The Truth against Rashida Tlaib's Lies

New congresswoman Rashida Tlaib is very devoted to her Arab heritage and to Arab historical grievances, which are sometimes true or partly true or often false and often totally hyperbolic. It is curious that both Tlaib and her comrade, Ilhan Omar, have made strange accusations against Jews. Omar is notorious for claiming --albeit in 2012-- that "Israel hypnotized the world. May Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel."  And she more recently accused American Jews of being more loyal to Israel than the USA, also  accusing American Jews of forcing congressmen and senators of the USA to declare allegiance to a foreign power, meaning Israel, whereas both Tlaib and Omar champion Muslim interests abroad. Of course they both seem to say provocative things once a week or once every other week. So it's hard to keep up and get it all straight in one's mind.

Now, Tlaib's latest provocation was a rant, a rather short one, in which she turned modern Middle Eastern history upside down. She claimed that the Palestinian Arabs had helped Jews obtain a safe haven:
“ … when I think of the Holocaust, and the tragedy of the Holocaust, and the fact that it was my ancestors—Palestinians—who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity, their existence in many ways, have been wiped out, and some people’s passports … just all of it was in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews, post-the Holocaust, post-the tragedy and the horrific persecution of Jews across the world at that time. And I love the fact that it was my ancestors that provided that, right, in many ways, but they did it in a way that took their human dignity away and it was forced on them.” [here]

One of the things that we can derive from Tlaib's remarks is that the Palestinian Arabs were victims of the Holocaust or Shoah as we call it in Hebrew. Rather than being victims of it, however, Palestinian Arabs were perpetrators. The top leadership of the Palestinian Arabs, Haj Amin al-Husayni [el-Husseini] were pro-Nazi and in fact Husayni spent most of the war years in the Nazi-fascist domain in Europe. Husayni regularly broadcast pro-Nazi genocidal propaganda towards Jews in Arabic over Radio Berlin in Arabic. In one of his broadcasts he called on the Arabs to: Kill Jews wherever you find them. . . . He and his entourage operated out of a headquarters in Berlin that the Germans put at his disposal and worked from there to persuade Muslims in Europe, especially Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, to collaborate with the Nazis. He was successful in helping the Germans recruit an SS division [the Handschar] among the Bosnian Muslims, which is one of the reasons for the bitterness of the Bosnian Serbs against the Bosnian Muslims in the Yugoslav civil war of the 1990s. This SS division helped the Nazis slaughter Serbs, Jews and Gypsies. For that reason, the post-war Yugoslav government put Husayni's name on a UN list of war criminals that they wanted tried by the UN or the Allies. Husayni also worked his influence on the Germans to get them to prevent Jews --including Jewish children-- from leaving the Nazi-fascist domain. Among other things, he and other Arab leaders urged the Germans to extend their persecution of Jews to Jews living in Arab-ruled countries. And so on.

So the Palestinian Arabs were hardly opposed, as a group, to the German Nazi extermination project against the Jews. The problem was not only Husayni. His entourage in Germany was made up of scions of leading Palestinian Arab families. Now before we get into more tedious detail, which you can find at the linked articles and blog posts, we may ask did they feel regret after the war. Tlaib asserts "it was my ancestors—Palestinians—who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity, their existence in many ways, have been wiped out . . . . all of it was in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews, post-the Holocaust, post-the tragedy . . . . I love the fact that it was my ancestors that provided that . . . . in many ways"

The truth be told, after the war the Palestinian Arabs as a group did not feel regret or remorse for the mass murder of the Jews. After all, their top leader Husayni had been applauding it and urging Arabs to murder Jews "wherever you find them." So the Arabs did not provide a safe haven for Jews or work to that end. They tried to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state in the ancient Jewish homeland. With the encouragement of the British government, under the Labour Party at that time, and the encouragement of most of the US State Department and CIA, and parts of the French government of the time. And most notably for the issue of Tlaib's claims, they applauded perpetrators of the mass murder of Jews.
Take the case of one Tscherim Soobzokov, a Circassian Muslim and Soviet citizen before WW2. When the Germans came to the northern Caucasus, Soobzokov joined the Einsatzgruppen, mobile mass murder squads that slaughtered Jews in towns and cities of the occupied USSR, mainly in Belarus and Ukraine of today. He had been recruited into the SS under the rule of Heinrich Himmler. It is curious that during WW One and the Armenian genocide, Circassian mass murder units had worked under the Ottoman Empire to slaughter Armenians. 
After WW2 Soobzokov desperately wanted to escape Soviet punishment for treason/Nazi collaboration/. He made his way to Egypt with Egyptian government aid and was sent by the Egyptians to Jordan, then Transjordan. 
Now, how was this mass murderer received by Palestinian Arabs in Jordan? 

