By Daniel Luban
On Wednesday, Ha’aretz reported on the Netanyahu government’s latest spin in its clash with the U.S. and the international community over planned settlement construction in East Jerusalem: change the subject to the Nazis.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has ordered diplomats to use an old photograph of a former Palestinian religious leader meeting Adolf Hitler to counter world criticism of a Jewish building plan for East Jerusalem.
Israeli officials said on Wednesday that Lieberman told Israeli ambassadors to circulate the 1941 shot in Berlin of the Nazi leader seated next to Haj Amin al-Husseini, the late mufti or top Muslim religious leader in Jerusalem.
One official said Lieberman, an ultranationalist, hoped the photo would “embarrass” Western countries into ceasing to demand that Israel halt the project on land owned by the mufti’s family in a predominantly Arab neighbourhood in East Jerusalem.
Lieberman’s transparent attempt to divert attention from the East Jerusalem controversy was widely derided across the political spectrum. It is, of course, a complete non sequitur — why would the mufti’s Nazi ties have anything to do with the status of Jerusalem under a peace deal? (Al-Husseini died in 1974.) As with Netanyahu’s implied accusation that Obama wants to make the West Bank “Judenrein,” the operative political strategy seems to be “when in doubt, bring up the Nazis.” Even among hardliners, few seemed inclined to take Lieberman’s ploy seriously.
Few, that is, except for the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the powerful and hardline Washington group whose policies generally track those of the Israeli right. Earlier this week, Conference of Presidents chairman Alan Solow and executive vice-president Malcolm Hoenlein issued a statement defending Netanyahu and calling the Obama administration’s objections to the proposed building project “disturbing”. It included this key paragraph:
It is particularly significant that the structure in question formerly was the house of the infamous Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseni who spent the war years in Berlin as a close ally of Hitler, aiding and abetting the Nazi extermination of Jews. He was also linked to the 1929 massacre in Hebron and other acts of incitement that resulted in deaths and destruction in what was then Palestine. There has been an expressed desire by some Palestinians to preserve the building as a tribute to Husseini.
The Conference of Presidents is perfectly free to side with Netanyahu over the U.S. government if they so desire — although in that case they should stop claiming to speak for all their member organizations, not all of which agree with their pro-settlement stance. But regardless, shouldn’t the group at least make an effort to pretend that it isn’t cribbing its talking points straight from Avigdor Lieberman?
[Cross-posted at The Faster Times.]
bataween
July 26, 2009 @ 2:03 am
“It is, of course, a complete non sequitur — why would the mufti’s Nazi ties have anything to do with the status of Jerusalem under a peace deal?”
In fact, it couldn’t be more relevant. International objections are sending the dangerous signal that Arabs can live among Jews, but Jews can’t live among Arabs. Yet Jerusalem had a Jewish majority since the mid 19th century. This anti-Jewish racism is just what the Mufti stood for. (Indeed the Mufti wanted the Jews not only out of Palestine but exterminated – he had plans for gas chambers near Nablus). Palestinian rejectionism of Israel still has its roots in the twin fascisms fostered by the Mufti – religious bigotry and pan-Arab nationalism.
Eric Petersen
July 27, 2009 @ 4:11 am
A rather strange argument to be used by the Zionists since al-H was their own creation: In 1921, Herbert Samuel, British High Commissioner for Palestine and an ardent Zionist, appointed al-H to the post (that had a life-long tenure), one Samuel created – there was no such thing as a Grand Mufti prior to this. The same year, Samuel created the Supreme Muslim Council and al-H was elected President in 1922. Al-H had no religious credentials, the post was purely political. During the 1920s, not only did, with Samuel’s encouragement, Jewish immigration greatly accelerate, but there was a growing food fight over the status of the Western Wall in Jerusalem with Rabbi Kook on one side, al-H on the other. This climaxed in the 1929 Arab Revolt. After the 1936 Arab Revolt, al-H was forced to flee Palestine, or be killed by the Zionists. He first went to Lebanon, then Iraq, then Italy, and finally Germany. Other Arab nationalists were also pro-Nazi (notably the leadership in Iraq), more because they were anti-British than anti-Jewish. Bottom line: The Zionists created the Grand Mufti, just like they created Hamas and Hezbollah.
