In May 1948, the Israeli government thanked Kirchwey for "having a good and honorable share of our success", at least partly as a consequence of distributing information on al-Husseini to the UN representatives. He completed his studies at Darul Uloom Deoband in 1898[8] at the age of twenty-two. [150] Husseini in the meantime had quietly slipped out of Beirut with his family on 14 October 1939, reaching Baghdad two days later. [291] They later explained this as due to the lack of legal procedure or precedent. This automatically promoted Amin al-Husseini to third position, which, under Ottoman law, allowed him to qualify, and Samuel then chose him as Mufti. [224] It has been established that the mission, briefed by al-Husseini before departure, aimed at establishing an intelligence-gathering base in Palestine, radioing information back to Germany, and buying support among Arabs in Palestine, recruiting and arming them to foment tensions between Jews and Arabs, disrupting the Mandatory authorities and striking Jewish targets. [282], Although al-Husseini had been removed from the Supreme Muslim Council and other administrative roles by the British government in 1937, they did not remove him from the post of mufti of Jerusalem. Das Dritte Reich, die Araber und Palästina (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2006); Meir Litvak and Esther Webman, From Empathy to Denial: Arab Responses to the Holocaust (London: Hurst & Co, 2009). [53] Matthews argues that the British considered the combinations of his profile as an effective Arab nationalist and a scion of a noble Jerusalem family 'made it advantageous to align his interests with those of the British administration and thereby keep him on a short tether.'. Along with his duties as a teacher and administrator, Dehlawi started to answer fataawa during this period. [232] Only about 6,300 Arab soldiers ended up being trained by German military organisations, no more than 1,300 from Palestine, Syria and Iraq combined. ... Terror ruled Palestine, Macatee wrote. [201] A single affidavit by Rudolf Kastner reported that Wisliceny told him that he had overheard Husseini say he had visited Auschwitz incognito in Eichmann's company. [290] The opposition of a relevant percentage of the Palestinian society to al-Husseini goes back to an earlier period and was also connected to the British way of dealing with the local majority: 'The present administration of Palestine', lamented for example the representatives of the Palestine Arab Delegation in a letter to British public opinion in 1930, 'is appointed by His Majesty's Government and governs the country through an autocratic system in which the population has no say'. [164], On 23 May 1940, Pinhas Rutenberg had suggested to a British official, Bruce Lockhart, that the Mufti be assassinated.

[262] The mufti blamed the mass desertions on German support for the Četniks. In the speech, he harshly criticised those he considered as aggressors against Muslims, namely "Jews, Bolsheviks and Anglo-Saxons." This assembly was successful in its aim, but was eventually ended due to a lack of participation. [47] His initial appointment was as Mufti, but when the Supreme Muslim Council was created in the following year, Husseini demanded and received the title Grand Mufti that had earlier been created, perhaps on the lines of Egyptian usage,[48] by the British for his half-brother Kamil.

A New Biography Says Yes", "PM Netanyahu's Speech at the 37th Zionist Congress", "Hajj Amin al-Husayni: The Mufti of Jerusalem", "Righteous among the Editors — when the Left loved Israel", "Historians, politicians slam PM's 'distortion of history, "Qui était le mufti de Jérusalem ? He expanded the Committee in order to ensure the dominance of the Husseinis. During the 1947/48 war, he was a commander in the Mufti’s jihad army (al-jihad al-muqaddas) where he chose another German Wehrmacht officer as his adviser.21 The jihad army’s most famous commander and its leader in Jerusalem, Abd al-Qadir el-Husseini, had also been a Nazi collaborator who had participated in the defense of the pro-Nazi regime in Baghdad. Promised arms shipments never eventuated. [301] Al-Husseini's first biographer, Moshe Pearlman, described him as virulently antisemitic,[302] as did, a decade and a half later, Joseph Schechtman. [241] Himmler had a romantic vision of Islam as a faith 'fostering fearless soldiers', and this probably played a significant role[242][243] in his decision to raise three Muslim divisions under German leadership in the Balkans from Bosnian Muslims and Albanians:[244][245] the 13th Handschar,[246] the 21st Skanderbeg, and the 23rd Kama (Shepherd's dagger). It was for this reason that he was renowned among common folk as well as the officials of the courts of law, who would prefer his rulings in religious cases. The proposals were rejected as unfeasible. 4, part II, 283-84 as cited by Efraim Karsh, Palestine Betrayed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 115. of that month in pacifying rioters and reestablishing order. [8] At the age of five, he commenced his education at the maktab of Hafiz Barakatullah. “A man (…) who is the enemy number 1 of a powerful empire – but this empire seems helpless against him – seems to them to be a worthy leader indeed.”40 Moreover, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood encouraged popular support for the Mufti. [281], The All-Palestine Government was declared in Gaza on 22 September, in a way as a countermeasure against Jordan. That year al-Husseini founded the pro-British Jerusalem branch of the Syrian-based 'Arab Club' (Al-Nadi al-arabi), which then vied with the Nashashibi-sponsored 'Literary Club' (al-Muntada al-Adabi) for influence over public opinion, and he soon became its president. Mohammed Amin al-Husseini (Arabic: محمد أمين الحسيني‎;[5] c. 1897[6][7] – 4 July 1974) was a Palestinian Arab nationalist and Muslim leader in Mandatory Palestine. The claims of Palestinian complicity in the murder of the European Jews were to some extent a defensive strategy, a preemptive response to the Palestinian complaint that if Israel was recompensed for the Holocaust, it was unjust that Palestinian Muslims should pick up the bill for the crimes of European Christians. While the view of the British Foreign Office, which in 1946, “spoke of Arab hatred of the Jews being greater than that of the Nazis” may be exaggerated,53 it is clear that wartime Nazi propaganda contributed to increased hostility toward the Jews in Arab countries. Had Egyptian authorities done so after the anti-Jewish riots of November 1945, the history of the Middle East might have been very different.

In contrast, Britain managed to recruit 9,000 from Palestine alone and a quarter of a million North African troops served in the French Army of Liberation where they made up the majority of its dead and wounded. [229], Throughout World War II, al-Husseini worked for the Axis Powers as a broadcaster in propaganda targeting Arab public opinion. [267], On 29 May, after an influential Moroccan had organized his escape, and the French police had suspended their surveillance, al-Husseini left France on a TWA flight for Cairo using travel papers supplied by a Syrian politician who was close to the Muslim Brotherhood.