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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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Trump announces he has ‘largely negotiated’ Iran deal, Strait of Hormuz opening
(JTA) — President Donald Trump announced in a post on Truth Social Saturday afternoon that a deal with Iran had been “largely negotiated,” despite saying earlier in the day that he was undecided on whether to agree to a proposal or resume strikes.
Trump described the deal as a “Memorandum of Understanding pertaining to PEACE” that was “subject to finalization” by the United States, Iran and other countries that participated in talks on Saturday. He noted that he’d “just had a very good call” with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan and Bahrain.
Trump said in his Truth Social post that, separately, he had spoken with Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a conversation that “went very well.” There was no immediate statement released by the Prime Minister’s Office following Trump’s post.
“Final aspects and details of the Deal are currently being discussed, and will be announced shortly,” Trump added.
In the post, Trump said the deal would include the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, though a widely reported quote from Iran’s Fars New Agency, which is close to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said that Trump’s assertion was “incomplete and inconsistent with reality” and that the strait would remain under Iranian control.
Trump’s announcement comes over a month since he unilaterally extended a fragile U.S.-Iran ceasefire in April.
The announcement did not make mention of Iran’s nuclear program or highly enriched uranium, which Trump has previously stressed must be included in a deal.
Trump’s announcement came hours after he told Axios that he was a “solid 50/50” on whether he would be able to make a “good” deal with Iran, or else “blow them to kingdom come.”
Trump also told Axios that Netanyahu was “torn” over the potential deal but rejected the idea that the Israeli leader was “worried” that he might strike an unfavorable agreement.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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In Trump’s assault on democracy, echoes of Nazi Germany but new glimmers of hope that America will be different
In the final, tumultuous years of the Weimar Republic, a succession of arch-conservative chancellors ruled by emergency decree rather than go through the Reichstag, the German parliament. Germany had become a democracy in name only, as reactionary power brokers steered the nation deeper into totalitarian waters, ultimately opening the door for Hitler.
As we approach our mid-term elections, America too is at a pivot point — with the burning question being whether Donald Trump’s grip on MAGA lawmakers can be broken so that Congress, feckless like the Reichstag of the late Weimar Republic, can resume its constitutional role as a check on the executive.
It’s a matter of life or death for American democracy as it nears its 250th birthday.
As Trump’s poll numbers tank while GOP lawmakers’ support for him endures, I find myself musing about the Weimar Republic and the self-immolation of its national legislature.
In the final months before they came to power on Jan. 30, 1933, Hitler and the Nazis were actually on the ropes. After they had become the largest party in the Reichstag in July elections a year earlier, two million Germans abandoned the Nazis in an election that November. Many Germans were less enamored of the Nazi leader, fatigued by a sense that the Nazis thrived on disorder. The spell seemed to be breaking. Does this ring a bell? Economics also played a role: Germany was finally emerging from the Great Depression.
But the German republic had already been brought to a breaking point by street fighting, political chaos, the Great Depression, and a coterie of arch-conservative power brokers who schemed and maneuvered to scrap Germany’s first democracy. They included Chancellor Franz von Papen.
Papen was unable to form a majority coalition after the July 1932 election because of huge gains by the Nazis and losses by other key parties, so he continued to govern by emergency decree with the consent of President Paul von Hindenburg, relying on the broad emergency powers of Article 48 of the constitution that had already hollowed out parliamentary rule.
More internal scheming resulted in Papen’s ouster after the November 1932 election. He was replaced by General Kurt von Schleicher, a master of intrigue. But Schleicher lasted only two months, as disagreements raged over whether to give Hitler a role in the government, and what that role should be. The reactionary schemers eventually reached a consensus: Let Hitler have the chancellorship but keep him in check by loading the cabinet with archconservatives like Papen. Once Hitler became chancellor on Jan. 30, 1933, it didn’t take him long to outmaneuver all of the other schemers, who became puppets of the Nazi leader instead of the puppet masters.
Germany’s political establishment — all but the Social Democrats and the banned Communists — ceremoniously handed the keys over to Hitler on March 23, 1933, when the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act, dismantling parliamentary democracy and giving Hitler dictatorial powers.
Which brings us to the question: Whither American democracy?
Under Trump, our Congress has been reduced to a shell of its former self, an American analog of the toothless Reichstag. As Trump has launched assault after assault on the pillars of American democracy — on the judiciary, on higher education, on free speech, our election system, the rule of law, and even on unflattering but true chapters in American history — Republicans have kept quiet, fearing Trump’s wrath and retribution.
But now there are glimmers of hope. Trump’s broken promises, self-aggrandizement, megalomania, corruption, utter indifference to everyday Americans’ economic suffering, and relentless catering to the country’s wealthiest are finally catching up with him. New polls put his approval rating at a dismal 37%. In a New York Times/Siena poll, just 28% of voters approved of how Trump is handling the cost of living, while only 31% approved of his war with Iran. Even Fox News had him at 39% approval. That same poll showed GOP support for Trump weakening considerably on his handling of the economy.
Economic pain is driving the collapse. The soaring costs of the war in Iran, Trump’s vanity projects, and his proposed $1.8 billion slush fund for the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, coupled with his push for lifetime immunity for himself and his family to commit tax fraud, have incensed voters who are already struggling to afford groceries, gas, housing and health care.
As Americans make impossible choices, the 47th president touts the glitzy White House ballroom he wants to build and his plans for an arch that would dwarf the Arc de Triomphe, all while prosecuting a war that has closed the Strait of Hormuz and driven up prices worldwide. The widening gap between Trump’s self-indulgence and the country’s hardship is finally producing something late Weimar never managed: a meaningful break in the habit of submission to an aspiring strongman.
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This Jewish artist hadn’t painted in more than 5 decades. Then came Oct. 7.
Sid Klein has finally found his subject. More than half a century after he scrambled to pick a topic for his senior art project at Brooklyn College—and settled on exploring the porcelain curves of a toilet bowl in a 20-painting series—he’s discovered a purpose.
Klein, 78, took a five-decade hiatus from art between college graduation and retirement. He picked his brushes back up just a few months before the events of Oct. 7.
Upon hearing of the Hamas attacks, Klein processed the news with acrylics. Soon, he began looking back to the Holocaust. He felt compelled to render contemporary and historical victims of hatred on paper and ultimately take on the mantle of combatting antisemitism, not with words or weapons but with images.
“For the first time in my life, I’m so motivated in my art,” Klein told me over Zoom from his home in South Florida. “All of a sudden I went from, ‘I don’t know what I want to paint,’ to, ‘I’ve got to make a record of this so people can look at these paintings and see what does antisemitism naturally lead to.’”
Born and raised in Brooklyn, Klein noticed at a young age that he could depict objects in three dimensions. “I started drawing with Crayola crayons with paper that my mom would pick up [at] the local five and dime,” he said.
But his mother died when he was seven, leaving his father to raise three children on his own. Though they weren’t particularly religious, Klein said, he attended yeshiva. The extra-long school day helped his working single father make sure he was safe. Klein continued dabbling in art through elementary and high school.
The Holocaust was not part of his education, as far as he remembers, not at the yeshiva and not later in college, where he flitted from pre-law to economics to philosophy before settling on fine art. “I’d never been exposed to it,” he said. “I’d never seen the photographs. I consciously avoided the photographs.”
“I was living in this bubble so I could pretend that antisemitism did not exist,” he said.
He remained in that bubble through business school and a long career in marketing. During that time, “painting didn’t even cross my mind,” Klein said. “For 55 years, I focused on the business and totally ignored the art.”
It wasn’t until his career drew to a close that he thought he might try again. “I wanted to give it a try and see what was left,” he said. But he wanted to keep painting only if he had a worthy subject, which he found in the wake of the Hamas attacks.
“That murder affected me in a profound way,” said Klein, who has two sons and five grandchildren living in Israel. “I started painting in my mind what these 1,200 people would have looked like. And that was my return to art.”
The segue from the horrors of Oct. 7 to those of the Holocaust felt natural to Klein. “For me, all of those are one of the same. They’re all Jew hatred at different times in history,” he said. “The amount of evil in our world is just—I don’t know how to measure it.” There are endless tragedies, he said, “but I’m focusing on our people.”
