We’ve all seen that photograph of Mufti Haj Amin al‐Husseini, the Muslim Pope, sitting down with Adolf Schicklgruber. Zionist mythology states that the Germans never seriously considered exterminating Jews until the Mufti came along and planted the idea in their heads, eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and letting the Shoah into the world. The Palestinians might have even shouted ‘Their blood be upon us, and on our children!’ when that happened, but I haven’t seen a Zionist claim that (yet).

Those who have been consistently reading my posts on the Shoah would have correctly guessed that I have a bone to pick with mainstream Holocaust education, but the implication that the Palestinians were at least partly responsible for the Shoah is simply the most egregious abuse of history. In reality, the Shoah had a multitude of causes (ironically, we have more evidence that Zionism was one of them rather than the Palestinians), a topic which I plan to discuss in depth in January, but for now I want to share with you some examples of Palestinians who didn’t want whatever snake oil the Fascists were selling.

Quoting René Wildangel in Arab Responses to Fascism and Nazism: Attraction and Repulsion, pages 107–9:

The growing, more unified opposition posed a threat to the mandate authorities, which introduced stricter censorship and media control. During the violent period of 1936–1939, several Palestinian newspapers were closed or temporarily suspended, provoking protest by their readers.

During the outbreak of violence between April and October 1936, Arab newspapers were suspended on thirty‐four occasions. However, even the most nationalistic papers with the most radical rhetoric against the British mandate power did not automatically lean toward Fascism or Nazism, although many sympathetic articles appeared in the 1930s.²⁶

However, since the dawning of Hitler’s Machtergreifung, parts of the Arab press had underlined the incompatibility of Arab and German interests, pointing out that Hitler’s anti‐Jewish policies in the 1930s were directed toward Jewish emigration and the expulsion of Jewish citizens from the territories under [the Third Reich’s] control.

To this end, the Haavara Agreement, which facilitated transfer of Jewish capital from Europe to Palestine, was signed in 1933. The Arab newspapers discussed the agreement²⁷ and were well aware of the negative impact that the German expulsion policy would have on the Arab community. This was highlighted by al‐Jami‘a al‐Islamiyya:

Hitler’s victory is a dangerous development for the Arabs in Palestine; his plans regarding the Jews are well known. He will not hesitate to realize these plans and we will witness waves of refuges to [Palestine]. The German Jews are rich industrials and they will be the first, who will take the land from our hands.²⁸

Arab newspapers in Palestine covered all aspects of [Fascism] in Germany. Articles on Hitler were driven by curiosity about his character and often exhibited a blatant sympathy during the 1930s. Often, parallels were drawn between Germany after the Treaty of Versailles and the Arab Palestinians under the mandate.²⁹

However, from its early stages, Hitler’s ascent was linked to a rising fear of a new war. The Arab newspaper al‐Difa‘ published an article in 1936 that stated: “There will be no peace in Europe until the spirit of the Swastika, ruling Germany today, will be overcome.”³⁰ Newspapers like Filastin extensively covered Germany’s new armament policy. As early as 1934, the newspaper warned, “Europe will see no peace if it will not keep distance from the spirit of the swastika [ruh al‐swastika] that dominates Germany today. […] [Hitlerism] is an ideology full of disrespect of all peoples; it glorifies the German, and therein lies a danger.”³¹

Between February and April 1935, the newspaper al‐Jami‘a al‐Islamiyya printed a forty‐five‐part series with the title “Hitler and the Jews.” The author was identified as a lecturer at London’s King’s College, and the newspaper provided a translation from two unidentified Arab professors. The article covers every aspect of the anti‐Jewish policy in Germany and its theoretic foundations on the works of writers such as Gobineau and Chamberlain.

The study condemns the anti‐Jewish policies in Germany and their haphazard ideology. The introduction highlights the author’s reliability, citing several years spent in Germany as a correspondent for the London Times. Therefore, the introduction explained, the paper had chosen the material to provide “detailed information” about this “subject of utmost importance for the further developments in Europe.”³²

Newspapers like Filastin sometimes openly dismissed German anti‐Semitism: “The Jews are oppressed only because they are Jews, no more, and there is no justification for that.”³³ The same newspaper explained the term Aryan in 1933 as the “Indo‐European race,” making clear that it comprised “Indians, Persians, Armenians, and a group of Europeans,” but not Arabs and Jews, who belong to the Semites.³⁴

The paper dismissed this ideological construct in another article titled “The Truth about the Hitler Movement: Reasons for the Persecution of the Jews”: “Hitler followers want to make their race the ruler of all races in the world. One would think, the Nazis are Christians, and is not Christianity a fruit of the Semites and not of the Aryan people? Therefore, the view of Hitler’s supporters is very strange.”³⁵

Palestinian papers repeatedly condemned Italian and German claims to supremacy over other nations as a new type of colonialism. In this context, Filastin published excerpts from Mein Kampf in order to illustrate Hitler’s derogatory opinion of peoples under colonial rule.

Hitler had justified British colonial rule by citing their cultural and racial “superiority,” and he had ridiculed the “so‐called oppressed in India and Egypt” as “chatty snobs” (schwatzhafte Wichtigtuer) or “bloated Orientals” (aufgeblasene Orientalen). In Egypt, the anger about the publication of these same quotes was so great that the German Embassy in Cairo denied the statements.³⁶

On the whole, the Arab press in Palestine provided detailed information on […] Fascism. Although some affirmative voices were heard, many articles rejected the [Third Reich’s] path. The fierce nationalist stance, which included sharp and violent opposition to the mandate and the Yishuv, was not dependent on those external forces. As Filastin pointed out in 1934:

The Arab Palestinians don’t need Fascists […] to be motivated against the Zionists. The hatred against the Zionist plan in Palestine grew long before […] Fascism. […] But always, when Arabs protest the pro‐Zionist policies of England, we heard: Arab Palestinians learned it from the Nazis. And the English believe this? Reality is different. The Arabs don’t expel the Jews from the home, but those foreigners want to push the Arabs out of the country.³⁷

(Emphasis added.)