| | Indeed, Haj Amin el-Husseini's record of collaboration from 1933 to 1945 was so clear-cut that the Allies were obliged to classify him as a war criminal, though the British, in their anxiety to prevent more Arabs from going over the Axis, censored news of his wartime activities in Berlin. | | Indeed, Haj Amin el-Husseini's record of collaboration from 1933 to 1945 was so clear-cut that the Allies were obliged to classify him as a war criminal, though the British, in their anxiety to prevent more Arabs from going over the Axis, censored news of his wartime activities in Berlin. |
| − | Nor was Haj Amin el-Husseini an exceptional case. The Nazi regime aroused a high degree of enthusiasm throughout the Arab world – in Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon as well as Palestine. Its nationalist fervour, militarism, fanatical antisemitism, and opposition to Anglo-French hegemony inspired many Arab nationalist leaders, intellectuals, and youth between the wars. Both Nasser and Sadat, among the Free Officers in Egypt, were admirers of Hitler and looked to Nazi Germany to free them from British rule. It is no accident, therefore, that in the 1950s a number of Arab countries, and especially Egypt and Syria, were to serve as havens for Nazi war criminals in hiding. Some of the most notorious of these, like Johann von Leers and Leopold Gleim, converted to Islam and continued to act as political advisers and experts on 'Jewish affairs' to the Arab regimes in war with Israel. | + | Nor was Haj Amin el-Husseini an exceptional case. The Nazi regime aroused a high degree of enthusiasm throughout the Arab world – in Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon as well as Palestine. Its nationalist fervour, [[militarism]], fanatical antisemitism, and opposition to Anglo-French hegemony inspired many Arab nationalist leaders, intellectuals, and youth between the wars. Both Nasser and Sadat, among the Free Officers in Egypt, were admirers of Hitler and looked to Nazi Germany to free them from British rule. It is no accident, therefore, that in the 1950s a number of Arab countries, and especially Egypt and Syria, were to serve as havens for Nazi war criminals in hiding. Some of the most notorious of these, like Johann von Leers and Leopold Gleim, converted to Islam and continued to act as political advisers and experts on 'Jewish affairs' to the Arab regimes in war with Israel. |
| | Given the immense sympathy for Hitler and Nazism in the Arab world in the 1950s and early 1960s, it was unlikely that a theory of Zionist Nazism could take firm root. When a leading Arab intellectual like Sadat's intimate friend, Anis Mansour, could write that 'The world is now aware of the fact that Hitler was right', or when a paper like the Jordanian English-language daily, the Jerusalem Times, could console Eichmann that his trial would 'one day culminate in the liquidation of the remaining six million to avenge your blood', there was little sense in accusing Israel of pursuing Hitlerian policies. On the contrary, the trend was to identify with neo-Nazi forces all over the world; this was Nasser's policy as it is...</blockquote></ref> | | Given the immense sympathy for Hitler and Nazism in the Arab world in the 1950s and early 1960s, it was unlikely that a theory of Zionist Nazism could take firm root. When a leading Arab intellectual like Sadat's intimate friend, Anis Mansour, could write that 'The world is now aware of the fact that Hitler was right', or when a paper like the Jordanian English-language daily, the Jerusalem Times, could console Eichmann that his trial would 'one day culminate in the liquidation of the remaining six million to avenge your blood', there was little sense in accusing Israel of pursuing Hitlerian policies. On the contrary, the trend was to identify with neo-Nazi forces all over the world; this was Nasser's policy as it is...</blockquote></ref> |