|
Trending Topics
|
Source: https://lennybendavid.substack.com/p/the-secrets-of-the-surrender-of-jerusalems
The Nazi Collaborator at the Surrender of Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter in 1948
(Substack) Lenny Ben-David - Mousa Abdullah al-Husseini, operating out of Berlin from 1941 to 1945, served as a vital aide, liaison, and researcher within the Arab Bureau of the Grand Mufti, an office attached to the German Foreign Ministry headed by his cousin, the notorious antisemitic Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini. During the war, Mousa organized anti-British and antisemitic propaganda broadcasts designed to incite sabotage and violent rebellions across British Mandate Palestine, Iraq, and Egypt. These broadcasts included speeches by the Mufti calling for the total liquidation of the Jewish people. At the war's end, Allied authorities tracked al-Husseini down in Central Europe and arrested him. Consequently, the British deported him to a prison camp in the Seychelles Islands in 1945. Yet by 1946, seeking to appease Arab leadership, the British government relented. At the urging of Harold Beeley - an influential anti-Zionist policy advisor to British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin - Mousa was freed and permitted to return to Jerusalem, where he immediately re-entered political life as the banished Mufti's chief agent. In April 1948, Mousa joined the inner circle of Jordanian military commander Col. Abdullah el-Tell, serving as the official liaison for the Arab Higher Committee. He was in el-Tell's entourage during the assault on the Old City, and ultimately, at the table for the surrender of the Jewish Quarter. He was photographed single-handedly screening the Jews evacuating the Jewish Quarter, separating Jewish civilians from suspected combatants destined for the Transjordanian prison camps. Yet, Mousa al-Husseini was never a true loyalist to the Hashemite King Abdullah I; his ultimate allegiance remained with the Mufti. This unresolved friction culminated in 1951, when Mousa masterminded the assassination of King Abdullah I on the steps of the al-Aqsa Mosque. Mousa was tried as the lead conspirator in the regicide and hanged in Jordan. The writer, a former AIPAC official and Israeli diplomat, is a research fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs.