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The Farhud: Roots of The Arab-Nazi Alliance in the Holocaust
The Nazis needed oil. The Arabs wanted the Jews and British out of Iraq. The Mufti of Jerusalem forged a far-ranging alliance with Hitler resulting in the June 1941 Farhud, a Nazi-style pogrom in Baghdad that set the stage for the devastation and expulsion of the Iraqi Jews and ultimately almost a million Jews across the Arab world. The Farhud was the beginning of what became a broad Nazi-Arab alliance in the Holocaust.
464 pages, Paperback
First published November 16, 2010
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About the author
Edwin Black
54 books153 followersIs an American syndicated columnist and journalist. He specializes in human rights, the historical interplay between economics and politics in the Middle East, petroleum policy, the abuses practiced by corporations, and the financial underpinnings of Nazi Germany.
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July 18, 2023
A penetrating, pivotal and insightful look into the Islamic-Nazi alliance of World War II, the bloody pogrom of Jews by Arab mobs in Baghdad in June, 1941, the background to these events and the relevance of oil , ideology and Islam to these events.
Islam had a long history of hatred and subjugation of the Jews, known as dhimnitude. The Jews in Islamic countries were reduced ton the status of humiliated and subjugated second class citizens, with a variety of laws to ensure this.
Dhimnis were barred from building any structure higher than a Muslims, could not ride horses but only donkeys without saddles, could not build any new houses of worship or repair existing ones and were forbidden from making any noises that would attract attention to their worship or burial of their dead.
They had to wear distinctive clothes to identify them, Jews had to wear yellow, and the mandatory yellow patch which was forced upon the Jews by the Nazis had it's origins in Baghdad, and not in Medieval Europe as commonly believed.
The idea of Jews in the Middle East being sovereign in an independent state, and not subjugated to Muslim rule and humiliated under Dhimni status is what was intolerable to the Arabs and the roots of the violent Arab rejection of the state of Israel, and before that of migration of Jews into the Land of Israel. This was anathema to the demand for Arab supremacy and dhimnitude
"Certainly the Palestinian population was accustomed to the many migrants from the far reaches of the Ottoman Empire and especially the extended Middle East who settled in the land. But the local Arab community harbored a special resentment, at one level or another, for all these new Jewish neighbours. They were after all Jews and as such second class citizens beneath the Syrian Muslims, Lebanese Muslims, Egyptian Muslims, and Turks who freely came and went from Palestine".
From 1920 attacks against Jews spread like wildfire in the Land of Israel, instigated by Haj Amin al husseini, the bloodthirsty Jew-hater and'Mufti of Jerusalem'.
The bloody 1929 pogroms and massacres of Jews that spread throughout the Land of Israel in 1929 were sparked in September, 1928, by Jews at the Western wall contravening the dhimni laws by erecting benches to sit on at the wall, and partitions to separate men from women. Jews were first massacred in Jerusalem and then the horrific massacres by Arabs of Jews took place of the ancient Jewish community of Hebron.
"House to house they went bursting into every room looking for hiding Jews. Religious scrolls or books were burned or torn to shreds. The defenceless Jews were variously beheaded, castrated, their breasts and fingers sliced off, and in some cases their eyes plucked from their sockets. Infants and adults, men and women , it mattered not. The carnage went on for hours, with the Arab policemen standing down. Blood ran in streamlets down the narrow stone staircases outisde the buildings.hose by house, room by room the savagery was repeated".
This was followed by the Arab pogroms against Jews of 1936, the Arab-Nazi Alliance and the spread of the Holocaust to Iraq where Jews were massacred horrifically in Baghdad by pro-Nazi Arab mobs. an event which the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has refused to acknowledge, either for reasons of refusing to recongnize the equality of Sephardi Jews to Ashkenazim, or a politically correct determination not to blacken the names of the Arabs or create an association of the Arab radicals with the Nazis.
The book go's onto to highlight the traditional Islamic Jew-hatred found a willing ally in Nazi Germany, with the instrumental role played by Husseini, who met with Hitler, worked closely with Eichmann, and wrote letters top Axis governments preventing the transportations of thousands of Jewish children from bulgaria and Hungary to safety in the Holy Land, instead diverting them to the death camps at Auschwitz where they were murdered.
Iraq gained independence in 1932. Nazi infiltration followed within a year. The Christian owned daily al Aram-al-Arabi (The Arab World) published daily extracts from the Arabic edition of Meim Kampf. with it's venomous anti-Jewish propagnda.
In 1935, as German influence strengthened , a pro-Nazi society, al Muthana was set up in Basra and Mosul lead by a well-known Jew-hater Dr Saib Shawkat, director of the Royal hospital in Baghdad, whose brother Sami Shawkat, a fellow medical doctor, founded the Futuwa youth brigades , which distributed anti-Jewish and anti-British leaflets.
Hilter's ambassador to Baghdad Fritz Grobba played the lead role in Iraq in disseminating anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist propagnda, his provocations were covered in newspapers of the day from Palestine to Great Britain. He claimed that 85% of commerce in Iraq was in Jewish hands and that Jews were not true Iraqis but a foul species apart. Dozens of Iraqi Jews were killed in attacks by pro-Nazi Iraqis. In a report to Berlin on June 6, 1939, Grobba wired a report to Berline labelled SECRET in which he railed that 'The Jews are the source of propaganda against the Italians and Germans in Iraq" Grobba threatened a bloody massacre of Jews in Iraq "If the Jews continue to make it difficult for Iraq with their deeds, a day will come when the anger of the masses erupt, and the result will be: a massacre of Jews. When an oriental people's feelings erupt, all restraint disappears: The want to see blood"
The central event referred to in the book is the Farhud, the senseless orgy of violence on June 1-2, on the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, in which the Arab-Nazis murdered, raped and pillaged the Jewish community that had lived there for 2,600 years. The riots occurred in a power vacuum following the collapse of the pro-Nazi government of Rashid Ali while the city was in a state of instability. Before British and Transjordanian forces intervened, over 600 Jews had been killed and thousands injured. Looting of Jewish property took place and thousands of Jewish homes were destroyed.
As the author recounts eyewitness testimonies : "Infants were vicously bashed to death against the pavement and were thrown lifeless into the Tigris. Jewish women-
hundreds of them-were mercilessly and openly raped in front of their husbands, in front of their parents, in front of their children, in front of wild Muslim mobs. If the women was pregnant, sometimes she was first raped, and then sliced open to destroy the unborn baby; only then was she killed. Men who defended their women and children were killed and their homes plundered. Commonly after murdering the defenseless Jewish men and women with hatchets, axes, and swords, the chanting throngs hacked the inanimate bodies to pieces thus further defiling the infidels and -temporarily-sating the mob's blood lust".
The original plans for the 1941 anti-Jewish terror on June 1, were intended to mimic Nazi extermination camps in Europe. Lists of Jews were compiled using the familiar approach the Nazis and their allies had employed in Europe.
It is important to realize that the Farhud was a mass movement, not the actions of a gang or a few errant officers.
By 1951, 110,000 Jews - 80% of Iraqi Jewry - had emigrated from the country, most to Israel. The Farhud has been called the "forgotten pogrom of the Holocaust" and "the beginning of the end of the Jewish community of Iraq", a community that had existed for 2,600 years.
One denominator characterized the Nazi-Arab confluence , the joint Arab and Nazi-Arab conviction that the Jews constituted a menace by their very existence, and had to be exterminated.
The book covers the SS and Wehrmacht units of Bosnian Muslims that worked with the bloodthirsty and sadistic Croatian Ustasha in killing millions of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies in Yugoslavia.
And then the spreading of the Holocaust to North Africa, where Arabs sponsored by the Nazis brutally annihilated thousands of north African Jews. The Arab-Nazi collaboration puts the lie to the Islamic claim that the Arabs had nothing to do with the Holocaust and therefore should not suffer the indignity of tolerating a Jewish entity in their midst.
The author also in the last chapter describes the continuation of the Arab support for Nazi ideology after the Holocaust, and the refuge given to Egypt by Nazi war criminals, including Aribert Heim, Alfred Zingler and Johan Von Leers, who helped to build the Nazi propaganda, intelligence and military machine against Israel.
This is required reading to understand the roots of Arab hatred for Israel and Jews, in an age where the Jews of the Middle East are threatened with another Holocaust today, and the ideologies of the mufti, the Farhud and the Arab-Nazi alliance are the ideologies that drive Hamas, Hezbollah, the Islamic Brotherhood, Al Qaeda and the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad regime in Iran.
