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Nazi-Germany’s Anti-Zionist Propaganda and Its Impact on the War of 1947/48
Matthias Küntzel
Abstract
This article demonstrates that the 1948 Arab war against the United Nation’s decision in favor of the partition of Mandatory Palestine was not inevitable. Even though the Arab world rejected the Partition Plan, there was at the same time a general reluctance to go to war, not only among the Arabs in Palestine but also among the governments of major Arab League states such as Egypt. Why did this war – so costly for both sides – nevertheless take place? The article examines the influence of Nazi Germany’s radio propaganda in the Arabic language that – from April 1939 to April 1945 – urged their listeners to prevent the birth of a Jewish state and exterminate the Jews living in Palestine. It shows how Nazi officials co-operated with the Muslim Brotherhood in secrecy before WW II and deals with the mobilisation of the Muslim Brotherhood after WW II that dragged Egypt and other Arab states into a full-scale war against the Jews of Mandatory Palestine. It states that there was not only a temporal proximity between the Arab war against Israel and the Nazi war against the Jews three years before, but also an ideological proximity so that the war of 1947/48 might appear as an aftershock of the war before.
Key words: Palestine, Israel, Egypt, Nazi-propaganda, Radio Zeesen, Muslim Brotherhood.
1. INTRODUCTION
On 29 November 1947 over two-thirds of the United Nations membership voted in favour of General Assembly Resolution 181 proposing a partition of Palestine: 56% of the mandate territory was assigned to a Jewish state and 43% to an Arab state, with Jerusalem under international administration. [1] The Jews in Palestine danced for joy in the streets all night. The following day, eight Jews were murdered in three Palestinian Arab attacks. The Arab war to prevent the implementation of the UN resolution had begun.
The struggle lasted an entire year. The first phase of the war was conducted by irregular Arab guerrilla groups and units. The second phase began on 14 May 1948. During the afternoon of that day, David Ben Gurion announced the birth of the State of Israel. Around midnight the country was invaded from the north by Syrian and Lebanese units, from the east by Jordanian troops and from the south by the Egyptian army. [2] As the British Mandate had ended on the same day, there was no one to stop them. Some 6,000 Jews and an unknown number of Arabs lost their lives before the first ceasefire agreements were signed at the beginning of 1949. [3]
This war – by turning about 700.000 Arab Palestinians into refugees and by strangling the putative Arab state at birth – has shaped the Middle East conflict to the present. Even if there were other reasons for the flight of Arab Palestinians the decisive factor remains: This exodus was a result of the folly of the Arab States in organizing and launching a war of aggression against Israel.
While the Arab world was unanimous in its public rejection of the UN Partition Plan, the question of whether military force should be used to thwart a two-state solution was highly controversial. In 1947, most Arabs in Mandatory Palestine were opposed to war. In his ground breaking study of Palestinian collaborators, Hillel Cohen introduces many examples of stubborn resistance on the part of Palestinian Arabs to their leaders’ calls to arms and of non-aggression pacts with nearby Jewish communities. There were even cases where Arabs actively supported Jewish fighters. [4]
There was a similar absence of war-like intentions within the Arab League. It was, for example, almost until the last minute unclear whether Egypt would participate in the war. “We shall never even contemplate entering in an official war,” proclaimed General Haidar, Egypt’s minister of defense, at the beginning of May 1948: „We are not mad. We shall allow our men and officers to volunteer for service in Palestine, and we shall give them the weapons, but no more.” [5] In February 1948, this was also the position of Abd al-Rahman Azzam, the Secretary-General of the Arab League. He defined “the conflict in Palestine as a civil war into which they would send their regular troops only if foreign armies were to get involved and implement the partition by force.” [6]
In light of the international support for partition, such caution was understandable. In February 1948, the UN Palestine Commission asserted that “it would be a dangerous and tragic precedent if a General Assembly resolution were to be thwarted by force.” [7] At the same time, the United States designated any attempt to change the decision by force as an “act of aggression.” [8] At the beginning of that year, no-one assumed that the Arabs would be so foolhardy as to challenge the combined authority of the United Nations, the United States and the Soviet Union who both favored the partition of Palestine. [9]
Foreign policy considerations were not the only reason for the Arab League’s hesitating stance. In private, some Arab leaders were not as unhappy with the partition plan as their public statements suggested. As Transjordan’s ruler King Abdullah stated: “The partition of Palestine was the only viable solution to the conflict.” [10] Abd al-Rahman Azzam, expressed a similar view. According to a Jewish Agency report of August 1946, “there was only one solution, in his view, and that was partition… But as Secretary of the Arab League he could not appear before the Arabs as the initiator of such a proposal.” [11] In conclusion, while the Arab world unanimously rejected partition in public, it was quite hesitant regarding embarking upon a regular war. Why then did this war – so costly for both sides – take place?
