Arafat and 'the Arab Fuhrer'

The Jerusalem Post ^ | November 11, 2004 | Sarah Honig

[quidnunc]

Contrary to popular mythology, Yasser Arafat wasn't the first so-called Palestinian president. His predecessor, however, didn't enjoy comparable worldwide acceptance, and the Jewish state next door wasn't yet one bit taken in.

But the predecessor was far more pivotal — "the Arab fuhrer," as Hitler dubbed Jerusalem's mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini.

Husseini copyrighted the jihadist pattern of massacres and terror, which Arafat would later adopt and adapt to his own era. There's inextricable continuity between the trailblazer and his follower. The latter cannot be understood without the former.

On October 1, 1948, in the midst of their military onslaught on newborn Israel, the Egyptians installed Husseini as president of the "All-Palestine government" they had established in the Gaza Strip (with Jerusalem its declared capital). It was formally abolished only in 1959.

Husseini's quasi-state was recognized by all then-independent Arab countries, save for Transjordan, which feared his ambitions vis-a-vis its own bit of Palestinian conquest — the West Bank. Husseini is widely considered responsible for the assassination of King Abdullah (the current Jordanian monarch's great-grandfather).

The first Palestinian "president" reached Cairo by the skin of teeth but with much Nazi loot, having fled Germany four days before its collapse. He spent the war years as Hitler's personal guest, luxuriously housed in a confiscated Jewish school on Berlin's Klopstockstr.

-snip-

[weenie]

"The Bet Agron International Center in Jerusalem interviewed Arafat's brother and sister, who described the Mufti as a cousin (family member) with tremendous influence on young Yassir after the Mufti returned from Berlin to Cairo. Yasser Arafat himself keeps his exact lineage and birthplace secret. Saddam Hussein was raised in the house of his uncle Khayrallah Tulfah, who was a leader in the Mufti's pro-Nazi coup in Iraq in May 1941."

source:

http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~jkatz/husseini.html

[cartan]

Hitler/Al-Hisseini/Arafat/Saddam -- now there's one nice gang of thugs! Here is more on this.

[PA Engineer]

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