The enemy of my enemy..

Just reading today about some of the links between the Nazis and the early Pan-Arabist movement. The ties are clear and pretty well-documented. After all, the word Iran translates to Aryan in English. I was interested to learn how far back the ties started.

One of the main collaborators was Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and one of the PLO's ancestors. This is the man whom Yasser Arafat referred to as his mentor and his guide. He was one of the first despots to seek a unified Arab presence (Pan-Arabist), which could be used to drive the Jews from the region. He was appointed Grand Mufti in 1921 and by the end of the 1930s he had effectively silenced any moderate Arab opinions in the territory of Palestine. In the 1940s, the Mufti traveled to Rome and Berlin, offering the services of the Arab nation to the war effort with the stipulation that they "recognize in principle the unity, independence, and sovereignty of an Arab state of a Fascist nature, including Iraq, Syria, Palestine, and Trans-Jordan (Jordan)." (1) In October 1941, the Nazi government issued a communication from Berlin in which they promised to help in the "elimination of the Jewish National Home in Palestine." (2) After a personal meeting with Hitler, the Mufti began to work even more feverishly on behalf of the Nazi regime, even appearing on radio broadcasts to make his pleas heard:

"If, God forbid, England should be victorious, the Jews would dominate the world. England and her allies would deny the Arabs any freedom and independence, would strike the Arab fatherland to its heart, and would tear away parts of it to form a Jewish country whose ambition would not be limited to Palestine but would extend to other Arab countries. . .

But if on the other contrary, England loses and its allies are defeated, the Jewish question, which for us constitutes the greater danger, would finally be resolved." (3)

But even this exhortation and bald-faced anti-semitism pales in comparison to his role in the Final Solution. During the Nuremberg trials, much of this information regarding the Mufti's involvement came to light. A Nazi official, Wilhelm Melchers testified that Husseini wanted to see "all of them (the Jews) liquidated." Adolf Eichmann's deputy, Dieter Wisliceny said that Husseini

played a role in the decision to exterminate the European Jews. The importance of this role must not be disregarded. . . the Mufti repeatedly suggested to the various authorities with whom he was maintaining contact, above all to Hitler, Ribbentrop, and Himmler, the extermination of European Jewry. He considered this an appropriate solution to the Palestinian Problem. (4)

and that

The Mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and had been a collaborator and advisor of Eichmann and Himmler in the execution of this plan. He was one of Eichmann's best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures. I heard him say that

accompanied by Eichmann he had visited incognito the gas chamber of Auschwitz. (5)

Mufti's legacy of literally killing off voices of moderation or dissent and feverishly working to eliminate the Jewish race was passed on to others like Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, who established the Arab world's first totalitarian state in 1952. Nasser in turn created special anti-Israel Palestinian military units where the likes of Yasser Arafat, Abu Iyad, and Abu Jihad all received their first training and inculcation of Pan-Arabist, anti-Zionist indoctrination. These men would go on to create the PLO, which revolutionized modern terrorism and helped to turn world opinion against the fledgling state of Israel.

In today's misinformed and manipulated zeitgeist, it is facile to bleat the propaganda that the hatred of Israel by the "Palestinians" is due to Israel's aggression and their occupation of "Palestinian" lands. But the hatred and militant activism against the Jewish people existed long before the nation of Israel was established. Like most of the "Palestinian" propaganda which is circulated in the media and ivory towers, it defies both logic and history. Much like the Jewish claim to the territory traditionally labeled "Palestine" stretches back much further than Arabian claims, the anti-semitism of the "Palestinian Liberation" movement stretches back much further than the establishment of the Israeli state.