"Soobzokov's arrival in Jordan coincided with the first Arab-Israeli war and . . . . Soobzokov made another practical alliance; the  Palestine refugee organizations could be a promising connection for an ingenious man.  Mahamet Perchich in his statement . . . wrote: 'During my stay in Jordan, it was 1949, I was witness of a conversation between Tscherim Soobzokov and the head of the Palestinian Arabs refugee camp, when Mr Soobzokov told the Arabs about his activities during World War II. As part of his story Mr Tscherim Soobzokov told the Arabs that if all those Jews he liquidated during World War II were now in Palestine, all the Arabs in the camp would not be enough to drink the blood of all those Jews. The same day the head of the camp gave an evening of festivities in honor of Mr Tscherim Soobzokov.' 
"And Danil Gussov . . . . wrote: 'While in Jordan Mr Soobzokov used to show Palestine refugee Arab leaders [sic] his documents with photos certifying his membership in Nazi execution commandos and that he was a killer of Jews in World War II, for which Mr Soobzokov received material help from Arab leaders . . .'" [These testimonies come from the book by Howard Blum, Wanted: The Search for Nazis in America (New York: Quadrangle 1977), see pp 60-61, 67. Quadrangle publishers was owned at the time by the New York Times].
It is clear that Palestinian Arabs knew at the time about the Shoah massacres which were reported  in the European press at the time. Or, in the unlikely possbility that they did not know about the Shoah, when they were informed about it, as Soobzokov recounted his role in it, they did learn about it. And in this case they approved of it and even celebrated it. The story of Soobzokov in Howard Blum's book  makes this clear. So Tlaib is either grossly ignorant of how Palestinian Arabs felt at the time --just a few years after the ovens of Treblinka were shut down-- or she is a gross liar. She may be both. One does not rule out the other.
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For additional info on Haj Amin al-Husayni [usually spelled el-Husseini], see posts on the Emet m'Tsiyon blog for lists of other books and articles.

Rashida Tlaib is trying to rob Jews of their history [here] - Yisrael Medad

Fake History: Rashida Tlaib's Grotesque Distortion. . . [here] - Lahav Harkov

The Myth that Palestinian Arabs Helped Jews in WW2 [here]

CNN Anchor Corrects Tlaib: Palestinian Arab Leaders of the WW2 Period Sided with Hitler [here]

Abbas Lied in Washington when He Claimed that His "palestinian authority" Was Promoting Peace Education for Arab Children

This post consists mainly in quotes from Palestinian Media Watch showing the mendacity and hypocrisy of Mahmoud Abbas and his distaste for peace with Israel:

The PA leadership publicly proclaims that it is promoting peace education. Mahmoud Abbas recently announced during a press conference with US Pres. Donald Trump: "I affirm to you that we are raising our children and our grandchildren on a culture of peace." [White House Press Conference, May 3, 2017]

But Abbas' embracing a "culture of peace" in Washington is meaningless when his schools in Ramallah embrace a culture of terror. Indeed, Palestinian youth themselves make a mockery of Abbas' claim, as children in the schools named for terrorists declare that those terrorists are their role models.

[the Palestinian Authority habitually names schools and other public places and institutions after Arab terrorists & Arab Nazi collaborators. The paragraphs from PMW below list schools named after prominent palestinian Arab Nazi collaborators]

The following is a list of schools the PA has named after Nazi collaborators:

The PA has named one school after Nazi collaborator and war criminal Amin Al-Husseini.

1.The Amin Al-Husseini Elementary School - El-Bireh

Amin Al-Husseiniwas the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem at the time of the British Mandate. During World War II he moved to Berlin, where he was a Nazi collaborator and an associate of Hitler. Al-Husseini was on Yugoslovia's list of wanted war criminals, and was responsible for a Muslim SS division that murdered thousands of Serbs and Croats. When the Nazis offered to free some Jewish children, Al-Husseini fought against their release, and as result, 5000 children were sent to the gas chambers.

