Amin al-Husseini
Mohammad Amin al-Husayni
Mohammad Amin al-Husayni
Mohammad Amin al-Husayni (ca. 1895-1974), also spelt al-Husseini, was a Palestinian Arab nationalist and Muslim religious leader. A member of Jerusalem's most prominent family, his most important positions were as Mufti of Jerusalem and President of the Supreme Muslim Council. Although commonly known as "Grand Mufti", he did not hold such a title officially. He played a major role in Arab resistance to Zionist political ambitions in Palestine and recruiting Muslims to fight in the German army during World War II. He became very close to the Nazi leading circle and conducted radio broadcasts and recruitment operations for them during the later part of the Second World War.
Early Life
In 1913 at the age of 28, al-Husayni, made the pilgrimage to Mecca and received the honorific of Hajj. Prior to World War I, al-Husayni studied Islamic Law for about one year at al-Azhar University in Cairo. With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, al-Husayni joined the Ottoman Turkish army, received a commission as an artillery officer and was assigned to the Forty-Seventh Brigade stationed in and around the predominately Greek Christian city of Smyrna. In November 1916, al-Husayni left the Ottoman army on three month disability leave and returned to Jerusalem where he remained for the duration of the war. In 1919, al-Husayni attended the Pan-Syrian Congress held in Damascus where he supported Emir Faisal for King of Syria. That year, al-Husayni joined (perhaps founded) the Arab nationalist club al-Nadi al-Arabi (English: The Arab Club) in Jerusalem and wrote articles for the first new newspaper to be established in Palestine, Suriyya al-Janubiyya (English: Southern Syria). Suriyya al-Janubiyya was published in Jerusalem beginning in September 1919 by the lawyer Muhammad Hasan al-Budayri, and edited by 'Arif al-'Arif, both prominent members of al-Nadi al-Arabi.
Until late 1921, al-Husayni focused his efforts on Pan-Arabism and Greater Syria in particular with Palestine being a southern province of an Arab state with it capital in Damascus. Greater Syria was to include territory now occupied by Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Israel. The struggle for Greater Syria collapsed after Britain ceded control over present day Syria and Lebanon to France in July 1920 in accord with the Sykes-Picot Agreement. The French army entered Damascus at that time, overthrew King Faisal and dissolved Greater Syria.
After this, al-Husayni turned from a Damascus oriented Pan-Arabism to a particularly a Palestinian ideology centered on Jerusalem.
Palestinian Nationalism
After anti-Zionist riots in 1920, in which 5 Jews of old yishuv were killed and 211 wounded, the British military court sentenced a considerable number of Arabs and Jews to long prison terms. Al-Husayni was sentenced in absentia to ten years imprisonment on charges of fomenting the riots of early 1920 since he had already fled to Syria.
In 1921, the British military administration of Palestine was replaced by a civilian one. The first High Commissioner Herbert Samuel decided to drop the charges against al-Husayni and appointed him Mufti of Jerusalem, a position that had been held by the al-Husayni clan for more than a century. The following year Samuel appointed him as President of the newly formed Supreme Muslim Council, which controlled the Muslim courts and schools and a large portion of the funds raised by religious charitable endowments.
This method of appointment was actually in consonance with tradition. For years under Ottoman rule. Muslim clerics would nominate three clerics and the secular temporal leader, the Caliph, would choose among the three who would become the Mufti. After the British took over Palestine, the secular temporal leader was the High Commissioner. This led to the extraordinary situation of a Jew, Herbert Samuel, choosing who would actually become Mufti. The only difference was that in this instance five candidates were nominated instead of three. It is thought that in furthering the dispute between the Nashashibi and Husseini clans, the British were practicing their finely honed system of "Divide and Conquer."
