Well, let me to tell you what you would have seen and heard.
If you'll not be pleasants listening, if you're at lunch, or if you have no appetite, now is a good time to switch.
Off the radio, an ancestor of my main chaine. If you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however.
Improbable, evasion, Russian banji out of it, you don't GENEROPI one.
Who knows that a lot of work I will needs by the thousand year. I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is inside.
I don't see any laughing dream.
I see an a laughing night. Moore.
I as if we care for Asu to kail, if we care for assure to gail.
If some say the world.
Will end, empire, some stay Anie.
From what I have tasted of desire, I hold those of flavor fire.
But if it had to perish twice, I think I know I'm not to hate to say that the destruction Ice is also great, and look sufficed.
This is history.
Well, it has not come up as much as one might expect.
I do sometimes get asked why I've spent.
So much time three years, to be exact, talking about the most infamous Grand Muffy of Jerusalem, Hajamin now Husseini. Now, this is a fair question, and while some asking might have some motivated reasoning at work, I figured it was worth delving into a little bit, if only as a brief addendum to the well the six hour beast I recently unleashed.
Upon all of you.
So why does Hajami now Husseini matter? To state it plainly, and to leave you with perhaps a more pointed example, Hajamen matters not just because of the significant effect that his rhetoric, actions, and even mere existence has had on the historical memory of the birthing pangs of Israel and the image cousured by his most fervent, rabid foes. There is,
in my view, much more to it than that. I would like to believe that I have demonstrated this very effectively in the most recent episode of the podcast and other writing and podcasting that I've done on the subject of Haja Mein, or even just on subjects that relate to Haja Mein. Hajjamen matters and must be brought from the dust bin of history to be carefully examined, in my opinion, because, like all monsters from our past. He was still a man and a man with agency, just
like the rest of us. There is a reason the relationship with his father is what opened the main narrative of the most recent episode of history. Impossible to restate the gist of that mini meditation on the influence fathers have on their sons. This influence can create ripple effects across time that can be felt many many decades after those fathers and sons have shuffled off this mortal coil.
This was as made obvious by the episode's narrative thrust referring to the influence that Hajamin al Husseini's father, Muhammad Tahira al Husseini had on the future Grand Mufty, namely his views on what would come to be known as Zionism, or as to Hear likely saw it, the encroachment of mostly European Jewish emigres on his decidedly purer to keyword there Arab homeland. The circumstances of this.
Influence of to Hear on Hajja Mean are what is.
Unique to the story of Hajja Mean and thus what makes him in part significant. But the influence to Hear had on his young son arguably was not that significant. We are all influenced by our parents, whether through their actions or through their absence, and there can, indeed be
long term consequences of such influence. Those consequences are what makes Hanja Mean unique in the historical record, but the fact that they at least partly stem from the influence of his father are not what makes Haja Mean unique in the historical record. And perhaps paradoxically, that is what
I believe makes him important and worth discussing. I say paradoxically because it hardly makes him unique, but it also reveals the human essence at his core, which was always there within him, even as his soul clearly rotted away over the years with the choices that he made and the hatreds that he carried. To make this point clear, let's ask, does this parable of paternal influence not apply to other controversial leaders in world history, even the most bloodthirsty,
even the Stalins, the Polepots, the Hitlers. Indeed, I believe it does. In fact, it applies very neatly to another controversial leader in this nearly century and a half long conflict. More importantly, a man who is quite literally on the opposite side of this conflict, that is a one Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu Nettan Yahoo, like Haja Mean, grew up in the shadow and indeed overcame the ship, at least to
a certain extent, of his father, ben Zion Netanyahu. Ben Zion was a formidable presence in Israel's history, having served as secretary to the infamous head of the Revisionist Zionists, Zaiev Jabotinsky. He lived to be one hundred and two years old, passing away in just twenty twelve, and his presence especially loomed large over his son. As Jeffrey Goldberg wrote in the Pages of The Atlantic back in the September twenty ten issue, quote always in the back of
Bibi's mind is ben Zion. One of the Prime Minister's friends told me, he worries that his father will think
he is weak. Ben Zion, by all accounts, was worshiped by his sons and their childhood, and today, the sixty year old Benjamin, who has been known to act in charmless ways, conspicuously upholds the Fifth Commandment when discussing his father at a party marking Benzion's one hundredth birthday held this past march at the Monoch and Began Heritage Center in Jerusalem, before an assembly that included the President of Israel,
Shimone Perez. Benjamin credited his father with forecasting the Shoa and in the early nineteen nineties, predicting that Muslim extremists would try to bring down the Twin Towers in New York. Many people in Lecud party circles have told me that those who discount ben Zion's influence on his son do so at their peril. This was the father giving his son history's marching orders. One of the attendees told me, I watched Bibby while his father spoke. He was completely absorbed.
