Not Just The Mufti - the real extension of the Palestinian-Nazi collaboration
When did the Palestinian Nazi connection really begin?
Was it limited only to the famous encounter between the Mufti and Hitler?
And how much did this connection affect Palestinian nationalism in the decades that followed?
First mutual understanding 1933–1936
On March 31, 1933, two months after Hitler came to power, Haj Amin al-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, called on Heinrich Wolff, head of the German Consulate in Jerusalem. In his report to the Auswartiges Amt (Foreign Ministry), Wolff wrote that Husseini said:
“Muslims inside and outside Palestine welcome the new regime in Germany and hope for the spread of fascist, antidemocratic state leadership to other countries.” In his view, “current Jewish influence on economy and politics” was “damaging everywhere and needed to be fought.”
In the hope of doing economic damage to the Jews, Husseini opined that “Muslims hope for a boycott of the Jews in Germany because it would then be adopted with enthusiasm in the whole of the Muslim world.” Further, he was willing to spread the boycott message among Muslims travelling through Palestine and to “all Muslims.” He also looked forward to trading with “non-Jewish merchants” dealing in German products [1]
In Nov 1933, it was reported, a direct contact between the German Nazis and the Palestinian Arabs, Arab Riot Leaders, revealed by Nazis
Between 1932 and 1935, political parties were formed among men of education, such as mayors, teachers, businessmen and lawyers.
In March 1935 the Husseinis also formed a party, called the Palestinian Arab Party. It was, as its president Jamal Husseini freely boasted, inspired by German Nazism. It included the ‘Al-Futuwwa’ (‘The youth ’), modelled on the Hitler Youth, for a while actually called the ‘Nazi Scouts’. The Mufti was on friendly terms with the German consul in Jerusalem and told him that the Muslims of the world, for whom he apparently felt he was spokesman, hoped for the spread of fascism to other countries and would assist a worldwide anti-Jewish boycott.[2]
When Hitler proclaimed the Nuremberg Race Laws in September 1935, a number of Palestinian Arabs sent telegrams congratulating him:
“Delegations from the Arab world participated in the Nuremberg marches of the Nazis, during the 1930s, and expressed their common disgust toward the Jews and their joint accusations of the Jews… Upon the publication of the racist Nuremberg Laws in 1935, Hitler received greetings from the entire Arab world, from Morocco to Palestine, where Nazi propaganda had taken root.” [3]
The shrill calls to take up extremist politics invoked a symbolism that glorified youth, violence, and death. By 1936 Al Difaa, the paper of the Istiqlal movement and the most widely read paper in the Arab community, proclaimed, in clearly fascist tones, that “youth must go out to the field of battle as soldiers of the Fatherland.” Others argued that the “Land is in need of a youth, healthy in body and soul like Nazi youth in Germany and the fascist youth in Italy which stands ready for the orders of its leaders and ready to sacrifice its life for the honor of its people and freedom of its fatherland.” …Nationalist rhetoric accompanied major efforts to build fascist-style youth organizations by recruiting young men to serve as the strike force of the nationalist movement. Throughout the 1930s the children of wealthy Palestinians returned home from European universities having witnessed the emergence of fascist paramilitary forces. Palestinian students educated in Germany returned to Palestine determined to found the Arab Nazi Party. The Husseinis used the Palestinian Arab Party to establish the al-Futuwwa youth corps, which was named after an association of Arab Nazi Scouts. By 1936 the Palestinian Arab Party was sponsoring the developments of storm troops patterned on the German model. These storm troops, all children and youth, were to be outfitted in black trousers and red shirts… The young recruits took the following oath: “Life — my right; independence — my aspiration; Arabism — my country, and there is no room in it for any but Arabs. In this I believe and Allah is my witness.” […]
The al-Futuwwa youth groups connected Palestinian youth to fascist youth movements elsewhere in the Middle East. While the Mufti was establishing youth groups in Palestine, al-Futuwwa groups were established in Iraq. [4]
The Great Arab Revolt, a Nazi proxy 1936–1939
Suspicion of Nazi involvement was already at the beginning, in 1936, with Germans arrested and German-made rifles at Arab rioters. Arabs were captured with smuggled Nazi Arms
German records show that the Nazis viewed the establishment of a Jewish state with great concern. A 1937 report from German General Consulate in Palestine said: “The formation of a Jewish state… is not in Germany’s interest because a (Jewish) Palestinian state would create additional national power bases for international Jewry such as for example the Vatican State for political Catholicism or Moscow for the Communists. Therefore, there is a German interest in strengthening the Arabs as a counter weight against such possible power growth of the Jews.”. [5]
Documented at the time and quoted in a May 22, 1939, session:
Already in 1935 — I am quoting the editor of the “Quarterly Review,” — 50 German agents were sent to Africa and the Near East. Their destinations, among orhers, were Haifa and Jaffa.
