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Roots of Islamic Fundamentalism Lie in Nazi Propaganda for Arab World
(Telegraph-UK) Allan Hall - "The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians would have been over long ago were it not for the uncompromising, religiously-inspired hatred of the Jews that was articulated and given assistance by Nazi propagandists and continued after the war by Islamists of various sorts," said Jeffrey Herf, a history professor at the University of Maryland and author of the new book, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World. Herf uncovered 6,000 transmissions, produced under the propaganda minister Josef Goebbels and sent around the Arab world from 1939 to 1945. Transcripts of the broadcasts were made by the American embassy in Cairo during the war, and were classified until 1977. But it was not until two years ago that Herf became the first scholar to be given access to the files. The Nazis relied on radio broadcasts because of high illiteracy in the Arab world at the time. "The Arab language propaganda produced in wartime Berlin was a significant chapter in the longer history of radical Arab nationalism and militant Islam."