ZOA Accuses Yad Vashem of ‘appalling’ censorship of Jerusalem Mufti’s ties to Hitler
Less than two weeks ago, the world’s largest Holocaust Museum, Jerusalem-based Yad Vashem, was reported to have removed a photo of Haj Amin al Husseini — the grand Mufti of Jerusalem — with Hitler.
Israel National News gave the background:
I would like to introduce a notorious Nazi SS general, a leading Muslim cleric and the father of a nation – all in one.
This person is Haj Amin al Husseini.
Husseini was the powerful patriarch of the leading Arab clan in Palestine in the first half of the twentieth century. He used his political power and religious influence for his life’s motif – the murder of Jews.
The article describes the influential role of this high-ranking Muslim cleric in working with Hitler and his henchmen to murder Jews, including Jewish children, during the Holocaust:
Husseini intervened in a deal that would have saved a train load of Jewish children for a bribe. Husseini would not allow one Jewish child to escape the gas chambers.
If anyone feels a need to conceal or undermine any part of history to avoid offending Muslims, he or she needs to ask the question: what kind of Muslim would not find the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem’s role in murdering Jews loathsome to begin with?
The decision by Yad Vashem to remove the photo of the Mufti tying him to Hitler did not go over well with Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) President Morton Klein, who “slammed the museum and its head Dani Dayan for an ‘appalling’ censorship of history.” Klein didn’t mince words, nor should he have done so, since the decision by Yad Vashem has worrying implications, particularly given the contemporary rise in Islamic antisemitism throughout Europe and North America.
It is no secret that the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas grossly undermines the Holocaust: in his PhD dissertation, which he later turned into a book, Abbas claimed that the number of victims in the Holocaust was less than a million. He also once claimed that “the Nazi mass murder of European Jews was the result of their financial activities, not anti-Semitism.” Abbas has also vowed that not one Israeli will live in a future Palestinian state.
The Palestinian jihad (expressed to the world as a “resistance”) against Israel is foundational in the Palestinian National Charter, the PLO Charter, Fatah Charter, and the Charter of Hamas. It is broad-based, as is reflected in the fact that five neighboring Arab states attacked Israel in 1948. The same jihadist impulse is very much alive today, and gaining in influence. A founding father of this movement of hatred is the Mufti, Haj Amin al Husseini.
Yet the Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate, Dani Dayan, argued that “the notorious Mufti’s role in the Holocaust was ‘marginal,’ his meeting with Hitler having ‘a negligible practical effect on Nazi policy,’ and thus the famous image depicting him with Hitler ‘was never displayed’ in the museum.
The Breitbart news article states that the photo was “allegedly removed and never returned during renovations in 2005.” Mort Klein says that he can “vouch and state as a matter of fact that I, Morton Klein, personally saw that picture on Yad Vashem’s wall when I was there.”
Dayan also argued that “the museum would not fall prey ‘to any political agenda,’ while warning that demands to expand focus on the Mufti are tantamount to forcing the museum to ‘partake in a debate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,’ and may even ‘legitimize Holocaust distortion’ by others.”
Is Dayan insinuating that the facts presented in the Israel National News article, The missing photo of Hitler and the Mufti of Jerusalem, about the Grand Mufti are exaggerated or distorted? Is he claiming that Klein did not see the photo he insists he saw? Or could it be possible that the head of Yad Vashem never knew that the photo was once displayed?
These are pertinent questions that need followup, given Dayan’s explanations. Yad Vashem is a fine museum that teaches expertly about the Holocaust. To remove or undermine an important part of history such as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem’s alliance with Hitler in the Holocaust is a cause for concern.
According to the official German record of the meeting between Adolf Hitler and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem on November 28, 1941 at the Reich Chancellory in Berlin, Husseini told Hitler that “the Arabs were Germany’s natural friends because they had the same enemies as had Germany, namely the English, the Jews, and the Communists.” He also thanked Hitler for supporting “the elimination of the Jewish national home.”
Husseini was an Arab nationalist leader who presented himself “as a preeminent defender of Islam and of Muslim rights in Palestine.” He vehemently opposed Jewish immigration to their historic homeland. To this day, the Nazi swastika is often seen flying in Gaza. Husseini is specifically named in the archived records of Heinrich Himmler, Reich Leader of the SS and Chief of the German Police.
