Showing posts with label Amin al-Husseini. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Amin al-Husseini. Show all posts

Thursday, October 2, 2025

What did Palestine and Yugoslavia have in common?


Answer: Amin al-Husseini.

Related on the female side to Yasser Arafat, former leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, revered by radical Islamists, President Tito of Yugoslavia charged him with war crimes.


Before we discover why, it is important to know what Israel was like before Jews fleeing persecution in Europe made its deserts bloom. Indeed, over half of this tiny country was desert and much of the remainder, malarial swamps. In 1857 the British consul wrote, 'the country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants.' Other visitors described it as 'desolate and unpeopled', in 'wretched desolation and neglect' (2). According to Mark Twain, who visited Jerusalem in 1867, the city was so small that one could walk around it in an hour, and hosted a mixed population of Arabs, Jews, Armenians, Copts and other Christians, Latins, Syrians and Abyssinians, speaking a variety of languages. Outside the walls, Bedouins rode wildly across the landscape. 'It seems to me that all the races and colors and tongues of the earth must be represented among the fourteen thousand souls that dwell in Jerusalem,' Twain wrote. 'Mournful, and dreary, and lifeless. I would not desire to live here' (3).

Thirty years later, Amin al-Husseini was born into this unprepossessing community. In a quick overview of his life, one thing is apparent: he always seemed to be fleeing from something. In 1920, he fled from Jerusalem to Syria to escape imprisonment by the British for inflammatory speech during the Jerusalem riots. He was a pivotal figure in the Hebron Massacre of 1929. In July 1937 he fled the British again, disguised as a woman, for his part in the Arab revolts against them and the Jews. Later that year, he fled to Lebanon, this time disguised as a Bedouin. As his relationship with the French and the Syrians deteriorated, he fled from there to Iraq in 1939. 'In October 1941 General Wavell, commander of the British Middle Eastern forces, offered a $100,000 (25,000 pounds) reward for [his] capture...dead or alive...being under a still valid warrant of arrest of the Palestine government for the assassination of Jews, Arabs, and British, including Galilee Commissioner Andrews.' (8). From Iraq, al-Husseini fled 'to Iran and hid himself in the Japanese Embassy'. From Tehran he [fled] to Italy' (8). From November1941, we find him in Germany supported by Hitler. In May 1945 following the dictator's suicide, he fled first from Austria to Switzerland and then to Germany where he was arrested by the French (4). It was while he was in France under house arrest that the request for his indictment arrived from Yugoslavia and so, in 1946, he fled yet again to Egypt where King Farouk of Egypt granted him asylum (5, 7).

As someone who has visited the former Yugoslavia once and since its breakup, Bosnia twice, and Serbia and Croatia many times, I have observed that Bosnia, although rich in natural resources, is the worst off. It is very poor. Unemployment is high. I saw whole villages lying deserted because the inhabitants had left for a better life. Over the centuries Bosnia has been exploited by the Ottomans, the Austrians, the Nazis, and most recently by political Islam. A young sales assistant we spoke to, a university graduate, told us in perfect English that it was generally felt that a war was again approaching.

Those of you who have read the Nobel Prize winning novel by Ivo Andrić, The Bridge on the Drina, will recall Turks in Bosnia with surnames like Sokolović and Branković. Though referred to as 'Turks', they were actually Bosniaks, Slavs who had converted to Islam in the centuries of the Ottoman occupation. During Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of Russia, Germany did not have enough soldiers to control Yugoslavia and, in 1942, Himmler decided to form two SS Waffen Divisions (a third was later added) from these Bosnian Muslims, ethnic Yugoslav Germans and a small percentage of Catholic Croats. (Waffen is German for 'armed' in the same way as Panzer is German for a 'tank'.) The divisions were led by German officers and became operational early in 1943. They were called the Handschar Divisions, handžar being a Serbo Croatian word for a scimitar, the curved sword of the Ottomans. They were Mountain Divisions because Bosnia is very mountainous until you descend to the plain of the Neretva River and commence the drive towards the coast.


Meanwhile in Berlin, Al-Husseini had been comfortably provided for by Hitler since 1941. He was assisting him with the Holocaust. In the spring of 1943, the Nazis flew him to Yugoslavia to help with the organizing and recruiting of Bosnian Muslims into Himmler's SS Divisions (10). Many photographs exist of al-Husseini at this time. After initial training in France, the units were sent to Germany, where al-Husseini met them again, inspected them and blessed them. Swelled by German soldiers, their numbers approached 22,000. In December 1943, the Germans returned the divisions to Yugoslavia for active service in Bosnia, and in October 1944 they were disbanded.

You don't need to have observed the recent anniversary of the Srebrenica Massacre to know that there is bad blood between Bosnian Muslims and Serbs. The Handschar SS Divisions did more than just fight the Yugoslav Partisans. They developed a reputation for savagery and atrocities against the civilian Bosnian population of Serbs and Jews. In addition, 'Al-Husseini ... had always preached that murdering Jews pleases Allah and is essential to salvation' (5). 

In July 1945, at the request of the Minister of the Interior and Information in the Yugoslav Government, the United Nations placed al-Husseini on their war criminals list (9). He was charged with organizing the SS divisions in Bosnia and being responsible for the massacre of Bosnian Muslims who refused to collaborate with the Germans.

He was never brought to justice. Like his father before him, Al-Husseini was a dedicated antisemite, notable for using inflammatory language and inciting riots against the Jews and the British, and for the murder of his rivals. His family had arrived in Palestine the same century as mine had arrived in Australia and, as 'Palestinian' was not used as a political term until well into my lifetime, he didn't advocate for its statehood. Given that the Koran says the Jews will return to the Promised Land (6) - Surah Al-Ma’idah (5:21) and Surah Al-Isra (17:104) - we may wonder at the extent to which the radical Islamists who admired him have created an unnecessary problem for the modern world. 

1. Taxation in the Ottoman Empire - Infogalactic: the planetary knowledge core

2. The Population of Palestine, circa 1875 on JSTOR

3. The Innocents Abroad, Complete | Project Gutenberg    Chapter LIII

4. Unmasking Hajj Amin al-Husseini through his wartime letters and diaries

5. From Hitler to Hamas: A Genealogy of Evil » ISGAP

6. EDITORIAL: The Koran itself says Jews will return to their land

7. The Long Shadow Over Palestine: The Terrorist Legacy of Haj Amin al-Husseini | by Jeff Cunningham | Medium

8, U.S. Dept. of State Withheld Evidence From Nazi Files, Shielded Grand Mufti of Jerusalem from Prosecution for War Crimes in 1948 | Adara Press

10. 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar (1st Croatian)