THE JEWISH NEWS
Friday, September 7, 1951
The Not-So Mysterious Mufti :
20
Rose to Power on Jewry's Back;
No Arab Leader Dares Oppose Him
Historiette:
(Copyright, 1951. American Jewish Press. All rights reserved).
The World Dismisses
Extermination Lightly
quarters and himself more pow-
By FRANK SIMONS
erful allies than the • bandit
An American Jewish Press Feature
in his bid for world domina- tribesmen who did his dirty-
tion the Mufti's first target is work for the sum of 10 pounds a
Six years have passed since a
Jewry.
group of 18 American newspaper
head.
He uses other popular preju-
He joined the Fascists. He editors and publishers, at the
dices, fans other hates among Organized the pro-Na&i rebel- invitation of Gen. Dwight D.
the Moslem peoples. He plays on lion of Iraq in 1941—ducked Eisenhower, toured German pris-
their hatred of the British, out into the Japanese Legation on camps to determine the ex-
Whips up resentment against in Iran when it flopped—and tent of Nazi tortures and bludg-
America, fans their passions hightailed it to Italy. Musso- eoning and extermination which
against all Christians in the lini agreed to have him set up occurred . during the -Hitlerian
Middle East. But his first and a pro-Fascist. radio propagan- regime.
most popular target is Jewry.
da and espionage network for
In the group were these prom- -
The Jews, the Mufti has
the strategic Middle East and inent journalists:
By RUTH KARPF
. learned, are both a• tradition-
al scapegoat and a very handy
one. On this, he has built his
career. In fact, the career and
the techniques of Hitler and
the story and methods of the
..Mufti show .a frighteningly
striking parallel.
Both of them started by fal-
sifying their background : Hitler
by claiming that he was really
a German and a "pure-blooded
Teuton" neither of which he
was—and the Mufti by claiming
that he is a direct descendent
from the Moslem, Prophet Ma-
hammed—which he isn't.'
This claim of descent from the
Prophet is an important political
card in the religiously • impas-
Sioned Middle . East. I took the
trouble of checking the Mufti's
claim for that reason. •
. What the Husseinis . claim is
descent from _Hussein, son of
Caliph Ali and Fatima, daugh-
ter of Mohammed. But "Ashraf,"
the Arab social register which
keeps track of family origins . of
the more prominent in Islam,
reveals that this is not true.
"Ashraf" shows that the Mufti's
family originates in the Yemen
and its original name is "Aswad"
which means "blacks."
The Mufti's grandfather mar-
ried the daughter of a Jerusa-
lem notable called El Husseini
and, contrary to Moslerri custom,
assumed his wife's name. On
this the Mufti capitalized to
claim that the El Husseini sign 7
ifies descent from Mohammed.
This may sound like an un-
important detail here. But there
was a major political showdown
about the situation 50 years ago
that went all the way to the
capital of the then-Turkish
Empire for a decision.
.
One of the traditional rival'
families of the Husseinis, the
moderate, pro-Western Nash-
ashibis who have always re-
sented the Husseinis bogus
claims as well as their radical
politics, asked the Turkish
governor of Jerusalem to re-
quest of the Sublime Forte to
issue . a decree forbidding the
so-called Husseinis from using
the holy name. A pitched bat-
tle of court intrigue followed
—which '.unfortunately - the
Husseinis won.
he did such a good job that
Hitler asked to have the valu-
able services of the Mufti at
his disposal.
In Germany, he worked out
the Nazis' master plan for the
extermination of Jewry, in col-
laboration with Himmier and
Eichman. This was revealed in
the Nuremberg trials where he
was also branded as a major
war criminal.
But he managed to escape to
France and the French who
were playing their own Medit-
erranean politics against the
British at that time decided
they'd let: the Mufti "escape."
He "escaped" to Egypt, walked
into King Farouk's palace and
said, "I am sure Your . Majesty
will find my exile in Egypt prof-
itable."