  

Amin Al-Husseini meeting with Adolf Hitler (December 1941)

  

The PA has named two schools after Nazi collaborator Hassan Salameh.

2.The Hassan Salameh Junior High School for Girls - Gaza

3. Hassan Salameh Elementary School - Gaza

Hassan Salameh was a leader of Arab gangs in the Lod and Jaffa region in the 1930s and 1940s. He was a loyal follower of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin Al-Husseini, who spent World War II in Berlin supporting the Nazi war effort. In 1941, Salameh was recruited to be a Nazi agent, and in 1944, he was sent on a mission by the Nazis in the British Mandate of Palestine, with the goal of starting an Arab revolt against the British and poisoning Tel Aviv's water sources. The plot was discovered and thwarted by the British. In 1947, Salameh was appointed by the Mufti as Deputy Commander of the "Holy Jihad" Army that fought Israel in the 1948 War of Independence. In June 1948, he was killed in battle.

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This story of Arab Nazi Collaboration should be more widely known but it is not. There are those who want to make the world  forget thi ugly chapter in Arab history.

See more on Arab Nazi collaborators on our blog:

The anniversary of Amin el-Husseini's first visit with Hitler [here]

Top Palestinian Arab Leader Collaborated with the Nazis & in the Holocaust -- PLO/PA Calls Israel "Nazi"

In another one of the outrageous and deceitful statements of the PLO and its embodiment in the "palestinian authority," the PLO/PA delegate to the UN accused Israel of acting like Nazis by calling Arab terrorists terrorists. The terrorists don't like to be called terrorists.

First, let's clear up the issue of "occupation." The PLO/PA delegate, one Riyad Mansour, claims:
". . . all colonizers, all occupiers, including those who suppressed the Warsaw [Ghetto] uprising, labeled those who resisted them as terrorists.” [i24 news TV - 4-27-2016]

As a matter of fact, Germany, Austria and Japan were occupied after World War 2. Germans (including Austro-Germans) or Japanese who resisted that occupation in any violent manner might have been called terrorists. In any case, they would have been suppressed violently and firmly. They would have found little sympathy in the world of that time, outside the Arab lands and Franco Spain, for example. Nazi German war criminals were given refuge in Egypt, Syria, Spain and several South American countries. In Egypt and Syria, Nazi veterans like Johannes van Leer obtained high positions in the state apparatus, where they often were used to work against Jews, such as making propaganda against them. The USA, USSR, UK and France were proud of occupying the former Axis powers. They were not ashamed. Russia still occupies vast expanses of pre-WW2 Japan at first occupied by its forerunner, the USSR.

Another point is that Mansour did not specifically mention the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943. Someone at i24 TV, perhaps someone ignorant of real history, inserted the word         "[Ghetto]" into Mansour's text in brackets. In fact, there was a Polish nationalist uprising in Warsaw in 1944, a year after the Jewish ghetto revolt. Maybe Mansour was referring to that revolt. Be that as it may, this Polish uprising was suppressed in blood, as the Jewish uprising had been the year before. In both cases, by the German SS and Wehrmacht. 

Now, the main problem with Mansour's words is that precisely the top leader of the Palestinian Arabs in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, Haj Amin el-Husseini, was a Nazi collaborator. He spent most of the war years in the Nazi-fascist domain in Europe, with a Nazi-subsidized headquarters [by Himmler] in Berlin. He visited Auschwitz and broadcast over Radio Berlin calls to murder Jews ["Kill them wherever you find them . . . "]. He also helped recruit a SS division made up of Bosnian Muslims which was called the Handschar [after khanjar - a kind of traditional Muslim sword]. This Handschar SS division became notorious for its massacres and atrocities in Bosnia and elsewhere in Yugoslavia, Serbia, Croatia, etc.
During and after WW2, Husseini and his criminal acts were notorious in the civilized world. However, the Big Four Powers, USA, UK, USSR & France protected him from being prosecuted at Nuremberg as a war criminal, which he surely was. Indeed, Yugoslavia put him on the UN's list of war criminals but the secretary-general of the newly formed Arab League, Azzam Pasha, went to Yugoslavia and persuaded the country's new Communist dictator, Tito, to allow Husseini to go without being prosecuted or punished for his crimes in Yugoslavia [recruiting the Handschar].