Here is one remarkable answer by Ali Mahir, the former Prime Minister of Egypt. “Arab opposition to Zionism”, he stressed in 1946, “was the product of both Nazi propaganda in the Arab East and Britain’s confusing politics.” [12] Much has been written about Britain’s perplexing politics. This essay will focus on the other aspect, Nazi Germany’s propaganda in the Arab East.
2. THE IMPACT OF RADIO ZEESEN
Until 1937, the Nazi government rejected Arab offers of cooperation: It was anxious not to jeopardize British appeasement of Berlin by activities in the Middle East, especially since the Mediterranean fell within the sphere of responsibility of Germany’s Italian ally. In June 1937, however, Berlin revised this approach. The trigger was the proposal from the British Peel Commission for the division of the Palestine Mandate territory into a smaller Jewish and a larger Muslim-Arab state. The formation of a Jewish state “is not in Germany’s interest,” was the instant response of Foreign Minister Konstantin von Neurath. “Germany therefore has an interest in strengthening the Arab world as a counterweight against such a possible increase in power for world Jewry.” [13] Strengthening the Arabs against the Jews – it is true that Berlin initially pursued this new course surreptitiously, lest it alienate London. Nevertheless, the scale of the operations now set in motion was impressive. Students from Arab countries received German scholarships, firms took on Arab apprentices, and Arab party leaders were invited to the Nuremberg party rallies and military chiefs to Wehrmacht maneuvers. [14]
The most effective vehicle of Nazi propaganda, however, was the Arabic language broadcasting out of Zeesen, a town with some four thousand inhabitants to the south of Berlin. Its influence has long been neglected by historians of the Middle East. This author has written about it since 2005 [15] , but in the meantime, Jeffrey Herf in his “Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World” and David Motadel in his “Islam and Nazi Germany’s War” analysed extensively this “long-range gun in the ether” as Joseph Goebbels dubbed it. Based on new sources, both authors show how the Nazis used this propaganda tool to popularize the Jew-hatred found in early Islamic sources and radicalized it by combining it with the patterns of European antisemitism. [16]
Between April 1939 and April 1945, Radio Zeesen broadcast in standard Arabic every day, soon adding programs in Maghribi Arabic, and broadcasts intended for Turks, Iranians, and Indians. The Oriental Service of the radio station had absolute priority over all other foreign broadcast offices and employed around eighty staff members. [17]
At that time, listening to radio took place primarily in public squares or bazaars and coffee houses. Various testimonies from that period indicate that the German broadcast in Arabic language was more popular than the BBC’s broadcasts in Arab language. For some reason:
Firstly, it emphasized religion: The programs were professionally produced, with regular recitations from the Koran and well performed Arabic music. Secondly, there were quite popular broadcasters, such as Hajj Amin el Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, the prominent Iranian announcer Bahram Shahrokh, Taqi al-Din al-Hilali from Marocco and the prominent Iraqi journalist Yunus al-Bahri. [18] Thirdly, the German transmitter – overhauled for the Olympics in 1936 in Germany – was more powerful than those of its competitors, thus ensuring a better listening experience.
Fourthly, Muslims were addressed as Muslims, not as Arabs : With its pro-Arab shift, Berlin had discovered the antimodernist potential of Islam. German propaganda, however, propagated a politicized version of Islam. According to Motadel,
“Berlin made explicit use of religious rhetoric, terminology, and imagery and sought to engage with and reinterpret religious doctrine and concepts to manipulate Muslims for political and military purposes. Sacred texts such as the Qur’an and religious imperatives such as jihad were politicized to incite religious violence against alleged common enemies, most notably the British Empire, the United States, Bolshevism, and Judaism. … German propaganda combined Islam with anti-Jewish agitation to an extent that had not hitherto been known in the modern Muslim world.” [19]
Jeffrey Herf highlights the centrality of the teachings of the Koran for Germany’s Arabic propaganda as well: “It was its reading of this work and this tradition – not citations of Mein Kampf, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, or speeches by Hitler or Goebbels – that served as the most important entry point to Arab and Muslim listeners.” [20]
The reception and the effectiveness of Germany’s broadcast propaganda is difficult to assess. There are indications, though, that it had a certain influence.