Al-Husayni came to dominate the Palestinian Arab movement after a bitter clash with the Nashashibis, Jerusalem's other most prominent clan, which tended to be more moderate and accommodating than the strongly anti-British Husaynis. During most of the period of the British mandate, bickering between these two families seriously weakened the effectiveness of Arab efforts. In 1936 they achieved a measure of unity when all the Palestinian groups joined to create a permanent executive organ known as the Arab High Committee under al-Husayni's chairmanship. The committee called for a general strike, nonpayment of taxes, and the shutting down of municipal governments and demanded an end to Jewish immigration, a ban on land sales to Jews, and national independence. The general strike resulted in a rebellion against British authority lasting from 1936 to 1939. Al-Husayni was the chief organizer of the rebellion.[1] As a result, the British removed al-Husayni from the presidency of the Muslim Supreme Council and declared the Arab High Committee illegal in Palestine. In October 1937 al-Husayni fled to Lebanon, where he reconstituted the committee under his domination. al-Husayni retained the support of most Palestinian Arabs and used his power to punish the Nashashabis.
Al Husseini formed in international Arab campaign to improve and restore the mosque known as the Dome of the Rock. Indeed, the current landscape of the Temple Mount was directly affected by Husseini's fundraising activities. He raised the vast sums necessary to plate the Dome of the Rock with gold.
The rebellion forced Britain to make substantial concessions to Arab demands in 1939. The British abandoned the idea of establishing Palestine as a Jewish state, and, while Jewish immigration was to continue for another five years (allowing a total of 75,000 Jews to immigrate), immigration was thereafter to depend on Arab consent. al-Husayni, however, felt that the concessions did not go far enough, and he repudiated the new policy.
World War Two Activities
File:AlHusayniHitler.jpg
al-Husayni and Hitler (1941)
In 1933, within weeks of Hitler's rise to power in Germany, al-Husayni contacted the German counsul-general in the British Mandate of Palestine offering his services. al-Husayni's offer was rejected at first out of concern for disrupting Anglo-German relations by allying with an anti-British leader. By 1938, Anglo-German relations were no longer a concern. al-Husayni's offer was accepted. al-Husayni links to the Nazi regime were very close. From Berlin, al-Husayni played a significant role in inter-Arab politics.
In 1939, al-Husayni fled from Lebanon to Iraq.
-- (To come in here: activities in Iraq, start of negotiations with Germany)
In May 1940, the British Foreign Office declined a proposal from the chairman of the Vaad Leumi (Jewish national council in Palestine) that they assassinate al-Husayni, but in November of that year Winston Churchill approved such a plan. In May 1941, several members of the Irgun including its leader David Raziel were released from prison and flown to Iraq for this purpose. The mission was abandoned when Raziel was killed by a German plane (Mattar, 1984).
-- (To come in here: move to Germany, meetings with Mussolini and Hitler, radio propaganda etc)
The Mufti approached representatives of the Nazi regime and sought cooperation on July 21, 1937, when he visited the German Consul in Jerusalem. He later sent an agent and personal representative to Berlin for discussions with Nazi leaders. SS Obergruppenfuehrer Reinhard Heydrich was second in command to Heinrich Himmler in the SS hierarchy and was the chief of the Reich Security Head Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt, RSHA) and was the head of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the SS Security Service. In Septemper, 1937, Heydrich sent two SS officers, SS Hauptscharfuehrer Adolf Eichmann and SS Oberscharfuehrer Herbert Hagen on a mission to Palestine, one of the main objectives being to establish contact with the Grand Mufti. During this period Husseini received financial and military assistance and supplies from Nazi Germany and fascist Italy.
After meeting Hitler and Ribbentrop in Berlin in 1941, the Mufti was made an SS Gruppenfuehrer by Reichsfuehrer-SS Heinrich Himmler.
File:Al-husseini-soldier.jpg
al-Husayni and Bosnian Muslim soldier (1941)
Beginning in 1943, al-Husayni was instrumental in the organization and formation of Bosnian Muslims into several divisions of the Waffen SS and other units. The largest was the 13th "Handschar" division (21,065 men), which conducted operations against Communist partisans in the Balkans from February 1944. It was responsible for a number of atrocities against civilians. The 21st "Kama" division (3,793 men) did not reach divisional operations strength and was disbanded after five months; its personnel being transferred to other units. Additional units included a Muslim SS self-defense regiment in the Rashka (Sandzak) region of Serbia, the Arab Legion (Arabisches Freiheitskorps), the Arab Brigade, the Ostmusselmanische SS-Regiment.