They were given instructions to carry on the most intensive propaganda efforts among the natives. In 1936 — I am quoting the “Daily Telegraph” — the Jerusalem police intercepted documents proving that the Arab raiders received £50,000 from Germany and £20,000 from Italy for the purpose of strengthening their resistance.
We know that British officers in Palestine talk freely of the German and Italian arms and money that the terrorists have received. We know that the land mines by which British soldiers have been murdered could not be made and could not be operated by the Arabs. We know that on one occasion the bloodhounds followed the trail from a land mine to a blacksmith’s shop in the German colony of Waldenheim. We know that Dr. Goebbels has established a propaganda school for Arabs in Berlin. [6]
A very alarming incident — a massacre of 19 Jews, including 9 women and 3 children — took place on 2 October 1938 in Tiberias.The following January, the Palestine Post reported that:
“Mr. Stuart Emeny who was in Palestine recently as a special correspondent of the News Chronicle…says there is evidence in Palestine which suggests active German intervention on the behalf of the Rebels, and a German, it is alleged, helped to organize the massacre of the 19 Jews in Tiberias at the beginning of October last…. Mr. Emeny recapitulates the details of the Tiberias incident, adding that a German ex-officer resident in Palestine is suspected to have had a hand in many Arab acts of sabotage on high-tension pylons…” [7]
A Joint Plan For Extermination 1939–1945
"Palestinians who fought against the Nazis” is a myth that is widely used to whitewash the historic support the Palestinian leadership and public of the Nazis.
In fact, it was the Jews who pushed the Arabs to enlist because of British discrimination, the Arabs did so mainly for economic reasons:
Gen. Archibald Wavell, commander of the British forces in the Middle East, opposed the formation of a Jewish regiment in the British army. According to historian Marcel Roubicek, the British High Commissioner for Palestine also feared that Jewish enlistment would inflame Arab anger. To solve that problem, he made it a condition that Jews wishing to join up find an equivalent number of Palestinian Arab volunteers to join up as well.
To accomplish this, the Jews of the Yishuv offered financial compensation to Palestinian Arabs to enlist. They ultimately succeeded in raising enough manpower from both communities to permit the formation of a Jewish regiment.
The opportunity for Palestinian Arabs to join the ranks of the British Army was thus a direct outcome of the Jewish desire to render its utmost assistance to Britain in every sphere of war activity, a point Abbasi ignores.
He is similarly fuzzy on Palestinian Arab motivation. He states, “Most of the [Palestinian Arab] volunteers were villagers and of the urban lower class, and…the economic motive played a central role in volunteering,” noting that these “motives…differed from [that of] their Jewish friends, who enlisted in the army mainly because of opposition to Nazi Germany and its racial policy toward their people, besides other motives such as the revival of a Jewish army, and the serious employment situation in the country at the beginning of the war.”
many of the Arabs who enlisted were not Palestinians, more than a third of them (3,000 out of 9,000) were Arabs from neighbouring countries who were brought in. By comparison, 136,000 Palestinian Jews volunteered, even though their population was smaller
“A total of 9,000 Arabs enlisted in the British Army here. Among them are many from across the Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, who came to the recruitment bureaus in Palestine. Many of them enlisted with the intention of acquiring weapons for themselves: indeed, by the end of the war only about half of the Arab soldiers remained, as the rest defected with their weapons from the army. Arab leaders who moved to Germany, led by Haj Amin al-Husseini, a former Mufti of Jerusalem, incited on German radio the Arabs to defect from the British army.
Amin al-Husseini actively assisted in the establishment of Arab and Muslim battalions in the German army. It was only after the Allied victory over Al-Alamein that it became clear to the Arab statesmen that their orientation on the Axis victory in the war had disappointed, and then they changed their position and declared their full support for the Allies.