How much of Bibby's policy decisions, including those related to West Bank settlements, as well as his post ten to seven policies, are related directly to ben Zion's influence, It is obviously impossible to say for certain. However, it is also impossible, given the evidence provided by Goldberg and the sources with whom he talked to, claim that there was and remains no influence.
Ben Zion.
Natanyahu, in the tradition of revision of Zionism's infamous and tractability, would proclaim in a terse speech given at his one hundredth birthday party. Quote from the Iranian side, we hear pledges that sued in a matter of days, even the Zionist movement will be put to an end and there
will be no more Zionists in the world. One is supposed to conclude from this that the Jews of the Land of Israel will be annihilated, while the Jews of America, whose leaders refuse to pressure Iran, are being told in a hinted fashion that the annihilation of the Jews will not include them. The Jewish people are making their position
clear and putting faith in their military power. The nation of Israel is showing the world today how a state should behave when it stands before an existential threat, by looking danger in the eye and calmly considering what should be done and what can be done, and to be ready to enter the fray at the moment there is
a reasonable chance of success. Much can be gleaned from this outlook, both related to geopolitical news at the time and how it is informed by a well at this point perhaps more justified, at least in a post ten to seven world preemptively defensive israel Centric worldview with an interesting inversion of the dual loyalty trope an implied allegation of insufficient loyalty by American Jews. But there can be no doubt that the outlook informing this speech has its
fingerprints on Benjamin Netanyahu's own approach to foreign policy. The point to take home from this is less that I am just as capable of deploying a potentially problematic psychoanalytic framework against the controversial Prime Minister of Israel, just as problematic as the one I deployed against the controversial Grand Muffy of Jerusalem Hajaja Mean. It is more that the point with which I open the most recent episode of
the podcast is even more proven. That men are often influenced by their fathers, and this can have reverberating effects across time in ways that they and those of us watching are probably unable of fully appreciating in the moment. After all, even the greatest men among us are only human, and because we are all only human, we can recognize a lot of what drives men in positions of power that most of us can only dream of possessing, and realize why they could well be figures not to be
trusted to make a bad situation better. I mean, in a way, I'm more deploying a classic cinematic villain trope. I'm more doing that than anything else with this imagining.
As I am.
Speaking these words, Old Bibby sitting across the table from Haja Mien, perhaps, each sipping on a lemonade in the hot Jerusalem sun. I'm not sure who says it, but I don't think it matters very much, since it works either way, honestly. But one of them eventually smiles and says, you and I are very much alike.
I hope I.
Don't sound too preemptively defensive when I say this, but I also want to make it clear that despite my biases that I would like to believe I've sufficiently acknowledged, both on the show and in my writing, that I have been and remain very aware that there are a lot of varying perspectives on how things have devolved so horribly in the Holy Land, especially if we place October seventh, twenty twenty three as a start date for our analysis.
