Said Walter Doehle, german consul in Jerusalem, wrote in 1937:
āPalestinian Arabs in all social strata have great sympathies for the new Germany and its Führer..ā¦If a person identified himself as a German when faced with threats from an Arab crowd, this alone generally allowed him to pass freely. But when some identified themselves by making the āHeil Hitlerā salute, in most cases the Arabsā attitude became expressions of open enthusiasm, and the German gave ovations, to which the Arabs responded loudly.ā
Although he was not the only collaborator with NazismāFawzi al-Qawuqji, Rashid Ali al-Kelani, Abu Ibrahim al-Kabir, Hassan Salama and Arif Abd al-Raziq spring to mindāthe role played by Palestinian leader and Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini in fomenting anti-Jewish incitement and violence, not just in British Palestine but across the Arab world, is key. From 1931, he conflated āZionistsā with āJews.ā Any Jewish community became fair game for collective punishmentā
and still is.
The Mufti met with Hitler in Berlin in November 1941 to discuss the extermination of the Jews in the Middle East. He spent the rest of the war as a guest of the Nazis.
Adolf Eichmannās deputy Dieter Wisliceny (later executed as a war criminal) in his Nuremburg Trials testimony stated, āthe Mufti was one of Eichmannās best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures.ā
On a visit to Auschwitz, the Mufti reportedly admonished the guards running the gas chambers to work more diligently. Throughout the war, he broadcast regularly on German radio to the Middle East, preaching his pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic message to the Arab masses back home.
(full article online)
Arabs are torch-bearers for Nazi anti-Semitism