Post-war Activities
After the war, al-Husayni was briefly arrested in France but escaped and was given asylum in Egypt. Zionist groups petitioned the British to have him indicted as a war criminal. The British declined, partly because they considered the evidence indecisive but also because such a move would have added to their growing problems in Egypt and Palestine, where al-Husayni was still popular. Yugoslavia also unsuccessfully sought his extradition.
In 1948 al-Husayni declared the president of the All-Palestine government in the Gaza Strip. On October 1, an independent Palestinian state in all of Palestine was declared, with Jerusalem as its capital. This government was recognised by Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen, but not by Jordan or any non-Arab country. His government was totally dependent on Egypt. Egypt annulled the All-Palestine government by decree in 1959. The failure of this venture and al-Husayni's lack of credibility because of his collaboration with the Axis powers during World War II did much to weaken Palestinian Arab Nationalism in the 1950s.
Al-Husayni died in Beirut, Lebanon in 1974. He wished to be buried in Jerusalem, but the Israeli government refused this request.
References
- P. Mattar, Al-Husayni and Iraq's quest for independence, 1939-1941, Arab Studies Quarterly 6,4 (1984), 267-281.
- R. Khalidi, The Formation of Palestinian Identity: The Critical Years, 1917-1923, Rethinking Nationalism in the Arab Middle East, Israel Gershoni and James Jankowski, editors
External Links
Amin al-Husseini
In 1941 Haj Amin al-Husseini, who had been appointed Grand Mufti of Jerusalem by the British and was the leading Arab in Palestine during the British Mandate, fled to Germany. He was installed as Prime Minister-in-exile of a pro-Nazi, Arab government and given $10,000 per month to fund Islamic Nazi activities in the Arab world. The Arab-Islamic community in Germany hailed him as "The Führer of the Arabic world."
Once in Germany, he presented Hitler with 15 drafts of declarations that he wanted the Axis to adopt. These declarations sought Nazi support for the wiping out of Jews in Palestine by Palestinian Arabs. When Hitler and al-Husseini met in November of 1941, Hitler refused to issue an official proclamation in support of the Palestinians but gave the Mufti his word that Germany shared the Palestinian desire of wiping out the Jews from the Middle East and promised that when Germany conquered the Caucasus they would wipe out Palestinian Jewry.
In exchange, the Mufti was very active during World War II in fighting for the Nazi cause.
- He issued radio propaganda on behalf of Nazi Germany - After the Allied victory at El Alamein, Egypt, Husseini responded by broadcasting in Arabic "Arise, O sons of Arabia! Fight for your sacred rights. Slaughter Jews wherever you find them. Their spilled blood pleases Allah, our history and religion. That will save our honor." Throughout the war Husseini made similar broadcasts regularly in support of the Nazis.
- Espionage for the Nazi cause in Muslim regions of Europe and the Middle East.
- Assisting the death camps. In the later periods of the war, Husseini was deeply involved with the upper echelons of Nazi power. Thus, when the Red Cross offered to mediate with Eichmann in a trade prisoner-of-war exchange involving the freeing of German citizens in exchange for 5,000 Jewish children being sent from Poland to the Theresienstadt death camp, Husseini directly intervened with Himmler. The exchange was cancelled. At the Nuremberg Trials, Adolf Eichmann's deputy Dieter Wisliceny (subsequently executed as a war criminal), testified that "The Mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and had been a collaborator and adviser 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, accompanied by Eichmann, he had visited incognito the gas chamber of Auschwitz."
- The formation of Muslim Waffen SS and Wehrmacht units in Bosnia-Hercegovina, North Africa, and Nazi-occupied areas of the Soviet Union.
In his memoirs, Husseini wrote as leader of the Arabs in Palestine: "Our fundamental condition for cooperating with Germany was a free hand to eradicate every last Jew from Palestine and the Arab world. I asked Hitler for an explicit undertaking to allow us to solve the Jewish problem in a manner befitting our national and racial aspirations and according to the scientific methods innovated by Germany in the handling of its Jews. The answer I got was: 'The Jews are yours.'"