In other words, I am very aware that it is not just a bunch of Arab Nazis running around with a thirst for Jewish blood full stop. There are other major factors at work, as there always have been, and the more thoughtful among the commentariat have discussed these factors
over the years. For example, some of the most compelling arguments that I have seen made from a position more sympathetic to the Palestinian plight, is questioning why the settlements of the West Bank continue to be built despite everything that might justify their existence in the minds of more strident Zionist Israelis, or despite everything that the Palestinians, namely the more politically and especially religiously radical among them, have
done to place themselves and more importantly, the millions of their regular ie civilian counterparts, in the situation that they're in. And this class of Palestinian radical has indeed done this, and yet I will be the first to admit that it is all a bit complicated, to say the least. As Andrew Sullivan, the famous writer and journalists, observed back in twenty twelve in a truly amazing essay and one
that actually inspired me to write the original essay. This particular podcast special is based on, as he observed quote, the Palestinians have for a long time, been their own worst enemies, and in the past have not sought peace for much of the past sixty years. The Palestinians bear a huge responsibility for their own situation quote. But Sullivan also so granted this fact one now more resonant and unfortunately prescient post ten to seven, while also asking very pointedly,
quote why continued to build the settlements on? Quote why indeed we can't, or at least I can't pretend that this question is discounted because of the lack of responsibility Palestinians, namely their more radical and less radical leadership, have as authors of the humiliation and even destruction that they have faced. The question of West Bank settlements is not mutually exclusive from applying the appropriate amount of moral responsibility on Palestinian
leadership across time. However, to return to the main point, let's.
Loop all this together.
It's this notion of placing the appropriate moral responsibility that brings us back to our pal now Husseini. Given these things that help flesh out the moral complexity of the narrative that I've been tackling, it is indeed fair to ask why place so much focus on Jajamin Now Husseini. The short version, my mini thesis, if you will, is simply that he is underrated, both in the historical and
more importantly, in the moral record. This problem of his being underrated is still in the process of being corrected, and despite not being a real historian, at least not yet, I'd like to think that I'm contributing at least in some fashion to correcting this deficient we'll say record, But this record, this long developing record, has hit many many hiccups along the way. As I already covered in the
just released episode of History Impossible. This is partly due to how much misinformation is out there about the man, coming from what we can call the Zionist camp, and partly due to how much seeming in curiosity and at times, as we also covered, very clearly deliberate obfuscation that there has been coming out of the Palestinian Nationalists or Palestinian
sympathetic camp. As a reminder, this runs the gamut from Bibi Netanyahoo falsely claiming that Hajamen was the real brains behind the Holocaust, to activist scholars claiming that he was not actually the monster that he has been painted as, and even some pretending that nothing he did between nineteen forty one and nineteen forty five mattered enough to discuss at any length or depth. This is a clear problem,
and it's one that actually has its own history. So this means we're going to briefly dive into what normally is my least favorite part of historical scholarship, but to be honest, really interesting to me, at least in this case, and that is historiography as in the history of doing history of a particular topic, and that's a pretty loose definition.
In the paper the Historical Problem of Hajamin al Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs in the Jewish Political Studies Review, author Joel Fishman explains that the lack of attention and thus confusion that has arisen over the course of the past half century since the Mufti's death is due to many reasons.
The first reason he cites is that, thanks to the methodology of early Israeli historians of collecting and preserving sources with the intent of allowing research to take place in the future, quote, lost opportunities and major gaps in our knowledge unquote, formed world events also conspired to make these opportunities more difficult to seize, with diplomatic developments between the PLO and the Israeli government in the nineteen nineties, i e.