Following this turning point, many Arab prisoners were released, who were imprisoned by the British, including organizers of riots in Palestine, and given permission to return to their homeland. Here they once again stood at the head of the Arab parties, even though they signed a letter of commitment not to be active in life …”
Major Lyall Wilkes of the House of Commons quoted the British officer who led the Arab Legion of Transjordan, General Glubb Pasha, as writing in 1944 that all the Arabs trained by the British deserted during World War II. Wilkes said the British recognized during the war that the Haganah was the only force the allies could rely on.
Opinion surveys conducted at the time showed widespread support for the Germans. In February 1941, 88% of the Arab Palestinians polled expressed support for Germany, while only 9% supported England
One top secret document revealed that in 1940 an agreement on Palestine was formulated. In it Germany and Italy recognize the right of the Arab countries to solve the question of the Jewish elements in Palestine and the other Arab countries in a manner that conforms to the national and ethnic interests of the Arabs, and to the solution of the Jewish question in the countries of Germany and Italy.
On August 6, 1940, Franz von Papen, German Ambassador in Turkey, cabled Berlin of his meeting with the Grand Mufti. The cable made known that the pro-Nazi Arab clique that included the present Saudi Arabian Secretary of State wished to cooperate with Hitler by organizing a revolt in Palestine.
Von Papen reported that an understanding was reached with Saudi Arabia on the removal of pro-British King Abdullah of Transjordan and the annexation of that territory to Palestine. The Grand Mufti wrote Hitler on June 21, 1940, that Arab Palestine which had been “fighting the democracies and international Jewry, is ready at any time to assume an active role.”
In Iraq, its rulers extended open aid to the Arabs of Israel [Palestine] by supporting the Germans.
In Jaffa, Nablus and Tulkarm there were many attending gatherings with Arab and Italian agents, who organized the young people to shout cheers: ‘Viva Italia! Viva Duce! And Heil Hitler!’
In a proclamation distributed, signed by Hitler, they called on their audience to fight the English.
In Acre, courses for instructors were organized in military cells. An Arab was apprehended by the Jordan Guard on May 19, 1940, with a letter and a considerable sum of money in his hand intended to act as the commander of the Arab Revolt in the Near East, who was required to begin terrorist acts. Hitler was called by the conspiratorial name — Abu Ali. In Baghdad, Arab leaders gathered and discussed the question of disturbances against the Jews of Israel [Palestine], according to the instructions of German agents. In return, Germany promised the Arabs, the deportation of the Jews … The Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who moved to Syria, demanded immediate terrorist attacks. Subhi Zivan and his brother Rostor Zivan from Tira were appointed to manage the Arab gang operations in the Haifa district. Abu Ali, head of the Arab al-Wahab tribe, located between Rosh Pina and Yesod HaMaala, was given the role of managing the fifth column in Israel [Palestine].
Said Shakid, one of the gang leaders, returned to Israel. In a proclamation distributed in Ramallah he warned the British that he would fight alongside Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini (he was caught after a shootout in Beitunia). Most of the gang members who fled to Iraq, after the events of 1936–1939, returned to Syria to prepare for riots in Israel. [8]
News report of June 1, 1941: Nazis run guns to the Arabs in Palestine. In addition, Nazi war planes taking off from Iraq dropped leaflets inciting the Arabs for a ‘holy war’ against the British and the Jews. The intensive anti-Jewish propaganda campaign conducted by the Nazis is becoming increasingly effective among certain sections of the Arab population.
CIA Report Aug 1942:
A majority of the Palestinian Arabs was fiercely “anti-Jewish” and saw in the approach of Rommel an ideal opportunity to murder all Jews their seize their property.
Arab Palestinians from the mufti’s camp, who were working actively for the Germans included: Akram Zuaiter, Jamal Hussein, Fawzi al-Qawuqji, Mu’in al-Madi, Amin Tamimi, ‘Abd al-Qader al-Husseini. [9]
Operation Atlas is a small example of cases in which Palestinian Arabs collaborated with the Nazis in the extermination of Jews. After the establishment of the “Jewish Brigade”, as part of the British army, the Mufti of Jerusalem announced the establishment of an “Arab Brigade” that would fight alongside Italy and Germany. In early 1944, Haj Amin al-Husseini formed a group of Palestinian paratroopers trained by the Germans in the Netherlands. Arab Germans whose goal was to poison the water wells of Tel Aviv and bring about the elimination of 250,000 Jewish residents
The Mufti succeeded in persuading the Germans to train Arabs. According to Dr. Gruba, the Arab forces will have about 400 Palestinian POWs who served in the British army in Greece. From the rest of the prisoners. These Arabs eventually joined Muslim SS units set up by the Mufti.