“Even if we do broadcast in Persian”, wrote Reader Bullard, the British Ambassador in Tehran, in 1940, “we cannot hope to rival the Germans in interest, as their more violent, abusive style, with exaggerated claims … appeals to the Persian public.” [21]
Not only to the Persians. In 1939, a British informant reported that he had passed a café in Jaffa. It was possible to listen to the German radio even outside, he wrote. Moreover, in his words, “all around the café stood Arabs – even on the nearby balconies – listening to the broadcast.” [22] Also instructive is another British report about the effect of Radio Zeesen on the Arabs in Palestine, written in October 1939:
“In general it may be said that the middle, lower middle and lower classes listen to the Arabic broadcasts from Berlin with a good deal of enjoyment. They like the racy, ,juicy’ stuff which is put over; they are amused at the slanderous and libelous attacks on British personalities. … What the average Palestine Arab does imbibe, however, is the anti-Jew material. This he wants to hear and to believe; and he does both. To that extent German propaganda is definitely effective.” [23]
In spring 1944, a “Weekly Review of Foreign Broadcasts,” done for the U.S. Military Intelligence Division concluded: “the anti-Jewish theme has in the past constituted a good half of the German propaganda directed towards the Near East. … In recent weeks the Arabic voice in Berlin has surpassed all its previous records in inciting violence in Palestine.” [24]
The bulk of the radio’s verbal material was indeed devoted to whipping up antisemitic hatred. “The defense of your life is a duty which can only be fulfilled by annihilating the Jews” was the message on July 7, 1942. “Kill the Jews, burn their property, destroy their stores … Your sole hope of salvation lies in annihilating the Jews before thy annihilate you.” [25]
At the same time, the anger of Radio Zeesen turned on fellow Arabs who entertained the possibility of coexistence with Jews in Palestine: “Noble Arabs! You should maintain your policy of boycotting the Jews. You should punish those who ignore the boycott. All Arabs who collaborate with the Jews should be destroyed before they help the Jews destroy us.” [26]
However, according to Herf, “the fusion of antisemitism with anti-Zionism was the key ideological weapon of the Nazi regime in its efforts to win support from Arabs and Muslims in North Africa and the Middle East.” [27] From April 1939 to April 1945, Radio Zeesen constantly urged their listeners to prevent the birth of a Jewish state and exterminate the Jews living in Palestine. It broadcast, for example, that the Jews would not be satisfied until they had made “every territory between the Tigris and the Nile Jewish.” If they succeeded, “there will remain not a single Arab Moslem or Christian in the Arab world. Arabs! Imagine Egypt, Iraq and all the Arab countries becoming Jewish with no Christianity or Islam there.” [28] The more impending the defeat of Germany, the shriller the warnings of Radio Zeesen about the consequences for Palestine should “World Jewry” take advantage of its opportunity.
Radio Zeesen stopped broadcasting in April 1945. However, the echoes of this propaganda, which fell on receptive ears due to anti-Jewish elements of the Qur’an and other Islamic sources, continued to reverberate. While the view of the British Foreign Office, which in 1946 „spoke of Arab hatred of the Jews being greater than that of the Nazis”, may be exaggerated, [29] it is obvious that wartime Nazi propaganda contributed to increased hostility after the war.