The Oslo Accords, leading to a supposedly moral imperative that quote, in order to make peace of the PLO, it was necessary to forget the past. The problem of diplomatic real politique aside, there were practical difficulties as well, such as the declassification of records from the war years, occurring at different times and more importantly, in different languages and in
different countries. As Joel Fishman explains, these sources included quote, Nazi documents captured by the Red Army State Department and CIA collections which have become declassified, and related primary sources
from Germany. It was not even until the late two thousands and early twenty tens, when books like Jeffrey Herb's Masterful Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World and David Modoedel's Incredible Islam and Nazi Germany's War, which by the way, were both used very extensively in the research of the last episode, that the story of the Mufty began to
emerge from the murk of recently unearthed historical documentation. Basically, the truth, the real dirty truths, I should say, surrounding the Grand Muffy really only started coming out very recently
as of this recording. Now, Hajamen had indeed gotten coverage from sources like Bayan al Hut and Philimtar, but without all of the documents unearthed in the nineteen nineties and beyond, there was little that could be effectively contested in there, as in Matar and al Hoot's sugarcoated or arguably dishonest accounts,
no doubt contributing to Hajamen's underrated status. This revival of interest thanks to the new information brought to light, of course, produced an opposite effective bias in some corners of the discourse, leading of course to the more extreme claims made about Haja Mien and his role in the Hulla. But the point to remember is that a more fully fleshed out sketch of the Grand Mufty and his thoughts and actions
was not even possible until very recently. The best comparison that I can think of that I want to make is that for a long time, William Shire's excellent book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich written in nineteen sixty and you know, it is an excellent book. It is by no means bad, but it was the mainstream source for looking at the history of Nazi Germany
for a lot of people. Now, there was obviously other books out there, but it was kind of considered a gold standard, mostly because I think william Shire was there. But flash forward several decades and many debates later. I mean, just go to your local Barnes and Noble or local independent bookshop and look at the history section where there's the World War II sub section, because I guarantee you
it is a sub section. The coverage has become much more fleshed out, as I'm sure you can see, and we having incredible work like Timothy Snyder's Blood Lands e Were between Hitler and Stalin, or Max Hastings's Inferno The World at War in nineteen thirty nine to nineteen thirty five, just to name a few examples that I tend to see a lot and ones that.
Are both very good.
When thinking about it in these terms, one might be tempted to suggest, as I kind of am, that the depth of scholarship on Haajamin al Husseini has only just begun to scratch below the surface. The scratching continues, with more material being produced on the Grand Mufty and painting an increasingly interesting picture of not just his relationship with Nazi Germany, but his overall thinking and eventual impact on the wider world. Now it is certainly possible to overstate
Hajaman's impact on certain things. To revisit the most controversial chapter in his time spent with the Nazis, it is hardly certain that he was able to effectively influenced change on the level of Nazi policy when it came to their final solution of the so called Jewish question. But it's also become much more possible to establish just how complicit he actually was when it came to the well
established crimes of that regime. Again, the evidence seems pretty clear that at the very least, he was well aware of the extent of their so called Eastern policies, and that he tried to ensure the efficacy of those policies on various Eastern European Jews, including thousands of children. Whether he was successful or not is less relevant than the fact that he tried. That was the point that I made in the episode, and we know that thanks to
the very good research being done. To put it bluntly, I do not believe that I would have been able to strike this balance in the last episode of the podcast without the incredible scholarship that has been done by the likes of Gilbert Atchkar, Joel Fishman, Klaus Genzica, Jeffrey Hurf, Jenny Label and David Moddel.
I'm just reporting on.
What they have found, and that kind of scholarship, it should be said, would not have been possible without the diligent curiosity of such scholars with an interest in Hajajamin al Husseini and a desire to basically just not take the clearly politically motivated scholars like al hut Khalidi Matar and Papa at their word that frankly, when it comes
to the Mufty, there's just nothing to see here. As Joel Fishman insists, quote, we must make sure that our own understanding of this chapter of history is comprehensive, truthful, and accurate. It is a disservice to ignore this part of the past, because it is crucial for our understanding of the present and for the reasonable formation of policy. It is simply not possible to build upon a foundation
of myth and ignorance. The career of Hajamin al Husseini represents a major historical problem, and the question of his place in history must be placed on the public agenda. It still requires thorough and sustained examination. If we look beyond the individual articles which appear in this issue of the Jewish Political Studies Review, we may identify several larger themes.