Merged review:
A penetrating, pivotal and insightful look into the Islamic-Nazi alliance of World War II, the bloody pogrom of Jews by Arab mobs in Baghdad in June, 1941, the background to these events and the relevance of oil , ideology and Islam to these events.
Islam had a long history of hatred and subjugation of the Jews, known as dhimnitude. The Jews in Islamic countries were reduced to the status of humiliated and subjugated second class citizens, with a variety of laws to ensure this.
Dhimnis were barred from building any structure higher than a Muslims, could not ride horses but only donkeys without saddles, could not build any new houses of worship or repair existing ones and were forbidden from making any noises that would attract attention to their worship or burial of their dead.
They had to wear distinctive clothes to identify them, Jews had to wear yellow, and the mandatory yellow patch which was forced upon the Jews by the Nazis had it's origins in Baghdad, and not in Medieval Europe as commonly believed.
The idea of Jews in the Middle East being sovereign in an independent state, and not subjugated to Muslim rule and humiliated under Dhimni status is what was intolerable to the Arabs and the roots of the violent Arab rejection of the state of Israel, and before that of migration of Jews into the Land of Israel. This was anathema to the demand for Arab supremacy and dhimnitude
"Certainly the Palestinian population was accustomed to the many migrants from the far reaches of the Ottoman Empire and especially the extended Middle East who settled in the land. But the local Arab community harbored a special resentment, at one level or another, for all these new Jewish neighbours. They were after all Jews and as such second class citizens beneath the Syrian Muslims, Lebanese Muslims, Egyptian Muslims, and Turks who freely came and went from Palestine".
From 1920 attacks against Jews spread like wildfire in the Land of Israel, instigated by Haj Amin al husseini, the bloodthirsty Jew-hater and'Mufti of Jerusalem'.
The bloody 1929 pogroms and massacres of Jews that spread throughout the Land of Israel in 1929 were sparked in September, 1928, by Jews at the Western wall contravening the dhimni laws by erecting benches to sit on at the wall, and partitions to separate men from women. Jews were first massacred in Jerusalem and then the horrific massacres by Arabs of Jews took place of the ancient Jewish community of Hebron.
"House to house they went bursting into every room looking for hiding Jews. Religious scrolls or books were burned or torn to shreds. The defenceless Jews were variously beheaded, castrated, their breasts and fingers sliced off, and in some cases their eyes plucked from their sockets. Infants and adults, men and women , it mattered not. The carnage went on for hours, with the Arab policemen standing down. Blood ran in streamlets down the narrow stone staircases outside the buildings. house by house, room by room the savagery was repeated".
This was followed by the Arab pogroms against Jews of 1936, the Arab-Nazi Alliance and the spread of the Holocaust to Iraq where Jews were massacred horrifically in Baghdad by pro-Nazi Arab mobs. an event which the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has refused to acknowledge, either for reasons of refusing to recognize the equality of Sephardi Jews to Ashkenazim, or a politically correct determination not to blacken the names of the Arabs or create an association of the Arab radicals with the Nazis.
The book go's onto to highlight the traditional Islamic Jew-hatred found a willing ally in Nazi Germany, with the instrumental role played by Husseini, who met with Hitler, worked closely with Eichmann, and wrote letters top Axis governments preventing the transportations of thousands of Jewish children from Bulgaria and Hungary to safety in the Holy Land, instead diverting them to the death camps at Auschwitz where they were murdered.
Iraq gained independence in 1932. Nazi infiltration followed within a year. The Christian owned daily al Aram-al-Arabi (The Arab World) published daily extracts from the Arabic edition of Mein Kampf. with it's venomous anti-Jewish propaganda.
In 1935, as German influence strengthened , a pro-Nazi society, al Muthana was set up in Basra and Mosul lead by a well-known Jew-hater Dr Saib Shawkat, director of the Royal hospital in Baghdad, whose brother Sami Shawkat, a fellow medical doctor, founded the Futuwa youth brigades , which distributed anti-Jewish and anti-British leaflets.