Jon Harrison
July 28, 2009 @ 6:11 am
Commenter bataween seems to forget that the Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem are illegal, and continue a pattern of aggression that goes back to the 1940s. The really relevant fact in this matter is that Israel was founded by robbing Arabs of land that they had occupied for over a millenium. The attitude of the long-dead mufti justifies displacing families and killing civilians? I don’t think so. Why should the Palestinian people have to pay for the crimes of Germans?
More important, however, is the question Israel’s American supporters always ignore: what is America’s interest? Exactly how does supporting Israeli settlement policy help the American people? Shouldn’t the U.S. government be looking out for American interests? The rabidly pro-Israel groups and publications in the U.S. constitute a fifth column and a danger to the American people as a whole.
bataween
July 28, 2009 @ 12:49 pm
Jon Harrison
Educate yourself. You obviously have no idea who the Mufti was – he was directly responsible for the killing of 180 Jews in Iraq, thousands injured and property wrecked in the pro-Nazi pogrom of 1941. It is the Arabs who have robbed the Jews – now transplanted to Israel – of land they owned for 2,500 years in the Middle East and North Africa.
As for the settlements being ‘illegal’ 360 new Arab settlements have sprung up in the West Bank .There is just as large a body of legal opinion which holds Jewish settlements ‘legal’.
Jon Harrison
July 28, 2009 @ 2:53 pm
Ah, bataween, your riposte is a non sequitur, I’m afriad. I’m well up on the history, thank you. I didn’t say the Mufti was a nice guy — I said he’s irrelevant to the issues of today. He’s been dead for 35 years, for Chrissakes.
I’m sick and tired of hearing that the Jews deserve to return to Palestine almost 2,000 years after they were expelled by the Romans. As I’ve said before both here and elsewhere, any American who believes this needs to immediately turn over all of his property to the nearest Indian.
As an American, I could care less what happens to Israelis and Arabs. I just want America to mind its own business and have nothing to do with these little, silly peoples.
bataween
July 28, 2009 @ 3:29 pm
“He’s been dead for 35 years, for Chrissakes.”
But his spirit is still very much alive in bigoted Arab rejectionism!
And once they’ve dealt with the Jews the jihadists will deal with you, Jon Harrison.
If only one of the silly little peoples – and no prizes for guessing which – decided it wanted peace tomorrow this whole thing could be resolved instantly.
Jon Harrison
July 28, 2009 @ 5:15 pm
Oh, I’m quite prepared to have the U.S. military vaporize the jihadists and any state that harbors them, long before they decide to come after me. The fact is that America became a target because of its absurdly one-sided position on the Palestinian-Israeli dispute.
The attitude in Israel and among its supporters here in the U.S. is that we ought to support Israel in all it does. Why the heck should I and the 95% of the U.S. population who aren’t Zionists care about some foreign Jews in Palestine? Don’t misunderstand me, it’s not that I love the Arabs. But the fact is that the Palestinians were deprived of their land and homes in retribution for the crimes of Europeans, principally Germans. That itself was a crime “against humanity.” The sufferings of the Jews do not permit Jews to oppress Palestinians. “As ye sow, so shall ye reap” is a lesson that the Israelis have yet to learn, amazing as that is.
My real problem is that the Israeli tail wags the American dog. If the Israelis won’t behave like good clients should, then let’s stop being their patron! I’m sick of U.S. interests being damaged for the benefit of Israel, and I’m sick of sending arms and money to support a people’s unjust quest for lebensraum.
bataween
July 29, 2009 @ 2:15 am
JH: “The fact is that America became a target because of its absurdly one-sided position on the Palestinian-Israeli dispute.”