The fusion of religion with politics in the form of a new Islamism, the sickness of arabanti Semitism, and of course the Mufti's historical responsibility.
And now for.
The complicated part that I'm probably making way too complicated for my own good, but here goes. If it is not yet clear, I could not agree more with the majority,
the vast majority, I would even say of Joel Fishman's sentiment. Unfortunately, though, I have to urge caution to anyone who might think that we take Hajamen's career and responsibility as our guiding north star for coping with the historical memory that has fueled such vast and apocalyptic death and destruction upon the Arabs and Jews of the Holy Land, especially after the events of ten to seven and the subsequent war that has claimed the lives of thousands.
It is true, without question.
I think I've made this clear that I believe this, but I will say it again as a matter of pointless throat clearing, that the bloodthirsty, genocidal and yes, savage and animalistic brutality brought upon the Israelis stands firmly in the same universe. Firmly, I gotta say that word again, firmly in the same universe, as Haja means own genocidal hatred, and by extension his status is a true Muslim Nazi,
if there is such a thing. But if we are to base the entire moral calculus of how to deal with the quote unquote Palestinian question, truly, for lack of a better term, on Hajamin's record, the ease with which we, or at least Israel's government could come to some pretty heinous, morally compromised conclusions increases exponentially. We spent hours, and by we,
I mean I I spent many hours. But you were all there with me, listening, looking at the vile things said about Jews that came from Hajamin's pen and mouth during and before the Second World War, so it's not worth revisiting them here. But his bloodthirstiness and ruthlessness claimed the lives of many Arabs and Muslims as well. That's
an important thing for us to remember. As historian Jenny LaBelle has written, quote, the Mufti was accused of numerous murders of his own people, which left behind twenty thousand neglected orphans and many poor people in the homeland. They also accused him of using humanitarian and religious funds for payments to his followers who practiced terror and carried out crimes.
The Shaikh from Jaffa accused the Mufti that he had corrupted and subdued the public opinion media by means of arms and confiscated printing presses from their legitimate owners unquote. Someone like this is not simply morally compromised or someone who has simply quote unquote gone insane. This is someone who, if given the means an opportunity, which he thankfully never got, would join the annals of history with the likes of
Joseph Stalin Polpot or yes, Adolf Hitler. And yet despite this, I see very little utility, and in fact, conversely, I see potential for true danger in using Hajamin as a guiding light for present and future policy. This is why, as much as I wholeheartedly agree with Joel Fishman that the story of Hajamen must be examined and re examined and told and retold in order to fully understand his
breadth and depth as a historical actor. And as I've been suggesting, a human being, a very very flawed human being like the rest of us, that I can't bring myself to go the whole way with this line of reasoning. I can't say that there is a lot of use beyond the academic or intellectual, at least not right now, and not in the way that many people, especially those inclined to see the Palestinians as problematic by default, may be tempted to see in the story of Hajamin al Husseini.