3. THE ROLE OF THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD
That became clear on November 2, 1945, the anniversary of the Balfour declaration. At that day, the worst anti-Jewish pogroms in Egypt’s history were perpetrated in Cairo: Demonstrators “broke into the Jewish quarter, plundered houses and shops, attacked non-Muslims, and devastated the adjacent Ashkenazi synagogue before finally setting it on fire.” [30]
This Arab mob was organized by the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been founded in 1928. The Muslim Brothers – being a religious sect – weren’t ardent followers of the Nazis. They supported, however, the German war effort against Britain and adopted the Nazi’s antisemitism. Documents of the British National Archives prove that the Nazis did not only finance the Brotherhood with high sums before WW II. In secrecy, Nazi officials in Egypt also organized “Palestine meetings” and anti-Jewish lectures for the Muslim Brothers and even helped the Muslim Brotherhood in producing explosives for their war against the Jishuw in Palestine. [31]
After 1945, the Brotherhood turned out to be the most important political force in Egypt with 1.500 branches and at least 500.000 members. By 1948, these figures had doubled or even tripled. [32]
They tirelessly defended the war crimes, perpetrated by Amin el-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem. “Should one hair of the Mufti’s been touched, every Jew in the world would be killed without mercy”- threatened their newspaper in 1946 – some months after the Holocaust. [33]
Utilizing the arguments of the Nazis, the Muslim Brotherhood started to radicalize the Arab street in their struggle against the Jewish state. They adopted the antisemitic course of Amin el-Husseini in every respect: “This hero fought Zionism with the help of Hitler and Germany”, they proclaimed in 1946. “Germany and Hitler are gone, but Amin Al-Husseini will continue the struggle.” [34]
Historians of the Middle East agree that it was to a large extent the pressure from the ‘Arab street’ that had previously driven a reluctant Arab League into a full-scale war against Israel in 1948. [35] Egypt’s Premier Nuqrashi, for example, was against the military assault that took place in 1948. However, he said he was swayed by public opinion that “was all in favour of the war, and considered anyone who refused to fight as a traitor.” [36]
When the Arab League met in Cairo in December 1947, the Brotherhood brought, for example, 100,000 demonstrators into the streets. According to a contemporary account, on the terrace of the Savoy Hotel where the meeting of the League took place, “the Prime Ministers of the Arab states stood with worthy and grave expressions acknowledging, fez in hand, the salutes of the passing parade of believers.” [37] The Arab League’s responded to this demonstration by, for the first time, agreeing to the training of volunteers for jihad in Palestine. Thus – it was under the impact of the Brotherhood’s mass mobilization that a reluctant Egypt government began its active participation in the fighting in Palestine.
In addition, while the Yishuv had to defend itself against guerrilla attacks, using all necessary means to do so, the Muslim Brotherhood spread rumours of horrific Zionist atrocities against Arabs in Palestine. Thus, they “created an atmosphere in which war seemed the only logical and natural process,” writes Thomas Mayer. “The [Brotherhood] Society succeeded in drawing Egypt into a full-scale military initiative in Palestine.” [38] The American embassy in Damascus confirmed this assessment. Without referring to the Brotherhood by name, they identified “the combined momentum of their own rhetoric and pressure from below” as the cause of the Egyptian invasion of Israel. The “Government appears to have led public opinion to the brink of war and [is] now unable to retreat.” [39]
Only in December 1948, after this war was lost, did the Egypt government dissolve the branches of the Muslim Brotherhood and ban the organization. Why weren’t the Arab rulers unable to dissolve the militant and antisemitic demonstrations of the “Arab street” in the years before?
Probably, those rulers were obsessed by an antisemitic kind of anti-Zionism, as well. Thus, two years after the liberation of Auschwitz, Ibn Saud described the Jews as an “aggressive people” whose ambitions “extend to all the Arab states where holy places are to be found.” [40] Lebanese Foreign Minister, Hamid Frangieh, regarded “the expansionist efforts of Zionism a serious threat to peace.” [41] Iraqi Crown Prince Abd al-llah considered Zionism “the greatest tragedy of the twentieth century,” [42] while an Egyptian member of parliament viewed it as “a cancer in the Arab body.” [43] It is no wonder, therefore, that an assembly of Arab kings and princes convened by Egypt’s King Farouk in May 1946 struck the same note. Their resolution states as follows: “We have decided that Zionism poses a danger not only to Palestine but also to all other Arab countries and to all nations of Islam. Therefore it is the duty of all Arab countries and Islamic countries to resist the danger of Zionism.” [44] The paranoid delusion that a few thousand Zionists in Britain and the U.S. Together with the Yishuv in Palestine constituted a dangerous global power that threatened the whole Islamic world had nothing to do with reality but much to do with the cumulative impact of the years of relentless Nazi propaganda since broadcasts from Berlin had permanently claimed that Zionism was inherently expansionist.
4. CONCLUSION
In 1948, there were, of course, also other motives to prevent Israel – the Egypt’s rulers desire to counter Abdullah’s ambitions for example or the feeling that Palestine had become a test of the Arabs’ independence vis-à-vis the imperial powers. However the after-effect of Nazi propaganda played a crucial role, as well. Nazi Germany’s efforts to incite Arabs against the Jews changed the perception of the Jew within Islamic societies. It strengthened an exclusively anti-Jewish reading of the Islamic scriptures, it popularized European conspiracy theories on a mass scale and it agitated in an anti-Semitic manner against the Zionist project.