Hilter's ambassador to Baghdad Fritz Grobba played the lead role in Iraq in disseminating anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist propaganda, his provocations were covered in newspapers of the day from Palestine to Great Britain. He claimed that 85% of commerce in Iraq was in Jewish hands and that Jews were not true Iraqis but a foul species apart. Dozens of Iraqi Jews were killed in attacks by pro-Nazi Iraqis. In a report to Berlin on June 6, 1939, Grobba wired a report to Berlin labelled SECRET in which he railed that 'The Jews are the source of propaganda against the Italians and Germans in Iraq" Grobba threatened a bloody massacre of Jews in Iraq "If the Jews continue to make it difficult for Iraq with their deeds, a day will come when the anger of the masses erupt, and the result will be: a massacre of Jews. When an oriental people's feelings erupt, all restraint disappears: The want to see blood"
The central event referred to in the book is the Farhud, the senseless orgy of violence on June 1-2, on the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, in which the Arab-Nazis murdered, raped and pillaged the Jewish community that had lived there for 2,600 years. The riots occurred in a power vacuum following the collapse of the pro-Nazi government of Rashid Ali while the city was in a state of instability. Before British and Transjordanian forces intervened, over 600 Jews had been killed and thousands injured. Looting of Jewish property took place and thousands of Jewish homes were destroyed.
As the author recounts eyewitness testimonies : "Infants were viciously bashed to death against the pavement and were thrown lifeless into the Tigris. Jewish women-
hundreds of them-were mercilessly and openly raped in front of their husbands, in front of their parents, in front of their children, in front of wild Muslim mobs. If the women was pregnant, sometimes she was first raped, and then sliced open to destroy the unborn baby; only then was she killed. Men who defended their women and children were killed and their homes plundered. Commonly after murdering the defenseless Jewish men and women with hatchets, axes, and swords, the chanting throngs hacked the inanimate bodies to pieces thus further defiling the infidels and -temporarily-sating the mob's blood lust".
The original plans for the 1941 anti-Jewish terror on June 1, were intended to mimic Nazi extermination camps in Europe. Lists of Jews were compiled using the familiar approach the Nazis and their allies had employed in Europe.
It is important to realize that the Farhud was a mass movement, not the actions of a gang or a few errant officers.
By 1951, 110,000 Jews - 80% of Iraqi Jewry - had emigrated from the country, most to Israel. The Farhud has been called the "forgotten pogrom of the Holocaust" and "the beginning of the end of the Jewish community of Iraq", a community that had existed for 2,600 years.
One denominator characterized the Nazi-Arab confluence , the joint Arab and Nazi-Arab conviction that the Jews constituted a menace by their very existence, and had to be exterminated.
The book covers the SS and Wehrmacht units of Bosnian Muslims that worked with the bloodthirsty and sadistic Croatian Ustasha in killing millions of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies in Yugoslavia.
And then the spreading of the Holocaust to North Africa (Where there were many Muslim Wehrmacht units), where Arabs sponsored by the Nazis brutally annihilated thousands of north African Jews. The Arab-Nazi collaboration puts the lie to the Islamic claim that the Arabs had nothing to do with the Holocaust and therefore should not suffer the indignity of tolerating a Jewish entity in their midst.
The author also in the last chapter describes the continuation of the Arab support for Nazi ideology after the Holocaust, and the refuge given to Egypt by Nazi war criminals, including Aribert Heim, Alfred Zingler and Johan Von Leers, who helped to build the Nazi propaganda, intelligence and military machine against Israel.
This is required reading to understand the roots of Arab hatred for Israel and Jews, in an age where the Jews of the Middle East are threatened with another Holocaust today, and the ideologies of the mufti, the Farhud and the Arab-Nazi alliance are the ideologies that drive Hamas, Hezbollah, the Islamic Brotherhood, Al Qaeda and the Khamenei regime in Iran.
Islam had a long history of hatred and subjugation of the Jews, known as dhimnitude. The Jews in Islamic countries were reduced ton the status of humiliated and subjugated second class citizens, with a variety of laws to ensure this.
Dhimnis were barred from building any structure higher than a Muslims, could not ride horses but only donkeys without saddles, could not build any new houses of worship or repair existing ones and were forbidden from making any noises that would attract attention to their worship or burial of their dead.
They had to wear distinctive clothes to identify them, Jews had to wear yellow, and the mandatory yellow patch which was forced upon the Jews by the Nazis had it's origins in Baghdad, and not in Medieval Europe as commonly believed.