It needs to also be stated that in the Spring of 1941, Husseini was in Baghdad, Iraq, then under a pro-Nazi regime where he agitated against the local Jews. This culminated in the Farhud massacre which took place in Baghdad on the Shavu`ot holiday of 1941. In Berlin, his headquarters and institute for training pro-Nazi imams included sons of most of the leading Palestinian Arab families. So Husseini's pro-Nazi crimes were not  individual acts but acts for which most of the Palestinian Arab leadership was responsible.
It is regrettable that Israeli ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, assumed that Mansour was referring to the 1943 Jewish Warsaw Ghetto Revolt rather than the 1944 Polish uprising. On the other hand, maybe Mansour was deliberately being vague, trying to allow people to read into his words whatever they wanted. Maybe he was intimating that he recognized the Jewish Ghetto Revolt without explicitly mentioning it. Because in their Arabic-language statements, the PLO/PA does not recognize the Holocaust [nor does the Hamas]. Or only seldom. As we know, Mahmoud Abbas himself, accused the Jews/Zionists of exaggerating the numbers of Jews killed by the Nazis.

Here is the article from i24 where Danny Danon objects to Mansour's hypocritical statements:

Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon calls on the international community to condemn the comparison.

The Palestinian representitive to the United Nations on Wednesday said that Israel labels its opponents as terrorists in similar fashion to the Nazi regime's suppression of Warsaw Ghetto uprising fighters.

✕"[Israel’s] representative on the UN Security Council trying [sic] to show that all the Palestinian people who have legitimate rights to resist occupation in legitimate ways he paints them as terrorists," said Palestinian UN ambassador Riyad Mansour, speaking at a press conference in New York.

"Guess what, all colonizers, all occupiers, including those who suppressed the Warsaw [Ghetto] uprising, labeled those who resisted them as terrorists,” the Times of Israel quotes Mansour.

Israel's UN ambassador Danny Danon rejected the comparison, calling on the international community to condemn the accusation.

"Any equalization between the Nazi’s and Israeli democracy is despicable and is worthy of denunciation from the international community," Danon said.

"The Palestinians continue to lie to the world and to turn to the international community with crazy claims, rather than to fight incitement and terrorism."

GPO
"Israel's Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon speaking at an emergency meeting of the Security Council on March 14, 2016"

✕Mansour has in the past accused Israel of harvesting the organs of dead Palestinians, theTimes of Israelreports, claiming that bodies of Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces have been returned "with missing corneas and other organs." [i23 TV 4-27-2016]

. . . . . . . [the article continues at the link above]

Two Aspects of the Holocaust to Keep in MInd

Israel commemorates the Holocaust in several days on the 28th of the month of Nisan, the month of Spring, which falls this year on the 28th of April, actually starting on the evening before, the evening of the 27th. This year, interestingly, it falls close in time to the Armenian commemoration of their genocide, which is on 24 April every year. Israel Radio [Qol Yisrael] discussed the Armenian genocide today on several programs. Right now Israel TV [channel 1] is running Claude Lanzmann's film, The Last of the Unjust.

First, an observation about the earlier genocide, the Armenian at the hands of Ottoman Empire, ruled during WW One by the Young Turks, a group of revolutionaries, supposed progressives. In fact, the formal name of the Young Turks' party was the Committee for Unity and Progress. Many Arab nationalists took inspiration from the Young Turks. Anwar Sadat's parents even named him after one of the Young Turks' leaders, Enver Pasha [Enver = the Turkish form of the Arabic name Anwar].

Although progressives, the Young Turks were imbued in their education with the values of Islam, especially the need for Islam and Muslims to dominate non-Muslims. To be sure, one Armenian historian, Raymond Kevorkian, located in France, wants to believe that the motive for the genocide was Turkish or Pan-Turanian nationalism, rather than Islam. This is very short-sighted but this is not the time to go into my reasoning.