Yasser Arafat’s birth name was Rahman Abdel-Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini. He was a blood relative of the Grand Mufti, and learned a great deal from him. His Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was created for the purpose of “liquidating” Israel. To this day, that is what the Palestinian “resistance” and “liberation” are about: annihilating Israel “from the River to the Sea.” The Palestinian quest to delegitimize Israel with the objective of obliterating the Jewish state has become a globally “acceptable” form of antisemitism.
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance includes this in its definition of antisemitism:
Manifestations might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity. However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.
No country’s existence is questioned more than that of Israel. No one even questions the violent jihad conquests in the Middle East, which turned it into Islamic territory. Yet they question the irrefutable archeological evidence and historic claims of Jews in their tiny homeland.
The history of antisemitism very much includes the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. A picture speaks a thousand words, as is proven by the photo of Hitler and Grand Mufti. Appeasement, meanwhile, never works. It does the opposite: it encourages more antagonism. Dani Dayan knows this. He declared in 2017 that the “real war” is the “intimidation, disruption and attempted silencing of pro-Israel voices on U.S. college campuses.” He was addressing the phenomenon of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement targeting the Jewish state. A month before his statement, he faced the hatred of the Palestinian movement against Israel when was “repeatedly heckled and disrupted during a speech at the City College of New York. There, students from the CCNY chapter of the Students for Justice in Palestine and other anti-Israel groups protested and temporarily disrupted the event.”
Supporters of Israel look to Yad Vashem to tell the truth. Mort Klein makes a powerful case for Yad Vashem to return the picture to its museum, certainly not for political purposes, but to do justice to the history of the Holocaust, in which Husseini played such an important role.
EXCLUSIVE: ZOA Accuses Holocaust Museum of ‘Appalling’ Censorship of Palestinian Mufti Ties to Hitler
by Joshua Klein, Breitbart, December 5, 2021 (thanks to Tom):
[CLICK HERE FOR A PHOTO OF HITLER WITH MUFTI HAJ AMIN AL-HUSSEINI]
Following a published letter by the head of “Yad Vashem” — Israel’s premiere Holocaust museum and research center — defending its refusal to display an infamous photograph of leading Palestinian “Mufti” [Islamic legal authority] Haj Amin al-Husseini meeting with Nazi leader Adolf Hitler during the Holocaust, Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) head Morton Klein slammed the museum and its head Dani Dayan for the “appalling” censorship of history.
Klein blasted Dayan on Friday, calling his defense of the infamous image’s absence “abominable” and criticizing his denials of its removal, while urging him to “reinstate” the picture.
After years of pressure and a recent op-ed by a longtime tour guide at the site attacking the museum’s stance, Dayan addressed the issue on Thursday, claiming the notorious Mufti’s role in the Holocaust was “marginal,” his meeting with Hitler having “a negligible practical effect on Nazi policy,” and thus the famous image depicting him with Hitler “was never displayed” in the museum…..
Klein, who has headed the nation’s oldest pro-Israel organization for nearly two decades, called out the museum for attempting to “appease” Palestinians.
“As a child of Holocaust survivors born in the displaced persons camp in Germany who lost most of my family to Hitler, I find it really appalling for Dani Dayan to actually be censoring out a part of Holocaust history at the major Holocaust museum in an attempt to appease the Palestinian Arabs,” Klein said.
He also accused the museum of seeking to placate “a Palestinian Authority that pays Arabs to murder Jews, names school streets and sports teams after Jew killers, promotes hatred and violence in every aspect of their culture, and has refused offers of statehood, clearly showing the issue is not land, but Israel’s destruction.”…
Klein noted the Mufti’s “significant” role during the Holocaust, particularly his plans to construct a concentration camp while claiming that painting his “historic” role in the Holocaust as “marginal” is “turning a blind eye to the truth of history.”
“The Mufti helped train the SS Waffen [Nazi military] battalion to kill Jews, and he and Himmler were planning a concentration camp in Samaria [the West Bank],” he said. “It didn’t happen because Germany lost the war, but he was planning with him.”
“It’s all history,” he added. “It’s not a secret.”
Calling the Mufti “one of the monsters in Jewish history,” Klein reiterated that having “one of the leading figures in the Arab world praising Hitler and urging him to kill Jews” is “not a minimal, trivial part of Holocaust history.”
“One of the leaders of the Arab world was working with and promoting Hitler,” he said. “He was so close to Hitler and his plans to murder Jews that [SS officer Heinrich] Himmler made the Mufti an honorary SS general.”
“That’s not trivial,” he added. “That’s part of history.”
He also noted the Mufti’s involvement in “training Bosnian forces to kill Jews.”…
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