[joyarjun1]

The article makes interesting reading.
However, casting the Mufti only in negative light is rather one-sided. One has to consider HIS side of the story, for that matter, the Palestinian/Muslim side of the story without, of course, forgiving or forgetting the holocaust.

Palestinian Muslim/Arab resentment of European Jews settling in what they considered their land was natural enough. The treacherous role of the British must not be forgotten, and not only in the Middle East!

Further, don't Westerners, even to this day, resent foreigners' , esp. 'coloured' people's, presence in numbers in their societies? Even coloureds resent other coloureds settling in their territory! The Palestinian fear that the relatively richer European Jews, who after all got hold of most of the land on which the native Arabs were mere toilers, were also invading their strong tradition and religion appears very much contemporary! Such resentment, in varying degrees, can be seen worldwide (the French resent English invasion of their precious language, other linguistic groups worldwide, esp. the Third World, have strong opinion opposing 'modernisation' which seems synonymous with 'Westernisation').

The Mufti merely articulated the range of Palestinian resentment, whether that resentment was justified or not. The quotes in the article point to another direction bulldozed over by the Icelandic author:

To Hitler:

"The Arabs were Germany's natural friends because they had the same enemies as had Germany, namely the English, the Jews, and the Communists.

In this struggle, the Arabs were striving for the independence and unity of Palestine, Syria, and Iraq."

TO Himmler:
In the meantime I have learned that the Jews, nevertheless [despite Nazi decls. to the contrary], did leave on July 2, 1944, and it is to be feared that further Jewish groups may leave Germany and France under the plan for exchanging Palestinian Germans.
It is for this reason that I ask you, Reichsfuehrer, to do everything necessary to prevent the Jews from emigrating to Palestine..."

Two things emerge here. The Nazis were not killing Jews outright but were facilitating their departure from Europe, as late as 1944! There have also been reports that the Nazis even encouraged and funded Zionists to migrate to Madagascar for instance. Second, the Mufti merely voiced the trepidation of the Arab Muslims over incoming Zionist settlers.

So, the attempt by the Mufti to team up with Hitler, where interests of both largely coincided (anti-Brits, anti-communist, anti-Jewish,etc.) was quite natural.

Let me illsutrate this point. It is axiomatic truth in history and diplomacy and my enemy's enemy is my friend. Otherwise, one has to call Washington a traitor, since he collaborated with retrogressive French monarchy against a 'democratic' Britain--here, you must close your eyes to the reason behind Washington's act! The Yale university memorial statue of Hale, the lad who was hanged by the Brits for fighting for America's independence, must also then be removed!

Further, didn't Stalin gang up with Hitler in Aug. 1939 through a non-aggression pact and agree to carve up Poland? Did this make him a Nazi, or Hitler a communist? If Stalin was so 'untouchable'--which 'morally' he should have been in the eyes of the Brit-US 'moral guardians', then how come the glorious 'democracies' of London and Washington team up with the Soviet dictator to fight Hitler and the Japanese? Did the Grand Alliance turn the UK or the USA into Stalin's puppets or into communists, or Stalin into a capitalist?

I don't understand this double standard.

In Asia, where heroes (in the natives' eyes) fought against the European colonisers and in the process sought help from the Axis powers like the Mufti, have been condemned by the propaganda of the colonisers and their buddies that they were 'quislings'! But traitors to whom? you may ask. To the ruling foreign power? Ha, one needs to tickle oneself to laugh.

So, while not condoning holocaust, I have full sysmpathy with the Mufti to the extent he, like Rashid Ali, was all set to fight colonialism.

All these crcodile tears about human rights earnestly began after WW II, when it emerged that the Germans considered even white-skinned Slavs, Jews and others as 'sub-humans'!

But what about the centuries of European/American exploitation of the Africans, Latin Americans, Asians and the Red Indians? They were not human beings, isn't it? The 'holocaust' of THEIR lives is easily glossed over!

The accumulated resentment is now showing with stuff like 9/11.