Wrong, wrong wrong! You’ve got it back-to-front, JH. Been reading too much Mearsheimer and Walt. If the US was not so one-sidedly pro-Arab, giving credence to their bogus claims and fraudulent ‘narrative’ we would have peace by now. There were far more Jewish refugees and the Arabs stole far more from us in Arab countries – property equivalent to FIVE times the size of Israel. I speak from personal experience.
You think that the jihadists will not go after you if you feed them Israel, but a crocodile is a crocodile is a crocodile.
Zhu Bajie
July 29, 2009 @ 5:26 am
“Exactly how does supporting Israeli settlement policy help the American people?”
It speeds up the Return of Jesus, something 10s of millions of Americans are eager for. Pay more attention to the Hal Lindseys and John Haggees, as unpleasant as they are.
Jon Harrison
July 29, 2009 @ 10:28 am
bataween, I’m not afraid of the jihadists, nor am I naive enough to think that if I feed an enemy, I won’t be next on the menu. I can assure you that America is quite capable of annihilating the entire Islamic world, should the latter decide to attack us.
I repeat, the affairs of silly little peoples like the Arabs and the Israelis are meaningless to Americans. We should look after ourselves. What happens to Israel is none of our business. Why in God’s name should I be expected to send money and arms to a foreign state whose policies damage American interests?
bataween
July 29, 2009 @ 11:19 am
Israel is merely the front line in America’s war against the Jihadists. As such it needs as much support as the US can give any loyal ally. And by the way aid to Israel is money well spent compared to what aid the US gives to the Arabs, which disappears down a black hole and maintains the Pal refugee problem, with nothing in return. As far as Israel is concerned, it’s a two-way street. Not many allies repay the US by giving it state-of-the art know-how and defence technology.
Jon Harrison
July 29, 2009 @ 11:43 am
This really is too much. Israel in fact repays us with the likes of the spy Pollard.
The United States is not dependent upon Israel for know-how and technology. Anything the Israelis may have given us is outweighed a millionfold by the damage the relationship has caused to American interests.
bataween
July 29, 2009 @ 12:44 pm
Don’t kid yourself, JH if you thought the jihadists would cease their war if America sold Israel down the river, you would be wrong. Israel has little to do with any of the islamist wars being waged all over the world, from Nigeria to Pakistan and Thailand.
I didn’t say the US is dependent on Israel’s technology, but it gets good value from this particular relationship.
kassandra
July 30, 2009 @ 6:25 am
Reading selected sites like this makes you kinda forget that in addition to the Latter Days types there are other batty types around, a la bataween. Can’t help but fall off the chair laughing when I read statements such as “land they owned 2 500 years ago”. Just makes me think of those 2000 year old Roman soldiers and pigs at Mastaba that Israel reburied with state honors, claiming they were “Mastaba Heroes”. Or how about that little 550 000 USD fake ivory pomegranate that the Israel Museum purchased, to prove the existence of “Solomon’s Temple”? Only the old Bolsheviks reworked history and propaganda to the lengths that Israel has. But then, there was a mutual history, wasn’t there?
Jon Harrison
July 30, 2009 @ 7:22 am
I’m not kidding mysel. I’m not the least bit worried about the Islamist “threat” to US security. If they come after us, we can destroy them. I’m not in favor of cutting ties with Israel because I think that’ll end the “Islamist threat.”
bataween
July 30, 2009 @ 9:54 am
kassandra
– and I can’t help laughing at your ignorance. The Jewish community in Iraq is over 2,500 years old. Or was, as there are only seven Jews left.
scott
July 30, 2009 @ 11:08 am
Bataween, your comments are racist and paranoid. Explain please how Israel, awarded 50% of Palestine in 1948 held 77% on June 1, 1967? You ignore the catastrophe.
Are there Palestinians Bataween? Regardless your answer, your lord, your golden calf Israel holds dominion over their heads. Stroke your pride, you know its true. You deny them trade, travel, or any political ability to affect change in their lives. You control their water, electricity and operate check points in their own lands.
