Im blinden Hass, im Vernichtungswillen der Hamas-Terroristen, und im Antisemitismus, den manche Muslime jetzt auch auf deutschen Straßen zeigen, stecken also auch Elemente des nationalsozialistischen Judenhasses? 

Cüppers: Unbedingt. Der Historiker Saul Friedländer hat für die nationalsozialistische Variante des modernen Judenhasses den treffenden Begriff „Erlösungsantisemitismus“ geprägt. Das beschreibt die verrückte, in Deutschland jedoch Staatsdoktrin gewordene Heilslehre, mit der Beseitigung jüdischer Menschen ganz anders gelagerte, vermeintliche oder reale Probleme und Missstände lösen zu können. Genau diese Form eines „Erlösungsantisemitismus“ fand in Palästina und anderen Teilen der arabischen Welt fanatische Fürsprecher und Anhänger. In historischen Quellen lässt sich der positive Bezug auf Hitler und das nationalsozialistische Deutschland gerade wegen des wahnhaften Judenhasses massenhaft nachweisen. Seitdem dauert im Nahen Osten als Großregion solcher Verschwörungsirrsinn fort und wurde auch nach 1945, als in Europa der Nationalsozialismus besiegt werden konnte, dort nie mehr zurückgedrängt oder auch nur entschieden problematisiert.

Wie gelangte die NS-Ideologie in die arabische Welt? 

Cüppers: Beispielsweise berief sich Amin al-Husseini, Mufti von Jerusalem und damit bedeutendste Autorität in Glaubensfragen, schon 1929 ernsthaft auf das berüchtigte antisemitische Machwerk der „Protokolle der Weisen von Zion“, bekanntlich eine russische Fälschung. Das veranschaulicht, wie Radikale antisemitische Ideologieversatzstücke aus Europa in die muslimische Welt importierten und vor Ort für ihre Zwecke einsetzten. Genau dieser Mufti wurde im Weltkrieg Jahre später einer der bedeutendsten muslimischen Nazi-Kollaborateure. Und als ab 1941 das nationalsozialistische Deutschland mit Rommels Truppen militärisch in der arabischen Welt intervenierte, betonten beide Seiten ihre große Gemeinsamkeit: ebendiesen „Erlösungsantisemitismus“. Von deutscher Seite fand das seinen praktischen Ausdruck in Abermillionen abgeworfener Flugblätter und überaus populären arabischsprachigen Radiosendungen – propagandistische Mittel also, mit denen Judenhass und antidemokratisches Denken massiv im Nahen Osten verbreitet wurden. 

Das ganze Interview ist hier zu lesen.

A strong Arab Muslim irredentist current, which achieved pre-eminence after the 1929 riots, promulgated the forcible restoration of dhimmitude via jihad, culminating in the widespread violence of 1936–1939. Two prominent Muslim personalities, Sheikh Izz al-Din al-Qassam and Hajj Amin el-Husseini, the former Mufti of Jerusalem, embodied this trend. And both these leaders relied upon the ideology of jihad, with its virulent anti-infidel (i.e., anti-Jewish, anti-Christian, and anti-Western) incitement, to garner popular support.

Al-Qassam called for the preservation of the country’s Muslim-Arab character, exclusively, and urged an uncompromising and intensified struggle against the British Mandate and the Jewish National Home in Palestine. Palestine could be freed from the danger of Jewish domination, he believed, not by sporadic protests, demonstrations, or riots which were soon forgotten, but by an organized and methodical armed struggle. In his sermons he often quoted verses from the Qur’an referring to jihad, linking them with topical matters and his own political ideas. Al-Qassam and his devoted followers committed various acts of jihad terror targeting Jewish civilians in northern Palestine from 1931 to 1935. On 20 November 1935, al-Qassam was surrounded by British police in a cave near Jenin, and killed along with three of his henchmen.

