To: William B. Kohn who wrote (24104 ) 4/9/2002 12:37:00 PM From: DrGrabow Respond to of 281500 it is a fact that Arafat's uncle was a major supporter of Hitler and pushed hitler towards a 'final solution' for jews. Let's not forget.....the enemy of my enemy is my friend motlc.wiesenthal.com Perceptions of the Nazis and the British. Stern propounded the idea that there was a difference between a "persecutor" and an "enemy." Persecutors, from Haman to Hitler, had sought to destroy the Jews throughout the ages; but an enemy is much more dangerous, because he occupies the Jewish homeland. This reasoning led Stern to see Britain as the principal enemy. Stern accepted Jabotinsky's view that there was a difference between Nazi antisemitism and Polish antisemitism, but he argued that since it had been demonstrated that a common language could be found with Polish antisemitism -- by winning its support for Jabotinsky's plan for the "evacuation" of Polish Jewry and its secret support for a war of liberation -- it followed that it might also be possible to reach an understanding with Nazi antisemitism. Contact with the Axis. At the end of 1940, Stern, with the backing of his Lehi command, sent an emissary by the name of Naphtali Lubenchik to Beirut, then under the control of Vichy France, to establish contact with the Axis representatives there and broach the idea of establishing a Jewish state within the framework of the "New Order." Such an idea had apparently been discussed regarding Italy earlier in 1940, its principal element being that a Jewish protectorate would be set up in Palestine to which the Jews of Europe would be transferred. No permanent contact, however, had been established with Italy, and it seems that the "Italian option" was dropped in view of Italy's military defeats in the Western Desert and in Greece. In early 1941 Stern's emissary met with Otto Werner von Hentig, a German Foreign Ministry representative, and submitted a memorandum on "the community of interests between the German concept of the New Order in Europe and the true national aspirations of the Jewish people, as represented by the Irgun." Stern was not authorized to speak on behalf of the Irgun, but only in the name of his own group (which numbered up to two hundred members), and on its behalf he offered political, military, and intelligence support to Nazi Germany , in exchange for the creation of a Jewish state and the formation of Jewish military units in occupied Europe that would take part in the conquest of Palestine.