Iqbal, you didn't ask me, but I thought I'd chip in my two cents. Haj Amin al Husseini was appointed Mufti in 1922, (not 1921), by Sir Herbert Samuel, Britain's High Commissioner in Palestine (and a Jew, go figure; he was persuaded by anti-Zionists that the appointment might convert Husseini to responsibility).
Before that, Husseini had been instrumental in inciting the riots of 1920, which killed 12 people, 6 Jews and 6 Arabs, the first blood spilled in the conflict.
From Collins & Lapierre, O Jerusalem!, 1972 Simon & Schuster, NY, pp 56:
For a while, it appeared that the British decision had been a wise one. Haj Amin was silent. He had better things to do that harass his foes. He labored patiently to build his power base. He secured his election to the post of president of the Sumpreme Moslem Council, capturing with it unfettered control over all Moslem religious funds in Palestine. He took over the courts, the mosques, the schools, the cemeteries, so that soon no Moslem in Plaestine could be born or die without being beholden to Haj Amin. No shiekh, no teacher, no official however petty, received an appointment in Haj Amin's domain without first establishing his total personal loyalty to the Mufti. Scornful and suspicious of the country's educated classes, he built his following in the souks and villages, upon the solid rock of ignorance, binding his followers to him with the promise of alms and arms.
So, does this remind you of anyone else's style that you know? -g-
The riots of 1929 you know of; Haj Amin's imams spread the rumor that the Jews were about to destroy the Dome of the Rock (the actual 'provocation' was, they had set up a portable screen by the Wailing Wall to separate men and women). That riot killed about 100 Jews and the British deported the survivors of Hebron to Jerusalem.
p 57-58:
In 1935, some of his followers started small-scale guerilla activities to protest the rising tide of Jewish immigration from Nazi Germany. The people, Haj Amin decided were ready to die...His bold undertaking began with a six-month general strike. When that failed to budge the British, the strike became an armed uprising. Aimed at first at the British and the Jews, the Mufti's rebellion soon turned from its original targets to his fellow Arabs. Those offered a chance to die were now the Mufti's enemies from the Husseini's rival clans, and finally anyone whose social situation or skills aroused Haj Amin's suspicions. Landowners, schoolteachers, government officials, clerks, at times anyone accused of reading and writing English too well, all were gunned down. Men began to hire the Mufti's gunmen to exterminate personal enemies. In the towns, the murders usually took place at the open-air market, early in the morning, when the men, following Arab tradition, did the shopping...In the country, they took place at night, a gang bursting into a man's house and killing him in his bed.
Over two thousand people died that vicious intramural bloodletting. While the Jews of Palestine were developing the young leaders and the social institutions that would be their greatest resource, Haj Amin Husseini methodically deprived the Arabs of theirs. Throttling progress and any drift to rational thought with his angry fanaticism, cowing with the guns of his ignorant villagers the educated elite, he reduced a generation of Arab leadership to fear and silence.
Again, remind you of anyone? Calling your opponent a "traitor" or "collaborator" is now an established Palestinian tradition. Half of the 2000 Palestinians who died in the first intifada were shot by other Palestinians. I haven't heard exact figures for the current intifada but I think it's about 200 or more.
The Mufti was an ardent Nazi, and didn't just visit Hitler after the British finally exiled him. Having tried and failed to overthrow the pro-British government in Baghdad, with Axis help, he fled to Tehran and from there to Berlin (p58), where he spent the war years helping the cause, raising Bosnian Muslims troops for Germany ( cf. psych.upenn.edu ), among other things. He should have been tried at Nuremburg, but the French, who were mad at the British for evicting them from Syria, let him go. |
