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.]
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.