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How the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Sought the Jews’ Destruction — and Paved the Path to War Today
The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, meets with Adolf Hitler in 1941. Photo: German Federal Archives via Wikimedia Commons.
In 1946, the future son-in-law of Harry Truman, who eventually decided to recognize Israel, met with the man whose life ambition was to destroy the Jewish State. Until recently, the resulting New York Times profile was seemingly lost to posterity.
But it tells us a great deal about how notorious antisemites were viewed in the wake of the Holocaust.
Clifton Daniel was a veteran journalist who would go on to lead the New York Times editorial section and, in 1956, marry Margaret Truman, the sole child of Harry Truman. Among his many accomplishments, President Truman created the architecture that eventually helped win the Cold War, oversaw the Marshall Plan, and recognized the newly created nation of Israel. To be sure, the Zionists fighting on the ground, many of them Holocaust survivors, secured Israel’s existence. Yet American support was crucial.
But in the summer of 1946, all of this was in the not-too-distant future. Daniel was then a 33-year-old reporter who had made his way to Cairo. He had secured a meeting with Amin al-Husseini, the founding father of Palestinian nationalism and an infamous Nazi collaborator.
In 1921, Husseini was appointed by ruling British authorities to the position of Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, making him the preeminent Muslim cleric in the land. Husseini had little to recommend him for the post. He was a mere 26 years of age and had little in the way of religious training. Yet he came from one of Jerusalem’s leading Arab families. And he had served the British as a spy and recruiter during the Great War and its aftermath.
The British had defeated the Ottomans and sought to administer the area as a Mandate. In 1917, the government of David Lloyd George declared its support for the creation of a “national home” for the Jewish people in their ancestral land. The 1920 San Remo Conference and 1924 Anglo-American convention further enshrined Jewish territorial claims into international law. But Husseini was unalterably opposed.
In 1920, Husseini helped incite an anti-Jewish pogrom in Jerusalem, with the hopes of influencing British authorities to drop their support for the Zionist project. To the cries of “the Jews are our dogs” and “kill the Jews; there is no punishment for killing Jews,” Husseini and other Arab rioters attacked Jerusalem’s Jewish citizens, murdering five Jews and injuring hundreds more.
At the time, Husseini proclaimed that “Faisal is our King,” hoping that the area would become part of Faisal’s short-lived Syrian kingdom. Put simply: his goal wasn’t so much the creation of a Palestinian Arab state as we would understand it today. Rather, he was an Islamic supremacist who opposed living in social and political equality with Jews. In 1920, that meant working to ensure that the area would be ruled by Faisal of the Hashemite family. Later, he would seek power on his own terms — indeed, his henchmen would eventually murder Faisal’s own brother, King Abdullah of Jordan, in 1951. And the British would unwittingly help him along the way.
In 1921, Herbert Samuel, the governor of the Mandate, appointed Husseini to be Grand Mufti over other, more qualified candidates. Historians have long speculated as to why Samuel would offer the position to a man who opposed one of its foundational tenets. Perhaps Samuel was rewarding Husseini for his wartime intrigues. Or perhaps he hoped that he could co-opt a “hardliner” opposed to Jewish self-determination and convert him, via patronage and support, to the great power’s objectives. If so, Samuel was the first, but hardly the last, to indulge in such self-delusions.
Husseini actively worked against ruling Mandate authorities, fomenting other, bloodier, pogroms in 1929. In the 1930s, he solicited, and received, support from the burgeoning fascist movements in Italy and Germany.
Husseini, gifted with fascist arms and money, played a leading role in the 1936 Arab revolt, in which terrorists attacked and murdered British authorities, Jews, and Arab “collaborators.” The revolt was eventually quashed, but not before the British government, worried about the gathering storm clouds of war in Europe, pursued appeasement.
In 1938, the Woodhead Commission recommended the first outline of what would later become known as the “two state solution” — one Arab state, and another Jewish one, carved out of the original Mandate. Arab leaders, pressured by a now-exiled Husseini, rejected it. The British, desperate to appease the Arabs, responded with more appeasement, issuing the 1939 White Paper, which closed the Mandate’s doors to Jews seeking to flee Hitler’s Europe.
