On January 4, 2013, Mahmoud Abbas spoke via video link to the masses in Gaza, who had gathered to celebrate the founding of Fatah (the Arabic word for conquest) – otherwise known as the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

In his speech, Abbas spoke glowingly of the legacy of the godfather of the PLO, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Muhammad Amin Al-Husseini, who during the 1920s and 1930s instigated pogroms against the Jews of Palestine. Not to mention that Al-Husseini, during his residence in Nazi Germany, also actively plotted a Final Solution to be carried out across the world once his German allies won the war.

Abbas praised the Mufti as a man whose ways should be emulated by all Palestinian Arabs. “We must remember the pioneers, the Grand Mufti of Palestine, Hajj Muhammad Amin Al-Husseini, as well as Ahmad Al-Shukeiri, the founder of the PLO,” Abbas said according to a translation of the speech made by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

At the time, my agency and others asked Israeli President Shimon Peres and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a comment on Abbas’ remarks.

Since the Israeli government is on record as proclaiming Abbas as a partner for peace, one would have expected a response that expressed horror and revulsion.

Instead, there was silence from the highest officials of the Israeli government. Peres’ office said that there would be no response. Netanyahu’s office said that there would be a response, in due time.

Nine months later, on October 6, 2013, Prime Minister Netanyahu chose the venue of a policy speech at Bar Ilan University to respond to the emulation lauded on the Mufti by Abbas and by the official curriculum of the Palestinian Authority.

Israel’s Prime Minister quoted the protocols of the Hitler-Mufti pact, and presented evidence used against the Mufti in the Nuremberg war crimes trials. The records of the meeting between Hitler and the Mufti explicitly state that Hitler would exterminate the Jews in Europe, while the Mufti would enlist Nazi aid to exterminate Jews in Palestine, so as to establish a “JudenRein” state of Palestine.

To that end, the Mufti ensconced himself in Hitler’s bunker, from where he recruited an Islamic unit of the Waffen SS, which actively engaged in the mass murder of Jews, while issuing Arabic language appeals on Nazi radio that incited Muslims to join the Nazi cause and to prepare for mass murder of Jews in Palestine.

The Protocols of the Nuremberg trials concerning the Mufti were published in a 1946 book, entitled, MUFTI OF JERUSALEM, authored by journalist Maurice Pearlman, who was appointed in 1948 by Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, as the first director of the Israel Government Press Office.

Pearlman reported that the refusal of the British government to arrest the Mufti in Cairo caused the head of the Zionist revisionists in the United States at the time, Ben Zion Netanyahu, the late father of Israel’s current Prime Minister, to launch an unsuccessful campaign to push the U.S. to demand the arrest of the Mufti in Cairo.

In his Bar Ilan speech, Netanyahu cited affidavits of senior SS prosecution witnesses who testified that the Mufti, working directly under Eichmann and Himmler, played an instrumental role in making sure that millions of Jews were murdered, and not ransomed.

Netanyahu referred to the affidavit of one of Eichmann’s subordinates, SS Hampsturmfuerer Dieter Wisliceny, who appeared as a witness for the Nuremberg prosecution. The Nazi officer testified that, “The Mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry for the Germans and had been the permanent collaborator and advisor of Eichmann and Himmler in the execution of the plan…According to my opinion, the Grand Mufti, who had been in Berlin since 1941, played a role in the decision of the German government to exterminate the European Jews, the importance of which must not be disregarded, He had repeatedly suggested to the various authorities… the extermination of European Jewry. He considered this as a comfortable solution of the Palestinian problem. In his messages broadcast from Berlin, he surpassed us in anti-Jewish attacks. He was one of Eichmann’s best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures…”

Discussion of the Mufti’s role in the extermination of the Jews has been downplayed for years by Israeli officials, who were hesitant to attack the George Washington of the PLO. Perhaps that would spoil the moderate image of the PLO as a peace partner.

Now Israel’s Prime Minister has placed the Mufti’s legacy on the agenda.

A little known fact concerns the Mufti’s special relationship with a young relative in Cairo, whom the Mufti would affectionately give the name “Yassir Arafat.” In December 1996, Ha’aretz interviewed Yassir Arafat’s younger brother and sister, who said that the Mufti served as a surrogate father figure and mentor to the young Arafat.

Prime Minister Netanyahu’s erudite reference to the Mufti’s role in the mass murder of Jews in World War II was not lost on pundits who followed every word of his speech. After all, that mass murder of Jews is currently taught in Palestinian Authority schools in accordance with Abbas’ 1983 doctoral thesis at the University of Moscow, which concludes that the World Zionist Organization, not the Nazis, was responsible for the destruction of European Jewry.

David Bedein runs news investigations that rely on private support.

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