama and Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni (his nephew), were allocated to the Lydda district and Jerusalem respectively. This decision paved the way for undermining the Mufti's position among the Arab States. On February 9, four days after the Damascus meeting, he suffered a severe setback at the Arab League's Cairo session, when his demands for more Palestinian self-determination for Palestine's fate were rejected. His demands included, the appointment of a Palestinian to the League's General Staff, the formation of a Palestinian Provisional Government, the transfer of authority to local National Committees in areas evacuated by the British, and both, a loan for Palestinian administration and an appropriation of large sums to the Arab Higher Executive for Palestinians entitled to war damages.

The Arab League blocked recruitment to the al-Husayni's forces - which collapsed following the death of one of his most charismatic commanders, Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni, on April 8.

Following rumors that King Abdullah I of Transjordan was reopening the bilateral negotiations with Israel that he had previously conducted clandestinely with the Jewish Agency, the Arab League - led by Egypt - decided to set up the All-Palestine Government in Gaza on September 8 , 1950 under the nominal leadership of al-Husayni. Avi Shlaim writes:

The decision to form the Government of All-Palestine in Gaza, and the feeble attempt to create armed forces under its control, furnished the members of the Arab League with the means of divesting themselves of direct responsibility for the prosecution of the war and of withdrawing their armies from Palestine with some protection against popular outcry. Whatever the long-term future of the Arab government of Palestine, its immediate purpose, as conceived by its Egyptian sponsors, was to provide a focal point of opposition to Abdullah and serve as an instrument for frustrating his ambition to federate the Arab regions with Transjordan.

Abdullah regarded the attempt to revive al-Husayni's Holy War Army as a challenge to his authority and on October 3, his minister of defense ordered all armed bodies operating in the areas controlled by the Arab Legion to be disbanded. Glubb Pasha carried out the order ruthlessly and efficiently.

Exile from Jerusalem

King Abdullah had assigned the position of Grand Mufti of Jerusalem to Husam Al-din Jarallah, and al-Husayni appears to have had contacts with the Arab conspirators behind King Abdullah's assassination in 1951. The assassin was a member of an underground Palestinian organization that was led by a relative and aide of al-Husayni, Daoud al-Husayni. Abdullah was succeeded by King Talal - who refused to allow al-Husayni entry into Jerusalem. Within a year, King Talal was declared incompetent, but his successor King Hussein renewed the ban on al-Husayni entering the city.

Al-Husayni died in Beirut, Lebanon on 4 July 1974. He wished to be buried in Jerusalem, but the Israeli government refused this request;Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordan, in 1967, during the Six-Day War.

Amin al-Husayni and antisemitism

Amin al-Husayni has been pictured as a virulent antisemite by traditional Israeli historiography.

His recent biographers emphasize his nationalism. Nevertheless, Zvi Elpeleg, while rehabilitating him from other charges , concludes his chapter concerning the involvment of the Mufti in the extermination of the Jews as follows:

'[i]n any case, there is no doubt that Haj Amin's hatred was not limited to Zionism, but extended to Jews as such. His frequent, close contacts with leaders of the Nazi regime cannot have left Haj Amin any doubt as to the fate which awaited Jews whose emigration was prevented by his efforts. His many comments show that he was not only delighted that Jews were prevented from emigrating to Palestine, but was very pleased by Nazi's Final Solution'.

Benny Morris also argues that '[the Mufti] was deeply anti-Semitic', sinced he 'explained the Holocaust as owing to the Jews' sabotage of the German war effort in World War I and [their] character : (...) their selfishness, rooted in their belief that they are the chosen people of God.'

In a study dedicated to the role and the use of the Holocaust in the Israeli nationalist feeling, Idith Zertal takes a new look at the antisemitic picture of the Mufti. She considers that 'in more correct proportions, [he should be pictured] as a fanatic nationalist-religeous Palestinian leader'. She also claims that '(...) the demonization of the Mufti serves to magnify the Arafatian threat' and that the '[picture of the Mufti as] one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry (...) has no (...) historical substantiation'.

Legacy

• The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry's report of April 20, 1946 stated: "The flight of the Mufti, Haj Amin el-Husseini, to Italy and Germany, and his active support of the Axis, did not lose for him his following, and he is probably the most popular Arab leader in Palestine today."
• Israeli historian Tom Segev paraphrased a letter that the commander of the British forces in the British Mandate for Palestine, General Evelyn Barker, publicly anti-Zionist, wrote to his wife in around May 1947 about the mufti's legacy: "Haj Amin al-Husseini, the former mufti, thought only of his own interests and not of his people, and had done the Palestinian Arabs a great disservice. The mufti sought only to augment his political power. The Arabs had only dissension and petty jealousies. Their tragedy was that they had no real leadership."
• Yasser Arafat's interview with the London-based Arabic language newspaper Al Sharq al Awsat was reprinted by a leading Palestinian daily Al Quds (August 2, 2002):

Interviewer: I have heard voices from within the Palestinian Authority in the past few weeks, saying that the reforms are coordinated according to American whims...

Arafat: We are not Afghanistan. We are the mighty people. Were they able to replace our hero Hajj Amin al-Husseini?... There were a number of attempts to get rid of Hajj Amin, whom they considered an ally of the Nazis. But even so, he lived in Cairo, and participated in the 1948 war, and I was one of his troops."

• John Marlowe said: "The dominant figure in Palestine during the Mandate years was neither an Englishman nor a Jew, but an Arab — Haj Amin Muhammed Effendi al Husaini... Able, ambitious, ruthless, humourless, and incorruptible, he was of the authentic stuff of which dictators are made."

See also

• Islam and antisemitism
• Arabs and antisemitism
• Palestinian political violence

References

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• Deutsche - Juden - Völkermord. Der Holocaust als Geschichte und Gegenwart (Germans, Jews, Genocide — The Holocaust as History and Present). Klaus Michael Mallmann and Martin Cüppers. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt, 2006.
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External links

• HUSSEINI, HAJ AMIN (1895-1974) at passia.org (with photos)
• Islamic Fascists?
• Mufti's Biography at the Jewish Virtual Library
• A biographical sketch of Haj Amin al-Husseini, Michal Gado, at "Omedia"
• Hajj Amin al-Husseini: the Mufti of Jerusalem (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)