Husseini, unbowed and unmoved, made his way to Nazi Germany, where he toured death camps, broadcast Arab propaganda, recruited a Waffen SS regiment, and in a November 1941 meeting with the Fuhrer, sought support for the elimination of Jewry in the Middle East that he hoped to one day rule.
By 1946, Husseini was a wanted Nazi war criminal, who had made his way from France, where he lived comfortably in a villa with a chef and bodyguards, to Egypt. The Third Reich was dead, but Husseini’s goals for a Judenrein Middle East lived.
Egypt’s King Farouk, Daniel noted, received Husseini with “cordiality, and offered him every comfort in exile.” And “it soon became apparent that the Mufti was a popular hero, and that there was no way short of actual imprisonment to keep him from continuing the work that has been his passion for a lifetime-keeping Zionism out of Palestine.”
To his supporters, Husseini’s virulent antisemitism was a recommendation. When Husseini left France, rumors swirled that he would return to Mandate Palestine where, Daniel reports “the Arabs of Palestine went delirious. Some of them did not sleep for three nights. They posted pictures of him all over Palestine, festooning them with garlands. They strung lights around the minarets, and with alarming abandon-built gasoline fires on the roofs of mosques and fired off guns which they threaten someday to turn again against the Jews and British.”
“Tributes of such fervency are not paid to a man unless he is something special,” Daniel observed. Husseini, the New York Times correspondent noted, displayed great “charm” and “excessive courtesy.” He was a “renowned spellbinder” who spoke “softly, with a well-modulated voice.” Daniel noted a young Arab supporter meeting the Mufti for the first time. “What a sweet guy!” the man exclaimed. “Oh, he’s beautiful! His eyes are something to hypnotize you. So polite, so nice. He’s lovely!”
But Husseini wasn’t without his detractors and rivals, many of whom he sought — often successfully — to have murdered during his long career.
Daniel noted that Husseini sparked “internecine” war among Arabs living in the Mandate and that, in 1946, some Arab leaders were lukewarm about the prospect of his potential return. Some of them, he remarked, referred to him as “just another Arab leader.” And “others feel privately that he has besmirched the Arab cause by his association with Germans and Italians.” Yet, “the controlling factor, however, is that this association with the Axis does not seem to have damaged him with the [Arab] masses.”
Husseini hoped to use this support, his ambitions undiminished.
The Mufti’s critics, Daniel noted, claimed “that he has not had a new idea for a quarter of a century.” But “another interpretation would be that he is single-minded.” And while future academics, journalists, and apologists would attempt to minimize or obfuscate Husseini’s ideology, Daniel didn’t do so. The Mufti’s life “has been dominated by a single idea to recreate the unity of the Arab nation, and particularly to prevent that one corner of the Arab world which is Palestine from being occupied by people whom he regards as intruders.” Those “intruders” were the Jewish people, whose suffering and death he actively sought. And his “devotion to this cause,” Daniel wrote, “is unflagging.”
The Mufti may have “played the role of the savior of Palestine” as Daniel put it, but his legacy, in all its blood drenched failure, is readily apparent today.
The writer is a Senior Research Analyst for CAMERA, the 65,000-member, Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis
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What Hailey Bieber smoothies and instant matzo ball soup reveal about American Jewish taste
It has become exceedingly difficult to get a bowl of kosher matzo ball soup in my L.A. neighborhood. I’m reminded of this every few months, when a cold or a craving reminds me what we lost when Pico Kosher Deli, established in 1968 about a mile from my apartment, closed for good early in the pandemic. It’s not just the soup, of course. It’s the whole kosher deli experience — bulging pastrami sandwiches, a waitress with a notepad, frilly toothpicks.
The traditional kosher deli is dying, if not dead, and not just in L.A. Kosher Ashkenazi fare is officially passé, a cuisine category today’s balabustas — at least my millennial Modern Orthodox cohort — have abandoned. At the kosher markets, Manischewitz products are relegated to a dusty corner, the “kosher aisle” of the kosher grocer. And at surviving delis like Katz’s and Canter’s, kosher is not a religious certification. It is, simply, a nostalgia cue immediately preceding the word “style.”