For a while, at least, King
Farouk did. His anti-British
anti-Christian and, of course,
anti-Israel policies dove-tailed
with the Mufti's own plans. It
was in fact the Mufti who really
pressured the Arab League into
attacking Israel and also clever-
ly maneuvered King Farouk in
particular to speed up his Egyp-
tian armies against the Jews.
When they returned • licked,
relations between the Palace and
the Mufti became somewhat
strained; but already the Mufti
had became a Frankenstein who
could no longer be controlled.
Today, responsible politicians or
wise statesmen in everyone of
the Arab countries who can and
do see clearly that their future
lies in alliance with the West, in
moderation and in domestic re-
form, find their hands forced by
the fanatical blue-eyed, red-
bearded plotter who sits in his
scrumptious villa exile outside
Cairo, guarded by 26 body
guards,. "receives" prominent
visitors from every part of. the
Moslem world—commands a
strong-arm movement of 600,000
men, has the most infammatory,
propaganda line in the Arab-
world, and owns a speedy DC-3
airplane in which he flies
around the Arab world and
spreads his diabolical doctrine.
The game which the rulers of
the Arab world played with the
Mufti has grown out of hand. .
Today, the Mufti deals with
MosCow—and everyone in the
Middle East knows it. And none
of the Arab leaders dare make
a move against him.
Abdullah was the only one
who had the courage to stand
up to him. He has been murder-
ed. Before he died he warned,
"The Mufti will lay us at the
mercy of the Russians."
The battle resulted in the en-
trenchment of the Husseinis as
a politically important family
and in official confirmation of
their phony but important claim
Of descent from Mohammed. •
The Mufti banked on anti-
Semitism when he staged the
bloody riots • against Jewry in
Palestine in 1921 and 1929. A
self-conscious Jew played into
his hands, trying to prove his
"fairness" through pardoning a
man who had been convicted of
Murder and arson and, in fact,
pushing through his appoint-
ment as Mufti of Jerusalem—
over an opponent who received CFPWNI.::-Milepp?'-'4 W7 wr
a greater measure of support
from the people themselves. The
Jew was Sir Herbert Samuel,
British High Commissioner of
Palestine at the time. It was.he
who gave Amin el Husseini the
final boost to political power
that he needed to really get go-
ing on his "holy war" against
the Jews. Much as certain groups
of ■ German Jews preferred to
give money to the Nazi Party in
the thirfieS to demonstrate how
truely "German". they were.
Just as Hitler, the Mufti also
banked in world disinterest in
Jewry's fate. He organized the
anti-J e wish riots in 1936-39
which most of the world let ride
as just another up-to-date ver-
sion of pogroms. Only this once
the Jews themselves fought
back, and by 1939 the Mufti
realized that he would have to
transfer his operatiOnal head-
Meeting Urgent
Need in 'Israel
The Leonard Lyons' Son's
Bar Mitzvah and the Birth
Of an Israel Movie Serial
—
Julius Adler, New York Times; .Mal-
colm Bingay, Detroit Free Press; Amon
Carter, Fort. Worth Star-Telegram: Nor-
man Chandler, Los Angeles Times; Wil-
liam Chenery, Collier's; E. Z. Dimitman,
Chicago Sun; John Randolph Hearst,
Hearst Newspapers; Ben Hibbs, Saturday
Evening Post; Stanley High. Reader's
Digest; Ben McKelway„ Washington Star;
William Nichols, This Week; L. K. Nich-
olson. New Orleans Times-Picayune; Jo-
seph Pulitzer, St. Louis Post-Dispatch;
Gideon Seymour, Minneapolis Star-Jour-
nal; Duke Shoop, Kansas City Star; Bev-
erly Smith, American Magazine; Walker
Stone, Scripps-Howard Papers; M. E.
Walter, Houston Chronicle.
