Hitler's Mufti By: [/FONT]
Matthew E. Bunson]
The Mufti Meets the Führer
Over the next few days, al-Husseini drafted a proposed statement of an Arab-Axis cooperative effort by which the Axis powers would recognize the right of the Arabs to deal with Jewish elements in Palestine and in the other Arab countries according to their own interests. The declaration was approved by Mussolini and sent to the German embassy in Rome. Pleased with the declaration, al-Husseini was invited to Berlin as an honored and useful guest of the Nazi regime. He arrived in Berlin on November 6 and met with Ernst von Weizsäcker, German secretary of state under Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop. Two weeks later, he met with von Ribbentrop himself, a prelude to his triumphant reception on November 28, 1941, with Adolf Hitler.
At their meeting, al-Husseini requested German assistance with the Arab independence movement and Nazi support in the extermination of any Jewish homeland. For his part, Hitler promised to aid that liberation movement, but went still further, promising that the aim of Nazi Germany would be the elimination of all Jews living under British protection once such territories had been conquered. This was described by al-Husseini in his own memoirs:
Our fundamental condition for cooperating with Germany was a free hand to eradicate every last Jew from Palestine and the Arab world. I asked Hitler for an explicit undertaking to allow us to solve the Jewish people in a manner befitting our national and racial aspirations and according to the scientific methods innovated by Germany in the handling of its Jews. The answer I got was: "The Jews are yours." (Ami Isseroff and Peter FitzGerald-Morris, "The Iraq Coup Attempt of 1941, the Mufti, and the Farhud")
SOURCE: Catholic Answers Magizine, Volume 20 Number 1.