Obviously, there was not only a temporal proximity between the Arab war against Israel and the Nazi war against the Jews three years before, but also an ideological proximity. In this respect, the war of 1947/48 might appear as an aftershock of the Nazi war before.
In today’s Middle East a rhetoric that was influenced by Nazi sources still prevails. To this day, Palestinian leaders continue to refuse to recognize the Jewish state by using those 80 year old pretensions. The more that connection is understood, the easier might it become to free the lives of Palestinians and Arabs from the idiocy of antisemitism.
[1] Resolution 181 (II) Future government of Palestine, A/RES/ 181 (II), 29 November 1947, accessed October 3, 2017, https://unispal.un.org/DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/5ba47a5c6cef541b802563e000493b8c/7f0af2bd897689b785256c330061d253?OpenDocument .
[2] Keesing’s Archiv der Gegenwart (Königswinter: Siegler-Verlag für Zeitarchive, 1949), entry of May 14,1948, 1498.
[3] For the stages of this war, see: Benny Morris, 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008) and David Tal, War in Palestine 1948: Strategy and Diplomacy (London: Routledge, 2004).
[4] Hillel Cohen, Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917-1948 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 231-258.
[5] Jon and David Kimche, Both Sides of the Hill: Britain and the Palestine War (London: Secker & Warburg, 1960), 153.
[6] Chronology of International Events and Documents, as cited by Archiv der Gegenwart, entry of February 16, 1948, 1385.
[7] UNO-Bulletin, as cited by Archiv der Gegenwart, entry of February 16, 1948, 1385.
[8] According to a draft resolution put by the USA to the Security Council on February 25, 1948, as cited by Archiv der Gegenwart, entry of March 5, 1948, 1408.
[9] Kimche, Both Sides, 64.
[10] Kirkbride (Amman) to London, 30 July 1947, FO 371/61876, E7242 as cited by Thomas Mayer, “Arab Unity of Action and the Palestine Question 1945-48,” Middle Eastern Studies 22, (1986): 344.
[11] “He [Azzam] would be prepared to support partition on [one of] two conditions: if one of the Arab states took into its hands the initiative and found the strength and courage to propose the thing in the League Council, or if the British requested him to work along these lines.” See: E. Sasson Report, Cairo, 9 August 1946 as cited by Neil Caplan, Futile Diplomacy, Vol. II: Arab-Zionist Negotiations and the End of the Mandate (London: Frank Cass, 1986), 264-265.
[12] E. Sasson’s report on “Attempts for Agreement with Arabs” (Jerusalem), 5 March 1946, in E. Sasson’s Private Papers (T.A.) as referred to by Thomas Mayer, “Egypt’s 1948 Invasion of Palestine,” Middle Eastern Studies, 22, (1986), 24.
[13] Heinz Tillmann, Deutschlands Araberpolitik im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Berlin-Ost: VEB Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1965), 66.
[14] Robert Melka, „The Axis and the Arab Middle East, 1930-1945″ (PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 1966), 53.
[15] Matthias Küntzel, „National Socialism and Antisemitism in the Arab World,” Jewish Political Studies Review, 17 (2005) 99-118, accessed October 3, 2017, http://www.matthiaskuentzel.de/contents/national-socialism-and-anti-semitism-in-the-arab-world .
[16] Jeffrey Herf, Nazi Propaganda in the Arab World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009); David Motadel, Islam and Nazi Germany’s War (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014).
[17] Werner Schwipps, “Wortschlacht im Äther,” in Wortschlacht im Äther, Der deutsche Auslandsrundfunk im Zweiten Weltkrieg , ed. Deutsche Welle (Berlin: Haude & Spenersche Verlagsbuchhandlung,1971), 58.
[18] According to Motadel, Islam and Nazi, 93, „Berlin could never have been able to find a better-suited man to be its propaganda instrument through the Radio”, a British intelligence report remarked about al-Bahri. “With his sharp voice, aggressive speeches, and marked ability to raise his voice, his broadcasts quickly became the earmark of Germany’s Arabic service.”
[19] Motadel, Islam and Nazi, 76 and 97.
[20] Herf, Nazi-Propaganda, 197.
[21] Reader Bullard, Letters from Tehran: A British Ambassador in World War II Persia (London and New York: I.B.Tauris, 1991), 28.
[22] Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem, Report by Kapeliuk, 18. October 1939 as cited by René Wildangel, Zwischen Achse und Mandatsmacht. Palästina und der Nationalsozialismus , (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 2007), 359.
