terrorist begets more terrorists? - Page 3 - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

host · 03-04-2007, 12:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dc_dux

Will...do you really believe there were democratic institutions in place in Palestine before Partition?

Under the defacto "government" or authoritarian rule of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (an ally of Hitler), even after he was convicted at the Nuremburg trials as a war criminal and living in exile in Egypt under the protection of Nasser) the simple answer is that the Arabs in Palestine/Israel had no right to vote on anything that affected their lives. The majority Arab population did what the Mufti ordered them to do.

In fact, there is a body of evidence that suggests that the Mufti ordered the Arab population to leave their homes after the Partition vote (with a promise that they could return after the Jews were driven from the land), which was what really initiated the Arab refugee problem. (I know there is a counter argument that the new Israeli govt ordered the Arabs to leave).

While the Mufti was in exile in Egypt after WW II, his nephew, a 17 yr old Egyptian named Mohammed Abder Rauf Arafat Al-Kudwa Al-Husseini, better known as Yasir Arafat, began to work for him and carry out his jihad against all Jews and any moderate Muslims who accepted the Jews in Palestine (this was even before Partition).

edit:
I know the above may further feed Roachboy's comment... "history" that makes this conflict "clear" is fine in the way that any narrative of a sufficiently high level of vagueness is--it serves the purpose of making things appear "clear" by simply ignoring everything that would complicate it....but you really cant ignore the role of the Grand Mufti in creating the 20th century Pan Arab terrorist movement against the Jews in the Middle East...it is part of the history.

dc_dux, you cite no sources to support your controversial statements.

Can we agree that the Mufti was a "bad, bad" man.....that he collaborated with the Nazis, but that his "collaboration" had no more "impact" on actual aid to the Nazi war effort, than say.....the collaboration of Prescott Bush or his partner, Harriman....or that the Mufti was any "badder" with regard to the "hands on" killing of innocents, than terrorists Menachim Begin, David ben Gurion, Yitzak Rabin, et al?

The Mufti was never tried or convicted at Nuremberg. My reading shows him to be a "distant cousin" of Arafat. Hannah Arendt, German Jewish refugee and later, prominent American political philosopher, was sent by the New Yorker magazine, in 1963, to cover the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Israel. She concluded that the Mufti was demonized by Israeli government intention, via that trial, and that the demonization was politically motivated and out of proportion:

Quote:

http://www.berenbaumgroup.com/ber_re...vsEichman2.htm

......... It is remarkable how small a role Hannah Arendt's work Eichmann in Jerusalem plays in Yablonka's work. Arendt's concept of the banality of evil is flawed, fundamentally flawed. While the evildoer may be banal – ordinary and routine – and far from the superhuman embodiment of evil that Israel prosecutors portrayed Eichmann to be, the evil that he and his Nazi colleagues perpetrated was anything but banal as the testimony of survivors made that vivid throughout the trial.

Several of her many insights are worthy of special note:

The Israeli establishment – Establishment with a capital letter is the way that Yablonska writes the term – was ill prepared for the trial. They were pressured by a German informant to capture Eichmann, they let a local blind man do the initial investigation in Argentine before they assigned an Israeli police official. The legal system was ill equipped to handle the trial. Laws had to be passed. Little work was done in the Educational Ministry in preparation. In 1961 Israel lacked the intellectual infrastructure of Holocaust historians capable on making an impression on the world or the political leadership had little faith in their own historians. Yad Vashem was helpful only in minor ways and the much smaller museum at Lochamei Haghettot played a much more significant role. Attorney General Gideon Hausner was trying his first criminal case yet the never harbored a moments doubt that a historian could ascertain regarding his readiness for the task. His predecessor Haim Cohen, a far more distinguished jurist, a far more nimble mind, had chosen a Supreme Court appointment over the opportunity to try the Eichmann case. Ben Gurion expressed anxiety about the appointment, but politics being what they were; there was little that he could do about it. Michael Oren demonstrated the same ill-preparedness regarding the Six Day War.

Politicians interfered with the trial again and again. <b>Ben Gurion was insistent that German Chancellor Konrad Adenhauer be protected, that his right-hand man, a former high ranking Nazi official, Hans Gloebke, be kept out of the trial and that Hausner speak of Nazi Germany and not Germany. Golda Meir, then Foreign Minister, wanted the Mufti of Jerusalem front and center even if he was peripheral to the guilt or innocence of Eichmann.</b> She wanted Nazi racist ideology included for it might impress African states, then a major interest of Israeli Foreign Policy..........

We do know that the Mufti lived in exile in Berlin during WWII and functioned as a propagandist for the nazis. We don't know how much of the Nuremberg testimony of later executed war criminal, Dieter Wisliceny, against the Mufti, was factual.

Given all of the above, isn't it fair to say that those who disagree with the most negative assessment of the Mufti's complicity with the nazis and "the final solution", are at a disadvantage to argue that his "crimes" were less than meets the eye, both because of the Mufti's own exile in Berlin, and his support of the nazis, and the much more limited means and opportunities of his Palestinian supporters to influence the rest of the world, than those of Israelis and their western supporters?

