San Marcos — Recently, the German magazine “Der Spiegel” reported that information about Iran’s nuclear weapons development program was contained on a laptop computer obtained by Germany’s foreign intelligence agency which was passed to American officials and then the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. The officials that read the dossier believe Iran is “serious” about developing a bomb. Experts estimate Iran could produce a primitive, truck sized version of the bomb this year and possibly produce a smaller warhead sized bomb in just two years.

The disconcerting aspect of this news is that Iranian President Ahmadinejad, a Holocaust denier, has declared that Iran will “wipe Israel off the map.” In fact, they have said that it is a religious obligation to develop and use weapons of mass destruction to do so.  Hezbollah, Iran’s surrogate in Lebanon, has made it very clear that its target is not Israelis, but Jews throughout the world. Hassan Nasrallah said: “If they (Jews) all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.”

The Egyptian imam, Muhammad Hussein Ya’qoub, summed up the theological argument for Islamic anti-Semitism in a January 2009 televised sermon thusly:

“If the Jews left Palestine to us, would we start loving them? Of course not. We will never love them; absolutely not. The Jews are infidels, not because I say so, and not because they are killing Muslims, but because Allah said: ‘The Jews say that Uzair (the biblical Ezra) is the son of Allah, and the Christians say that Christ is the son of Allah.’ These are the words from their mouths. They imitate the sayings of the disbelievers before. May Allah fight them. How deluded they are (sura 9:30) It is Allah who said that they are infidels. 

Hassan Nasrallah’s statement along with the theological argument of Muhammad Husein Ya’qoub’s makes it crystal clear that the Israel/Palestinian problem is not Israel occupying so called, Islamic territory.

In his speech at Columbia University, Ahmadinejad repeats two myths about the Holocaust. The first was that the Holocaust did not occur. The second was his statement that the Palestinian people and their leadership had absolutely nothing to do with the Holocaust. The conclusion that is supposed to follow from this “fact” is that the establishment of Israel in the wake of the Nazi genocide of the Jewish people was unfair to the Palestinians. This is the way Ahmadinejad put it in his Columbia speech:

“Given this historical event the Holocaust, if it is a reality, we need to question whether the Palestinian people should be paying for it…the Palestinian people didn’t commit any crime. They had no role to play in World War II.”

Ahmadinejad’s statement is a blatant lie. The Palestinian leadership, supported by the Palestinian masses, played a significant role in Hitler’s Holocaust. The Palestinian leader at the time was Hajj Amin Al-Husseini, the Grand Mufit of Jerusalem, as Professor Edward Said has acknowledged:

Husseini was “Palestine’s national leader” and it was in that capacity that he made his notorious alliance with Hitler and played an active role in promoting the Holocaust. Here is a small segment of the story.

Shortly after Hitler came to power, the Grand Mufti decided to emulate him. He informed the German consul in Jerusalem that “the Muslims inside and outside Palestine welcome the new German regime and hope for the extension of the fascist anti-democratic, governmental system to other countries.” In an effort to bring it to his own country, Husseini organized the “Nazi Scouts,” based on the “Hitler Youth.” The swastika became a welcome symbol among many Palestinians.

The Palestinians and their Arab allies were not neutral concerning the fate of European Jewry. Haj Amin al-Husseini, spent the war years in Berlin with Hitler, serving as a consultant on the Jewish question. He was taken on a tour of Auschwitz by Himmler and expressed support for the mass murder of European Jews. He also sought to “solve the problems of the Jewish element in Palestine and other Arab countries” by employing “the same method” being used “in the Axis countries.” He would not be satisfied with the Jewish residents of Palestine, many of whom were descendants of Sephardic Jews who had lived there for hundreds, even thousands, of years, remaining as a minority in a Muslim state. Like Hitler, he wanted to be rid of “every last Jew.” As Husseini wrote in his memoirs:

“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.”

Husseini also helped to inspire a pro-Nazi coup in Iraq and helped to organize thousands of Muslims in the Balkans into military units known as Handselar divisions which carried out atrocities against Yugoslav Jews, Serbs and Gypsies.

The Mufti was apparently planning to return to Palestine in the event of a German victory and to construct a death camp, modeled after Auschwitz, near Nablus. Husseini incited his pro-Nazi followers with the words “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.” In 1944, a German-Arab commando unit, under Husseini’s command, parachuted into Palestine and poisoned Tel Aviv’s wells.

It is fair to conclude that the official leader of the Muslims in Palestine, Haj Amin al-Husseini, was a full fledged Nazi war criminal and was declared as such at Nuremberg. He was also sought by Yugoslavia as a war criminal after the war but he escaped to Egypt where he was given asylum and helped to organize many former Nazis and Nazi sympathizers against Israel.

Knox Pitzer of San Marcos is a published author of numerous technical articles and papers including both national and international publications.