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.]
Prior to Israel those weren’t issues. You’re the one who’s connecting the Mufti in Jerusalem with Iraq. Now, does the Iraqi gov’t have any reason to suspect foreigners or those with foreign ties.
If Israel never existed the United States activities in Iran and Iraq would justify their suspicion. I know Iraqi Sunis who suffered the same predations under Saddam. I doubt the previous gov’t was much different.
I really suppose you could track all this back to the Brits and their carving up of the Ottoman Empire, treaty of Paris and all of that. That of course, takes us back to Balfour, Israel, Palestine and Lebanon.
Again, let me suggest that your comments are racist. Perhaps you have justification, but you’re still racist suffering some PTSD or no. I don’t really think bitter Cubans should direct our foreign policy toward that Island nor bitter Jews or, really any too terribly embittered by getting cut off from our empire’s embezzlement campaigns.
Again, you aren’t perhaps guilty of that, maybe no Iraqi Jew is suspect, but American and Israeli covert actions certainly justifies their fear of Jews equal to your distrust of Arabs. Nor can you argue that Israel was the unwitting dupe of the US, nor can we argue that. We’ve been in cahoots in illicit affairs and the distrust of the natives is to be expected.
Perhaps the Mufti had his reasons for paling up with the Germans, they weren’t the only country that espoused eugenics, and utterly racist ideology. Woodrow Wilson was a wicked white supremacist, most educated Americans were in that day. Hell, Truman was an anti-Semite but an old Jewish business partner swayed him into supporting the Israeli state.
You speak of the Mufti’s genocidal wishes. What say you about Plan Dalet and Plan Gimmel? How is it that while the Mufti may have had some wistful thoughts of ridding his land of these immigrant Jews from Russia. But, Ben Gurion and Hertzl had far more that wishes and blueprints, they had bombs, troops, a religious furor inspired by the books of Leviticus and Joshua ironically meted out by atheists. They destroyed whole villages, leaving not a stone standing atop another, re-enacting atrocity you claim as holy–atrocities that would make Dostoevsky shudder.
These people have, according to 5000 IDF refusniks, “humiliated, starved, oppressed and dominated and entire people.” For 60 yrs running. There are Jews living throughout the Arab world today. Despite the brazen catastrophe beset by Jews upon Arabs that predated the depredations you bemoan. I don’t support wrong doing, but I sure as hell didn’t wonder why someone would fly airplanes into our skyscrapers. I wondered why they hadn’t done it sooner.
I don’t know what it is to be “special” or “chosen.” You act like that here in Texas, someone’s gonna kick your ass. It must be hard to be humble when you’re chosen by God. Perhaps that’s why some Jews have such a hard time with the Golden Rule. If you don’t get the Golden Rule, Karma might get you.
THE GRAND MUFTI HAS EVERYTHING TO DO WITH JERUSALEM TODAY !
THE PALESTINIANS HAVE ALWAYS USED TERMS AGAINS ISRAEL LIKE “NAZI”, ETC.
THE ULTIMATE HYPOCRACY,NO? HERE THE WERE, THEIR IMMEIDATE ANCESTORS, CALLING MY PEOPLE NAZIS WHEN THEY WERE THE COLLABOATORS OF THE NAZIS? ONLY IN A WORLD LIKE THIS !!
Scott
I don’t know where you get your history from – most probably your fertile imagination. You say there are Jews living throughout the Arab world today. Well I’ve got news for you Scott, there are some 4,000 left out of one million in 1948. That means 99 percent have ben ethnically cleansed. And talking of racism, there are no Jews in Libya, no Jews can live in Jordan, no Jew can purchase land on the West Bank because the seller will be put to death, no Jew can even visit Saudi Arabia. So who exactly are the racists?
By the way, 1,000 Jews died in pogroms in Arab countries in the ten years before Israel was established.
How many Christians or Arabs can purchase land in Israel? How many Palestinians are displacing Jews from their land in the West Bank or Israel? What about the opposite, how many Jews are taking Arab water, land, farms and blockading roads in their own lands? You’re the one in fantasy land. You’re the one who thinks himself “special.”
Further, of those 1000 Jews, how many more facilitated the European colonialists? I know Jews were divided, many risked everything throwing their lot in with the people they had lived with for years, but others literally represented a fifth column. Do you deny this?
Let’s talk about Algerian history the roles of the Jews and the French, the history of Libya and Italy and the Jews there. The Balfour declaration was yet another example of Jews lobbying the European colonialists for their own venal interests. Those are also fairly viewed as acts of treason.
Bataween, I don’t have a problem with looking at the flaws and wrongs of my own country, USA and it’s allies. However, you don’t seem to be able to fairly study history. You failed to cover the Nakba, pograms that Jews, many atheistic, what the hell you all worship the Golden Calf of “Israel.” You failed to cover how Israel expanded her territory by 50% from Jordan yet are mystified why Jordanians distrust you. Perhaps the fact that Jews occupy the entire Jordan river valley, staring lustfully at the water, the land owned by Arabs all around them.
The facts are that Israel expands literally on a daily basis. This, in any other context is a cancer. If Israel can’t learn to become benign, she will surely perish, for the United States can’t afford to do her bidding any longer. When we curl up from our economic expansive gluttony, who will help you? Will you avenge those 1000 Jews lost in pogroms, ignoring the 1300 you mercilessly took in Gaza, with nukes this time? Do you have any limits any longer to what ends you’ll stoop to sate your blood, and land lust?