Dc_dux, I see no more point in "saddling" this generation of Palestinians with the legacy of the Mufti, than I do in saddling this generation of Iraelis with the terrorist acts of Israel's founders, or of saddling the current president Bush with the financial activities of his grandfather that aided the nazis.

When I post about Prescott Bush and the terrorist founding leaders of the state of Israel, I do so to focus on the hypocrisy of the opposing "black or white" arguments. The "gray areas" do not seem to sap the convictions of the most resolute, because they don't often admit that they are on the map.....

Willravel · 03-04-2007, 01:22 PM

RB, exactly. "Terrorism" has become a term along the lines of "evil". It's perceived as inexcusable. It's paired up with things like "they hate freedom" and such so much that any possible understanding of their rational would make you yourself one of them. It's an ancient way to control hatred of the enemy, and is just as successful today as it was when the Catholic church fought the Saracens. Of course, the second one does peer through the haze of control into the meaning of the actions of 'terrorists', it becomes clear. I agree that terrorism is wrong, as wrong as war, but to deny the meaning of terrorism is to lose the freedom to think for yourself. OBL doesn't attack us because he hates freedom or because he hates American Idol (though I'm sure he's not a fan), but because we've fucked with his people time and time again. He felt and feels betrayed because of things that happened when the US was still demonizing Communism (the last great enemy before terrorism, go figure). The Palestinians don't suicide bomb in Israel because they hate the Jews so much as they hate being prisoners in their own homes. They hate watching their homes and businesses bulldozed in the name of "Jewish safety". They hate having walls built around them, with armed guards and cameras. They don't like being bombed. Is it right when someone explodes himself in a bus of civilians? Of course. But to act as if they are blindly hating without reason is like saying that Bush wire taps our phones to protect us. It's naive.

host · 03-04-2007, 01:40 PM

As I outlined here:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...ad#post2139216

...if the US regime was serious and balanced in it's views and reactions to "terrorism", it's terrorist "jihad" propagandist Tom Gauthier, would be in a jail cell, instead of being principle administration advisor on Afghanistan, and his "protege", Khalilzad, would not be arriving at the UN to chair the US delegation there. The current US approach to "terrorism" and to "jihad" is a farce, to anyone with any curiousity and the initiative to use a newspaper archival resource, probably available at the website of their own, local library, would dispense with a "black or white" POV. We are not little children, we adults in the US. Blind faith in, followed by regurgitation of the "talking points" of our national leadership, is not patriotic, nor does "blind faith" support the troops.....

Willravel · 03-04-2007, 01:55 PM

I couldn't agree more. The maddening hypocrisy surrounding the administration's throwing the word 'terrorism' around, while all along being terrorists themselves is as blatant as the nose on their faces.

dc_dux · 03-04-2007, 02:29 PM

Quote:

The Mufti was never tried or convicted at Nuremberg. My reading shows him to be a "distant cousin" of Arafat. Hannah Arendt, German Jewish refugee and later, prominent American political philosopher, was sent by the New Yorker magazine, in 1963, to cover the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Israel. She concluded that the Mufti was demonized by Israeli government intention, via that trial, and that the demonization was politically motivated and out of proportion:

Host...I stand corrected. The Mufti was not tried and convicted at Nuremburg. He was indicted by the Yugoslavian govt. for his direct involvement in the Bosnian muslim collaboration with the Nazis and active participation in war crimes against the Jews (and Serbs) of Yugoslavia, but was able to avoid trial with the complicity of the French and Brits:

Quote:

In July 1945, the Yugoslavian government, a charter member of the United Nations, indicted Haj Amin el Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, for war crimes committed in Bosnia-Hercegovina.
..
Husseini, however, fled from Berlin to Switzerland. But because the Swiss did not want to harbor “alleged war criminals”, they refused him political asylum. The Swiss government gave him to France, where he lived in a villa outside of Paris.

Although Palestine was then under British “administration” under the Mandate, the British government, like the French, refused to extradite the Mufti. The British and French governments wanted to have good relations with the Arab and Muslim nations after World War II. They wanted to maintain their colonial and imperial possessions. They did not want to anger the Arab and Muslim leaders because they wanted to control the oil in those countries. What did Yugoslavia have to offer? Nothing. Britain and France could derive nothing from the Slavs. But oil was in abundance in the Arab and Muslim countries.

The French government gave the Mufti “privileged treatment” and saw him as “the head of a great Arab community." The Mufti had his own personal chauffeur, a secretary, and bodyguards. He walked openly in the streets of Paris.

In April, the American Jewish Conference requested that France turn the Mufti over for trial at Nuremberg as a war criminal. Instead, the French government denied the extradition request by Yugoslavia and allowed the Mufti to leave Paris for Cairo. Egypt granted him political asylum. This was how the Grand Mufti was able to “escape” war crimes prosecution in Yugoslavia for alleged war crimes he committed in Bosnia.

http://www.serbianna.com/columns/savich/077.shtml

***
In 1943 al-Husseini traveled several times to Bosnia, where he helped recruit a Bosnian Muslim S.S. company, the notorious “Hanjar troopers,” who slaughtered 90 percent of Bosnia’s Jews and burned “countless Serbian churches and villages.”

http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=223

Biased sources? You can decide for yourself.