The idea of Jews in the Middle East being sovereign in an independent state, and not subjugated to Muslim rule and humiliated under Dhimni status is what was intolerable to the Arabs and the roots of the violent Arab rejection of the state of Israel, and before that of migration of Jews into the Land of Israel. This was anathema to the demand for Arab supremacy and dhimnitude
"Certainly the Palestinian population was accustomed to the many migrants from the far reaches of the Ottoman Empire and especially the extended Middle East who settled in the land. But the local Arab community harbored a special resentment, at one level or another, for all these new Jewish neighbours. They were after all Jews and as such second class citizens beneath the Syrian Muslims, Lebanese Muslims, Egyptian Muslims, and Turks who freely came and went from Palestine".
From 1920 attacks against Jews spread like wildfire in the Land of Israel, instigated by Haj Amin al husseini, the bloodthirsty Jew-hater and'Mufti of Jerusalem'.
The bloody 1929 pogroms and massacres of Jews that spread throughout the Land of Israel in 1929 were sparked in September, 1928, by Jews at the Western wall contravening the dhimni laws by erecting benches to sit on at the wall, and partitions to separate men from women. Jews were first massacred in Jerusalem and then the horrific massacres by Arabs of Jews took place of the ancient Jewish community of Hebron.
"House to house they went bursting into every room looking for hiding Jews. Religious scrolls or books were burned or torn to shreds. The defenceless Jews were variously beheaded, castrated, their breasts and fingers sliced off, and in some cases their eyes plucked from their sockets. Infants and adults, men and women , it mattered not. The carnage went on for hours, with the Arab policemen standing down. Blood ran in streamlets down the narrow stone staircases outisde the buildings.hose by house, room by room the savagery was repeated".
This was followed by the Arab pogroms against Jews of 1936, the Arab-Nazi Alliance and the spread of the Holocaust to Iraq where Jews were massacred horrifically in Baghdad by pro-Nazi Arab mobs. an event which the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has refused to acknowledge, either for reasons of refusing to recongnize the equality of Sephardi Jews to Ashkenazim, or a politically correct determination not to blacken the names of the Arabs or create an association of the Arab radicals with the Nazis.
The book go's onto to highlight the traditional Islamic Jew-hatred found a willing ally in Nazi Germany, with the instrumental role played by Husseini, who met with Hitler, worked closely with Eichmann, and wrote letters top Axis governments preventing the transportations of thousands of Jewish children from bulgaria and Hungary to safety in the Holy Land, instead diverting them to the death camps at Auschwitz where they were murdered.
Iraq gained independence in 1932. Nazi infiltration followed within a year. The Christian owned daily al Aram-al-Arabi (The Arab World) published daily extracts from the Arabic edition of Meim Kampf. with it's venomous anti-Jewish propagnda.
In 1935, as German influence strengthened , a pro-Nazi society, al Muthana was set up in Basra and Mosul lead by a well-known Jew-hater Dr Saib Shawkat, director of the Royal hospital in Baghdad, whose brother Sami Shawkat, a fellow medical doctor, founded the Futuwa youth brigades , which distributed anti-Jewish and anti-British leaflets.
Hilter's ambassador to Baghdad Fritz Grobba played the lead role in Iraq in disseminating anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist propagnda, his provocations were covered in newspapers of the day from Palestine to Great Britain. He claimed that 85% of commerce in Iraq was in Jewish hands and that Jews were not true Iraqis but a foul species apart. Dozens of Iraqi Jews were killed in attacks by pro-Nazi Iraqis. In a report to Berlin on June 6, 1939, Grobba wired a report to Berline labelled SECRET in which he railed that 'The Jews are the source of propaganda against the Italians and Germans in Iraq" Grobba threatened a bloody massacre of Jews in Iraq "If the Jews continue to make it difficult for Iraq with their deeds, a day will come when the anger of the masses erupt, and the result will be: a massacre of Jews. When an oriental people's feelings erupt, all restraint disappears: The want to see blood"
The central event referred to in the book is the Farhud, the senseless orgy of violence on June 1-2, on the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, in which the Arab-Nazis murdered, raped and pillaged the Jewish community that had lived there for 2,600 years. The riots occurred in a power vacuum following the collapse of the pro-Nazi government of Rashid Ali while the city was in a state of instability. Before British and Transjordanian forces intervened, over 600 Jews had been killed and thousands injured. Looting of Jewish property took place and thousands of Jewish homes were destroyed.