Klein paints in a corner of the family room he’s designated as his studio. He regularly pores over hundreds of black-and-white photos taken in ghettos and camps, looking for his next subjects to call out to him.
In one photograph, he recalled, he saw lines upon lines of women and children, standing near cattle cars, waiting, exhausted. He distilled the scene to one row of imminent victims in “Innocents.” They’re “going to be taken to a gas chamber and they’re going to be dead in 20 minutes or a half hour, and they don’t know that,” he said. On the right, a boy tugs at his mother’s coat. The woman on the far left balances the small child in her arms alongside her pregnant belly. In the middle, another grasps a toddler’s hand. Their eyes implore the viewer to grapple with their fate.
Several of Klein’s Holocaust works were displayed earlier this year at the Gross-Rosen Museum in Rogoźnica in Poland, on the grounds of the concentration camp system of the same name, where an estimated 120,000 people were imprisoned and 40,000 died.
“As employees of a Memorial Site, we have constant access to disturbing historical photos and documents; these are undeniably important, but viewing the victims through the eyes of an artist is an entirely different, more intimate experience,” Bartosz Surman, who works for the museum’s education department, told me. Surman estimated that approximately 4,000 people saw Klein’s work there between January 27 and March 31. “For a Memorial Site located in a village of fewer than a thousand people, we consider it a significant success and a testament to the power of Mr. Klein’s work,” he said.
Four thousand miles away, “My Zaidy” hangs on the wall at the Dr. Bernard Heller Museum in downtown Manhattan as part of the exhibition “Proverbs, Adages, and Maxims.”
The man in the painting wears a star under his heart. The bright yellow patch and pearlescent and gold shimmer of his face contrast with the matte blue of his coat and hat. But turning the corner of the exhibition, it’s the eyes that catch you. “I left them blank, so you can put in his eyes, any eyes you want,” Klein said—his zaidy’s or yours or a stranger’s.
The eyes may be missing but the gaze is powerful, as though this old man, as he approaches his cruel end, is staring and saying, “Look at me. Do you see what’s happening? Why are you just standing there?”
“A lot of bubbes and zaides were exterminated,” Klein said, including his paternal grandfather. But the zaidy in the painting isn’t Klein’s, exactly, he said. He can’t recall ever seeing a photo of him. Instead, he painted another elderly man in a photo that struck him: This is what a zaidy selected for the gas chamber looks like. This is what Klein’s zaidy could have looked like.
“I decided I was going to do a painting, and fill that hole in my heart,” Klein said.
“There’s something very haunting about the hollowed, empty eyes,” museum director Jeanie Rosensaft told me over the phone. “We were very touched, because although [Klein] has not had a long resume of art production, we felt that the image that he provided was very compelling.”.
Klein is one of 58 artists in the exhibition, and his work will be included in a tour the museum is organizing following its New York run, which ends June 24. “We hope that he continues on this path,” Rosensaft said. “It’s really essential that art bear witness to the past and provide a bridge to the future.”
Seeing the pain
Klein’s next painting, he told me, was inspired by a photo of two small children, empty bowls in hand, begging for food.
“If I had more working space, I would make my paintings bigger,” said Klein, who says he hopes to one day create life-size portraits. “Right now you’ve got to get pretty close to see what the hell is going on,” he said. “I want size to be part of your experience seeing the pain.”
Spending his days sifting through Holocaust photos and painting its victims takes a toll. “When I paint, I become emotionally involved. But when it’s done, I listen to my music for a couple of hours, and that gives me the emotional strength to continue,” says Klein, who puts on Vivaldi, Mozart, or Brahms, for example. “After I do a painting, I need this music to settle my nerves.”
“Sometimes I say, ‘Klein, try something else!’” he said. But he can’t imagine abandoning his subject or newfound mission for any others. Which means he’ll need more of that music in the years to come, as might those viewing his paintings.
“A lot of my work is grotesque,” Klein said, and that’s intentional. “I want to shake you up.”
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