The dispute between Husseini-supporters and their opposition was inflamed by the return of Jamal al Husseini to the Middle East and his resumption of political activity. Morris, for instance, notes that al-Husseini saw the Holocaust as German revenge for a putative Jewish sabotaging of their war effort in World War I,[315] and has written that "Haj Amin al-Husseini was an antisemite. ", Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East, "Parallels between Nazi and Islamist Anti-Semitism", "Frenchman, Jews, or Arabs? The Nation Associates under Freda Kirchwey prepared a nine-page pamphlet with annexes for the United Nations entitled The Arab Higher Committee, Its Origins, Personnel and Purposes. Thirteen members of the clan had been Mayors of Jerusalem between 1864 and 1920. [299] His granddaughter married Ali Hassan Salameh, the founder of PLO's Black September, who was later killed by Mossad for his involvement in the Munich massacre. News that the Zurich Congress, in creating the Jewish Agency on 11 August., had brought unity among Zionists and the world Jewish community, a measure that would greatly increase Jewish investment in British Palestine,[84] set off alarm bells. These pieces of information never received any confirmation from the British (or French) intelligence service. Heinrich Himmler, Franz von Papen, Joseph Goebbels), the Mufti's diary account of meeting Hitler, several letters to German officials in several countries where he requested that Jews never be permitted to emigrate from Europe to a Jewish Home in Palestine, and many photographs of the Mufti, Rashid Ali, and other Arab politicians in the company of Nazis and their Italian and Japanese allies. [15] Husseini helped organize Arab students, POWs and North African emigres in Germany into the "Arabisches Freiheitkorps", an Arab Legion in the German Army that hunted down Allied parachutists in the Balkans and fought on the Russian front. 1 (2009), 194-5. In November 1916 he obtained a three-month disability leave from the army and returned to Jerusalem. [282] Pre-conference by the Arab League obtained an agreement to have Ahmad Hilmi Pasha preside over the government, while giving al-Husseini a nominal role, devoid of responsibilities. [293], The king was assassinated on 20 July 1951, on the eve of projected secret talks with Israel, by a militant, Mustafa Ashu, of the jihad al-muqaddas, while entering the Haram ash-Sharif to pray. It happened because Nazi antisemitic, anti-Zionist propaganda continued to dominate the political culture of the Arab world after the defeat of Germany, thus preventing any viable challenge to the antisemitic policies of the Mufti and the Muslim Brotherhood. 1313, Cairo (September 23, 1943), Axis Broadcasts in Arabic … September 2 to 8, 1943, NACP RG 84, Egypt: Cairo Embassy General Records, 1936-55, 820.00 – 822.00, entry 2410, box 93, as cited by Herf, Nazi Propaganda, 181.

At the time, the Sachsenhausen camp housed large numbers of Jews, but was only transformed into a death camp in the following year. [99], Many observers saw al-Husseini as the mastermind behind the riots, accusing him of dispatching secret emissaries to inflame regional passions [citation]. Thus, they “created an atmosphere in which war seemed the only logical and natural process,” writes Thomas Mayer. [267], At around this time, the British head of Palestine's Criminal Investigation Division told an American military attaché that the Mufti might be the only person who could unite the Palestinian Arabs and 'cool off the Zionists'. With Chancellor abroad, and the Zionist Commission itself, with its leader Colonel Frederick Kisch, in Zurich for the 16th Zionist Congress (attended also by Ze'ev Jabotinsky), the SMC resumed works, confidentially authorised, on the Haram only to be met with outcries from the Jewish press. Abdullah's grandson, Hussein, who had been present at the murder, eventually lifted the ban in 1967, receiving al-Husseini as an honoured guest in his Jerusalem royal residence after uprooting the PLO from Jordan. [282], Although al-Husseini had been removed from the Supreme Muslim Council and other administrative roles by the British government in 1937, they did not remove him from the post of mufti of Jerusalem. This assembly was successful in its aim, but was eventually ended due to a lack of participation. [195], Although some historians have questioned al-Husseini's knowledge of the Holocaust while it was in progress, Wolfgang G. Schwanitz notes that in his memoirs Husseini recalled that Heinrich Himmler, in the summer of 1943, while confiding some German war secrets, inveighed against Jewish "war guilt", and revealed the ongoing extermination (in Arabic, abadna) of the Jews.[196]. [175], Al-Husseini arrived in Rome on 10 October 1941. He was first president of the Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind and was also regarded as Grand Mufti … "[124] He remained in Lebanon for two years, under French surveillance in the Christian village of Zouk,[125] but, in October 1939, his deteriorating relationship with the French and Syrian authorities led him to withdraw to the Kingdom of Iraq. In this way he imitated the Nazis who were destroying them, in portraying the Jews as morally inferior. 28 The Mufti, 202, and Arab Unity of Action, 334.

Haj Amin al Husseini was the chairman of the AHE, even though he was absent, and Jamal acted as Vice-Chairman.

Informed by residents in the neighbouring Mughrabi quarter, the waqf authority complained to Harry Luke, acting Chief Secretary to the Government of Palestine, that this virtually changed the lane into a synagogue, and violated the status quo, as had the collapsible seats in 1926. Nazi preparations for the destruction of the Palestinian Jews are described by Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cüppers, in: Nazi Palestine: The Plan for the Extermination of the Jews in Palestine (Washington, D.C.: Enigma Books, 2010). If Muslims could cite an Ottoman regulation of 1912 specifically forbidding objects like seating to be introduced, the Jews could cite testimonies to the fact that before 1914 certain exceptions had been made to improve their access and use of the Wall. Therefore, we must ask how he resumed his position as the leader of the Palestinian Arabs despite his commitment to the Nazi cause and to the side that had suffered such a bitter defeat. [267], On 29 May, after an influential Moroccan had organized his escape, and the French police had suspended their surveillance, al-Husseini left France on a TWA flight for Cairo using travel papers supplied by a Syrian politician who was close to the Muslim Brotherhood. Al-Husseini certainly played an energetic role in Muslim demonstrations from 1928 onwards, but could not be held responsible for the August riots, even if he had 'a share in the responsibility for the disturbances'. Husseini reports that Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler ... told him in summer 1943 that the Germans had "already exterminated more than three million" Jews: "I was astonished by this figure, as I had known nothing about the matter until then." Later Arab sources show this quite clearly: no one claimed responsibility for any planning (, harvnb error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFMorris2011 (, harvnb error: no target: CITEREFBenvenisti1996 (, The longest accounts for the riots are in. [57], The British initially balanced appointments to the Supreme Muslim Council between the Husseinis and their supporters (known as the majlisiya, or council supporters) and the Nashashibis and their allied clans (known as the mu'aridun, the opposition). After asking the new German Consul-General, Hans Döhle on 21 July 1937 for support, the Abwehr briefly made an exception to its policy and gave some limited aid. [321][322], In October 2015, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that Hitler at the time was not thinking of exterminating the Jews, but only of expelling them, and that it was al-Husseini who inspired Hitler to embark on a programme of genocide to prevent them from coming to Palestine. ETZEL, which had started such actions, apparently had the Hagana in tow, and if attacks on Jews continued, the Hagana might switch from a policy of protecting lives to aggressive defense. [151] There he was welcomed as the leading Arab nationalist of his day, and heir to King Faisal, modern Iraq's founder.