Much has been written about the Jewish Holocaust. I now want to just stress two aspects.
1) The Holocaust was not restricted to Jews living in Europe. Thousands of Jews were sent to death camps in Europe from the North African countries of Libya and Tunisia. And the Germans set up labor camps for Jews in those countries. Pro-Nazi pogromists in Baghdad slaughtered local Jews in the Spring of 1941 in an orgy of violence and brutality called the Farhud. The numbers of Jews murdered range from 179 to 600 or more. It is a common mistake that the Holocaust was restricted to European Jews, or Jews living in Europe. However, Leon Poliakov, one of the most important Holocaust historians wrote long ago about the North African Jews caught up in the Holocaust crimes. Yet, the mistake is still made.

2) The Arab nationalist movement in its  majority was pro-Nazi. The Arab intellectuals who set up the Arab Socialist Ba`ath Party and the Syrian National Socialist Party [often called the Syrian Social Nationalist Party in order to hide its Nazi inspiration] were much interested in and great admirers of Nazi ideology, policies, power, and organization.

The chief leader of the Palestinian Arabs in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, Haj Amin el-Husseini, instigated the Farhud in Baghdad, according to an Iraqi investigating committee. After two days of Farhud massacres, British troops occupied Baghdad and finally suppressed the pogrom after waiting outside the city for two days. At this point Husseini fled Baghdad and made his way through Iran and Turkey to the Nazi-fascist domain in Europe. Greece, bordering on Turkey, was already occupied. While still in Baghdad, Husseini and a small group of other Arab nationalist leaders drew up a draft political statement which they wanted Hitler to make in favor of Arab nationalist ambitions. In essence, this was really a petition to Hitler to recognize what these Arab leaders saw as their rights and interests, including the right to solve the Jewish Question in the Arab lands as it was being solved in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. Bernard Lewis supplies a thorough discussion of the several versions of their petition to Hitler in his book, Semites and Anti-Semites.
While in Baghdad Husseini may not have understood the full meaning of "the Final Solution." However, after speaking with Hitler in Berlin, or before, he knew that it meant genocide of the Jews. On his visit or visits to Auschwitz he was able to observe just how this Final Solution was being carried out. The Germans provided Husseini, the British-appointed Mufti of Jerusalem [1922], with a headquarters and money to support a large entourage and used him to make pro-Nazi, pro-Arab nationalist, anti-Jewish propaganda over Radio Berlin. [such as: Kill Jews wherever you find them (see Lukasz Hirszowicz, The Third Reich and the Arab East)].

In their discussion at Hitler's headquarters Hitler promised Husseini that "solving"  the Jewish Question in  the Arab lands was part of Nazi Germany's plan. Husseini, the Mufti, was "fully reassured and satisfied by the words which he had heard from the Chief of the German State. . ."  He was pleased with Hitler's promise.

Later in the war, Husseini addressed the Bosnian Muslim SS division [the Handschar, khanjar]. He told them that Nazi ideology, National Socialism, had much in common with Islam (see Joseph Schechtman's biography of Husseini, The Mufti and the Fuehrer).
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24 April 2014 -- Obama continues to evade recognizing the Armenian genocide as genocide. He issued  a statement that danced around a frank statement of the issue [here]. He still wants to protect Erdogan and Turkey and Islam in general.

Gingrich Told the Truth!!! Never a "palestinian people" in History

EXPANDED & REVISED 12-13-2011&1-18-2012

There never was a "palestinian people" in all history, and the present day sub-set of Arabs fashionably called "palestinians" have no special tie to the ancient Philistines, a people who disappeared with the Babylonian Conquest when the bulk of them were deported to Mesopotamia as were many or most of the Jews.

We know that before the 1960s nobody was talking about a "palestinian people" distinct from Arabs but somehow ethereally connected with them. Before the founding of the PLO in 1964, the Palestinian Arabs were typically Pan-Arabists. George Habash was the leader of an outfit called the Arab National Movement before the 1967 Six Day War. After that war, he founded the PFLP, the "popular front for the liberation of palestine." That is, even after founding of the PLO in 1964 many or most Palestinian Arabs saw themselves primarily as Arabs. So even after January 1, 1964, when the PLO was founded at a conclave in Cairo, the "palestinian people" continued to stress their Arab identity. Indeed the PLO charter stresses this pan-Arab identity of the "palestinian people" in its very first article.

Palestine Liberation Organization Covenant, Article One:
Palestine is the homeland of the Palestinian Arab people and an integral part of the great Arab homeland, and the people of Palestine is an integral part of the Arab nation.