There's been a lot of talk in the United States the last month or so as of this recording at least, and I've joined in on it. If you haven't seen it, go check out my piece on violent rhetoric on Substack. But there's been a lot of talk about that, about the role of existentially phrased rhetoric violent rhetoric in compelling people to act in a certain violent way, and it is for good reason. Like I said, check out the piece that I wrote about violent rhetoric causing violent behavior,
or rather the fact that it doesn't. And I'm sure I'll have a hard time convincing a good portion of my audience that such a thing is true, with emotions
still running as high as they are. But when it comes to the idea of crafting policy toward a historically hostile people based on how their first self appointed political and spiritual leaders saw you as Jews in this case, in ways a little better, if not worse than the National Socialists of Germany, than the probability of treating all of those people, not just the radicals, as existential threats
goes up. And with that probabilistic increase, you were also running the risk of treating them in some truly disproportionately cruel and unusual ways. Now this must be made clear, because I can already hear the shouting from either side of this long running debate that a the Palestinians have clearly shown themselves as an existential threat to the existence of the world's only Jewish state and her people, or b that Israel is already treating Palestinians in truly disproportionately
cruel and unusual ways. What I am saying does not
diminish these opinions. One can very easily make the argument that Israel has every right to feel exist essentially threatened by the Palestinians, especially when their government, that is Hamas, sees such astoundingly high support from the populace, and that same government does obviously hold as much, if not more hate in their hearts for Jews as people as the Nazis did, And one can very easily make the argument that Israel's response has been disproportionately cruel, especially in the
context of the nakedly imperialistic statements made by members of the Lecud party and the Dettan Yahoo Cabinet. One can even make relatively reasonable arguments if you mistakenly, in my opinion, but regardless, reduce the proportion to literal numerical comparisons, which in my view is a fool's errand in a war.
The point is this, we can and should use Hajajamin al Husseini's record responsibility and influence across time as a guiding principle for understanding men who radicalize themselves and develop monstrous characteristics. But we should not use these things for informing wartime policy. Is David Joseph Volodsko and I discussed, and as he has written, the Israel Hamas war is already underway. It has been for over nine months as
of this writing, fast closing in on one year. The dead can't be made alive, and continuous pleas of ceasefire mean very little when both sides of the conflict understandably show very little interest in seizing anything or at least finding some kind of common ground required for a lasting peace. But the war will eventually end, and the question of how to conduct things after that happens is the much,
much more important one. At least by my estimation, the questions of war conduct are rather moot at the moment, if you ask me, especially since the world remains watching and as morally defunct and inconsistent as the UN has been on this issue and really on all issues related to Israel, it won't let us forget any infractions committed during wartime. In other words, there's no rush the accounting for such things will come, and it will come later,
whether we want them to or not. It will be the occupation that follows that will serve as the true litmus test on Israel's trustworthiness on the world stage, at
least as far as I'm concerned. And I would rather they or anyone not use the legacy of haja Mean as the barometer for how to treat millions of Palestinians a dozen generations removed from him and his ilk, because if I've learned anything in the process of researching this story over the years, there were very few people who hated Jews as much as Hajamin now Husseini did.
And when you see.
Him as the guiding principle for how to treat a people, rather than just an unspoken or even subconscious influence on the most radical among them, there is very little that you would not justify doing in order to prevent the horror of ten to seven from happening. Again, take it from someone who does as young as he was, remembers nine to eleven and the years that followed, and the kind of justifications that were being made for things like
literal torture. This is to say that Hajamin al Husseini should serve as a guidepost for a worst case scenario, both for Arabs in general and for Jews in particular. Preventing such a figure from rising to the occasion, as it were, requires a deep and serious investment in the lives of Palestinians. Once this war, which remember is already happening, is over, to revisit what David Velodsko and I spoke of.
This is the real moral responsibility in a post ten to seven world, making sure it does not happen again in the most sustainable and dignified way possible for everyone involved, ensuring peace quote unquote, at least in the short term by shooting and incinerating and exploding any and all threats faced by the Jews of Israel.
But without a long term, truly.
Peaceful investment, the death and destruction will then literally be for no reason, and it will simply perpetuate the cycle of violence that we have been watching unfold for over a century. Simply fighting, destroying and displacing will just create another vacuum in the Arab world.
They say nature abhors.
A vacuum, and I say, here's like Hajamin al Husseini crave it. And if he is not used as an object lesson for what not just Arabs and Jews, but all people should avoid and prevent, then the consequences could and likely.
Would be disastrous.
At best, people like Hajamen just managed to make things worse, and at worst, well, we have plenty of examples with body counts that the Grand Mufty could only dream about. S