One of the Nashashibi family, who studied medicine in Vienna, served as a doctor in death camps. Mostly in Mauthausen and no doubt murdered hundreds of people. Another Arab young man from Jaffa, who also studied medicine in Austria, was engaged in “medical experiments” in a labor camp for Jewish women in Silesia.
Glorification After Defeat 1946–1947
An Intelligence 1946 report:
Arab leaders who had fled the country during the war and cooperated with Hitler, began to return to Palestine with the full consent of the British authorities.
Among those who returned were Nimr el-Hattab, Amin el-Khouri, Subhi el-Hadra, and Jamal el-Husseini. Only the Mufti himself, Haj Amin el-Husseini, was not granted an entry visa, since even the British realized that that it would be carrying the policy of appeasement to impossible lengths. It was nevertheless made possible for him to “escape” from confinement, cross the country under an assumed name, and reach Egypt, where he was taken under the protection of King Farouk. Not many days passed before the Mufti, chief inciter of the anti-Jewish riots and close friend and collaborator of Hitler, began to make his influence felt throughout the country. News reaching the intelligence section said:
“The Mufti’s agents are appearing in Arab villages, making speeches, and inciting to violence.” — “Cash from the Mufti’s treasury in Egypt is coming in for the purchase of arms for the coming ‘Holy War.’” — “The Mufti is becoming almost legendary among the Arabs. Wonderful stories are being told of his meetings with Hitler and Mussolini.” — “Arabs arriving from neighboring countries tell of widespread volunteering to the Syrian army in preparation for the day when it will invade Palestine and drive out the Jews.”
Jamal Husseini and Ahmad Shukeiri, declare at the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry that the Mufti is Arabs’ “only” leader, and there’s no substitute. Both, Jamal Husseini and Ahmad Shukeiri had reiterated Goebbels ideology and had justified the Holocaust. This was repeated by Arab representative in UN in 1947, stating: “the Mufti is the irrefutable leader of the Holy Land Arabs.”
Arabs’ search for ex-Nazi officers to train units to fight the Jews, by the end of 1946, beginning of 1947, Nazi officers were “liberated” and have been smuggled into Palestine, where they were employed as instructors by “Futuwa” and “Nejada.”
Attempt to complete the final solution, The 1948 war
As the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine was declared on 29 November 1947, Arab Higher Committee demanded from the British that they refrain from intervening in the violence which Arab gangs unleashed with 5 hours of the Partition plan. In its leaflet it wrote: “The Arabs have taken the final solution to the Jewish problem”
Hundreds of members of the 13th and 23rd SS Divisions volunteered to fight in the 1948–1949 Arab–Israeli War. The Syrian government made a request for the transfer of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim refugees to Syria, many for recruitment into the Syrian Armed Forces. Iraq sent representatives to Europe and invited 2,500 Bosnian Muslims to settle there. Frantzman and Culibrk estimate that approximately 1,000 former Bosnian Muslim SS members fought in Palestine. Many of the volunteers served in the Arab Liberation Army’s Ajnaddin Battalion.
Similarly, continuity with the Nazis existed on an individual level.
Hasan Salama-
One of the October “Operation Atlas” 1944 parachutists, served as a major in the Wehrmacht at the time. During the 1947/48 war, he was a commander in the Mufti’s ‘Holy War Army’ (al-jihad al-muqaddas) where he chose another German Wehrmacht officer as his adviser.
Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni-
The jihad army’s most famous commander and its leader in Jerusalem,
Received military training in Nazi Germany in 1936–1937, was one of the leaders of the pro-Nazi uprising in Iraq in 1941 [10]
Fawzi al-Qawuqji-
Served as the Arab League-sponsored Arab Liberation Army (ALA) field commander, had been in charge of broadcasting Nazi propaganda in the Arab world during Second World War. According to Der Spiegel, “important positions in Fawzi’s headquarters are occupied by members of the old German Wehrmacht… They are mainly former soldiers in Rommel’s Africa Corps, escapees from Egyptian POW camps or Muslim Yugoslavs and Albanians who Jerusalem’s ex-Mufti had previously recruited to a pro-German Mufti Brigade.” “No one,” the report continues, “is troubled by the fact that the German volunteers, as in the old days, have adopted ‘Die Fahne Hoch’ [the Horst Wessel Song] as their marching song.” [11]
Fawzi el Kutub-
“the engineer” was responsible for the attacks and explosions that killed dozens of Jews and the destruction of dozens of synagogues’ was a graduate of an SS commando course in Nazi Germany
By the beginning of 1948, Black International — an army of 30,000 veterans of fascist military forces. Some were in action already in attack against Jewish settlements, others are undergoing rapid special training in Syria.