You’re not democratic, your country sullies the US. The US holds often the same dreadful policies, and I criticize them too. You ignore that the Mossad bombed Synagogues in Iran and other countries to drive Jews back to Israel. You ignore that in the seventies the popularly elected mayor of Baghdad was a Jew.
We’ve performed similar loathsome false flag operations as well. Ironically, or not often under the tutelage of the same geniuses, Kissinger, Wolfowitz, Perle, Ross and Feith. Without fail their Machiavellian machinations backfires into some more horrible blowback.
Jon Harrison
July 30, 2009 @ 5:35 pm
I didn’t say anything about Iraq’s Jewish community. Comments like “laughing at your ignorance” only show that you’ve run out of arguments. We should always try to argue on the merits and not disparage our interlocutors, no matter how much we may disagree with them.
bataween
July 31, 2009 @ 1:25 am
Scott
I haven’t even mentioned the Palestinians. And I am not Israeli. I’m an Iraqi Jew. My parents did not flee Iraq because of bombs, they left because the Iraqi government prevented them from earning a living,studying. travelling, extorted money from them, arrested Jews on trumped up charges, executed Jews at random and finally stole their property. That is not racism or paranoia – these are the facts which you choose to DENY.
I presume you are a liberal concerned about human rights abuses. But when it comes to the suffering of Jews, you are BLIND deaf and dumb! So much more convenient to talk of false flag operations and nonsense. God forbid the truth should disturb your cosy world view= Zionists evil, Arabs good.
As for you JH, my comment about ignorance was directed at kassandra, not you.
Jon Harrison
July 31, 2009 @ 11:33 am
Oh, sorry bataween. I saw the comment but overlooked the name you attached to it, and I missed kassandra’s comment completely. Bouncing back and forth on the net too quickly, I guess.
scott
August 2, 2009 @ 3:19 am
Prior to Israel those weren’t issues. You’re the one who’s connecting the Mufti in Jerusalem with Iraq. Now, does the Iraqi gov’t have any reason to suspect foreigners or those with foreign ties.
If Israel never existed the United States activities in Iran and Iraq would justify their suspicion. I know Iraqi Sunis who suffered the same predations under Saddam. I doubt the previous gov’t was much different.
I really suppose you could track all this back to the Brits and their carving up of the Ottoman Empire, treaty of Paris and all of that. That of course, takes us back to Balfour, Israel, Palestine and Lebanon.
Again, let me suggest that your comments are racist. Perhaps you have justification, but you’re still racist suffering some PTSD or no. I don’t really think bitter Cubans should direct our foreign policy toward that Island nor bitter Jews or, really any too terribly embittered by getting cut off from our empire’s embezzlement campaigns.
Again, you aren’t perhaps guilty of that, maybe no Iraqi Jew is suspect, but American and Israeli covert actions certainly justifies their fear of Jews equal to your distrust of Arabs. Nor can you argue that Israel was the unwitting dupe of the US, nor can we argue that. We’ve been in cahoots in illicit affairs and the distrust of the natives is to be expected.
Perhaps the Mufti had his reasons for paling up with the Germans, they weren’t the only country that espoused eugenics, and utterly racist ideology. Woodrow Wilson was a wicked white supremacist, most educated Americans were in that day. Hell, Truman was an anti-Semite but an old Jewish business partner swayed him into supporting the Israeli state.
You speak of the Mufti’s genocidal wishes. What say you about Plan Dalet and Plan Gimmel? How is it that while the Mufti may have had some wistful thoughts of ridding his land of these immigrant Jews from Russia. But, Ben Gurion and Hertzl had far more that wishes and blueprints, they had bombs, troops, a religious furor inspired by the books of Leviticus and Joshua ironically meted out by atheists. They destroyed whole villages, leaving not a stone standing atop another, re-enacting atrocity you claim as holy–atrocities that would make Dostoevsky shudder.
