The forgotten cleric
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Having read this book with great interest, especially as my appetite had been whetted by reading Rabbi Dalin's book on Pius XII, I decided to comment on it. However on reading the review by Mr Soper I concluded that he had already said, concisely and accurately, most of what I would have wished to say.
Certainly Al-Husseini serves as a link between the old anti-semitism, which had itself gravitated from being religious to biological, and the new denial of the right of Jews to exist as a nation which can defend itself. New anti-zionism is indeed old anti-semitism writ large. He is clearly a very important and much neglected person.
However the book suffers from a lack of direct documentation. Again and again one finds an interesting quotation and checks it with the footnote only to be referred to yet another book. Chapter 4, which is composed of the Mufti's reflections, could well have been cut, as one can only surmise in the absence of many documents what he would have thought. This and other attempts to say what he thought are not history.I would have welcomed a more extensive treatment of the British operation of the Mandate to help those without much knowledge of the period.
Nevertheless I found this a most useful book. The pictures are excellent - including one of the Mufti with the Fuhrer. The documented account of important newspapers and books in some countries saying in the 21st century that Jews slaughter children and use their blood to make matzots for Passover provides an amusing but grim commentary on the modern world.
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Chilling revelations, references should have been more direct
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A proof of the bridge formed between old and new anti-Semitism in the person of Mohammed Amin Al-Husseini. Jew hatred has mutated from racist genocide to blinkered anti Israel prejudice. The authors depict the principal agent of this transformation the Grand Mufti of Palestine, President of the Arab Higher Committee for Palestine, and a chief instrument in the convening of the World Islamic Congress.
Al-Husseini was a close associate of Himmler, Eichmann, and von Ribbetrop, held an audience with Hitler on 28th September 1941, acted as Nazi arabic radio propagandist for 3 years from Berlin, influenced Nazi policy, for example of Jewish escape from the slaughter, and the formation of the Bosnian Muslim Waffen-SS corps responsible for the murder of 12,600 Bosnian Jews. He was reported by Eichmann aide Dieter Wisliceny to have visited Auschwitz, and to have incited systematic extermination. On 21/9/44 he broadcast of '11 M Jews in Europe', he knew this represented a deficit of 6M.
There is much more to shock and surprise in this short but potent volume, especially the Mufti's legacy to Arafat, Saddam Hussein's uncle and his links with Qutb father of the Brotherhood.
One is lead to wonder repeatedly why such plain and profound evils are so little discussed or so little known, and the reasons are not hard to find in the text.
Eye opening as it is, there are two flaws in its testimony. First there is too much speculation about the Mufti's thought life, conversations and attitudes - a more clinical, less ornamented account would have been wiser. Second the references are almost entirely from secondary sources, even quotes from Mein Kampf (hardly the most difficult book to reference) or the most seminal of events to the book the audience with the Fuhrer (though the translated text of the German minutes of the meeting and the Mufti's diary are in the appendices). This considerably weakens the polemical value of the work, nevertheless a vital and valuable resource for students of the Middle East.
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