The army is composed of former Nazi soldiers, remnants of Gen. Vlassov’s renegade Soviet battalion, remnants of Gen. Anders Polish army, as well as pro-Nazi Poles, Yugoslavs and Moslems whom the Mufti originally organized into a Moslem brigade to fight alongside the Germans. Furthermore, the bodies of pro-Nazi Poles have already been found among the attackers of our colonies whom we killed. What’s more, the Haifa commander of the so-called Arab revolt is a German.
Commenting, source said: “These Poles, Russians, Germans and Yugoslavs… are the Arabs fighting for national liberation,” he said bitterly. “Actually their cynical joy is unbounded at the double gift which has been handed them — the opportunity to butcher Jews, and get paid for it.”
By the Dec of 1947, it’s confirmed that various European guides, Nazi prisoners of war, former soldiers at Nazi Wehrmacht as well those in the ‘Afrika Korps’, and other foreigners are already participating in the training of the Arab gangs
Per a Jan 13, 1948 report, about 30 POW Nazis are participating in the battles of the Arab gangs, 15 of them as instructors in the Hebron area. Four Nazis command a gang of 200 Arabs in the Jerusalem area.
Three of the five Egyptian pilots who were shot down on May 22 in the Haifa area were neither Egyptians nor Arabs. They were believed to be Nazi Germans.
The real reason the exodus of the Arabs from Haifa in the 1948 war happened, Arab Higher Committee couldn’t abide the terms of surrender, which included laying down their arms and turning in all the Nazis (yes, Nazis) and other foreigners who had been helping them fight.
Continuation of the struggle 1948–1967
From a 1951 report: The ex-Mufti al-Husseini and Salim Idris سلیم ادریس — Secretary General of the Permanent Office of Palestine in Beirut are the link between the Nazi center in Cairo and the court of Farouk and the Arab League.
Nazi agents and former German generals sit in all the capitals of Arab countries working tightly with Fawzi Qauakji, who in Nov-1951 had visited Latin America and the Nazi “colonies” in those countries, and other Arab personalities, from former Hitler’s associate. German-Nazi advisers in the training of Arab armies. Hundreds of Nazis, SS men, formerly German generals and colonels, recruited by Kaukji and Nazi spy Miller in Germany and transferred via Rome to Damascus and Cairo. German pilots work as experts and instructors in Egypt.
In 1960, it was revealed by a German magazine:
Adolf Eichmann continued his war against Jews at the end of World War II with the help of zealous Arabs — writes the widely circulated West German weekly “Bunte Deutsche Illustrierte”.
The weekly illustrated publishes a message, given to his correspondent Bruno Arnold, in the Sinai desert, by “Sheikh Ahmad,” whose identity has not been disclosed. “Eichmann, who exterminated more Jews than all of us together, provided us with the weapons we are fighting against Israel. We swore to die and not leave Palestine in the hands of the Jews. We will kill them wherever they are,” the Sheikh said.
The weekly’s correspondent adds that after the Sinai War, Fedayeen operations against Israeli farmers in the Negev decreased, but “new assassinations, on a larger scale, are being prepared.” “These operations,” the reporter stresses, “are organized by former Nazis who found refuge in the Near East.”
The American Jewish World, 28 December 1956:
“Dr. Joachim Prinz , R. of Congregation Bnai Abraham in Newark, N. J., whose former Berlin synagogue was burned by the Nazis , charged Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser with collaborating with top Nazis in his terroristic program against Jews.
He said Gen. Otto Remer headed the Egyptian training program which created the fedayeen and the Algerian guerilla fighters.
He named Willy Beisner and Johan Van Leers, both Nazis, as Nasser collaborators.
Citing French intelligence sources, Dr. Prinz named the infamous Karl Eichmann as the man behind Egypt’s program of terror.”