In the immediate aftermath of his death, Hajj Amin el-Husseini was appointed Mufti of Jerusalem by the British High Commissioner, in May 1921, a title he retained, following the Ottoman practice, for the remainder of his life. Throughout his public career, the Mufti relied upon traditional Qur’anic anti-Jewish motifs to arouse the Arab street. For example, during the incitement which led to the 1929 Arab revolt in Palestine, he called for combating and slaughtering ‘the Jews’, not merely Zionists. In fact, most of the Jewish victims of the 1929 Arab revolt were Jews from the centuries-old dhimmi communities (for example, in Hebron), as opposed to recent settlers identified with the Zionist movement. With the ascent of Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, the Mufti and his coterie intensified their anti-Semitic activities to secure support from Hitler’s Germany (and later Bosnian Muslims, as well as the overall Arab Muslim world), for a jihad to annihilate the Jews of Palestine.

Following his expulsion from Palestine by the British, the Mufti fomented a brutal anti-Jewish pogrom in Baghdad (1941), concurrent with his failed effort to install a pro-Nazi Iraqi government. Escaping to Europe after this unsuccessful coup attempt, the Mufti spent the remainder of World War II in Germany and Italy. From this sanctuary, he provided active support for the Germans by recruiting Bosnian Muslims, in addition to Muslim minorities from the Caucasus, for dedicated Nazi SS units. The Mufti’s objectives for these recruits—and Muslims in general—were made explicit during his multiple wartime radio broadcasts from Berlin, heard throughout the Arab world: an international campaign of genocide against the Jews. For example, during his 1 March 1944 broadcast he stated: ‘Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history, and religion.’

Invoking the personal support of such prominent Nazis as Himmler and Eichmann, the Mufti’s relentless hectoring of German, Romanian, and Hungarian government officials caused the cancellation of an estimated 480,000 exit visas which had been granted to Jews (80,000 from Romania, and 400,000 from Hungary). As a result, these hapless individuals were deported to Polish concentration camps. A United Nations Assembly document presented in 1947 which contained the Mufti’s 28 June 1943 letter to the Hungarian Foreign Minister requesting the deportation of Hungarian Jews to Poland, includes this stark, telling annotation: ‘As a Sequel to This Request 400,000 Jews Were Subsequently Killed.’ The Mufti escaped to the Middle East after the war to avoid capture and possible prosecution for war crimes.

The Mufti’s legacy of virulent anti-Semitism continues to influence Arab policy towards Israel. Yasser Arafat, beginning at the age of 16, worked for the Mufti, performing terrorist operations. Arafat always characterized the Mufti as his primary spiritual and political mentor.

Click to read the full article on Jihad, Dhimmitude and Islamic Antisemitism in Palestine of the British Mandate by Andrew G. Bostom.

In einem Brief, in dem die Verbindung von Hamas und Nazi-Antisemitismus vehement bestritten wird, muss all dies nicht nur verschwiegen werden, sondern darüber hinaus die Verbindung von führenden Akteuren der palästinensischen Nationalbewegung der 1930er und 1940er Jahre wie des damaligen Großmufits von Jerusalem, Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, mit dem Nationalsozialismus Anathema bleiben.

Zu erwähnen wären nicht nur die Kollaboration al-Husseinis mit den Nazis im Holocaust, nicht nur seine offene Erklärung, man versuche nun gemeinsam mit Deutschland, »die jüdische Frage aus der Welt zu schaffen« [3], nicht nur von ihm inspizierte muslimische SS-Einheiten im Zweiten Weltkrieg oder seine judenfeindliche Propaganda für die islamische Welt, sondern auch bereits die durch den Terror des Muftis in den 1930er Jahren im palästinensischen Mandatsgebiet und die britische Appeasementpolitikbewirkte Schließung der Tore Palästinas für vor den Nationalsozialisten fliehende Juden.

Auch von den Faschismusbezügen der Muslimbruderschaft, deren palästinensischer Ableger die Hamas ist, und ihrer damit einhergehenden umma-sozialistischen Dritter-Weg-Ideologie der islamischen Volksgemeinschaft gegen Zins, Materialismus und Säkularismus, verrät uns der offene Brief der Holocaustforscher nichts. Die sozialpsychologischen Mechanismen der Schiefheilung kollektiv narzisstischer Kränkungen durch antisemitische Verschwörungstheorien ähneln sich bei Adolf Hitler und Sayyid Qutb, einem Vordenker der Muslimbrüder, bis aufs Haar: Hinter allen ›gemeinschaftszersetzenden‹ materialistischen, feministischen und individualistischen Einflüssen werden die Juden vermutet: »Hinter der Doktrin des atheistischen Materialismus stand ein Jude; hinter der Doktrin der animalischen Sexualität stand ein Jude; und hinter der Zerstörung der Familie und der Zerrüttung der heiligen Beziehungen in der Gesellschaft […] stand ein Jude.« [4]

