German Silence

Nazis, Jihad, and the Left

By Matthias Küntzel

April 2003

Timing and location were carefully chosen: The Tupamaros West-Berlin, a radical left organization, placed the bomb, which was supposed to destroy the Jewish Congregation Center of West-Berlin exactly on November 9, 1969, the anniversary of the Reichskristallnacht in 1939. Why was this done? In order to free the 1968 student movement from the „predominance of the complex towards the Jews“, as Dieter Kunzelmann, a movement´s speaker, (wrote) put it then. „True anti-Fascism“, as the letter of confession explained, means clear an uncompromising solidarity with the fighting fedayin of Palestine.“

Even though the explosive could be de-activated just in time the slogan went off with all the more momentum: There didn´t exist any other Left in Europa which stronger identifies itself with the struggle of the fedayin against Israel.
Spurred by so much emotiveness of a just and antifascist struggle had this left movement notwithstanding one simple fact insistantly ignored: I´m talking about the truth that at the same time also Nazis were keen on visiting the military training centers of the Palestinians.
Nobody has wanted to know about it thus nobody has felt disturbed by it. What a fatal error! For that was the reason why the historical context remained (kept) always hidden in the dark which connects the Anti-Zionism of the New Left with the Anti-Zionism of the Nazis.
In 1920 the first German translation of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion was presented putting at disposal the ideological principles of a Nazi-like Anti-Zionism. Fabricated by secret agents of the tsar those Protocols offered “prove“ that each and every evil in the would has to be traced back (could be put down) to a world-wide Jewish conspiracy. In 1921, Alfred Rosenberg, the leading ideologist of the NSDAP drew the consequence in his book “Zionism – hostile to the state” (Der staatsfeindliche Zionismus): “Zionism“, he wrote, “is a means for ambitious speculants to create for themselves a new field of activity for practising ursury against the world.“ In Mein Kampf, written in 1925, Adolf Hitler furthermore explained: The Jews “don´t even think about building up a state in Palestine … Instead they just want to get an own organizational headquarter for their international business of world-cheating, vested with its own sovereign rights.“
In the same year the first Arab translation of the Protocols was published in Palestine, too. Already in 1925, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin el-Husseini, infamous (notorious) for his later co-operation with the Nazi government, had been the highest political and religous authority. There was no-one, who instigated the conflict between Muslims and Jews in Palestine more sucessfully than the Mufti who made a relentless struggling against the Jews into the highest principle of all believers. Those, who didn´t follow his anti-Jewish orders were namently denounced and threaten during the Friday prayers within the mosques. In addition, el-Husseini reported proudly in a letter to Adolf Hitler about his tireless albeit sucessful efforts “to use the Palestine question in order to coalesce all Arab countries in a common hatred against the British and the Jews.“
Since 1933, the Mufti offered the Nazi government to enter its service again and again. Only in 1937, however, this offers became rewarded. It was the „Arab Revolt“ against the presence of Jewish and British people in Palestine, triggered by the Mufti himself, which provided for this occasion.
This revolt took place between 1936 and 1938 under the sign of the (against the background of the) swastika: Arab leaflets and signs on the walls were often marked with that symbol of the Nazis; the youth organzisation of the party, which was led by the Mufti, paraded as so-called “Nazi-scouts“ and even Arab children greeted themselves with the Nazi salute. Who was supposed to cross the rebellious quarters of Palestine during these years used to fix a swastika flag at his vehikel in order to get shelter against the assaults of Arabic volunteers. Particulary favourable (benevolent) did German Nazi authors comment on the of German Nazi authors about the Islamists practises of terror, which the Mufti had ordered in territories he controled. Those who didn´t submit to the anti-West oriented dress regulations (rule of clothes) of the Mufti or the sharia law of the Islamists were (got) liquidated at once. In addition especially those politicians of the Palestine were murdered which didn´t want to shot at Zionists but to negotiate with them. „The Mufti eliminated conciously and with utmost (extreme) cruelty his opponents within the Palestinian camp“, emphazises Abraham Ashkenasi. „Within the Palestinian camp there was more murder and manslaughter than against the Jews or against the British.“ It was not the struggle against the British mandatory power but the getting rid of thoses Palestinians who were prepared to talk with Jews that captured priority.
Since 1937 this “Holy War“ of the Mufti got support from Nazi Germany in terms of financial aid and the delivery of weapons, als Klaus Genicke points out in his thesis about The Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin el-Husseini and the National Socialists which was published in 1988: “The Mufti himself admitted that it wouldn´t have been possible to carry out the revolt in Palestine at that time without the money granted by the Germans. From the outset he demanded quiete huge sums and the Nazis complied with it to a very large degree.“
Always however, was the coverage of the exesses of those years in the texts (accounts) of the German left cleansed of each and every Nazi related aspect.
Nobody wanted to know about it so that nobody felt disturbed by it. Instead these excesses had been gloryfied as „guerilla war and Palestine resistance“ (Marxistische Blätter), as „armed revolution“ (Al Karamah) or as an „Arab revolt, with wich the masses of farmers … revolted against the Zionist implantation into their country“ (Helga Baumgarten). In 1941, the prominent Nazi author Giselher Wirsing gloryfied the Mufti because of his antisemite position as an „striking leader“ and an „outstanding propagandist“ in his book Engländer, Juden, Araber in Palästina (Englishmen, Jews and Arabs in Palestine). However, nearly the same language was used in Helga Baumgarten study Palästina: Befreiung in den Staat (Palestine: Liberation into the state), which got a lot of credit within the German left. She praised the Mufti as having being „the charismatic and influential leader on top of the movement“ while devastatingly critizising thoses liberal opponents of the Mufti who wanted to get along with the Jews.
Today, the silence about the Nazi connections of the Mufti is being continued in terms of ignoring the antisemitism of the Islamists. Lets take the example of the Islamist organization Hamas in Palestine. Pointedly (avowedly) Hamas is taking up the heritage of the Mufti of Jeruslam. Firstly, this group as well used to kill the opponents of its Islamistic course again and again. Over the period of the first Intifada (1987-1993) alone, the incredible number of more than 940 assassinations of so-called “collaboratiers“ are well documented. Secondly, Hamas continues the policy of the Mufti by persistently destroying every starting-point of a peaceful solution. Its last huge massacre of January 2003, which killed 24 Israeli citizens within the pedestrian precinct of Tel Aviv, avowedly served the purpose of wrecking an election victory of the candidate of Israels Workers Party, Amram Mitzna, who is assumed to be more prepared to comprimise towards Palestinian demands. Thirdly, Hamas has adopted the antisemitism of the Nazis, as well. This becomes particulary obvious if we look its Charta of 1988, which is still valid today. This program hallucinates the Jews as being the global evil par excellence which triggered not only the French Revolution but also Word War I as well as Word War II and bears exclusive responsibility for exploiting the Third World and disseminating drugs. Consistently Article 32 of this Charta presents the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a serious as well as truthful document.
It is tempting just to ridicule such lunacy, just like Hitler´s jabbering was ridiculed in times past. It is, however, just this inane picture of Jews as the evil ones and the villains of the world which instigates
the mass-murdering of civilians within Israel or the U.S.A. and which motivates (provides for) the Islamists enthusiasm about it.
Nobody wants to know about it, again, so that nobody feel disturbed.

