Sunday, April 03, 2016

Oh How They Pervert History


From a Haaretz puff piec on Menachem Klein:-

In 1927, nine years before he spearheaded Palestinian nationalism in the Arab Revolt,

Er, wait.  Before 1936 he didn't "spearhead" anything?

Didn't Haj Amin -El-Husseini, the above "he", get sentenced to 10 years imprisionment (from which he escaped across the Jordan) by the British for insitigating a violent pogrom on  Jerusalem's Jews in 1920?

Of course, Haaretz's versions of history are to be considered suspect.  Here is another report on the Mufti from last October:-

Born in Jerusalem near the turn of the 20th century, Husseini came from a prominent Palestinian family. In 1921, Palestine’s British rulers installed him as the grand mufti of Jerusalem, a religious leadership position.

It also skipped that little incident of Jew-killing.

Here's one summary of pre-1936:

In 1918, al-Husayni became president of the newly organized Arab Club (al-Nadi al-'Arabi), which advocated Arab unity, a union of Palestine and Syria, and an end to Jewish immigration into Palestine. He organized demonstrations in the winter of 1920 to denounce the 1917 Balfour Declaration (announcing British intention to permit the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine), to demand independence for Palestine, and to promote union with Syria. On April 4, 1920, the day of the al-Nabi Musa festival, Arab civilians initiated violent riots in the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem after listening to a number of speeches, including one given by al-Husayni, in which he called for the incorporation of Palestine into Syria. Four days of rioting and plunder left five Jews and four Arabs dead and 211 Jews and 33 Arabs wounded. Fearing arrest, al-Husayni fled to Syria. In late April, a British military tribunal convicted him in absentia for incitement to revolt and sentenced him to 10 years imprisonment. Al-Husayni was pardoned and returned to Jerusalem in autumn 1920...During the early 1930s, Al-Husayni developed and used his international renown and prestige to advocate more autonomy for Arab Palestine and more unity among the Arab states, and to vigorously oppose Jewish immigration into Palestine. Among the many groups in the Middle East with which al-Husayni established contact, was the Society of Muslim Brothers (Muslim Brotherhood), a fundamentalist Pan-Islamic group founded in Egypt. In August 1935, the Society dispatched two of its leaders on an official mission to Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon. In Palestine, they met with al-Husayni, who welcomed their support, and later provided them with an introduction to the leader of the Syrian-based Islamic Guidance Association...As Mufti of Jerusalem, al-Husayni sought assistance from FascistItaly and Nazi Germany beginning in 1933. Nazi Germany's anti-Jewish radicalism and hostility to the Western democracies (Britain and France) led the Mufti to perceive Germany to be a natural ally of Arab causes in Palestine. Al-Husayni approached German Foreign Office officials as early as 1933. 

What's really galling is that the reporter writes about Klein's new book that certain facts

are absent from both the Jewish and Palestinian national narratives,


By the way, another historical error is in here:

to the day the mufti left Jerusalem – in 1936, for fear he would be arrested by the British in connection with the ongoing revolt –

In truth, on July 17, 1937, al-Huseini fled to the sanctuary of the Dome of the Rock to avoid arrest by the British authorities and on the night of October 13-14, 1937, he used a rope to slide over the Haram's wall and from there to Jaffa and from there to Lebanon.  One account has him disguised as a Bedouin and another as a woman.

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