This is another one of those columns where I tie shoestrings. Two things going on at the same time that are related, at least in my mind. The things are a TV program and a law.
First up, the TV show was called nazi Secret Files and the episode involved Otto Skorzeny. Skorzeny was hitler’s favorite commando. He led the rescue of mussolini, bravely kidnapped a child, and was a good nazi, he hated Jews. None of this is news, what the show focused on was his activities after the war.
At the beginning of the 20th century 1 million Jews lived peacefully in North Africa and the Middle East. They were mainly the Sephardic Jews. After Germany’s defeat in WWI and hitler’s rise to power Jews began to flee Europistan for Palestine. In the 1930s 250,000 European Jews fled Europe for Palestine. At that time Germany let them go, they wanted them to leave. In 1917 the British Empire had issued the Balfour Declaration, they saw it as restoring the land back to the Jews.
His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
At that time the land was under the control of the local Falest Pales Ara Turks. Yup, no one local controlled the land, Turkey did.
So the local arabs began to express their displeasure, they didn’t don the powerful pink knitted hat, nope, they went the antifa terrorist route and began to attack and sabotage. Stirring the pot was Haj Amin al-Husseini. It seems the British just couldn’t keep from shooting themselves and the Jews in the feet and any other handy place, they appointed al-Husseini as Grand Mufti after he promised he’d be good and quit inciting bloody attacks and riots on the Jews like he had in 1920 and 1921. Of course he lied and there were horrid riots in 1929 and 1936. Since al- Husseini hated the British as well as Jews, they really, really should have known better. Alas. He looked pretty much like your typical arab, blue eyed, fair complexion and it was said he could be charismatic and charming. Obviously, the Brits didn’t catch on. What al- Husseini did was change the focus of the conflict in the middle east from political to religious. From 1936-1939 he convinced 5,000 arabs that it would be a great idea to get themselves killed trying to prevent the Jews from settling. Now this is important, if you follow events in Israel, it will sound familiar, very familiar. He convinced local gullible arabs that the Jews were trying to destroy islam. Today the imams, hamass and abu mazen says that they Jews are going to destroy the Alka-Seltzer Mollusk, but it’s the same tired approach, and they’ve yet to catch on. It may surprise you to know, that back then the majority of the arabs wanted to make peace with Israel. They viewed al-Husseini as radical and didn’t want that path. They wanted to live in peace with the new Jews like they had the Jews that already lived there and just get on with their lives. Interesting, yes?
So fair haired, blue-eyed, Jew hating al-Husseini, who would love a guy like that? Yep, on November 28th of 1941 he goes to meet hitler in Germany. However, hitler is less than besotted and turns him over to himmler since he was never really sure about al-Husseini’s genetic make up. Of course a life long friendship begins between himmler and al-Husseini, and they both loved islam. Seriously, they saw Christianity and Judaism as the religion of slaves and islam as the religion of warriors. Hey dipwads, you never heard of King David? Judah Macabee? But I digress, so the new BFFs form islamic nazi SS units in Bosnia with 26,000 men. Indeed one of the largest. al-Husseini becomes a General, gets money and houses and with the similarities between nazism and islam they all get on peachy. Joseph Gerbils even gets in on the act because he sees the muslims as being important to use against Britain. The mufti tours the concentration camps and decides to bring them to Israel. He wants the mobile gas chambers like the kind used by Walter Rauff who followed Rommel around. He was hoping he could get Eichmann to help him set up the camps.
Does any of this give you the idea that there was far more to al-Husseini’s hatred that just some Jews moving to Israel?
This hatred is what led to the assassination of King Abdullah I of Jordan (established in 1948). Not all the arabs wanted war with Israel, King Abdullah wanted to make peace, and was killed for it.
Back to Skorzeny, before the end of the war, Skorzeny had come up with a plan that could extend the action against the allies for up to another year possibly. He began the group known as the werwolves. They were made up of mostly hitler youth because they were available, but like many modern school children, also easy to indoctrinate. Their goal was to work as a partisan unit, disrupt, destroy and kill. I don’t know how effective they really were at that as much as Joseph Gerbils used them to great effect by propaganda broadcasts urging German civilians to join in. The army reacted by warning service men and putting in place curfews on the German population.
“Every friendly German civilian is a disguised soldier of hate. Armed with the inner conviction that the Germans are still superior … [they believe] that one day it will be their destiny to destroy you. Their hatred and their anger … are deeply buried in their blood. A smile is their weapon by which to disarm you … In heart, body and spirit every German is Hitler.”
Eventually Skorzeny sees the writing on the wall and turns himself in to the Americans. In July of 1948 he is sprung from custody by some of his werwolves disguised as American soldiers. He has helped many of the nazi high officials flee via the Ratlines and now he is ready to move, and so he does.
So there is some background.