Fortunately, a wave of new, smartly packaged foodstuffs capitalizing on that nostalgia has arrived to restore my Ashkenazi birthright, or at least my former sodium levels. In the years since my neighborhood deli closed, direct-to-consumer brands have launched to hawk kosher potato latke crisps, kosher matzo chips and kosher jarred charoset (lovingly named Schmutz). The newcomer that I sprung for was a kosher instant matzo ball soup called Nooish. A box of four stout, colorful soup cups arrived about a week after I ordered them online.
To find out why these shelf-stable products have taken off while delis languish, I called Nate Rosen, whose official title — creator of the consumer brands newsletter Express Checkout — obscures the coolness of his job, which largely consists of reviewing new snacks on TikTok. According to Rosen, the kosher renaissance was part of a broader surge of food startups during the pandemic, when free time and disposable income were suddenly in abundance. It was inevitable someone would find the Jewish angle on the trend.
“There’s a market for it,” Rosen said. “There’s dedicated spots for it [on shelves]. And I think especially now, people are proud to be Jewish and proud to show that off a little bit.”
Nooish’s instant soup, ready in just a couple minutes, doesn’t come with booth seating. But taste-wise, comfort-wise and deli-wise, it’s a worthy adaptation of the experience. The kneidlach — three to a cup, each a bit larger than a Ping-Pong ball and floating in a salty brown broth, hold their form but obey your spoon. (There’s no chicken, and the soup is certified pareve.) At four-for-$36, the instant soup is probably too pricey for your kid’s lunchbox, and not substantial enough for an adult meal. But in a pinch — say, a cold or a craving — it can be transporting.
If the kosher deli is out, what’s in? The answer awaited me at Hatch Kitchen, a new kosher meat restaurant, where earlier this week I watched a barista prepare a fancy smoothie. Elaborate, astonishingly expensive and often named after celebrities, fancy smoothies are an L.A. institution, the lifeblood of the influencer class. The most notorious of these drinks, the upscale grocery chain Erewhon’s Hailey Bieber smoothie, contains strawberries and dates but also vanilla collagen powder and something called sea moss gel. It costs $20.
Hatch, I was told, makes something similar, the strawberry-based “Or-gan-ic” (the middle syllable also the Hebrew word for garden), which the restaurant calls its “most viral smoothie.” No sea moss gel, but the menu touts “anti-inflammatory” ingredients that include flax seeds and hibiscus. It’s $12, which sounds like a lot if you’ve never spent $20 on a smoothie before, and like a bargain if you just did, and for that one you’d had to look a cashier in the eye and utter the name of Justin Bieber’s wife. (At Hatch, you order from an iPad.)
Hatch’s fancy smoothie — which is also a photogenic one — models the dominant trend in contemporary kosher dining: pop-culture mimicry. Across from where the Pico Kosher Deli once stood, you can order a kosher crunchwrap supreme — a Taco Bell menu item — from a Mexican street food place called Lenny’s Casita. Kosher cafes still serve bagels, but people go for the avocado toast. It’s kosher dining’s hypebeast era, if you can afford it; Lenny’s crunchwrap with beef runs $30. I’m not sure how close the knockoff is to the real thing, or whether proximity really matters. Most customers will never taste the alternative.
There’s a tension inherent in these appropriated menu items — affirming both the desirability of secular culture and the Jewish laws forbidding it. Cultural diffusion and communal retreat. Assimilation and resistance. Meanwhile, the ancestral cuisine, which emerged out of kosher dietary laws, has been simultaneously rejected and idealized. You can’t find too many kosher delis, but TikTok has popularized pickle fountains. (Wait until they find out about hamantaschen.)
I was sort of sad about this state of affairs until I spoke to David Sax, who was dismayed enough about the decline of delis to write a book about it. He explained that Jewish deli food developed as a way of transforming European deli methods and flavors, which were more often made with pork, into kosher adaptations. The corned beef sandwich was the original fancy smoothie, which means our kosher crunchwrap might become tomorrow’s matzo ball soup. The comfort food changes, but the people endure.
The post What Hailey Bieber smoothies and instant matzo ball soup reveal about American Jewish taste appeared first on The Forward.