And, his young relative, Arafat, may well have been a distant cousin (rather than nephew or grand nephew) who referred to Haj Amin el-Husseini as Uncle out of respect. In either case, Arafat joined el-Husseini's jihad against Jews in the Middle East in 1946, which began when el-Husseini was appointed Mufti by the Brits in 1921 (there are many sources). If that is considered demonizing the Mufti (and Arafat), so be it.

Quote:

Can we agree that the Mufti was a "bad, bad" man.....that he collaborated with the Nazis, but that his "collaboration" had no more "impact" on actual aid to the Nazi war effort, than say.....the collaboration of Prescott Bush or his partner, Harriman....or that the Mufti was any "badder" with regard to the "hands on" killing of innocents, than terrorists Menachim Begin, David ben Gurion, Yitzak Rabin, et al?

Nope...the comparisons are absurd IMO....unless you can find similar religiously driven extremism (by Prescott Bush, Begin, ben Gurion, Rabin...) and incitement of others to follow the same extremism as this:

Quote:

“The overwhelming egoism which lies in the character of Jews, their unworthy belief that they are God’s chosen nation and their assertion that all was created for them and that other people are animals” makes them “incapable of being trusted. They cannot mix with any other nation but live as parasites among the nations, suck out their blood, embezzle their property, corrupt their morals.” “Kill the Jews wherever you find them,” the Mufti told his growing Arab radio audience in 1944. “This pleases God, history, and religion.”

Now back to the more general discussion of terrorism begetting terrorism.

Elphaba · 03-04-2007, 04:44 PM

Elph flings a smelly sock at dc dux

My first act of 'terror'

dc_dux · 03-04-2007, 04:48 PM

*covering my plate of kosher kung pao chicken*

edit:
fortune cookie: "someone is speaking well of you"

03-04-2007, 04:44 PM	#86 (permalink)
Elphaba Deja Moo Location: Olympic Peninsula, WA	Elph flings a smelly sock at dc dux My first act of 'terror' __________________ "You can't ignore politics, no matter how much you'd like to." Molly Ivins - 1944-2007

03-04-2007, 04:48 PM	#87 (permalink)
dc_dux Location: Washington DC	covering my plate of kosher kung pao chicken edit: fortune cookie: "someone is speaking well of you" __________________ "The perfect is the enemy of the good." ~ Voltaire Last edited by dc_dux; 03-04-2007 at 05:02 PM..

03-04-2007, 01:22 PM	#82 (permalink)
Willravel ... a sort of licensed troubleshooter.	RB, exactly. "Terrorism" has become a term along the lines of "evil". It's perceived as inexcusable. It's paired up with things like "they hate freedom" and such so much that any possible understanding of their rational would make you yourself one of them. It's an ancient way to control hatred of the enemy, and is just as successful today as it was when the Catholic church fought the Saracens. Of course, the second one does peer through the haze of control into the meaning of the actions of 'terrorists', it becomes clear. I agree that terrorism is wrong, as wrong as war, but to deny the meaning of terrorism is to lose the freedom to think for yourself. OBL doesn't attack us because he hates freedom or because he hates American Idol (though I'm sure he's not a fan), but because we've fucked with his people time and time again. He felt and feels betrayed because of things that happened when the US was still demonizing Communism (the last great enemy before terrorism, go figure). The Palestinians don't suicide bomb in Israel because they hate the Jews so much as they hate being prisoners in their own homes. They hate watching their homes and businesses bulldozed in the name of "Jewish safety". They hate having walls built around them, with armed guards and cameras. They don't like being bombed. Is it right when someone explodes himself in a bus of civilians? Of course. But to act as if they are blindly hating without reason is like saying that Bush wire taps our phones to protect us. It's naive.

03-04-2007, 01:40 PM	#83 (permalink)
host Banned	As I outlined here: http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...ad#post2139216 ...if the US regime was serious and balanced in it's views and reactions to "terrorism", it's terrorist "jihad" propagandist Tom Gauthier, would be in a jail cell, instead of being principle administration advisor on Afghanistan, and his "protege", Khalilzad, would not be arriving at the UN to chair the US delegation there. The current US approach to "terrorism" and to "jihad" is a farce, to anyone with any curiousity and the initiative to use a newspaper archival resource, probably available at the website of their own, local library, would dispense with a "black or white" POV. We are not little children, we adults in the US. Blind faith in, followed by regurgitation of the "talking points" of our national leadership, is not patriotic, nor does "blind faith" support the troops.....

03-04-2007, 01:55 PM	#84 (permalink)
Willravel ... a sort of licensed troubleshooter.	I couldn't agree more. The maddening hypocrisy surrounding the administration's throwing the word 'terrorism' around, while all along being terrorists themselves is as blatant as the nose on their faces.