Gingrich pointed out that the "palestinian people" was an "invented people" [see video of Gingrich's interview here; transcript here].

I believe that the Jewish people have the right to have a state, and I believe that the commitments that were made at a time [commitments made from 1917 through 1922 by Britain, other major powers & the League of Nations]. . . remember there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire. And I think that we’ve had an invented Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs, and were historically part of the Arab community. [links to video and transcript above]

Gingrich stressed that those later known as "palestinians" were part of the "Arab community" which is how they saw themselves and --I believe-- still see themselves. The PLO Covenant [or Charter] agrees with Gingrich. It is a clearly pan-Arab document, as we see above.

Further, many knowledgeable observers agree with Gingrich but I would like to address the issue by describing the political maneuvers of Haj Amin el-Husseini [also spelled al-Husayni]. Husseini was the chief Palestinian Arab leader from 1921 up to about 1950. In this capacity he was also a Nazi collaborator, as were other Arab nationalists. But Husseini was the most prominent Arab Nazi collaborator and a participant in the Holocaust of the Jews. A number of important books and articles have been published in recent years describing and detailing Arab-Nazi relations. But first a little on Husseini's career.

The British mandatory authorities in the Jewish National Home, to which Western powers gave the territorial name "Palestine," not used during rule by the Ottoman Empire, appointed Husseini to be Mufti [chief Muslim religious judge] of Jerusalem in 1921, also creating a new post for him near the end of that year at the newly created Supreme Muslim Council. He became notorious for promoting atrocities against Jews in the Land of Israel during the mandatory period [1920-1948]. He too was an Arab nationalist, a pan-Arabist, rather than a "palestinian nationalist" as he is so often mistakenly described today.

On this issue, I found some interesting documentation in a new book on Nazi-Arab collaboration. The authors write that while the Germans were winning the war --up to early 1943, the Battles of el-Alamein [1942] & Stalingrad [1943] -- Husseini and his comrade and rival, Rashid Ali al-Gailani [former prime minister of Iraq], vied for German recognition of one them as leader and absolute chief of "the Great Arab Empire" which they hoped that the Germans would help establish. They were both in Berlin for the bulk of the war. The authors write:

In June 1942, Al-Husseini brought up a new element. During a discussion with Ettel [a Nazi official], he claimed to be the president of a secret organization baptized "Arab Nation". This league had been founded in his time by Hussein, the sherif ofMecca [great-grandfather of Abdullah, present king of Jordan] and leader of the revolt against the Turks during the First World War. In their demand for independence, he explained, the Arabs attributed [to him, Husseini] the leadership role in this organization, which counted members and trusted persons in all of the Arab countries. Al-Gailani was also part of it and had only been prime minister of Iraq because of this recognition in fact of his [Husseini's] position. Al-Husseini stated to Ettel that he intended to have his role as leader recognized by the Germans. Thus he would fulfill his project of making himself uncontested leader of the Arab world.
[Martin Cuppers & Klaus-Michael Mallmann, Croissant fertile et croix gammee (Paris: Verdier 2009; trans. from German), p 131. The book has also been translated into English]

Now this "secret" organization may have been fictitious, a device for Husseini to advance his own ambitions. But those ambitions were not fictitious. The ambitions were seeing himself as the pan-Arab ruler. In this regard also see the record of his meeting with Hitler on November 28, 1941. Hitler actually fed or played up to Husseini's aspirations for pan-Arab leadership for himself. Hitler promised that when the Germans had conquered the Middle East, Husseini would be

. . . the most authoritative spokesman for the Arab world. [here]