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Hamas, Hezbollah, Terror Allies Vow to Keep Fighting Israel, Reject Regional Peace Initiatives
Hamas terrorists carry grenade launchers at the funeral of Marwan Issa, a senior Hamas deputy military commander who was killed in an Israeli airstrike during the conflict between Israel and Hamas, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in the central Gaza Strip, Feb. 7, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Hamas and allied terrorist groups on Friday hailed the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel as a “landmark victory,” rejecting disarmament and vowing to continue fighting the Jewish state even as international efforts push to implement a regional peace plan.
Leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah, and several other Islamist terrorist groups gathered at the 34th Arab National Conference in Beirut, where speakers called for “resistance against the Israeli occupation and its expansionist projects in Palestine and the region,” Arabic-language Lebanese news outlet Al Mayadeen reported.
During the summit, terrorist leaders rejected efforts to compel them to disarm and pledged to continue fighting against Western influence across the Middle East, emphasizing the central role of weapons “in protecting national sovereignty and securing the region’s future.”
“On Oct. 7, an extraordinary act of heroism unfolded across Palestine and its borders, as people everywhere contributed in their own way to support us,” Hamas chief Khalil al-Hayya said during the conference, referring to the group’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel in 2023.
“Gaza is wounded today, but it remains steadfast, calling on everyone to stay united in the pursuit of our legitimate national goals,” the terrorist leader continued.
“Palestine will endure, just as Gaza has, despite the aggression — its land, its people, men, women, and children — and eventually, injustice will be overcome,” al-Hayya said.
” طوفان الأقصى كان رداً على محاولات طمس القضية الفلسطينية وبناء شرق أوسط جديد”
رئيس حركة حماس في #غزة خليل الحية #الميادين pic.twitter.com/tsSAc44KXY
— قناة الميادين (@AlMayadeenNews) November 7, 2025
At the Beirut gathering, Hamas and its terrorist allies praised the Oct. 7 atrocities, calling them a turning point in their fight against the “Zionist occupation.” They also opposed any attempt to divide Gaza and reaffirmed their commitment to unity.
“We emerged from this battle against the occupation with our weapons in hand. All resistance factions stood united against the aggression, and that same solidarity extended to the political front,” Palestinian Islamic Jihad chief Ziad al-Nakhala said during the conference.
“[US President Donald] Trump’s plan has set numerous obstacles and conditions that cannot be implemented,” al-Nakhala continued, referring to the US-backed peace plan aimed at ending the war in Gaza.
“لقد كانت كل فصائل المقاومة يداً واحدة في وجه العدوان وكذلك كان الحال على الصعيد السياسي ولولا ذلك لما صمدنا شهراً واحداً”
الأمين العام لحركة الجهاد الإسلامي زياد النحالة في افتتاح الدورة الـ34 للمؤتمر القومي العربي في بيروت pic.twitter.com/w71U1GNkZx
— قناة الميادين (@AlMayadeenNews) November 7, 2025
Amid international efforts to mediate the Gaza conflict and bring peace to the Middle East, Hamas and its allies said they opposed all such initiatives, opting instead to escalate violence and advance their own agenda.
At the summit, Jamil Mazhar, deputy secretary general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), called for “rejecting plans to place the Palestinian people under tutelage and opposing any attempt at demographic change” — a clear rebuke of the Gaza peace plan.
Under Trump’s plan, an International Stabilization Force (ISF) will oversee the Gaza ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and train local security forces
The ISF would include troops from multiple participating countries and would be responsible for securing Gaza’s borders with Israel and Egypt, while also protecting civilians and maintaining humanitarian corridors.
“We have gathered to renew our commitment against the Zionist enemy and its allies, and to reaffirm that the fight continues,” Mazhar said during his speech at the conference.
“Today, we must move beyond mere solidarity and slogans, and put them into practical action,” the terrorist leader continued.
During the summit, Hezbollah international relations official Ammar al-Moussawi reaffirmed the Lebanese terrorist group’s commitment to defending and supporting the “resistance in Gaza.”
“We joined the battle to support Gaza out of our conviction in the justice and righteousness of this cause, and we do not regret our decision,” al-Moussawi said.
“History shows that the resistance in Lebanon and Palestine has endured crises far graver than today’s, and the same resistance that produced those martyred leaders is fully capable of producing new ones,” he continued.
Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi also said at the conference that “the support fronts have played a key role throughout this important two-year round.”
“Hezbollah’s role is at the forefront of the support fronts, thanks to its steadfastness, pioneering and significant contributions, and immense sacrifices,” the leader of the terrorist group in Yemen said.
“The Israeli enemy, in alliance with the United States, seeks to impose a permissive formula and always place the blame on the victim,” he added.
“The Israeli enemy is attempting to disarm the weapons that protect Lebanon and the arms that have prevented it from controlling Gaza for the past two years,” al-Houthi said.
“العدو الإسرائيلي يحاول نزع السلاح الذي يحمي لبنان والسلاح الذي يُعيقه عن السيطرة على غزة على مدى عامين”
قائد حركة أنصار الله السيد عبد الملك الحوثي في افتتاح الدورة الـ34 للمؤتمر القومي العربي في بيروت pic.twitter.com/utTs6S26Wc
— قناة الميادين (@AlMayadeenNews) November 7, 2025
Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis are all backed by Iran, which provides the Islamist groups with weapons, funding, and training.
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US Rep. Elise Stefanik, Outspoken Pro-Israel Supporter, Jumps Into New York Gubernatorial Race
US Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Feb. 22, 2025. Photo: Zach D Roberts/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), one of Israel’s staunchest allies in the US Congress, officially announced on Friday that she will run for governor of New York in the 2026 election, a move that could reshape the political landscape in the Empire State.
In a campaign video released early Friday morning, Stefanik declared that she would fight to make “New York affordable and safe for families all across our great state.” She took aim at incumbent Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul’s leadership, declaring her the “worst governor in America.”
The campaign announcement video lambasted Hochul’s “failed policies” and depicted New York as a wasteland overrun by “migrant crime.”
“Our campaign will unify Republicans, Democrats, and independents to fire Kathy Hochul once and for all to save New York,” Stefanik said in a statement.
Stefanik, 41, has represented New York’s 21st Congressional District since January 2015 and has risen to national prominence as chair of the House Republican Conference. A close ally of US President Donald Trump, she has also emerged as one of the most outspoken defenders of Israel in the US House of Representatives.
During the Israel-Hamas war, Stefanik earned praise across Jewish communities for her unequivocal condemnation of Hamas’s terrorism and her efforts to hold American universities accountable for antisemitic incidents on campus. Her fiery December 2023 questioning of Ivy League presidents during a congressional hearing, in which she pressed them on their refusal to denounce calls for genocide against Jews, went viral and cemented her reputation as a defender of American Jewry.
In March, Trump withdrew Stefanik’s nomination to serve as US ambassador to the United Nations due to the Republican Party’s razor-thin margins in the House of Representatives and concerns over passing legislation.
Though most polls indicate that Hochul maintains a lead over Stefanik, a recent survey by the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, shows the conservative firebrand leading Hochul 43 percent to 42 percent in a head-to-head matchup.
Hochul issued a pithy retort to Stefanik’s attacks.
“My message to Trump’s ‘top ally’ – bring it on,” Hochul said on X.
Though New York remains a heavily Democratic state, her candidacy could energize conservatives across upstate and suburban regions, particularly amid voter discontent over crime, migration, and the state’s economy. However, skeptics suggest that her status as a close Trump ally could capsize her candidacy in a historically blue state.
Pro-Israel groups have long considered Stefanik one of their strongest allies on Capitol Hill. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and other advocacy organizations have praised her leadership on anti-BDS legislation and support for US military aid to Israel. In April, she introduced the Countering Hate Against Israel by Federal Contractors Act, which would bar entities that boycott Israel from doing business with the US federal government.
Stefanik’s quest to become governor comes as Zohran Mamdani, an anti-Israel activist and member of the far-left Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), prepares to become mayor of New York City following his election victory on Tuesday. Stefanik lambasted Hochul recently after the governor issued a formal endorsement of Mamdani, claiming that Hochul aligned herself with Mamdani’s alleged antisemitism. If Stefanik were to become governor, she could potentially serve as a critical bulwark in thwarting any anti-Israel policies from Mamdani’s office.
If elected, Stefanik would become the first female Republican governor of New York.