As the author recounts eyewitness testimonies : "Infants were vicously bashed to death against the pavement and were thrown lifeless into the Tigris. Jewish women-
hundreds of them-were mercilessly and openly raped in front of their husbands, in front of their parents, in front of their children, in front of wild Muslim mobs. If the women was pregnant, sometimes she was first raped, and then sliced open to destroy the unborn baby; only then was she killed. Men who defended their women and children were killed and their homes plundered. Commonly after murdering the defenseless Jewish men and women with hatchets, axes, and swords, the chanting throngs hacked the inanimate bodies to pieces thus further defiling the infidels and -temporarily-sating the mob's blood lust".
The original plans for the 1941 anti-Jewish terror on June 1, were intended to mimic Nazi extermination camps in Europe. Lists of Jews were compiled using the familiar approach the Nazis and their allies had employed in Europe.
It is important to realize that the Farhud was a mass movement, not the actions of a gang or a few errant officers.
By 1951, 110,000 Jews - 80% of Iraqi Jewry - had emigrated from the country, most to Israel. The Farhud has been called the "forgotten pogrom of the Holocaust" and "the beginning of the end of the Jewish community of Iraq", a community that had existed for 2,600 years.
One denominator characterized the Nazi-Arab confluence , the joint Arab and Nazi-Arab conviction that the Jews constituted a menace by their very existence, and had to be exterminated.
The book covers the SS and Wehrmacht units of Bosnian Muslims that worked with the bloodthirsty and sadistic Croatian Ustasha in killing millions of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies in Yugoslavia.
And then the spreading of the Holocaust to North Africa, where Arabs sponsored by the Nazis brutally annihilated thousands of north African Jews. The Arab-Nazi collaboration puts the lie to the Islamic claim that the Arabs had nothing to do with the Holocaust and therefore should not suffer the indignity of tolerating a Jewish entity in their midst.
The author also in the last chapter describes the continuation of the Arab support for Nazi ideology after the Holocaust, and the refuge given to Egypt by Nazi war criminals, including Aribert Heim, Alfred Zingler and Johan Von Leers, who helped to build the Nazi propaganda, intelligence and military machine against Israel.
This is required reading to understand the roots of Arab hatred for Israel and Jews, in an age where the Jews of the Middle East are threatened with another Holocaust today, and the ideologies of the mufti, the Farhud and the Arab-Nazi alliance are the ideologies that drive Hamas, Hezbollah, the Islamic Brotherhood, Al Qaeda and the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad regime in Iran.
Merged review:
A penetrating, pivotal and insightful look into the Islamic-Nazi alliance of World War II, the bloody pogrom of Jews by Arab mobs in Baghdad in June, 1941, the background to these events and the relevance of oil , ideology and Islam to these events.
Islam had a long history of hatred and subjugation of the Jews, known as dhimnitude. The Jews in Islamic countries were reduced to the status of humiliated and subjugated second class citizens, with a variety of laws to ensure this.
Dhimnis were barred from building any structure higher than a Muslims, could not ride horses but only donkeys without saddles, could not build any new houses of worship or repair existing ones and were forbidden from making any noises that would attract attention to their worship or burial of their dead.
They had to wear distinctive clothes to identify them, Jews had to wear yellow, and the mandatory yellow patch which was forced upon the Jews by the Nazis had it's origins in Baghdad, and not in Medieval Europe as commonly believed.
The idea of Jews in the Middle East being sovereign in an independent state, and not subjugated to Muslim rule and humiliated under Dhimni status is what was intolerable to the Arabs and the roots of the violent Arab rejection of the state of Israel, and before that of migration of Jews into the Land of Israel. This was anathema to the demand for Arab supremacy and dhimnitude
"Certainly the Palestinian population was accustomed to the many migrants from the far reaches of the Ottoman Empire and especially the extended Middle East who settled in the land. But the local Arab community harbored a special resentment, at one level or another, for all these new Jewish neighbours. They were after all Jews and as such second class citizens beneath the Syrian Muslims, Lebanese Muslims, Egyptian Muslims, and Turks who freely came and went from Palestine".
From 1920 attacks against Jews spread like wildfire in the Land of Israel, instigated by Haj Amin al husseini, the bloodthirsty Jew-hater and'Mufti of Jerusalem'.