As an early Ba'thist leader wrote of this pre-WW2 period:

We were racists, admiring Nazism, reading its books. . . We were the first to think of translating Mein Kampf. Whoever lived during this period in Damascus would appreciate the inclination of the Arab people to Nazism, for Nazism was the power which could serve as its champion. (6)

Hannah Arendt argues in her seminal work, The Origins of Totalitarianism, that historically totalitarianism is accompanied by the normalization of anti-semitism. As we see the seeds of a totalitarian state rising in Venezuela, already accompanied by a rise in anti-semitism, Ms Arendt's observation seems to hold true. One can only hope that nations like Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay, and Educador will resist the pressure to join the totalitarian regimes which are hostile to Jews already existing in Iran, Syria, and elsewhere.

Indeed the enemy of an enemy will most often become a friend. I pray that the Lord's strong arm will continue to protect and sustain His people in these dark times.

(main source: Netanyahu, Benjamin "A Durable Peace")

(1) Lewis, Bernard "Semites and Anti-Semites" (New York: Norton, 1986) p 151

(2) ibid, pp 152-153

(3) ibid, Mufti quoted on p 155

(4) Schechtman, J.B., "The Mufti and the Fuhrer: The Rise and Fall of Haj Amin el-Husseini (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1965) pp 159-160

(5) ibid, p 160

(6) Donohue and Esposito, "Islam in Transition", Al-Banna quoted p 80

A Dearth of Humanity?

The Times Online last Sunday carried a story about Ishaq Khan, a 12 year-old schoolboy from Kohat, located in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan. He was given 50 rupees to carry a plastic bag into a crowded area between several shops and leave it. Ishaq was excited to be offered 50 rupees ($0.62) to perform as task as simple as this. His family "barely survives on the money his father earns from house-painting jobs." Ishaq dropped the bag at the appointed site but when he was 20 steps away, the bag exploded. The blast shattered his foot, left 3 people dead and 23 injured.

When he learnt that three people had been killed and 23 injured he was
horrified. “I never imagined it was a bomb,” he said, his eyes filling with
tears. “I move bags for people all day.”

The doctors at the hospital say that the heel on his left foot is completely crushed and they are not sure if he will be able to walk again. His back was hit with shrapnel from the bomb, but his family "has no money for painkillers", so he is likely recuperating in enormous amounts of pain.




Stories like this are becoming more and more common in Pakistan, Iraq, and elsewhere in the Middle East. Islamic radicals are demonstrating that they no longer care about the rules of society (which we knew already) and that they are willing to exploit and endanger the most vulnerable of our societies to accomplish their "noble" aims. I am reminded of the incident on January 2, 2009 where two mentally-handicapped Iraqi women were strapped with explosives and sent into a crowded market in Baghdad. The devices were detonated remotely, killing the two women, 65 people, and injuring at least 150 others.




When I read stories like this I am shocked. And then I am ruefully aware of my shock and its inappropriateness. As much as I want to scratch my head in amazement at the heartless actions of evil people around the world, I should know better. The Lord reminds me in the book of the prophet Jeremiah, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; Who can know it?" (Jer 17:9). I know this passage. I understand the fallen depravity of man and the sinfulness of my own flesh. So why does this wickedness surprise me?




I believe that it is a reflection of my Creator that a part of me recoils with horror when I read stories like these. Some of the most sensitive beings around us are children. A child can often sense when someone is troubled or sad. They seem to be innately tuned to be intuitively empathetic towards people around them. This argues that we are indeed created in the image of our Maker. We were created by a loving and caring God and since we are created in His image, it follows that we too retain some vestige of his empathetic love (albeit in a flawed and sporadic variety that tends to be muted more and more frequently as we age). We know, without having to think about it or talk to anyone else, that it is evil to use an innocent child or a disabled person for evil. We do subscribe to a universal morality and stories like these remind us of the fact very quickly.



The warning of Jesus about corrupting influences directed towards children, recorded in Mark 9:42 and elsewhere is particularly relevant here, "But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea." Methinks these cowards who hide behind school-children and coerce handicapped women to do their murderous work are busily earning their very own millstone. Thankfully we have a Savior who is perfect Justice. Marana tha!