The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem-- A role in the Holocaust?

[uberjude]

AJFFM, agree with most of what you say, and didn't mean to imply that clan loyalties were anything other than local. I would say, however, regarding the Mufti, that he had parleyed his position to become a larger figure in the Palestinian Arab consciousness; at the very least, he involved himself in larger Palestinian Arab nationalist issues. Though generally Pan-Arabist in the pre-war period, it nonetheless gave him a higher profile.

I would also say that the British didn't give him the Mufti position to reward his loyalty, but to coopt him after the anti-Jewish violence he'd led in the previous year.

Umachine, you are speaking in broken thoughts and riddles. If you have some sort of narrative to relate, please do so, but right now there is no form or substance to what you're saying. I'm not saying you're not correct (or at the very least, not reporting something you heard, whether it's true or not), but you are not actually providing any substance to what you're saying. Consider that out of nowhere you start talking about an Arab police officer and IG Farben canisters. Where? When? Where is this information from? Where did these canisters come from (and of course, Zyklon B was also a delousing agent which was widely used by the German military). So again, you provide no substance or even details. So I'd ask again, if you would like to make a compelling case, could you please structure your posts in some sort of narrative with some details?

[UMachine]

The Mufti was involved with the planning of the chemical assault uberjude.This is why the Israelis will not let go.

Assume for a moment the Palmach seized the contraband....where did it go?And could this be the reason everything is murky.

Remember also Italian diplomats providing cover for Husseini during his flight from Iraq...who ran the show,Mussolini or OVRA?

[michael mills]

The Mufti was involved with the planning of the chemical assault

What chemical assault?

[UMachine]

The chemical assault in June 41,stopped by ambush in Jerusalem.I am absolutely certain this event took place.

You know about how nasty it got later between the Jews and the Brits.

This is my suspicion as to why it is covered up.

[Gorque]

The chemical assault in June 41,stopped by ambush in Jerusalem.I am absolutely certain this event took place.

I take it you are referring to this?

Among the sabotage al-Husayni organized was an attempted chemical warfare assault on the Jewish community in Tel Aviv. Five parachutists were sent with a toxin to dump into the water system. The police caught the infiltrators in a cave near Jericho, and according to Jericho district police commander Fayiz Bey Idrissi, "The laboratory report stated that each container held enough poison to kill 25,000 people, and there were at least ten containers."

Source: http://www.mideastweb.org/iraqaxiscoup.htm

Are there any documents etc. that can support this?

[UMachine]

There are no documents.OVRA would not admit to this.Never any mention of where this poison went.....

[Gorque]

A dubious source?

All the details here about chemical attacks on Tel Aviv's water supply seem to track back to Bar-Zohar and Haber's The Quest for the Red Prince. Our citation is to Benyamin Korn at the David Wyman institute, who just tells us that "The details of their mission were first revealed in the 1983 book", then explains what Red Prince says........

Source:http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/s ... clnk&gl=us

[UMachine]

The biographer of Ben Gurion,

[little grey rabbit]

There are no documents.OVRA would not admit to this.Never any mention of where this poison went.....

Generally events the involve the capture of agents with poison tend to leave a paper trail

For example the use of typhoid agents by the Israelis after WW2 certainly did:

The following cable was sent from the commander of the Egyptian Forces in Palestine to General Headquarters in Cairo:

"15.20 hrs, 24 May [1948] Our Intelligence forces captured two Jews, David Horeen and David Mizrahi, loitering around army positions. They were interrogated and confessed they had been sent by Officer Moshe to poison the army water supply. They carried with them water bottles divided in the middle. The top part has potable water and the bottom part has a liquid contaminated with typhoid and dysentery, equipped with a rear opening from which the liquid can be released. They confessed they were members of a 20-strong team sent from Rehovot for the same purpose. Both have written their confession in Hebrew and signed it. We have taken the necessary medical precautions."

http://www.marxist.com/israel-biologica ... ns1948.htm

In 1941 Tel Aviv and Jerusalem were under British military control, there is no way they would not document such an occurrence and report it back to London. It seems to me delivery of sufficient quantities of [???] chemical by parachute would be problematic also

[little grey rabbit]

In his book Islam and Nazi Germany's War Motadel wrote on page 42, " When al-Husayni asked Hitler for a written guarantee of Arab, and especially Palestinian, independence, the dictator evaded the issue...

Strange recostruction from Motadel as al-Husayni already had such a letter: see document no. 293:
https://archive.org/stream/DocumentsOnG ... 9/mode/2up

This letter was written in April 41 without any explicit commitments especially when we know that at the time Germany already controlled one Arab country and the situation of their Arab citizens (actually they were not even citizens in their own country) was just about as bad as it was before German presence.

