Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (34 page)

The changing tone of the propaganda was understandable when set against the background of Axis military and political disasters.78 In June and July 1943, with Tunis as their base of operations, British troops captured Axis-held islands south of Sicily. On July io,1943, Allied forces landed in Sicily. After a month of heavy fighting, the German army was forced to withdraw. In late July, the king dismissed Mussolini. On September 8,1943, the new Italian government led by Marshall Pietro Badoglio surrendered to the Allies. On October 13, the new government of Italy declared war on Germany. In spring 1943, the Axis forces were driven out of North Africa. Hitler had lost his Italian ally. The AngloAmerican bomber offensive was destroying German towns and industries along with the German air force. In the battle of Kursk, the Red Army decimated German tank divisions. The momentum of World War II had turned against Nazi Germany. Visions of Arab independence brought by victorious Axis forces were a distant memory. The Allied invasion of Italy also had a direct impact on Axis Arabic broadcasting. On October 1, the Allied (American and British) Theater Monitoring Service reported that following the Italian surrender, Bari in Arabic, Arab Nation, Independent Egypt, and Young Africa were no longer on the air. Berlin in Arabic, the Voice of Free Arabism, and the Station of the Free Arabs were the only remaining Axis stations broadcasting in Arabic.79

On October i, a speech by Husseini in the Berlin mosque was broadcast on Berlin in Arabic. He said that "a dangerous program had been formulated for the North African Moslem countries." The Allies intended to create a Jewish home there to which "they will transport the Jews of Europe and [from] the United States, the Negroes of the U.S.A." North Africa was to be made into a "Jewish bridge linking New York with Jerusalem, as though the Jewish problem which the world has failed to solve for thousands of years could be solved at the expense of the Arabs and the Arabs alone. This is injustice and betrayal.... The Arabs and the Moslems will never accept this-they will never accept any unity which does not include Palestine." America, "more so even than Britain," had become a "plaything in the hands of the Jews.... This Jewish pressure is ominous, it is fraught with great danger." In this period of Axis setbacks, Husseini again spoke of faith. Arabs and Muslims should defend the Holy Land "with their blood and their wealth." He worried that some were not heeding his call. "Woe to the wavering, the feeble in faith! Woe to him who is as a feather in the breeze! Woe to him who is unstable, irresolute! Arabs and Moslems, fortify yourselves with your faith! Faith is a fundamental element of victory. Sacrifice for your God and your country. 1180

On October 2, an address by Kilani was broadcast on Berlin in Arabic. By comparison with Husseini, Kilani's address to "Arabs, my brothers" was the voice of a more secular anti-imperialism. The aim of the imperialists, by which he meant Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and the Jews, was "to drug the Arab nation" with illusory promises about postwar Arab unity with the intention of diverting the Arabs from their struggle against Britain's "tyrannical imperialist policy." It was a time of mourning for the forces of Arab anti-imperialism, yet Kilani expressed "no doubt that Germany and her allies will level a deadly blow at its enemies." He was "fully convinced that ultimate victory" would be won by "our faithful friends, the Germans" and that "this victory will be a victory for our cause." What he called "the Arab nation" should continue to resist Anglo-Saxons, Bolsheviks, and "the evil ambitions of the Jews."81 Yet appeals to faith and the Arab nation had a growing air of unreality in the face of Axis setbacks.

The German documents generally do not disclose if particular broadcasts were a response to specific actions of the Allies. On November 1, 1943, the foreign secretaries of Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States issued a "Declaration of German Atrocities;" which warned German officers and members of the Nazi Party that they would be "taken back to the countries in which their abominable crimes were committed to be charged and punished according to the laws of those countries. 1182 An annex to the declaration written by Churchill and only slightly amended in Moscow made reference to diverse crimes, such as those committed in the Soviet Union; shootings of Italian officers; executions of French, Dutch, Belgian, or Norwegian hostages and of peasants in Crete; and slaughters in Poland.83 Yet despite numerous press reports about the mass murder of Jews by fall 1943, the declaration made no mention of them, perhaps in order not to play into the hands of Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda." As a by now very extensive scholarship has confirmed, for a variety of reasons, saving the Jews of Europe was not the first priority or rationale for going to war for Britain, the Soviet Union, or the United States.84