Otto Skorzeny,was an Austrian-born German SS-Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel) in the Waffen-SS during World War II. Famous for the use by the Mossad to sabotage the Egyptian-German missile project, also trained Arab volunteers in commando tactics for possible use against British troops stationed in the Suez Canal zone. Several Palestinian refugees also received commando training, and Skorzeny planned their raids into Israel via the Gaza Strip in 1953–1954. One of these Palestinians was Yasser Arafat. [12]
The Ex-mufti brought Von Leers ‘Omar Amin’ to Egypt, He was one of the most important ideologues of the Third Reich, serving as a high-ranking propaganda ministry official. He later served in the Egyptian Information Department, as well as an advisor to Gamal Abdel Nasser. He published for Goebbels, in Peron’s Argentina and for Nasser’s Egypt. He converted to Islam, and changed his name to Omar Amin. He served as head of the Institute for the Study of Zionism, managing anti-Israeli propaganda.
Ahmad al-Shukeiri-
was a long time agitator and the first Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, serving in 1964–67.
Shukairy joined the Arab Higher Committee which was also headed by the ex Mufti. Shukairy got his start in politics in the early 1930s when he belonged to a group of fanatical extremists led by the ex-Mufti. This gang cooperated with the Communists and prior to the Hitler-Stalin Pact sought in every possible way to sabotage the Allied war effort against the Nazis in the Middle East. However, when Soviet Russia joined the Allies, Shukairy’s group split with the communists and went all out for Hitler.
In December 1962, representing Saudi Arabia, he told the Special Political Committee of the United Nations General Assembly that the Tacuara movement had been formed to combat Zionism and he hoped it would spread in Latin America and its principles adopted by the United Nations. The Tacuara was a neo-Nazi youth movement in Argentina, Following Eichmann’s execution in 1962, the Tacuara launched 30 antisemitic attacks. On June 21, 1962, they kidnapped a 19-year-old Jewish girl, Graciela Sirota, tortured her, and scarred her with Swastika signs.
The Next Generation 1967–1982
François Genoud was one of the founders of the Nazi party in Switzerland during the Hitler era; He travelled to Berlin frequently during the war “to see his friend the grand mufti,” and visited him afterward many times in Beirut, Genoud is notable for having been the executor of last will and testament of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, and for reportedly making a fortune from publishing Goebbels’ diaries which he held the posthumous rights for along with Hitler and Bormann’s works.
After the war, his close contact was Ibrahim Hafid’s man, Abdul Yousufi. Genaud was very active in Die Spinne (German for “The Spider”) helping Nazi war criminals escape justice. The “Arab Commercial Bank” — mostly of a dubious and illegal nature — was established by: François Genoud in partnership with Hans Reichenberg — former S.S. Officers — and with various factors in the Arab world. Genoud began to finance in Switzerland the activities of the “Friends of the Palestinians Organization” founded in Lausanne by neo-Nazi circles who saw helping the Palestinians as a way of expressing their anti-Jewish feelings. In the 1960s he began supplying arms for various Palestinian causes. His co-founded Lausanne-based New European Order organisation, met in Barcelona in April 1969, there Palestinian groups received financial support and Genoud placed them in contact with former Nazis who would assist their military training, as well as pledged support designated for the PLO.
Genoud was a close associate of George Habash and Jacques Vergès. In September 1969 he contributed finances for the legal expenses of three Palestinians from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) following their attack on an El Al flight in Zurich, present at trial. Including among the prisoners to be exchange for the Achille Lauro hostages was one of West Germany’s top neo Nazis [13]
George Habbash was also close with former Belgian Nazi collaborator Jean Thiriart. He gave money to Thiriart’s publication La Nation Européenne, which in return supported Habbash in this magazine. Pro-Arab and anti-Jewish themes were explicit in La Nation Européenne, which included ads for The International Jew, the infamous anti-Semitic screed by Henry Ford. La Nation Européenne also eulogized Roger Courdroy, a Belgian Waffen SS veteran who was killed fighting for the Palestinians in June 1968. Courdroy was a close collaborator with Thiriart.