It’s now 1953 and Skorzeny shows up in Egypt to reunite with the arab fuhrer as al-Husseini was called. So what’s an out of work nazi to do? He begins setting up arab werwolves. He teaches terrorism to the arabs. One would have thought they already knew enough about that. He meets a cousin of al-Husseini named yasser arafat who went on to form the ancient people known as falestinians in 1964. I believe I read that he stated in his biography he came up with the term “Palestinians” as applying to arabs as a propaganda type tool. Knowing he and Skorzeny were BFFs for the rest of their lives I just wonder where he could have gotten such a propaganda idea. After the War for Independence in 1948 the arabs had conducted raids on Israeli farms, stole livestock and farm equipment, mostly. After 1956 Gamal Abdel Nasser came to power and ousted the British from Egypt. Gamal was a hitler fan-boy. So with Skozeny training the arab werwolves the raids changed, now they became vicious towards the Jews. The nazis had their foothold. They viewed civilian trains, buses, markets as fair game. He trained the fedayeen to kill Jews in Gaza, Judea and Shomron. 260 Israelis were killed in 1955 alone. It might interest you to know that Skorzeny was also involved in training young neo-nazis in the United States. By 1960 Nasser had set Egypt up as a nazi state in the mid-east. He had his opposition killed and 75,000 Egyptian Jews had either fled, been expelled or killed. Now that everything is set up, Skorzeny moves to Spain and forms a terrorist for hire group called “The Paladin Group”. His clients included Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi, both admirers of the nazis.
In the 1960s and the 1970s the terror really kicked up in the mid-east with the proliferation of non state terror organizations. The fedayeen, hamass, hezbollah, jemaah islamiyah, al-qaeda all of these originated from Skorzeny’s werwolves and his training back in Egypt in the 50s. Mein Kampf is still a best seller in the arabic world, and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are thought to be true as well.
So now you know how some of the terrorism and propaganda in the mid-east had nazi origins. Now for part 2, it’s shorter.
Perhaps you’ve heard about the new Nation state law recently passed by Israel. Much of the world has weighed in on it. Racist, establishing apartheid, discrimination, democracy is dead. The arabs are all in a tizzy, the left wing Jews are having a hissy, actually left wing everything pretty much always has a hissy when Israelis do anything other than die quietly. But just in the interest of letting you form your own opinion, here is the new Israel Nation State Law, in it’s entirety.
1. The State of Israel
a) Israel is the historical homeland of the Jewish people in which the state of Israel was established.
b) The state of Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people, in which it actualizes its natural, religious, and historical right for self-determination.
c) The actualization of the right of national self-determination in the state of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.
2. National symbols of the State of Israel
a) The name of the state is Israel.
b) The flag of the state is white, two blue stripes near the edges, and a blue Star of David in the center.
c) The symbol of the state is the Menorah with seven branches, olive leaves on each side, and the word Israel at the bottom.
d) The national anthem of the state is “Hatikvah”
e) [Further] details concerning the issue of state symbols will be determined by law.
3. [The] unified and complete [city of] Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.
4. The Language of the State of Israel
a) Hebrew is the language of the state.
b) The Arabic language has a special status in the state; the regulation of the Arab language in state institutions or when facing them will be regulated by law.
c) This clause does not change the status given to the Arabic language before the basic law was created.
5. The state will be open to Jewish immigration and to the gathering of the exiled.
6. The Diaspora
a) The state will labor to ensure the safety of sons of the Jewish people and its citizens who are in trouble and captivity due to their Jewishness or their citizenship.
b) The state will act to preserve the cultural, historical and religious legacy of the Jewish people among the Jewish diaspora.
7. The state views Jewish settlement as a national value and will labor to encourage and promote its establishment and development.
8. The Hebrew calendar is the official calendar of the state and alongside it the secular calendar will serve as an official calendar. The usage of the Hebrew calendar and of the secular calendar will be determined by law.
9. National Holidays
a) Independence Day is the official holiday of the state.
b) The Memorial Day for those who fell in the wars of Israel and the Memorial Day for the Holocaust and heroism are official memorial days of the state.
10. Saturday and the Jewish Holidays are the official days of rest in the state. Those who are not Jewish have the right to honor their days of rest and their holidays. Details concerning these matters will be determined by law.
11. This Basic Law may not be altered except by a Basic Law that gained the approval of the majority of the Knesset members.
And that’s it. All of it. For some good commentary check out IsraellyCool. He has a professor of law analyze it.
And yes, Skorzeny did help the Mossad find information on the rockets being built in Egypt by German scientists. Some wondered what his motivation was. They wondered if on some level he wanted to atone.
“How can I trust you?” Skorzeny asked. “How can I be sure that you won’t go after me later?” He feared that Israeli avengers would find him as they found Eichmann, and his fate would be the same.
Rafi Eitan found the solution right away. “We are authorized to offer you freedom from fear,” he said. He took a sheet of paper and wrote Skorzeny a letter, in the name of the State of Israel, which guaranteed him “freedom from fear” and assured him that he would not be subject to any kind of persecution or violence.
Skorzeny perused the document, then fell silent. He got up and paced back and forth, immersed in thought.
He finally turned to the Israelis. “I agree,” he said.
Nope, self-serving till the end. He may be gone, his filthy legacy lives on.
That’s it, and now you know where the genesis of much of that hatred and misinformation is coming from. The roots of the lies and tactics go back to nazi Germany. And somewhere hitler, Skorzeny and al-Husseini are smiling as the world attempts to deny the Jewish state the right to be, a Jewish State and screams “disproportionate force” as Jews die there still fighting for their right to be a Jewish State.