After surveying the damage,
the destruction, the loss of life
at Buchenwald and Dachau, the
Commission wrote in part:
"Actual Nazi methods ran the
gamut from deliberate starva-
tion and routine beatings to sa-
distic tortures too horrible and
too perverted to be publicly de --
scribed. Murder was common-
place.
"PriSoners whose only crime
was disagreement with Nazi
philosophy were treated with
uniform cruelty. When death
came as it did to multiplied
thousands, it must have been a
relief from worse than death.
". . . We strongly urge that
United Nation8 policy in regard
to war criminals be speedily
agreed to and the War Crimes
Commission, speedily empowered
to put those policies into action."
In a small matter of six short
years, many of these editors are
now asking for German rearma-
ment regardless of the rise of
Neo-Nazi ideologies. How quick-
ly the world forgets the injus-
tices that have been inflicted.
Reprinted from The Lyons Den
by Leonard Lyons in New York Post
THE TWO MOTHERS: Last
winter my wife and I attended
Margaret Truman's concert in
Constitution Hall, and later met
the concert singer's . mothe r.
"You have no idea how we felt,
my husband and I," said Mrs.
Truman, "sitting in that crowd-
ed hall and seeing our child
walk out on the platform and
perform—our knees shook. You
just can't understand how we
felt." . . . "We understand," my
wife told her. "Only a few weeks
ago we sat and watched our
13-year-old son at his Bar Mitz-
vah" . . A warm light began
to glow in Mrs. Truman's eyes,
as if she were evisioning the
crowded temple and the boy, at
the Ark, reciting the ancient
ritual of confirmation . . . "Yes,"
Mrs. Truman smiled. "You know
how we felt."
TRADITION: The next time I
saw Miss Truman on a platform
was at the Runyon Fund's spe-
cial performance of "Guys &
Dolls," where she served as the
Fund's hostess for the evening.
I, as vice-president of the Fund,
was to introduce her from the
stage. We stood in the wings
at the 46th St. Theater, and
when iny cue came and I started
to walk on stage, I heard her
call to me: "Break a leg" . .. I
wheeled, in disbelief at what I'd
heard, and she repeated: "Break
a leg" . . , She later explained
this superstition among concert
artists — that it really means
Good Luck.
BIRTH OF A STORY: Paul
Gallico attended the Bar Mitz-
vah of our son, George, and it
was his first visit to a syna-
gogue. During the sermon Gal-
lico noticed a copy of the Scrip-
tures in the receptacle before
him. He reached for it, opened
it at' random, and read part of
"Genesis." It gave him an idea
for a story . . . Gallico developed
the idea, then wrote an outline 1
and took it to Philadelphia for
discussion with the editors of
the Sat. Eve. Post. They bought
it for a 6-installment serial,
MGM hopes to acquire the movie
rights and Gallico has been in
Israel these past weeks, getting
background material f o r the
story.
THE DISAPPOINTED B 0 Y:
When George was 7 years old
we took him and his younger
brother, Warren, to Washington.
Matt Connelly, the White House
secretary, arranged for the boys
to tour the Executive Mansion,
and then he brought them into
another room, telling t h e m:
"Come in here, boys. I want you
to meet a friend of yours, the
President of the United States"
. . When we returned to our
hotel room, and George began
emptying his pockets before re-
tiring, he suddenly voiced hi5.
exasperation. "I had this bui
forgot to use it when I shook
hands with the President," h
said . . And he showed us th
trick buzzer.
(In 'a follow-up column, Mr.
Lyons wrote: "Photos of the re-
ception which followed the con-
firmation of my son, George .
One of the photoss is of Dr. Jacob
Rosenbluth, who attended my
mother at my birth. His fee for
delivering me had been $10. He
gave my son a check for $15 as
a confirmation gift, and said:
`This is a helluva way to do bus-
iness. I've lost money on the
whole deal'.")
American• Jewish Population at Peak;
Steady Decline Seen in Birth Rate
Paper Rejects Klan's
`Help' in War Against
Communistic Tyrants
NEW YORK (AJP) — T h e
leading newspaper of a chain
of 19 dailies throughout the na-
tion announced rejection of any
"assistance" the anti-Jewish Ku-
Klux Klan might render Ameri-
ca in its fight against Com-
munist oppression.
- Noting that .Klan "crosses
have been burned again at sev-
eral points in the South," the
New York Worl&Telegram and
Sun, a Scripps - Howard paper,
commented editorially that "the
`grand dragon' of the Klan said
that this was part of a cam-
paign against Communism."
Admitting that the "cam-
paign against Communism is
essential to American security,"
the paper pointed out that" it
can be carried out much more
successfully if Klan crosses are
not part of it." The editorial ap-
peared under the heading, "No
Thanks fot This `Help'."
Employees at the
Assia Pharmaceu-
tical Factory near
Ramat -,Ga,n pre-
p are pharmaceu-
ticals for the use
of Israel's grow-
ing popuation.
$500,000,000 State
of Israel Bond Is-
sue will enable the
country to achieire
a greater tempo of
industrial and ag-
ricultural produc-
tion and make the
hundreds of thous-
ands of new immi-
grants w h o are
flocking to its
shores fully self-
sustaining econom-
ically.
NEW YORK (AJP) — The
American Jewish population has
reached its maximum size and
will soon begin to shrink steadily
in numbers because AmeriCan
Jews do not have children in
adequate numberS.
These are the conclusions of a
new study on "Jewish Population
Trends in the. United States"
which found that Arnerican Jews
fall mainly into a low birth' rate
class.
"They are urban, professional,-
educated,and increasingly aged,"
and like their counterparts in
the general population, tend to
have less and less children.
In addition to that fact, Amer-
ican Jews were found to respond
to discrimination against them
as. Jews by fighting harder for
material and social success. •
"In this struggle for status it
seems inevitable that. many seg-
.ments of the Jewish group . .
will forego the satisfaction of
having large families in order
to achieve higher • status for
themselves and a smaller num-
ber of. offspring."
The study, which appeared in
the current issue of "Social Re-
search," a technical periodical,
declared that with the end of
large-scale immigration to the
United States, the Jewish group
"can maintain itself only through
an excess of births over deaths."
Community Council Slates
Delegates' Meet Sept. 25
The season's first delegates
assembly of the Jewish Com-
munity Council will be held Sept.
25 at the Davison Jewish Center.
A full report of Council activi-
ties during the summer months,
including the current status. of
FEPC for Detroit, will be given
by committee chairmen..
OPC,
"This it is not doing at pres-
ent," the study found. "A cau-
tious prediction may be made
that the Jewish comniunity . ir
America' will in the course of the
next fifty years, decline in num-
bers, both absolutely and in
proportion to the general popu-
lation."
The study was made • by Prof.
Carl M. Rosenquist of the 'Uni-
versity of Texas and S. T. Fried
man, executive director of the
Southwest Jewish Community
Relations Council in Houston.
Shows No Jewish Data,
Wilson Barred from Iraq i
NEW YORK, (AJP)—Column-
ist Earl Wilson switched atten-
tion from Broadway to Beer- ,
sheba in a report from Israel
that he had been denied admit-
tance to Baghdad because he re-
fused to submit evidence to the
Iraqi authorities that he was
not a Jew. Wilson is a Metho-
dist; his wife, a Catholic.
The popular Broadway col-
un-mist reported sadly that he
could not get bagel and lox any-'
where in Israel to satisfy a tgste
he had acquired in New York.
Wilson, • all praise for "thrill-
ing, - challenging Israel," said
that the only reason the Iraq
consulate gave at Beirut for re-
fusing him a visa was that he
lwas a "newspaperman." He was
told- in Israel, however, that Iraq
now often demands "certificates
of religion" from tourists and is
"stuffy" to Americans generally.
The columnist said he was
deeply moved by the Jew's who
had been flown from Iraq, large-
ly stripped of their possession;
cheerfully ready to begin life
anew.