So the chief leader of the Palestinian Arabs was in fact motivated by pan-Arab ambitions, not by narrow "palestinian" aspirations. All this supports Gingrich's position.
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12-15-2011 Prof. Richard Landes, a historian at Boston University, defends Newt Gingrich's assertion that the "palestinians" are an "invented people" [ici in French]
12-15-2011 "palestinian Media Watch" [PMW] presents facts supporting Gingrich's position.
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Daniel Pipes has a useful account of the development of the "palestinian people" notion [here], also go to the two links in his article. I have some reservations about Pipes' account. He ascribes the origin of the "pal ppl" notion to the year 1920. I say on the contrary that the Arab leadership in Israel recognized the existence of a country called "palestine" in that year, mainly because the Greater Syria that they aspired to be part of was rendered impossible by the French overthrow of Faisal the Hashemite's Syrian kingdom in July 1920 and the French-British division of what the Arabs called bilad ash-Sham --a traditional Arab geographical concept-- called Greater Syria in English. Neither Syria nor palestine are indigenous Middle Eastern geographical terms but were used by ancient Greek writers. Syria included the Syria, Jordan, Israel and Lebanon of today. "Palestinian" as an adjective for southwestern Syria was used by Herodotos, although Judea was the usual Greek and Latin name for the country, after Alexander's conquests and probably before then. But the Arab leadership/elite in Israel did not recognize or consider itself as a "palestinian people" in 1920. Rather they called "palestine" an Arab country. Consider the slogan "Palestine for the Arabs" which the Arab leadership issued on a decorative stamp in the 1930s [see Kimmerling & Migdal, The Palestinians, in Hebrew edition if not in English ed.].
1-18-2012 Robert R Reilly wrote an excellent piece for Crisis magazine in which he not only confirms Gingrich's assertion but expands his scope to include the Muslim religious motives which keep Arabs from recognizing and making peace with Israel [here]. See our post here for Quranic background to Reilly's article. While several verses in the Quran agree with the Biblical account that the Land of Israel [called Holy Land in the Quran] was divinely assigned to the Jews, these verses and other humane and universalistic verses are abrogated either by other verses in the Quran or by later Muslim teachings, hadiths, the sunna, etc.

Seventy Years Since the Arab Mufti Haj Amin el-Husseini, Met Hitler

Expanded12-5-2011 Link added at bottom12-17-2013

The Arab Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem met Hitler the other day 70 years ago, on 28 November 1941. The seventieth anniversary of a friendly, palsy meeting between the greatest mass murderer in history, Adolf Hitler [yes, Stalin gave him stiff competition] and a would-be mass murderer who took part in Hitler's genocidal crimes. We know what went on at the meeting since two written records were made, one by Hitler's secretary, one Schmidt, the other by the Mufti himself.

Here we quote from the German record:
The Fuhrer then made the following statement to the Mufti, enjoining him to lock it in the innermost depths of his heart:
1. He (the Fuhrer) would carry on the battle to the total destruction of the Judeo-Communist empire in Europe.
2. . . . the German armies would in the course of this struggle reach the southern exit from Caucasus.
3. . . . Germany's objective would then be solely the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere under the protection of British power. In that hour the Mufti would be the most authoritative spokesman for the Arab world. It would then be his task to set off the Arab operations which he had secretly prepared. . .
. . .
The Grand Mufti replied that it was his view that everything would come to pass just as the Fuhrer had indicated. He was fully reassured and satisfied by the words which he had heard from the Chief of the German State. . . .
The Grand Mufti thanked him. . . .
[translated text in Walter Laqueur and Barry Rubin, editors, The Israel-Arab Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict (seventh revised & updated edition; London & New York: Penguin Books 2008), pp 54-55. The first edition of this book came out in 1969 with Laqueur alone as editor. The record of the Husseini-Hitler discussion has been in the book from 1969 through all the revisions and updatings.
The Mufti's own record of the discussion which he recorded in his diary was published in Joseph B Schechtman, The Mufti and the Fuehrer (New York: Yoseloff 1965), pp 306-308.]

A short film of the Mufti, Haj Amin el-Husseini [also spelled al-Husayni] arriving at Hitler's offices for the meeting is at this link with narration in French. The film is obviously of great documentary importance. It was no doubt made by the Germans in Berlin and then sent to the Vichy government of France who put in a French narration and most likely supplied it to movie theaters as a newsreel. TV was not in common use. Note that Husseini gives the Nazi salute [upraised arm] when he meets Hitler. Also see this video .
This site has a lot of documentation, photos and texts, about the Mufti.
Photos of the Mufti and his associates, including a German veteran fighting with the Arab forces against Israel in 1948 as a mercenary, are here.