The November meeting, where the supposed inspiration for the Holocaust came, is the one under question and again the results were quite frank. No real commitment.

AJFFM, you seem to be confusing two issues. The "no real commitment" was in response to a public statement in regards to the Mufti's political aspirations for the Arab lands, not about the "Jewish question". Hitler's grounds for not making a public statement was
1. it would upset his relations with Vichy France if he made a political settlement regarding Syria
2. He felt it was pointless to make a public commitment regarding Palestine until he was poised to enter the country.

Whether Hitler would double cross the Mufti on the issue of Palestine (probably - his position up till then was that a guarantee to British imperial interests were worth peace with Britain) is a separate issue as to what the mutual understanding Hitler and the Mufti had in regard to the Jews in Palestine, when and if they should come into their control.

In my view, this

The Fuhrer replied that Germany's fundamental attitude on these questions, as the Mufti himself had already stated, was clear. Germany stood for uncompromising war against the Jews. That naturally included active opposition to the Jewish national home in Palestine, which was nothing other than a center, in the form of a state, for the exercise of destructive influence by Jewish interests. Germany was also aware that the assertion that the Jews were carrying out the functions of economic pioneers in Palestine was a lie. The work there was done only by the Arabs, not by the Jews. Germany was resolved, step by step, to ask one European nation after the other to solve its Jewish problem, and at the proper time to direct a similar appeal to non-European nations as well.

looks euphemistic. It is not certain at this point what Hitler understood by "solve its Jewish problem", it isn't clear what he thought the Mufti understood by it, and its unclear what the Mufti understood by it.
If there was still a blueprint under consideration for a resettlement zone in the USSR, why was Hitler not more explicit? If the Mufti did not know what "solve its Jewish problem" meant, why did he not ask for clarification? What seems clear is whatever was meant, Hitler was more than happy to extend it to Palestine's Jews and the Mufti was more than happy to accept.

Using the same document collection its worth comparing what was being said to other foreign dignitaries at the time.
This is Ribbontrop to the Bulgarian Foreign Minister Popov on 27 November 1941

M. Popov finally brought up the difficulties which the Bulgarian
Government encountered in carrying out the laws directed against the
Jews. Quite a number of the Jews living in Bulgaria were not citi-
zens of Bulgaria but of Hungary, Rumania, Spain, and other coun-
tries. These countries, however, claimed the same rights for their
Jewish citizens as for their other citizens, and did not tolerate their
receiving the special treatment provided for in the Jewish legislation.
This was after all a question that had to be settled jointly among
the European countries.
The Reich Foreign Minister replied that he found this question
which M. Popov had brought up to be not without interest. Even at
this time, he could tell him one thing : at the end of the war all Jews
would have to leave Europe. This was an irrevocable decision of the
Fuehrer's, and was also the only way to master this question, because it
could only be solved on a global basis and because individual measures
were of little use. Incidentally, one should not attach too much im-
portance to the protests regarding Jews who were alien nationals. At
any rate we no longer paid attention to such protests from American
quarters. He — the Reich Foreign Minister — would have the problem
brought up by M. Popov examined in the Foreign Ministry.

Leaving aside what Ribbontrop thought the policy was going to be, in the absence of other evidence I would assume Popov merely thought some kind emigration/resettlement program was on the cards at this point.

This is document 566 on 8 December

Minister Benzler, who is currently in Berlin, communicated the
following by telephone
In the plan for the further treatment of the matter of the Serbian
Jews, a change had occurred since the conference in Belgrade,
that the Jews now would not be sent to a Serbian island, but rather
to the Zemun camp. The island previously under consideration is
under water. The Croats had agreed to the Jews' being sent to Zemun
as a temporary camp.
Minister Benzler requested on that account that the Jews should
be taken away to the east at the earliest. I replied that this was
completely out of the question before next spring because the deporta-
tion of the Jews from Germany had priority. Even next spring
such a transfer would still be doubtful.
Herewith submitted to Under State Secretary Luther with the
request that the contents be noted.
RADEMACHER

Again, officials at the periphery - in the absence of other evidence - seem to be assuming deportation means deportation.

Document 527. A circular in the Foreign Ministry regarding the appointment of Alfred Rosenberg as Minister for the Occupied East is interesting as may suggest a resettlement program was still under consideration, but there was a fear of Allied propaganda on the subject. Or at least that is a possible interpretation

Subject : Germany and the occupied eastern territories.
The attempt is being made in various interested quarters to induce
German authorities to make statements concerning the war aims and
the constructive political intentions which Germany is planning to
realize in the eastern area liberated or still to be liberated from Bol-
shevism. The establishment of civil administrations in the occupied
eastern area and the announcement of the appointment of Minister
Rosenberg •will probably give a new impetus in this direction. Ques-
tions of this sort often derive from motives for which Germany has
understanding, particularly when members of the nations oppressed
by the Soviet regime up to now wish to learn in what manner their
homeland is to participate in the new order which is developing.
However, these elements which sympathize with the German struggle
for liberation must be told that we also have to reckon with other
undesirable and hostile trends which are often behind the wide-spread
curiosity about the German plans for the eastern area. "We have no
interest in facilitating the work of enemy propaganda, which so far
has been groping in the dark. Concrete statements about the German
political aims would only serve the enemy in his attempt to discredit
and disrupt precisely the form of the work of reconstruction which
is planned in the east by a corresponding campaign operating with
insinuations and distortions.

[/quote]

[UMachine]

There are no documents.OVRA would not admit to this.Never any mention of where this poison went.....

Generally events the involve the capture of agents with poison tend to leave a paper trail

For example the use of typhoid agents by the Israelis after WW2 certainly did:

The following cable was sent from the commander of the Egyptian Forces in Palestine to General Headquarters in Cairo:

"15.20 hrs, 24 May [1948] Our Intelligence forces captured two Jews, David Horeen and David Mizrahi, loitering around army positions. They were interrogated and confessed they had been sent by Officer Moshe to poison the army water supply. They carried with them water bottles divided in the middle. The top part has potable water and the bottom part has a liquid contaminated with typhoid and dysentery, equipped with a rear opening from which the liquid can be released. They confessed they were members of a 20-strong team sent from Rehovot for the same purpose. Both have written their confession in Hebrew and signed it. We have taken the necessary medical precautions."

http://www.marxist.com/israel-biologica ... ns1948.htm

In 1941 Tel Aviv and Jerusalem were under British military control, there is no way they would not document such an occurrence and report it back to London. It seems to me delivery of sufficient quantities of [???] chemical by parachute would be problematic also

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The captured man did not recognize any uniforms...this told directly to me.I said I believed they were irregulars...Palmach...or some other group.The man did not know how their mission was compromised.

These irregulars may have taken possesion of the chemicals and spirited them away.They recognized the unique power of these chemicals and decided to stash them away.

IIRC,when this forum started up some members were questioning Lupo about this event,Italians were mentioned at that time.

I would think it highly doubtful that Italians would be the source of these stories,who would admit involvement?

I am quite wary of Arab sources concerning the 1948 time frame.

Can any member confirm if the forged passport Husseini used to depart Iraq was discovered soon after,and whether any protest was filed?

[uberjude]

Umachine, could you please provide us with at least some narrative framework--what precisely are you talking about, when, what, who, etc. Right now we have something involving some Italian paratroopers, some reference to an Arab police officer named "adrissi" (I assume it's "Idrissi"), but if it's a reference to the events of 1944, that seems to have been with German paratroopers.

So please, please please, rather than respond with another broken thought, could you please just spell out in some narrative detail what precisely you are saying occurred. Thank you.

[uberjude]

Rabbit, if your point is that militaries tend to document cases of their enemy planning chemical or biological warfare, you are absolutely correct. If your point is that Israel was actually doing so in May, 1948, I'd say that an account from the Egyptian military of something that two Israeli POWs allegedly confessed to and for which there is no other evidence isn't terribly compelling. I wouldn't say that Israel wouldn't do such thing (and I wouldn't be surprised if they did), I would say that, as with the various allegations made about the Mufti, I'd want a little more than the assorted rumors and concoctions swirling around assorted websites on the subject.

But your first point, as noted, is valid--were the Palmach (or the British, for that matter) to have some evidence of biological warfare on the part of their enemies, chances are they would have done a better job of publicizing it at some point, which is why I'd love Umachine to provide some narrative details.

[AJFFM]

AJFFM, you seem to be confusing two issues. The "no real commitment" was in response to a public statement in regards to the Mufti's political aspirations for the Arab lands, not about the "Jewish question". Hitler's grounds for not making a public statement was
1. it would upset his relations with Vichy France if he made a political settlement regarding Syria
2. He felt it was pointless to make a public commitment regarding Palestine until he was poised to enter the country.

And this is what I meant although I should have written in in a clearer way. Hitler did not commit to the Mufti on anything especially the independence of Palestine.

[UMachine]

Everybody forget the 1944 concoction with five paras,not enough men to accomplish anything.Simply nonsense,IIRC,the NATIONAL ARCHIVES no less released this in 2000 I believe.Which is why I believe thr real story will never be admitted to by those involved.
Italy
Israel
Britain
Germany

OVRA and the Mufti planned and carried out the attempt
Jewish fighters took the chemicals from the Italian paras
Britain I suspect was made aware of these chemicals during the nasty years(1946 or 1947 ?)
Germany's I.G.Farben supplied these chemicals on the sly to OVRA