Die Hakenkreuze auf den Feuerdrachen der als »Grenzzaun-Proteste« verharmlosten Aufmärsche der Hamas von 2018 waren ebenso wenig ein antifaschistischer Protest wie die Hasspredigten des Muslimbruders Yusuf al-Qaradawi, der auf dem katarischen Sender Al-Jazeera jahrelang unzählige Millionen Menschen erreichte und 2009 die Muslime als ›gemäßigtere‹ Vollender des Holocausts der Nazis fantasierte: »Im Laufe der Geschichte hat Allah den [Juden] Menschen auferlegt, die sie für ihre Verderbtheit bestrafen sollten. Die letzte Bestrafung wurde von Hitler vollzogen. Durch all das, was er ihnen angetan hat – auch wenn er es übertrieben hat –, hat er es geschafft, sie in ihre Schranken zu weisen. Dies war eine göttliche Strafe für sie. So Allah will, wird es das nächste Mal durch die Hand der Gläubigen geschehen.«

Der Artikel von Ingo Elbe ist auf Mena-Watch erschienen: zur Weiterleitung hier klicken.

Eine englische Übersetzung liegt auf Fathom.org Journal vor: “Comparing the Hamas Pogrom of 7 October to the Holocaust is a misuse of Holocaust Remembrance say Omer Bartov, Raz Segal, Christopher Browning et al. This is why they are wrong.”

I) Jews are frequently denoted as the “Enemies of God” or the “Enemies of humanity”. This latter expression is even to be found in the opening speech of the U.A.R. Vice- President, Mr. Al-Shafel The expression “dogs of humanity” is used by Mr. Hassan Khaled, the Mufti of the Lebanon.

2) Jews manifest in themselves an historical continuity of evil qualities. Thus the vices of their forefathers – as described in the Qur’an or depicted in the Bible – are now rampant amongst modern Jews. Scandals in the Bible, which were narrated perhaps as confessions of human frailty, self-criticism, or reproach, are here generalised as typifying the squalid nature of the Jews. Islam recognised in Judaism and Christianity religions of divine revelation. Although the Bible is a Holy Book for both Jews and Christians, in this volume, following a continuous and unchanged Islamic tradition, it is considered a counterfeited work, falsifying God’s message.

3) The Jews themselves are a riff-raff and do not constitute a true people or nation. Their evilness has been transmitted throughout their history, by means of their cultural inheritance. Thus, whoever is converted to Judaism is infected with their repugnant qualities. By their behaviour, the Jews have called forth the hatred and persecution of all the peoples with whom they have come into contact. They deserve their fate.

4) The State of Israel is the culmination of the historical and cultural depravity of the Jews. It has to be destroyed, having been established through aggression which is its congenital and immutable nature. This should be achieved by a Jihad – a Holy War.

5) The superiority of Islam over all other religions is brandished as a guarantee that the Arabs will ultimately triumph. The grandeur of Islam must be reflected in future secular successes. Arab defeats and reverses are explained away as having been ordained by a providential design in order to teach the Arabs a lesson because of their spiritual negligence, and as a purgatorial ordeal. (This explanation may also have the psychologic- al effect of alleviating Arab self-reproach.)

Eine deutsche Übersetzung des Artikels von Andrew Bostom gibt es auf MENA-WATCH.

Der Link zur von David G. Littmann zusammengestellte Broschüre, auf die sich der Artikel stützt und die eine Kritik der Theologisierung des arabischen Pseudonationalismus und des ihm inhärenten Erlösungsantisemitismus darstellt.

In 1929, al-Husseini used his seat of power to instigate new atrocities against the Jews—the Palestinian version of Kristallnacht. There was still no “Zionist occupation” of Arab land, but the mufti spread the rumor that the Jews were plotting to take over the Haram al-Sharif (the Dome of the Rock) above the Western Wall. His followers responded by again attacking the defenseless Jewish Quarter, this time killing more than 130 innocents. A few days later, an Arab mob turned the Orthodox Jewish community in Hebron into a killing field. Sixty-seven Jews were murdered, women were raped, and several men were castrated.

Yet again, the British authorities sought to constrain the violence by offering political gifts to the perpetrators. A white paper issued by the British government declared that Jewish immigration would be limited, based on the country’s “economic absorptive capacity.” The Palestinians and their maximum leader, al-Husseini, were not pacified.

Al-Husseini was soon elected chairman of the eight-member Arab Higher Committee (AHC), which became the ruling political body for the Palestinian Arabs for the next 15 years. The AHC then initiated a full-scale rebellion against the British occupation. This time, the Palestinians had enough guns and bombs to launch hit-and-run guerrilla attacks against the overstretched British military forces. The declared aim of the revolt was the ouster of the mandatory regime and the elimination of the Yishuv, the name given to the organized Zionist community in Palestine.

The whole piece by Sol Stern on Commentary.

Christians could complain to the Christian authorities and Jews would be drained of their wealth and then imprisoned or expelled. At times, it suited the Christian rulers to allow their Christian subjects to “riot,” that is, to enter Jewish homes and to rob, rape, and kill Jews at will, with no punishment by the rulers. There are heart-rending scenes depicted in Jewish poetry and prose—of women raped in the presence of their children and husbands; of children torn apart alive; of slit throats of children and parents in the presence of each other, of whole communities enclosed in synagogues and then burned alive. It didn’t happen every day, or even every year. But it happened every once in a while. The word was “pogrom” and it meant a riot by Christians, the purpose of which was to kill Jews, in the cruelest ways, with the quiet sanction of the state.

To be sure, living in a society that preached that Jews were Christ-killers, demons, and sorcerers, the source of the plagues that killed large percentages of the population, and so on, ensured that Jews would be a target. Christian education and preaching prepared the masses for the murder of the Jews. Jews in Christendom knew they were not safe.

Jews in Muslim lands were not much better off. There are searing narratives and poems that describe what it was like living in a society that forced Jews to cross the street when they encountered a Muslim; that did not allow public celebration of Jewish holidays; that made Jews pay a poll tax and get beaten publicly when they did; that invented the idea of special Jewish garb to single out Jews; that allowed Muslims to seize Jewish orphans and raise them as Muslims; that punished Jews for assaulting Muslims but not Muslims for assaulting Jews; and more. And then, there were the “riots” in which the masses were allowed, even encouraged, to roam through the Jewish community, raping, killing, torturing, and humiliating the Jews of all ages and genders.

The riots didn’t happen every day, or even every year. But they happened every once in a while, and became part of Jewish reality. The word was “sin’ut,” Jew hatred, and it meant the long-term humiliation of Jews, mixed with the sporadic violent murder of Jews. To be sure, living in a Muslim society that preached that Jews were deniers, apes and pigs, dishonest, greedy, and sources of illness, ensured that Jews would be a target. Muslim education and preaching prepared the masses for the murder of the Jews. Jews in Islamic lands knew they were not safe.

Then, came the Enlightenment with the idea that humans are alike. “Liberty, equality, and fraternity.” “All men are created equal.” It wasn’t true. Women were excluded. Blacks were excluded. So were Jews. But, it was a dream which, very slowly, was extended until the declaration of human rights was understood to be universal.

European and American Jews were glad to live in the Enlightenment. There were still remnants of the old regime and they were called “antisemitic,” but we, Jews, believed them to be remnants of medieval Christendom that would fade away in the Enlightenment. The problem was that antisemitism had very deep roots in western culture and religion and, in their enthusiasm for the Enlightenment, the Jews of Europe forgot those roots. In time, the forces of deep Jew hatred reared their heads, and secular modernity also turned against the Jews. Jews were hated because they were Jews, again: greedy for world power, the source of the loss of the old traditional values, vermin, an inferior race, modern Antichrists. That resulted in the Holocaust, an almost-successful, systematic, mechanized, state-sponsored effort to annihilate all the Jews in Europe. The education of the populace by these forces, especially in the Nazi and communist states, prepared the masses for the murder of the Jews. Jews in the modern world learned that they were not safe.