By October 1943, Hitler's speeches had made the word "extermination" familiar to millions inside and outside Germany. On November 3, a VFA broadcast, "Palestine between the Bolsheviks and the Jews," attacked the Jewish Agency, the executive arm of the World Zionist Organization charged with assisting Jews in the settlement of Palestine, because it urged the Allies to support a Jewish state in Palestine. It then broadcast an appeal to exterminate the Jews: "Should we not curse the time that has allowed this low race to realize their desires from such countries as Britain, America and Russia? The Jews kindled this war in the interests of Zionism. The Jews are responsible for the blood that has been shed. Despite this, Jewish impudence has increased to such an extent that they claim that they alone are the sacrifice of this war and that they alone are tasting bitterness. The world will never be at peace until the Jewish race is exterminated. Otherwise wars will always exist. The Jews are the germs which have caused all the trouble in the world."85

Not only did these assertions fly in the face of common sense and wildly exaggerate the power of the Jews, they also vastly exaggerated the global significance of the conflict between Jews and Arabs over Palestine. In World War II, especially after the Allied victory in the battle of Tunisia, the conflict over Palestine was a sideshow in the global panorama of events that constituted the world war. Yet with this broadcast, VFA adapted the general threats of exterminating the Jews coming from Nazi propaganda in Europe to the inclinations of its regular listeners in the Middle East. It found the cause of World War II as a whole in the Zionist aspiration for a Jewish state in Palestine. Hence the only way to establish world peace, and also prevent the establishment of such a state, would be to exterminate "the Jewish race." In using such terms, and not only shouting to "kill the Jews," VFA mimicked the vocabulary used by Hitler, Goebbels, and the main organs of Nazi propaganda in Germany and Europe. The hatred that drew on religious passion merged with Nazism's modern racist rhetoric. Not just murder but calls for genocide were literally on the airwaves.

On November 5, VFA reported on an important address that Husseini delivered at a meeting in Berlin of "all the Moslems of Germany and Europe" to protest the Balfour Declaration.86 The Islamic Institute in Berlin published a German text of Husseini's speech, thus making his views more accessible within Germany.87 As the speech expressed his fundamental views, which were repeated in shorter form in leaflets and broadcasts, it bears examination. In Husseini's view, the Balfour Declaration of November 2,1917, which supported a homeland for the Jews in Palestine, was "the result of a Jewish-English conspiracy in the last war." The declaration gave Palestine, "an Arab-Islamic country" of great importance to Muslims, to the Jews and in so doing broke a promise made to Hussein, the Sharif of Mecca, of independence to the Arabs. He recounted a story of British injustice to and oppression of the Arabs and the Jews. Husseini then poured forth his intense hatred of the Jews. He referred to the "overwhelming egoism" that was part of their character, and to their "contemptible belief that they were God's chosen people, their claim that everything had been created for their sake" and that "other men are animals which could be used for their own purposes."88 As a result of these characteristics, the Jews could not be loyal to anyone or integrate into another nation. Rather, "they lived like a sponge among peoples, sucked their blood, seized their property, undermined their morals yet still demand the rights of local inhabitants. They want every advantage but they won't assume any obligations! All of this brought the hostility of the world down on them and nourished the Jew's hatred against all the peoples that had been burning for two thousand years." He believed that "God's anger and the curse on the Jews mentioned in the Holy Koran" was due to these Jewish characteristics. The Jews, who had "tormented the world for ages[,] have been the enemy of the Arabs and of Islam since its emergence. The Holy Koran expressed this old enmity in the following words: `You will find that those who are most hostile to the believers are the Jews.' They tried to poison the great and noble prophets. They resisted them, were hostile to them, and intrigued against them. This was the case for 1,300 years. For all that time, they have not stopped spinning intrigues against the Arabs and Muslims."89

Husseini's hatred of the Jews was an ineradicable component of his understanding of Islam. In his interpretation, Islam as rooted in the Koran was an in herently anti-Semitic doctrine. He placed the efforts of Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Balfour, Lionel Rothschild, and Nathaniel Rothschild to establish a Jewish home in Palestine into this long continuity of Jewish-Moslem enmity. Indeed, he called the Jews "the driving forces of the destruction of the regime of the Islamic Caliphate" in the Middle East. The Jews used their power in finance, politics, and the press to this end. The Arabs and Muslims all knew of the "Jewish desire" to seize the Islamic holy sites. He claimed that such intentions extended to the Al Aksa Mosque and "to build a temple on its ruins." Many "official documents and statements of responsible Jewish leaders" confirmed these plans. A Jewish "kingdom" in Palestine would "double the Jewish danger" and would

give them an excellent geographical position at the meeting point of three parts of the world from which they could exert financial, political, and propagandistic influence. Though a Jewish state would be a great danger for all of humanity, it would be even more dangerous and important for Arabs and Muslims. Such a state would be a barrier between the Arab-Islamic countries in Asia and those of Africa. It is a bloody stab in the heart of the Arab fatherland! The establishment of a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine would subject the Arab countries and all the countries of the Middle East to the danger of Jewish economic exploitation and to the Jewish world conspiracy. In addition, it would make this country [i.e., the resulting Jewish state] a center that any foreign state could exploit to colonize and occupy the neighboring countries.