Up to the present days this Charta has been completedly ignored even by those who want to figure out the motivation for the suicidal murder of Israeli citizen. Until today the insight as well as the knowledge about this kind of antisemitism, so obviously connected with Germany´s past, is being blocked.
Because of that the awareness (view) towards the antisemitism of the 9/11 perpetrators is denied as well. As far as their antisemit orientation is concerned there is no difference between al Qaida and Hamas. According to Osama bin Laden the jewish enemy had „taken hostage America and the west“. In his Letter to the American People of Oktober 2002 bin Laden wrote: „The Jews in all its different forms and guises have taken control of your economy, through which they have then taken control of your media, and now control all aspects of your life making you their servants and achieving their aims at your expense.“ The means of Jewish infiltration of which bin Laden obviously wanted to liberate the Americans was according to his letter „the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling´s,and trading with interest.“
It is just this mission of purification and salvation, however, which gives (lends) Islamistic antisemitism an eliminatory quality which creates a hatred of Jews that is even stronger the the fear of death. The well-known scholar of Islam and muslim, Bassam Tibi, has accuratly critizied that nobody in Germany really wants to see of or to learn about this anitsemite dimension of 9/11. He wrote: „Unless the German public is prepared to confront this threat of antisemitsm in an adequate (appropriate) way (manner) it won´t be possible to resume that it really understood the lessons of Germany´s past.“
Thirty years after the plot (bomb attack) carried out by the Tupamaros Westberlin exactly that position is gaining dominance within German society which Mr. Kunzelmann gave expression to when he talked about the “complex towards the Jews“: That any additonal burdening with Germany Nazi past has to be regarded as a kind of illness, just a “complex“, whereas healthy and realistic Germans are exclusively dealing with present times and their practical ends (purposes). To emphasize the justification (right) of Israel to exist is comme il faut in today´s Germany. However, in rejecting (disapproving, refusing, declining) that “complex“ the 1968 left remained (was) seemingly true to itself. We can´t consider a change of mind of the Left at any rate as long as Hamas is being defended as a “liberation movement“, as long as the anti-Jewish massacres of Hamas are romanticized as “acts of desperation“and as long as those Islamist are invited to sing praises of their massacres (together) side by side with radical left or fascist anti-imperialists, as it took place the other day in Berlin.

Source: Taz (Berlin), April 12, 2003