Netanyahu blames the Grand Mufti for the Holocaust, not Hitler (updated)

Update: October 31, 2015

Netanyahu has retracted his statement about the Grand Mufti, which is the subject of this blog post.  You can read about his retraction on this news article:  http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/31/world/netanyahu-hitler-grand-mufti-holocaust/

As everyone in the world knows, Hitler was the worse person, who ever lived.  Of course, Hitler is to blame for every bad thing that ever happened in his lifetime.

Continue reading my original post.

Haj Amin al Husseini, the Grand Mufti

According to this news article, Benjamin Netanyahu blames the Grand Mufti, the man in the photo above, for the Holocaust, not Hitler.  But Germany insists that Germany was to blame:  http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-34599706

The Grand Mufti inspects Muslim troops sent to fight for Germany (Click to enlarge)

This quote is from the CNN news article:

(CNN)There’s no question Adolf Hitler led Nazi Germany when it implemented the “final solution” in an effort to kill all Jews.

But, in a speech this week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested it wasn’t Hitler’s idea.

Rather, he pointed to Jerusalem’s then-grand mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who met with the Nazi leader in Germany in the early 1940s.

“Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time, he wanted to expel the Jews,” Netanyahu said Tuesday at the 37th Zionist Congress, according to a transcript on his website. “And Haj Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said, ‘If you expel them, they’ll all come here.’

“‘So what should I do with them?’ (Hitler) asked. (Husseini) said, ‘Burn them.'”

There’s no video or audio, not even a transcript, that can definitively prove Netanyahu’s account of the conversation between Hitler and Husseini, who as grand mufti oversaw Muslim sites in Jerusalem. But it quickly spurred criticism in Israel and the Palestinian territories, with some claiming that Netanyahu had effectively absolved Hitler of the Holocaust’s most gruesome, deplorable aspect and instead blamed Husseini — then and now a renowned figure in Palestinian circles — for the systematic killing of more than 6 million Jews using gas chambers and firing squads.

End Quote

Hitler talks to al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti, November 1941

What a revolting development this is!  Hitler was the worst person animal who ever lived.  Everything was his fault.

You can read another news article about this subject at http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/dumping-blame-for-the-holocaust-on-the-grand-mufti-is-an-insult-to-its-six-million-victims-9587755.html

I had to look all this up, to refresh my memory.

This quote is from The Jewish Virtual Library: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/muftihit.html

Begin quote:

In 1941, Haj Amin al-Husseini fled to Germany and met with Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Joachim Von Ribbentrop and other Nazi leaders. He wanted to persuade them to extend the Nazis’ anti-Jewish program to the Arab world.

The Mufti sent Hitler 15 drafts of declarations he wanted Germany and Italy to make concerning the Middle East. One called on the two countries to declare the illegality of the Jewish home in Palestine. Furthermore, “they accord to Palestine and to other Arab countries the right to solve the problem of the Jewish elements in Palestine and other Arab countries, in accordance with the interest of the Arabs and, by the same method, that the question is now being settled in the Axis countries.”

In November 1941, the Mufti met with Hitler, who told him the Jews were his foremost enemy. The Nazi dictator rebuffed the Mufti’s requests for a declaration in support of the Arabs, however, telling him the time was not right. The Mufti offered Hitler his “thanks for the sympathy which he had always shown for the Arab and especially Palestinian cause, and to which he had given clear expression in his public speeches….The Arabs were Germany’s natural friends because they had the same enemies as had Germany, namely….the Jews….” Hitler replied:

Germany stood for uncompromising war against the Jews. That naturally included active opposition to the Jewish national home in Palestine….Germany would furnish positive and practical aid to the Arabs involved in the same struggle….Germany’s objective [is]…solely the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere….In that hour the Mufti would be the most authoritative spokesman for the Arab world. The Mufti thanked Hitler profusely.

In 1945, Yugoslavia sought to indict the Mufti as a war criminal for his role in recruiting 20,000 Muslim volunteers for the SS, who participated in the killing of Jews in Croatia and Hungary. He escaped from French detention in 1946, however, and continued his fight against the Jews from Cairo and later Beirut. He died in 1974.

End quote
From http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/muftihit.html

One of the regular readers of my blog touched on this subject in an essay which he sent to me several years ago:  http://www.scrapbookpages.com/Contributions/Murmelstein/JudenratQuestion.html

Scroll down to read this quote from the essay:

Eichmann still continued to speak about emigration, but in 1940, the remaining opportunities were very few. It is noteworthy that in December 1940, Benjamn Murmelstein had been ordered to work out a plan, and submit an essay, for a possible Jewish Homeland. Driven by his Zionist ideals – although as a rabbi he had to avoid any official affiliation – Benjamin Murmelstein expressed the view that a Jewish Homeland could be settled in Palestine only with the help of “that power which at the end of war will be leading in the Near East Area.” It seems that Eichmann commented: “Murmelstein does not understand that only Germany can win the war and be the leading power in Near East Area.”

The point is “What did Eichmann know at that time?” In November 1937, he had visited the Near East Area for talks with Arab representatives.

At the “FUEHRER HEADQUARTERs,” in December 1940, it was already clear that Germany had to come into the war in Libya and Egypt, as in Greece where Italian armies had beat a withdrawal

The Mufti El Husseini, after having met Mussolini in Rome, preferred to go to Berlin where he had a talk with Hitler.

End quote

“It is a crime in Israel to talk about, promote or commemorate the Nakba.”

There are quote marks around the title of my blog post today because the title is a quote from a news article which you can read in full at http://www.saudigazette.com.sa/index.cfm?method=home.regcon&contentid=20140427203186

Palestinians were forced to leave Palestine in 1948

I am writing about this today because I did not know, before today, that there are laws in Israel against mentioning the suffering of the Palestinians, who were forced to leave when Israel became a country.  Until today, I have deliberately avoided reading anything about the atrocities committed by the Israelis because I consider this subject to be a “hot potato,” or something too controversial to be studied.

Here is the full quote about the Nakba from the news article:

The Nakba is the Arab term symbolizing the Israeli defeat of the Palestinians and the occupation of Palestine’s land during the 1948 war.

The Nakba also refers to Israeli brutality against Christian and Muslim Palestinians inside Palestine. That suffering is denied by many Israelis and Jews, and it is just as immoral as denying the Holocaust.

So intense is the hatred of Palestinians by Israelis that Israel has adopted laws to prohibit Palestinians from showcasing Israel’s atrocities. It is a crime in Israel to talk about, promote or commemorate the Nakba.
Israelis can deny what they do to Palestinians. But Palestinians cannot deny what the Nazis did to Jews. The two issues are unrelated, but are both crimes.

The article, from which I quoted above, was written by Ray Hananina.  The title of the article is

Palestinian professor’s trip to Auschwitz sparks needed debate

This quote is from the first part of the article:

So why do some Arabs deny the Holocaust? Most are angry because they believe the political movement of the Jewish people, Zionism, exploited the Holocaust to browbeat Western audiences into sympathizing with them over the Palestinian cause.

I believe that the above statement is correct. Holocaust denial is against the law in around 19 countries now because the Holocaust is the reason that the Jews need to have their own country to protect them from enduring another Holocaust.

Palestinians were forced to live in tents after they were kicked out of their country in 1948

Who was it that denied Palestine to the Jews? (the British) Who was it that got the Jews into Palestine illegally? (Hitler)

I wrote about Hitler and “the Transfer agreement” in a previous blog post at https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2011/10/05/hitler-and-the-transfer-agreement/

I learned about how Hitler helped the Jews to get to Palestine when I visited the Museum at the house in Wannsee where the Nazis planned “The Final solution.”  The British were only allowing a few 15 year old Jewish boys and girls, who had manual labor skills, into Palestine. Hitler set up schools and farms where the Jewish boys and girls could learn skills that would qualify them for entry into Palestine.  There were photos in the Wannsee museum showing these Jewish children in the schools that had been set up by Hitler.

So you can blame it all on Hitler. If not for Hitler and the Holocaust, there would be no Israel today. The Palestinians would still have their country and there would have been no Nakba.

How long will this problem continue?  It will still be going on, long after I am dead.

Palestinians are forced to live behind this wall

 

The debate about “Israel’s right to exist”

Someone asked me if I believe that “Israel has the right to exist.”  Wow!  What a loaded question!!!  As regular viewers of my blog may have noticed, I have never written anything about Israel.  I don’t know enough about the subject to write about it.

Map of Israel

I did a google search to find the answer to the question: “Does Israel have the right to exist?”

I found what I consider to be an excellent essay on the subject of Israel’s right to exist at http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/06/does-israel-really-have-a-right-to-exist/

Then I did a search on “Does Palestine have a right to exist?” and found this excellent essay entitled “Excuse me, But Israel Has No Right to Exist.”

According to Wikipedia, “As of 27 September 2013, 133 (68.9%) of the 193 member states of the United Nations have recognised the State of Palestine.”

It seems to me that the main argument with regard to Israel’s Right to Exist is that, in case there is another Holocaust, the Jews need a place to go.  Remember the Evian Conference?  You can read about it here, on the website of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Throughout history, the Jews have been expelled from many countries, e.g. England in 1290 and Spain in 1492.  The Jews need some place to go if they are ever expelled again.  The Palestinians will just have to “suck it up.”

Before the “Land of Israel” was given to the Jews, there was a plan to establish a homeland for the Jews in Uganda, but this fell through.

Remember the 1960 movie Exodus, starring Paul Newman.  I couldn’t understand this movie.  Why were the British trying to keep the Jews out of Palestine?  Paul Newman is Jewish.  What’s not to like?

A Holocaust survivor who criticized “Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories”

Yehuda Elkana was an Auschwitz survivor who is in the news today because he died recently “at the age of 78.”  You can read about him on the website of The Vancouver Sun here.

This quote is from The Vancouver Sun, which printed an article that was published in The Daily Telegraph on December 29, 2012, about the death of Yehuda Elkana:

While all societies needed a collective mythology (and Elkana was critical of those in Germany who want to “close the chapter” of the Holocaust), “any philosophy of life nurtured solely or mostly by the Holocaust leads to disastrous consequences.”

In a later interview Elkana spelled out his fears for where this philosophy was leading Israel: “We are heading toward turning 100 million Arabs into a terrorist army against us: the whole Arab world! The United States wants to support rational, moderate Arabs. And rational, moderate Arabs will tolerate Israel’s occupation of Arab land less and less. So what is there to look forward to if we go on this way?”

I believe that Yehuda Elkana hit the nail on the head. We have now reached the point where 100 million Arabs are against Israel and America is in the middle of it because of our support for Israel.

I watched Mike Huckabee’s TV show last night.  He told about his recent trip to Omaha Beach where American troops landed and went on to “liberate France and to eventually save the world.” From there, Huckabee traveled to Poland to visit Auschwitz, where he was photographed at the iconic “Arbeit Macht Frei” gate into the main Auschwitz camp. Huckabee said that “what they (the American soldiers) came to fight was made clear when we went to Auschwitz.”  I wondered why Mike Huckabee would go to Auschwitz in the dead of winter.  Now I have learned that he has scheduled a trip to Israel in February this year.  Huckabee is following in the footsteps of Glenn Beck, who first went on a pilgrimage to Auschwitz before going on to Israel.

I love Mike Huckabee: to me he is the epitome of a good person.  Huckabee is quite religious, since he is an ordained Baptist minister.  As a devout Christian, Huckabee supports Israel, as do most devout Christians.  But is he right to support Israel when even a Holocaust survivor refers to “Israel’s occupation of Arab land.”

This quote is from the article about Yehuda Elkana:

Moving to Israel after the war, Elkana experienced profound unease with the way the Holocaust was being manipulated by governments of right and left to craft an atavistic Jewish national identity. He became convinced that the motives behind Israel’s uncompromising approach to the Palestinians was “a profound existential ‘angst’ fed by a particular interpretation of the lessons of the Holocaust and the readiness to believe that the whole world is against us, and that we are the eternal victim.”

The term “atavistic Jewish national identity” might need some explanation.  What bothers the Palestinians is that most of the Jews in Israel are not the descendants of the Jews who lived in Palestine before they were expelled. Today’s Jews who are “occupying Arab land” are the Ashkenazi Jews, aka Russian Jews, aka Khazars.  The original Jews in Palestine are believed to have been the Sephartic Jews who later settled in Spain; there are not many of them in Israel today.

Yehuda Elkana was 10 years old, and living in Hungary, when he was sent to Auschwitz in 1944, along with the Hungarian Jews.  Ten years old?  Wait a minute.  How did he survive? Surely, he didn’t lie about his age and convince Dr. Mengele that he was over the age of 15.

This quote from the article explains how Yehuda beat the odds and was not gassed at Auschwitz:

In 1944 the family moved to Szeged in Hungary where, later that year, they were rounded up and transported to Auschwitz. They survived by sheer accident. As they were being lined up for the gas chambers, SS guards pulled them out of the line and sent them in a train with other Jews to clean up Allied bomb damage in Austrian cities. They made it to Israel in 1948.

So why was the family of Yehuda Elkana not sent directly to Austria, where 10 year old Yehuda was put to work cleaning up bomb damage?  They were sent first to Auschwitz because of the location of the railroad lines in Europe.  Auschwitz was the largest railroad hub in Europe, analogous to the railroad yard in North Platte, Nebraska, which is the largest railroad hub in the world. The Jews from Hungary were first sent to Auschwitz where they changed trains and then went to Austria.  Yehuda had to make up a story to explain why, as a 10 year old, he was not gassed at Auschwitz.

The UN vote on Palestine

This quote is from an article by Gordon Duff about the UN vote on Palestine:

Today’s vote [Nov. 30, 2012] at the United Nations can be seen as a humiliating defeat for Israel. It could also be seen as a humiliating defeat for the United States though the current regime in Tel Aviv is quite violently anti-American and an outspoken enemy of President Obama.

You can read Gordon Duff’s article in full here.

Israel’s West Bank separation barrier is often referred to as the “apartheid wall.” (Photo: Marc Venezia)

Mr. Netanyahu, tear down this wall.

Anne Frank wrote in her diary: “We can never be just Dutch, or just English, or whatever, we will always be Jews as well.”

The first thing that visitors see on a tour of the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam is a poster with a quote from Anne’s diary, written on April 9, 1944:

“One day this terrible war will be over. The time will come when we will be people again, and not just Jews! We can never be just Dutch, or just English, or whatever, we will always be Jews as well. But then, we’ll want to be.”

The photo below is on the poster at the entrance to the Anne Frank house with the quote that I have written in the title of this post.

Famous photo of Anne Frank at the age of 13

The Anne Frank house at 263 Prinsengracht in Amsterdam

(Click on the photo to see a larger size)

I thought about Anne’s diary entry when I read articles in today’s news about concerns that American Jews have dual loyalty to America and Israel. You can read  one of these articles here.

Anne Frank was only 14 years old when she wrote that Jews can never be “just Dutch, or just English, or whatever” but she captured the essence of the problem that caused Hitler to want to get rid of the Jews.  The title of the Wannsee conference, ordered by Hermann Goering, Hitler’s right-hand man, was “The Final Solution of the Jewish Question.”

The Jewish Question had been discussed for years in Germany; even Karl Marx weighed in on the Question. The “Jewish Question” was should Jews assimilate into the country where they lived, or should they keep themselves separate in their ghettos and Jewish quarters.  The word “anti-Semite” was coined to mean a person who wanted the Jews to assimilate, meaning a person who did not want the Jews to be separate or to have their own country.  Anti-Semite originally meant anti-Zionist.

Hitler was not an anti-Semite; he did not want the Jews to assimilate, but rather, he wanted the Jews to get the hell out of Germany and go some place where they could have their own country.  The problem was that the British did not want the Jews to go to Palestine and since Palestine was a British protectorate, they had the power to limit immigration into Palestine.  That’s why Hitler appointed Adolf Eichmann to sneak Jews into Palestine, beginning around 1934.  The British would only allow young people with manual labor or farming skills, so Hitler set up work shops and farms where young Jews could learn these skills.

Poland didn’t want the Jews either, and the Poles began working on a plan to send them to Madagascar, which was the second choice of Zionist leader Theodor Hertzl as a Jewish homeland. After Germany conquered Poland in 1939, Hitler took over the Madagascar plan, but it came to naught.

In 1933, when Hitler came to power, the German Jews had everything that a country normally has:  They had their own flag, their own anthem, their own language (Yiddish) and their own alphabet (Hebrew), their own jokes, their own music, their own foods, their own history, their own clothing style, their own holidays, their own day of rest (Saturday), even their own clocks which ran backwards because the numbers were in Hebrew. Inside their ghettos, the Jews of Europe followed their own laws.

Of course, there were assimilated Jews in Germany in 1933, including the Otto Frank family. But there were other German Jews whose loyalty was to their fellow Jews, not to Germany.  This was basically what caused the German exportation of the Jews and the Holocaust, after other countries refused to allow them to enter.