Secret Zionist documents had proven that the Kingdom of Israel would encompass the space between the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf. In addition to Palestine, [such a kingdom would include] Lebanon, Syria, Transjordan, Iraq, a part of the Saudi Arabian Kingdom, and a part of the Egyptian Kingdom. The Jews place the holy sites of the Hadj in greatest danger and rob the Arabs and Islam of the fruits of their land, which they have defended for thirteen centuries with the blood of their martyrs.

This ancient Jewish yearning was intertwined with the contemporary goals of British imperialism. The "Anglo-Jewish conspiracy" envisaged a Jewish state in Palestine as an important base for Britain in the Middle East, from which Arab efforts at unity could be defeated. Husseini extolled Arab revolts against "this devilish project" in Palestine. Palestine's inhabitants would receive help from other Arabs and Muslims because their country was "part of the Arab fatherland and a holy site of the Islamic religion." The Palestinians struggled against both the Jews and the British.9o

Husseini stated that Arab unity could not be attained without the inclusion of Palestine. "America, which now carries the Jewish flag, wants to create a sec and Jewish homeland in the Islamic Maghreb and in North Africa, one in which the Jews driven out of Europe and a part of the Jews and Negroes from North America would find refuge." The Americans were trying to deceive the Arabs so that they could exploit them with the Jews' assistance; they, like the English, were serving the Jews' effort to create a Jewish state.

The conspiracy against the Arabs and the Muslims is completely obvious. It is evident from the statements of the leaders of the Jews and their allies. For while the Jews state that a victory of the Allies is their victory and means the realization of their aspirations, the English and Americans ... see in the implementation of Jewish plans a guarantee of their own economic and political interests.... The bonds between the Jews, the English, and the Americans are very deeply intertwined with one another. They cannot be weakened. For a long time they have been bound together by common interests, the unity of their plans and goals, the similarity of their characteristic assessments, the similarity of their wealth, and the common participation in financial and economic establishments."

These affinities went so far that some Englishmen saw themselves as one of the lost tribes of Israel and called themselves "Israeli British." Whereas the British called on the Arabs to tolerate the Jews, doing so would only make the Jews more arrogant. Therefore, tolerance toward the Jews was a "stupid plan and a shameful crime against the fatherland. Whoever engages in it will be called to account by the nation and will be severely punished. Can iron be made into something else that is not iron?" Arabs and Muslims must pursue a different goal, namely, the "expulsion of all the Jews from all Arab and Muslim countries. This is the only remedy. It is what the Prophet did thirteen centuries ago.."9' Given the bonds between the Allies and the Jews, an Arab and Muslim agreement with them was an illusion. Indeed, the Jews and the Allies were conspiring against the Arabs and Muslims.

Husseini then turned to recent history." The shame of Versailles" was a disaster for both Germany and the Arabs, "but National Socialist Germany knew how to save itself from the Jewish disaster." He recalled the grounds for German-Arab friendship. Germany had not colonized anyArab or Islamic country and was fighting against "the same enemy which oppressed the Arabs and Muslims in their different countries." Moreover, the Germans had "decided to find a definitive solution to the Jewish danger." This "common battle against the Jewish danger" bound the Arabs and Muslims to Germany. Hence "our friendship with Germany is not at all one of opportunism that rests only on contemporary circumstances. Rather it is the result of common interests of both nations and of their unified stance toward a common enemy in a battle."92 Among Britain's "greatest crimes" was its effort to encourage the Arabs to fight against Germany and Japan, two states that had never invaded Arab or Islamic countries. Both had always shown sympathy to Muslims. Equally terrible were Britain's efforts in Palestine to support the Jews against the Arabs and, according to him, arrest "tens of thousands" of Arabs. Husseini stressed that Arabs and Muslims could not trust states-England and the United States-that "supported the Jews and helped them tear the home of the Arabs and Muslims away from them." He concluded: