Friday, June 25, 2021

The Complete Story of the 1941 Farhud (Pogrom) in Baghdad

In The Truth About Mideast Genocide, I quoted from Joseph Samuels' firsthand account of the 1941 Farhud (pogrom) committed by Nazi-sympathizing Arabs/Muslims against the Jewish community of Baghdad, an atrocity that foreshadowed the dislocation and destruction of Iraq's 2500 year old Jewish community.

The Dramatis Personae Behind The 1941 Farhud Pogrom In Baghdad – And Personal Recollections Of The Events by Dr. Nimrod Raphaeli documents the deep and intimate connections between Arab nationalism and Nazism. The comparison of Israel to Nazi Germany is odious and offensive not only because it is false, but also because it is an inversion of the historical fact that Arab nationalism from its early days to the present cannot be separated from the ideologies and policy goals that the movement shares with the Nazis. 

Not mentioned by Dr. Raphaeli but worth noting is that after Nazi Germany's defeat in World War II many high ranking Nazis were given sanctuary by Arab countries and actively participated in those countries' efforts to destroy Israel:

Intelligence officers, SS generals, propaganda specialists and even Holocaust functionaries went to Egypt after the collapse of the Third Reich to continue to persecute Jews.

Geraldine Schwarz, who has made a film on the subject called Exile Nazi: The Promise of the Orient, said the covert recruitment drive was the brainchild of Egypt’s King Farouk I.

"He commissioned a confidant to build a new army," she told Die Welt newspaper. The king's man was Adel Sabit, entrusted to build the anti-Israel force along with former Afrika Korps Lieutenant General Artur Schmitt. "The Arab League wanted it so," she said...

Egypt's neighbour Syria hired 50 Nazis between 1948-9, including many former SS soldiers, to help mould its army and intelligence service to rival Israel's. One of the men it brought to Syria was Walter Rauff.

Rauff was, at the war's end, the SS security chief for northern Italy, a wanted war criminal who helped develop mobile gas-wagons to kill Jews and other enemies of the regime.

"Allah in Heaven, Hitler on Earth" was a common slogan in Syrian capital Damascus [during World War II]...

It is not difficult to find information about the connections between Arab nationalism and Nazism. For example, consider the facts contained in a 2014 Daily Beast article titled "Hitler’s Henchmen in Arabia":

In fact, the list of some habitués of Cairo in the 1950s and the 1960s reads like a who's who of Nazi Germany, featuring as it did the rescuer of Mussolini, Otto Skorzeny; the ace Stuka pilot Hans-Ulrich Rudel; the leader of a notorious SS penal unit, Oskar Dirlewanger; and the particularly odious and violently anti-Semitic stooge of Goebbels, Johannes von Leers.

What made the relationship between these former Nazis and the Egyptians and Syrians so successful was that it was a genuinely two-way deal. The Arabs offered the Nazis a haven, as well as a market for all their nefarious dealings in arms and black market currency. The Nazis, meanwhile, were able to provide technical and military experts, as well as the knowhow of establishing the instruments of repression.

However, below the back scratching lay a deep and dark underpinning to the relationship between the crescent and the swastika. That was, of course, a hatred of the Jews, and in particular, a desire to see the eradication of Israel.

That shared exterminationist desire had been born during the war itself, when the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husayni, had made his home in the luxurious Hotel Adlon in Berlin in 1941, and had impressed Hitler with his hatred of the Jews. The Mufti lobbied the Nazis hard to kick the British out of the Middle East, and he was instrumental in raising recruits for a largely Muslim unit of the SS called the 13th Armed Mountain Division of the SS Handschar.

In addition, throughout the war in North Africa, German intelligence had worked closely with the Egyptians, and the Mufti is thought to have been a key intermediary between King Farouk and Hitler himself. If further evidence were needed [of the] roots of the Nazi-Arab affair...then it is worth considering the fact that both Nasser and his successor, Anwar Sadat, had been wartime agents for the Germans.

Anyone who speaks out about the Middle East--let alone anyone who has a role in shaping America's Middle East policies--must know this history, but it is particularly important that self-proclaimed "progressives" are educated about these facts and events; people who claim to be "antiracist" and then denounce Israel while praising Israel's enemies must be informed in no uncertain terms that such pronouncements represent an endorsement of genocide against Jews past, present, and future, and are thus a repudiation of the principles that self-proclaimed "progressives" purport to uphold. Further, media outlets that perpetuate the notion that Israel has committed and/or is committing genocide are not only slandering Israel but, in so doing, they are giving aid and comfort to the true heirs of Nazi Germany's genocidal ideologies and policies.

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