German Wehrmacht officer in World War II, Otto Ernst Remer was in contact with Yasser Arafat, “I know Mr. Arafat quite well, natürlich,” he asserted. “I saw him many times. He invited me to eat at his headquarters. I knew all his people. They wanted many things from us.” For Remer, anyone who was an enemy of Israel was his friend, particularly when a profit could be turned. He claimed to have brokered several business deals between West German companies and the PLO
Among Arafat’s first instructors in guerrilla warfare was a former Nazi commando officer imported to Egypt by the mufti. Haj Amin himself encouraged Arafat to recruit adherents to his Fatah terror group during the late 1950s. Once Arafat became head of the PLO in 1968, he continued the mufti’s methods and approach. Mein Kampf was required reading in some Fatah training camps; Nazis were recruited for Fatah and for the PLO, including Erich Altern, a key figure in the Jewish affairs section of the Gestapo, and Willy Berner, an SS officer in Mauthausen death camp. Among the neo- Nazis on the PLO payroll were the German Otto Albrecht and two Belgians, Karl van der Put and the secretary of the fascist La Nation Européene, Jean Tireault. [14]
The West German neo-Nazi Karl von Kyna, who fought for Palestinians against Israel, fall in a commando raid on the Suez front in September 1967
Two years later, West German police arrested Udo Albrecht, founder and leader of the Freikorps Adolf Hitler, who was founded carrying an identification card linking him to El Fatah, the largest PLO faction, led by Yasser Arafat. Albrecht and twelve other neo-Nazi militants had fought alongside the Palestinians against Jordan’s King Hussein during the battle of Black September, 1970. Albrecht, who boasted of direct access to PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat, is believed to have used PLO facilities in Lebanon to train West German neo-Nazis. An alarming report was given over already in March 1970: Nazis and neo-Nazis aid “Front for the Liberation of Palestine” operations.
Per report in April 1969 Fatah terrorists conducted training camps in the Venezuelan mountains, where young people are training in urban guerrilla warfare. The terrorists are in contact with former Nazis living in Venezuela.
Neo-Nazi, Willi Pohl, aided Palestinian perpetrators of 1972 Munich massacre. In 1977 Fatah made a deal with the French Work (L’Oeuvre Francaise), a neo-Nazi group, to train its members in terrorist operations on behalf of Fatah.
https://www.haaretz.com/neo-nazi-aided-munich-massacre-report-says-1.5179784
In January, 1978, the general prosecutor of the West German Supreme Court at Karlsruhe uncovered further links between German neo-Nazis and the PLO after four members of the Adolf Hitler Free Corps were arrested for arms running from’certain Arab countries at the request of the PLO.
The most serious discovery in recent years of concerted PLO-neo Nazi activity has centred on the neo Nazi Military Sports Group of Karl Heinz Hoffman. Gundolf Keller, the student member of the MSG, who died after exploding a bomb at the Munich Beer Festival in September, 1980 was found to have undergone military training at a PLO camp in southern-Lebanon.
On December 19, 1980, Rabbi Shlomo Lewin was assassinated in West Germany, the killer was the neo-Nazi Hoffman’s member Uwe Behrendt, he and his friends received training and weapons in Lebanon by the the PLO
The connection between the Palestinian organizations and neo-Nazi underground continued until the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982.
Conclusions
As can be seen, The Palestinian-Nazi connection was not limited to a single meeting between the Mufti and Hitler, but was systemic for decades.
[1] Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World by Jeffrey Herf pg 16
[2] Jillian Becker,, “The PLO: the rise and fall of the Palestine Liberation Organization”, Volume 1984, Part 2. (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1984). p. 21
[3] Israeli, Raphael. The Death Camps of Croatia: Visions and Revisions, 1941–1945. N.p.: Taylor & Francis, 2017. p. 119
[4] David M. Rosen, “Armies of the young: child soldiers in war and terrorism,” (Rutgers University Press, 2005), p. 106
[5] Document on German Foreign Policy, 1918–1945: series D.
[6] Parliamentary Debates (Hansard).: House of Commons official report, Vol. 347. Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. H.M. Stationery Office, 1938. Contains the 4th session of the 28th Parliament through the session of the Parliament., pp. 2045–6
[7]Nazis in the Holy Land 1933–1948 by Heidemarie Wawrzyn p.92
[8] Avishay, Shaul. Propaganda in the Underground (Jerusalem: Reuven Mess, 2008), p. 132
[9] Cohen, Hillel. Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917–1948. Ukraine: University of California Press, 2008. 203
[10] “The Battle on the Kastel” by Danny Rubinstein pg 55.
[11] Der Spiegel, 13 March 1948, 11
[12] Infield, Glenn B. Skorzeny: Hitler’s Commando, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1981.
[13] Lee, Martin A. and Coogan, Kevin (May 1987) “Killers on the Right: Inside Europe’s Fascist Underground” Mother Jones. pp.45–52.
[14] Wistrich, Robert S.. A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad. United Kingdom: Random House Publishing Group, 2010