Some background for Husseini should be known. He belonged to the Husseini clan, one of the most influential among the Arab-Muslims in Jerusalem. The Ottoman Empire gave members of the family high posts in government, first in the Jerusalem area, then in the government of the empire as a whole, one serving as a governor in Anatolia and elsewhere. Haj Amin el-Husseini served as an officer in the Ottoman army in World War I, but I don't know whether he was involved in the Armenian genocide perpetrated by that army. However, it was the British who gave him political predominance over the Arabs in the newly created Palestine, the territorial name for the Jewish National Home juridically erected at the San Remo Conference in April 1920 and endorsed by the League of Nations in 1922. In March 1921, the British made him mufti --chief Muslim judge-- of the Jerusalem area, and in December of that same year he was made president of the newly created Supreme Muslim Council which controlled the public money of the Muslim community in the newly created Palestine. This position gave him even more power than the first. Members of the Husseini family have been prominent in the PLO, such as Faisal Husseini, his great-nephew, and Leila Shahid, now the PLO spokeswoman and chief liar representing the PLO/Palestinian Authority in France, a grand-daughter of the Mufti.

The following books and articles are useful for info, documentation and pix on the Mufti and his collaboration with the Nazis:

M S Arnoni, Rights and Wrongs in the Arab-Israeli Conflict (1968). This book has a photo of Husseini with Himmler on which Himmler has written a dedication ["Seiner Eminenz dem Grossmufti -- zur Erinnerung"] plus a pix of Husseini & Nasser.
Zvi El-Peleg, HaMufti haGadol (Tel Aviv: MOD publishing House 1989). This has the cover page of the Nazi weekly, Wiener Illustrierte which shows the Mufti saluting Muslim units of the German army [probably the Bosnian Muslim SS division] plus a few other significant pix. El-Peleg's book came out in English too but I don't know if that edition has the pix.
Martin Gilbert, Exile and Return [Philadelphia: Lippincott 1978]. This book has a pix of the Mufti shaking hands with a Nazi official wearing a swastika armband, when he arrived in Berlin.
Jennie Lebel, Haj Amin uBerlin (Tel Aviv: 1996; in Heb.) This book in Hebrew has relevant pix, inc. documents in German. Much detail here about the Mufti's collaboration with the SS in Bosnia. Jennie Lebel is/was a collateral descendant of Theodore Herzl. She used much documentation in the Serbo-Croatian language which other researchers were not capable of using.
Joseph B Schechtman, The Mufti and the Fuehrer (New York: Yoseloff 1965).

The best on line source for photos on Arab-Nazi collaboration is the site Bibliotheque Proche-Orientale [ http://aval31.free.fr/ ] in both French & English [mostly French]. It also has a link to the short video [from a film] mentioned and linked to above of the Mufti coming to his meeting with Hitler in Berlin, with soundtrack in French. This site has a lot of material on the subject of Arab-Nazi collaboration, mostly French, plus pix.

Another online source of photos of the Mufti is here: http://mtolivesviews.byethost7.com/muftiphotos.html 
These photos come from John Roy Carlson, Cairo to Damascus (New York: Knopf 1951)

Several useful books on Arab-Nazi collaboration and Nazi influence on Arab nationalism, including the Palestinian Arab movement, are here in French & English:
Matthias Kuntzel's book with links to Amazon in English & French:
http://www.amazon.com/Jihad-Jew-Hatred-Islamism-Nazism-Roots/dp/0914386360

http://www.amazon.fr/Djihad-haine-Juifs-terrorisme-international/dp/2356310401/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1322036262&sr=8-1
Matthias Küntzel: Djihad et haine des Juifs : Le lien troublant entre islamisme et nazisme à la racine du terrorisme international

http://philosemitismeblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/livre-croissant-fertile-et-croix-gammee.html
Martin Cüppers, Klaus-Michael Mallmann
Croissant fertile et croix gammée : Le Troisième Reich, les Arabes et la Palestine

http://www.amazon.fr/Nazi-Propaganda-Arab-World-Jeffrey/dp/0300168055/ref=sr_1_cc_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322036590&sr=1-3-catcorr
Jeffrey Herf
Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World

Klaus Gensicke, The Mufti of Jerusalem and the Nazis, The Berlin Years (London: Valentine Mitchell 2011)
http://www.amazon.com/Mufti-Jerusalem-Nazis-Berlin-Years/dp/0853038449/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323097866&sr=1-1

This is a very large subject that is often suppressed from school history books on World War II and the Holocaust, and from books and articles on Arab nationalism and the Middle East in WW2.
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LINK ADDED 1-16-2013 Jonathan Tobin on why the story of the Mufti Husseini is still important today [here]