Antisemitism in Palestine – nothing seems to change

“Antisemitism in Palestine – nothing seems to change”, sent to Monterey Herald on Oct. 5, 2023– never published

Concerning Cynthia Tucker’s Nov. 4 “Tragedies mount, rhetoric gets more toxic” commentary: there is a connection between Palestinian leaders and the Third Reich. Within a few weeks of Hitler’s rise to Germany’s Chancellorship in 1933, the German Consul-General in Jerusalem for Palestine, Heinrich Wolff, touted the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, as an eager supporter of the Nazis, especially their anti-Jewish boycott across Germany. Wolff relayed to Berlin that Husseini had asserted that the Muslims in Palestine “looked forward to the spread of Fascism throughout the region.”

Eventually, Husseini met Hitler in 1941. In that meeting, Al-Husseini pressed for Arab independence, particularly the liberation of Palestine from the British. He also sought to prevent the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine. The British had proposed a “national home for the Jewish people,” in 1917.

Husseini made a series of Nazi propaganda broadcasts to “foment unrest, sabotage, and insurrection against the Allies.” In one Nazi-sponsored radio broadcast in 1944, Husseini asked Arabs to rise up and “kill the Jews wherever you find them.”

Seems like nothing ever changes.

Lawrence Samuels, Carmel