Rashida Tlaib’s insistence on pushing her Nakba lie and the UN giving its stamp of approval made me want to go back in time and review a period that seems to have been swept under the rug and forgotten. I will hit some of the highlights.
Israel accepted the partition plan in July of 1937 proposed by Earl Peel, an ex-British Cabinet Minister. The mufti of Jerusalem demanded independence, the annulment of the Balfour Declaration and the removal of all Jews. The mufti re-started the revolt in 1937 that he had begun in 1936 with pogroms against the Jews of Palestine. He embraced violence and called his forces the Holy War Army. Nine days after Peel’s partition plan proposal, the mufti called on the German Consul in Jerusalem to lend his support and sympathy for Nazism. The British tried arresting him, but he escaped, dressed as a woman.
In 1941, the mufti made his way to Italy. On October 27, Benito Mussolini received him. Mussolini who was an ally of Hitler who said if the Jews wanted their own country, “they should establish Tel Aviv in America.” “We have here in Italy 45,000 Jews and there will be no place for them in Europe.” The mufti said he was “very satisfied by the meeting.”
On November 28, 1941, the mufti visited Adolf Hitler. In Simon Sebag Montefiore’s epic work “Jerusalem,” the exchange went as follows: The mufti’s interpreter told Hitler that by Arab tradition coffee should be served. Hitler replied that he did not drink coffee. The interpreter told Hitler the mufti still expected coffee. “Hitler replied that even the High Command was not allowed to drink coffee in his presence: He then left the room, returning with an SS guard bearing lemonade.” The mufti and Hitler then agreed to eradicate the Jews. Hitler said to the mufti as soon as “German armies reached the southern exit of Caucasia, Germany’s objective would then solely be the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere.” The mufti boasted that he supported the Nazis “because I was persuaded and still am that if Germany had carried the day, no trace of the Zionists would have remained in Palestine.” Although Hitler had clear designs on wiping out the Jews of Palestine, he was defeated and prevented from doing so. SS-Obersturmbannführer Walter Rauff had been assigned to exterminate the Jews of Africa and Palestine.
On November 29, 1947, the UN voted in favor of the so called “partition plan.” The Arabs rejected the plan. Israel accepted it. Arab mobs poured into Jerusalem, lynching Jews, firing guns, looting Jewish shops, and screaming “butcher the Jews.” On December 7, 1947, Ben-Gurion’s convoy was ambushed. On May 14, 1948, Israel was granted and declared Statehood. President Truman was praised by his lifelong friend Eddie Jacobson for having “helped create Israel.” President Truman responded, “I am Cyrus! I am Cyrus!”
Six Arab countries then invaded the newly-minted State of Israel. Over 6,000 Israelis were killed in the war that followed. Arab leaders, including the mufti of Jerusalem, told the Arabs of Israel to leave their homes between 1947 and 1949, proclaiming they could all return when the Jews had been wiped out. The Jews tried to convince them to stay. Golds Meir went to Haifa to try to convince the Arabs to not leave. They left of their own volition. The historical revisionists are purposefully trying to turn the world against Israel and the Jewish People. This cannot be allowed. We must constantly revisit our past truthfully to advance our civilization. I have attempted to do just that.
Joseph M. Frager is a physician and lifelong activist.
