By: Lyn Julius – Jewish News Syndicate; jns.org
It is not Haj Amin al-Husseini’s effect on the Nazis that Yad Vashem chair Dani Dayan ignores, but rather, the Mufti’s impact on the Arabs.
What impact did the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, have on the Nazi enterprise? According to Dani Dayan, chairman of Yad Vashem, the Mufti’s role was limited—so marginal, in fact, that Dayan refused to reinstate a large photo of the Mufti meeting Hitler in November 1941.
The floor-to-ceiling photo used to feature at the Museum before it was redesigned in the 1990s. Denying at first that the photo was ever at Yad Vashem, Dayan even told Haaretz: “Those who want me to put it up aren’t really interested in the Mufti’s part in the Holocaust, which was limited anyway, but seek to harm the image of the Palestinians today. The Mufti was an anti-Semite. But even if I abhor him, I won’t turn Yad Vashem into a tool serving ends not directly related to the study and memorialization of the Holocaust. Hasbara [puboic diplomacy] … is an utterly irrelevant consideration that shall not enter our gates.”
It is certainly true that the Mufti was marginal to the “final solution.” Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was wrong to remark in 2018 that the Mufti “convinced” Hitler to annihilate the Jews.
cont’d…
https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-nazi-roots-of-arab-anti-semitism-must-not-be-denied/