The Enlightenment never came to the lands of Islam—not for the Jews, not for women, and not for others. Modern technology came, but not the Enlightenment. Rather, modern Islam borrowed the “antisemitism” of the Christian modern world, added it to Islamic antisemitism, and began to educate Muslims to murder Jews in the modern spirit and way.

The Jews responded to Christian, secular, and Muslim Jew hatred by creating their own state. It was to be a place where Jews could live without pogroms and sin’ut, where Jews could breathe freely. At first, Jews moved to the Holy Land and settled there with their own self-government. Then, they established their own state with the purpose of making it into a place where they could live without fear of pogroms and sin’ut. They had to fight for it. Many died, but it was worth it. They were free to live, to work, even to quarrel with one another. There were occasional incursions of Muslims and wars with them, but the Muslims were fought off. We paid a price, but we thought we were safe—even to have mass protests against our own government. We knew that the Muslims hated us, but we held that at a distance and, when their hatred of us, welled up, we responded. A stalemate, but a livable one.

The full piece by David R. Blumenthal on Tabletmag

“The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the links in the chain of the struggle against the Zionist invaders. It goes back to 1939, to the emergence of the martyr Izz al-Din al Kissam and his brethren the fighters, members of Moslem Brotherhood. It goes on to reach out and become one with another chain that includes the struggle of the Palestinians and Moslem Brotherhood in the 1948 war and the Jihad operations of the Moslem Brotherhood in 1968 and after. 

Moreover, if the links have been distant from each other and if obstacles, placed by those who are the lackeys of Zionism in the way of the fighters obstructed the continuation of the struggle, the Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to the realisation of Allah’s promise, no matter how long that should take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said: 

“The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.” 

in: Hamas Covenant, Article 7

One of the key documents of this fusion was the Hamas Covenant of 1988. It has been readily available in English on the internet since soon after 9/11 at the Yale Law School’s Avalon Project website. Reflecting its origins in the Islamist ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, the covenant based its complete rejection of any Jewish state anywhere in what it calls “Palestine” on its reading of the Koran and commentaries.

Armed struggle—that is, war—was essential to destroy the Jewish state. Compromise with it was religious heresy. As was the case in Nazi propaganda aimed at the Middle East during World War II, the Hamas Covenant drew on Nazism’s antisemitic conspiracy theories as it blamed Jews and Zionists for the two world wars. Despite the fact that the Hamas Covenant has long been publicly available, scholars in the United States who regard themselves as leftists have bizarrely sought to present Hamas as perhaps an extreme element of an otherwise progressive global endeavor. Anyone who reads the text can immediately recognize the aftereffects of the Nazi-Islamist ideological fusion that emerged four decades before Hamas published its statement of beliefs.

Read the whole article by Jeffrey Herf on Tabletmag

Altogether, 850,000 Jews were expelled from Arab countries. More than half a million fled to Israel. Those expulsions were largely inspired by the anti-Semitism of the Nazi collaborator and propagandist Amin Al Husseini who, at the time, was the leader of the Palestinian national movement. Thus, Arabs are hardly in a position to complain that Mizrahim sought refuge in Israel or to claim that Mizrachi immigration to Palestine was a settler-colonial project.

Full piece on JNS

Artikel in deutscher Übersetzung auf MENA-WATCH

In 1333 and 1344 Baghdad’s synagogues were destroyed. By the 15th century, almost no Jews remained in the city. Under the Ottomans, who ruled Iraq from the 16th century until 1917, the picture was mixed, and during the 19th century the Jews came to dominate Iraq’s economy.

In the years of British mandate rule (1921-32) the Jews prospered, with a Jew—Sasson Effendi—even serving as finance minister. But Iraqi independence brought a swift and permanent decline in their status. Anti-Jewish laws were enacted and Jews were dismissed from government posts.

During 48 hours in June 1941 in Baghdad, some 200 Jews were slaughtered and hundreds raped by Muslim mobs and soldiers, as police and government officials looked on, in what became known as the Farhud—an event for which Shlaim incredibly blames the British.

Full piece on Tablet Magazine by Benny Morris