These people have, according to 5000 IDF refusniks, “humiliated, starved, oppressed and dominated and entire people.” For 60 yrs running. There are Jews living throughout the Arab world today. Despite the brazen catastrophe beset by Jews upon Arabs that predated the depredations you bemoan. I don’t support wrong doing, but I sure as hell didn’t wonder why someone would fly airplanes into our skyscrapers. I wondered why they hadn’t done it sooner.
I don’t know what it is to be “special” or “chosen.” You act like that here in Texas, someone’s gonna kick your ass. It must be hard to be humble when you’re chosen by God. Perhaps that’s why some Jews have such a hard time with the Golden Rule. If you don’t get the Golden Rule, Karma might get you.
brant
August 3, 2009 @ 5:42 am
THE GRAND MUFTI HAS EVERYTHING TO DO WITH JERUSALEM TODAY !
THE PALESTINIANS HAVE ALWAYS USED TERMS AGAINS ISRAEL LIKE “NAZI”, ETC.
THE ULTIMATE HYPOCRACY,NO? HERE THE WERE, THEIR IMMEIDATE ANCESTORS, CALLING MY PEOPLE NAZIS WHEN THEY WERE THE COLLABOATORS OF THE NAZIS? ONLY IN A WORLD LIKE THIS !!
bataween
August 3, 2009 @ 2:14 pm
Scott
I don’t know where you get your history from – most probably your fertile imagination. You say there are Jews living throughout the Arab world today. Well I’ve got news for you Scott, there are some 4,000 left out of one million in 1948. That means 99 percent have ben ethnically cleansed. And talking of racism, there are no Jews in Libya, no Jews can live in Jordan, no Jew can purchase land on the West Bank because the seller will be put to death, no Jew can even visit Saudi Arabia. So who exactly are the racists?
By the way, 1,000 Jews died in pogroms in Arab countries in the ten years before Israel was established.
scott
August 5, 2009 @ 8:07 pm
How many Christians or Arabs can purchase land in Israel? How many Palestinians are displacing Jews from their land in the West Bank or Israel? What about the opposite, how many Jews are taking Arab water, land, farms and blockading roads in their own lands? You’re the one in fantasy land. You’re the one who thinks himself “special.”
scott
August 5, 2009 @ 8:19 pm
Further, of those 1000 Jews, how many more facilitated the European colonialists? I know Jews were divided, many risked everything throwing their lot in with the people they had lived with for years, but others literally represented a fifth column. Do you deny this?
Let’s talk about Algerian history the roles of the Jews and the French, the history of Libya and Italy and the Jews there. The Balfour declaration was yet another example of Jews lobbying the European colonialists for their own venal interests. Those are also fairly viewed as acts of treason.
Bataween, I don’t have a problem with looking at the flaws and wrongs of my own country, USA and it’s allies. However, you don’t seem to be able to fairly study history. You failed to cover the Nakba, pograms that Jews, many atheistic, what the hell you all worship the Golden Calf of “Israel.” You failed to cover how Israel expanded her territory by 50% from Jordan yet are mystified why Jordanians distrust you. Perhaps the fact that Jews occupy the entire Jordan river valley, staring lustfully at the water, the land owned by Arabs all around them.
The facts are that Israel expands literally on a daily basis. This, in any other context is a cancer. If Israel can’t learn to become benign, she will surely perish, for the United States can’t afford to do her bidding any longer. When we curl up from our economic expansive gluttony, who will help you? Will you avenge those 1000 Jews lost in pogroms, ignoring the 1300 you mercilessly took in Gaza, with nukes this time? Do you have any limits any longer to what ends you’ll stoop to sate your blood, and land lust?
Libertarian
September 8, 2009 @ 10:22 pm
Is Harrison a member of the Liberty staff? A writer by that name is so viciously mis-informed about Israel, that I dropped my subscription.
Scott is an ignorant anti-Semite. Christians and Arabs have the same rights to land in Israel as Jews. Beduin, in fact, have greater rights under an Israeli affirmative-action programme for their benefit.