In a surprising televised monologue, a senior member of the Saudi royal family and former ambassador to Washington accused Palestinian leaders of betraying their people, signaling an erosion of Saudi support for an issue long considered sacrosanct.... Prince Bandar offered a rambling and selective history of the Palestinian struggle, saying that the Palestinians “always bet on the losing side.”His survey, interspersed with archival images and footage, cited the contacts between Haj Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem and an early Palestinian nationalist leader, and the Nazis in the 1930s, adding, “we all know what happened to Hitler and Germany.”While there is broad agreement that Mr. al-Husseini collaborated with the Nazis against Zionism, historians differ on the significance of his relationship with Nazi leaders.
First of all, the Mufti's contacts with the Nazis were during the Holocaust in the 1940s, not in the 1930s. Even the photo of Hitler and the Mufti that the NYT published was from a 1941 meeting.
Secondly, the Mufti was a rabid antisemite for his entire life. He wasn't against "Zionism," he was against Jews - just like the Nazis he collaborated with.
The New York Times is engaging in Holocaust minimization.
The US Holocaust Museum summarizes the Mufti's antisemitic statements on Nazi radio:
Al-Husayni spoke often of a "worldwide Jewish conspiracy" that controlled the British and US governments and sponsored Soviet Communism. He argued that "world Jewry" aimed to infiltrate and subjugate Palestine, a sacred religious and cultural center of the Arab and Muslim world, as a staging ground for the seizure of all Arab lands. In his vision of the world, the Jews intended to enslave and exploit Arabs, to seize their land, to expropriate their wealth, undermine their Muslim faith and corrupt the moral fabric of their society. He labeled the Jews as the enemy of Islam, and used crude racist terminology to depict Jews and Jewish behavior, particularly as he forged a closer relationship with the SS in 1943 and 1944. He described Jews as having immutable characteristics and behaviors. On occasion, he would compare Jewishness to infectious disease and Jews to microbes or bacilli. In at least one speech attributed to him, he advocated killing Jews wherever Arabs found them. He consistently advocated "removing" the Jewish homeland from Palestine and, on occasion, driving every Jew out of Palestine and other Arab lands.
Even during that meeting with Hitler the word "Zionist" was never used - just "Jews."
[Mufti:] The Arabs were Germany’s natural friends because they had the same enemies as had Germany, namely the English, the Jews and the Communists....The Arabs could be more useful to Germany as allies than might be apparent at first glance, both for geographical reasons and because of the suffering inflicted upon them by the English and the Jews.The Fuhrer replied that Germany’s fundamental attitude on these questions, as the Mufti himself had already stated, was clear. Germany stood for uncompromising war against the Jews. That naturally included active opposition to the Jewish national home in Palestine, which was nothing other than a center, in the form of a state, for the exercise of destructive influence by Jewish interests. Germany was also aware that the assertion that the Jews were carrying out the functions of economic pioneers in Palestine was a lie. The work there was done only by the Arabs, not by the Jews. Germany was resolved, step by step, to ask one European nation after the other to solve its Jewish problem, and at the proper time to direct a similar appeal to non-European nations as well.
Hitler's opposition to a Jewish state came directly from his hate of Jews - exactly like the Mufti.
The Mufti is a hero to Palestinians and considered their first leader.
The tie between antisemitism and anti-Zionism has never been clearer than these words from Adolf Hitler.
The Saudi royal accurately noted the mistakes of Palestinians including allying with Hitler. The New York Times then tries to minimize those ties as being merely "anti-Zionist."
What a joke the New York Times has become.