Friday, September 5, 2008
This is just a quick link to follow -- an "aside." These are links to interesting things that, for one reason or another, I didn't place into a full posting. Click the link to visit the full article. Go to the blog index for a regular listing of posts.
Jonathan Schanzer: Hitler's 'Grossmufti von Jerusalem' - 'For the better part of a century, violence against Jews has arguably been the top export of the Palestinian people. True, they have olives and citrus, but ask any man on the street what the Palestinians are best known for, and you are likely to hear "suicide bombings" or "rockets." While most Palestinians would claim that the violence is simply a means to "liberate" their homeland, another plausible explanation may lie in the fact that early Palestinian nationalism was influenced heavily by Nazism. While other nations have disavowed fascism (Germany and Italy, for example) and have since developed into thriving democracies, the Palestinians have never reconciled with their past. The most influential leader of the Palestinians during the British mandate, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, was a Nazi collaborator. Husseini's relationship with the Nazis is incontrovertible. He worked closely with Hitler's top men in an attempt to achieve the "final solution." Yet, in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Husseini is considered a founding father of Palestinian nationalism...'