[23] British National Archive, London, WO 208/1701, Palestine Historical. Monthly appreciations German Nazi activities in Palestine. Oct ’38 – Oct ’39.
[24] Weekly Review of Foreign Broadcasts, F.C.C., No. 118, 3/4/44 “Near and Middle East”, as cited by Herf, Nazi-Propaganda, 219.
[25] Voice of Free Arabism, July 7, 1942, 8:15 pm, “Kill the Jews before They Kill You”, Kirk to Secretary of State, No. 502, (July 21, 1942), as cited by Herf, Nazi-Propaganda, 126.
[26] Arab Nation, April 30, 1943, 9:00 p.m., “Has the Jewish Danger Passed?”, Kirk to Secretary of State, No. 1047, Cairo (May 15, 1943), as cited by Herf, Nazi-Propaganda, 171.
[27] Herf, Nazi-Propaganda, 178.
[28] Berlin in Arabic, September 8, 1943, “Talk: The Ambitions of the Jews,” Kirk to Secretary of State, No. 1313, Cairo, September 23, 1943, as cited by Herf, Nazi-Propaganda, 57.
[29] Benny Morris, 1948, 34.
[30] Gudrun Krämer, Minderheit, Millet, Nation? Die Juden in Ägypten 1914-1952 (Wiesbaden: Verlag Otto Harrassowitz, 1982), 320.
[31] British National Archive, London, FA 371/23343 Defense Security Office, Egypt, 10.9.1939 – Note on German Suspects – Egypt, 13, 24, 26.
[32] Abd Al-Fattah Muhammad El-Awaisi, The Muslim Brothers and the Palestine Question 1928-1947 (London: Tauris, 1998), 135.
[33] “One hair of the Mufti’s is worth the Jews of the Whole World,” Al Ikhwan Al Muslimun, 20 June 1946, Tuck to Secretary of State, No. 1648 (June 24, 1945) as cited by Herf, Nazi-Propaganda, 242-3. See about the Mufti’s war crimes Joseph B. Schechtman, The Mufti and the Fuehrer: The Rise and Fall of Haj Amin el-Husseini (London and New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1965), 152-163 and Klaus Gensicke,Der Mufti von Jerusalem und die Nationalsozialisten. Eine politische Biographie Amin el-Husseinis (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2007), 103-134.
[34] As cited by Herf, Nazi-Propaganda, 244.
[35] Matthias Küntzel, „The Aftershock of the Nazi War against the Jews, 1947-1948: Could War in the Middle East Have Been Prevented?”, Jewish Political Studies Review 26 (2016) 38-53, accessed October 3, 2017, http://www.matthiaskuentzel.de/contents/the-aftershock-of-the-nazi-war-against-the-jews-19471948 .
[36] Fawaz A. Gerges, “Egypt and the 1948 war.” In: The War for Palestine. Rewriting the History of 1948, edited by Eugene L. Rogan and Avi Shlaim, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) 2001, 154.
[37] “Mit deutschem Gruß für Palästina,” Spiegel , 51 (1947), 11.
[38] Thomas Mayer, “The Military Force of Islam. The Society of the Muslim Brethren and the Palestine Question: 1945-48.” In Zionism and Arabism in Palestine and Israel, edited by Elie Kedourie and Sylvia G. Haim, London (Frank Cass) 1982, 110-11.
[39] Robert Memminger, Damascus to Secretary of State, 9 May 1948, USNA, 800 Syria/9-548 as cited by Morris, 1948, 181.
[40] United Press, “Telegramm von König Ibn Saud und Präsident Truman”, as cited by Archiv der Gegenwart, entry of October 18, 1946, 901.
[41] “UN-Bulletin, Declaration by Hamid Frangieh on behalf of the Arab League,” as cited by Archiv der Gegenwart, entry of July 22, 1947, 1151.
[42] FO 371/45237/E 2090, Oriental Department to Dickson, 26 March 1945, as cited by Meir Litvak and Esther Webman, From Empathy to Denial: Arab Responses to the Holocaust (London: Hurst & Co, 2009), 39.
[43] Al-Ahram , 6 and 7 March 1946, as cited by Meir and Webman, From Empathy to Denial, 41.
[44] Third Section of the Resolutions of the Anshas Summit of 28 and 29 May 1946, as cited by Zvi Elpeleg, Through the Eyes of the Mufti. The Essays of Haj Amin (London: Valentine Mitchell, 2009), 194.
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