The bloody 1929 pogroms and massacres of Jews that spread throughout the Land of Israel in 1929 were sparked in September, 1928, by Jews at the Western wall contravening the dhimni laws by erecting benches to sit on at the wall, and partitions to separate men from women. Jews were first massacred in Jerusalem and then the horrific massacres by Arabs of Jews took place of the ancient Jewish community of Hebron.
"House to house they went bursting into every room looking for hiding Jews. Religious scrolls or books were burned or torn to shreds. The defenceless Jews were variously beheaded, castrated, their breasts and fingers sliced off, and in some cases their eyes plucked from their sockets. Infants and adults, men and women , it mattered not. The carnage went on for hours, with the Arab policemen standing down. Blood ran in streamlets down the narrow stone staircases outside the buildings. house by house, room by room the savagery was repeated".
This was followed by the Arab pogroms against Jews of 1936, the Arab-Nazi Alliance and the spread of the Holocaust to Iraq where Jews were massacred horrifically in Baghdad by pro-Nazi Arab mobs. an event which the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has refused to acknowledge, either for reasons of refusing to recognize the equality of Sephardi Jews to Ashkenazim, or a politically correct determination not to blacken the names of the Arabs or create an association of the Arab radicals with the Nazis.
The book go's onto to highlight the traditional Islamic Jew-hatred found a willing ally in Nazi Germany, with the instrumental role played by Husseini, who met with Hitler, worked closely with Eichmann, and wrote letters top Axis governments preventing the transportations of thousands of Jewish children from Bulgaria and Hungary to safety in the Holy Land, instead diverting them to the death camps at Auschwitz where they were murdered.
Iraq gained independence in 1932. Nazi infiltration followed within a year. The Christian owned daily al Aram-al-Arabi (The Arab World) published daily extracts from the Arabic edition of Mein Kampf. with it's venomous anti-Jewish propaganda.
In 1935, as German influence strengthened , a pro-Nazi society, al Muthana was set up in Basra and Mosul lead by a well-known Jew-hater Dr Saib Shawkat, director of the Royal hospital in Baghdad, whose brother Sami Shawkat, a fellow medical doctor, founded the Futuwa youth brigades , which distributed anti-Jewish and anti-British leaflets.
Hilter's ambassador to Baghdad Fritz Grobba played the lead role in Iraq in disseminating anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist propaganda, his provocations were covered in newspapers of the day from Palestine to Great Britain. He claimed that 85% of commerce in Iraq was in Jewish hands and that Jews were not true Iraqis but a foul species apart. Dozens of Iraqi Jews were killed in attacks by pro-Nazi Iraqis. In a report to Berlin on June 6, 1939, Grobba wired a report to Berlin labelled SECRET in which he railed that 'The Jews are the source of propaganda against the Italians and Germans in Iraq" Grobba threatened a bloody massacre of Jews in Iraq "If the Jews continue to make it difficult for Iraq with their deeds, a day will come when the anger of the masses erupt, and the result will be: a massacre of Jews. When an oriental people's feelings erupt, all restraint disappears: The want to see blood"
The central event referred to in the book is the Farhud, the senseless orgy of violence on June 1-2, on the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, in which the Arab-Nazis murdered, raped and pillaged the Jewish community that had lived there for 2,600 years. The riots occurred in a power vacuum following the collapse of the pro-Nazi government of Rashid Ali while the city was in a state of instability. Before British and Transjordanian forces intervened, over 600 Jews had been killed and thousands injured. Looting of Jewish property took place and thousands of Jewish homes were destroyed.
As the author recounts eyewitness testimonies : "Infants were viciously bashed to death against the pavement and were thrown lifeless into the Tigris. Jewish women-
hundreds of them-were mercilessly and openly raped in front of their husbands, in front of their parents, in front of their children, in front of wild Muslim mobs. If the women was pregnant, sometimes she was first raped, and then sliced open to destroy the unborn baby; only then was she killed. Men who defended their women and children were killed and their homes plundered. Commonly after murdering the defenseless Jewish men and women with hatchets, axes, and swords, the chanting throngs hacked the inanimate bodies to pieces thus further defiling the infidels and -temporarily-sating the mob's blood lust".
The original plans for the 1941 anti-Jewish terror on June 1, were intended to mimic Nazi extermination camps in Europe. Lists of Jews were compiled using the familiar approach the Nazis and their allies had employed in Europe.
It is important to realize that the Farhud was a mass movement, not the actions of a gang or a few errant officers.
By 1951, 110,000 Jews - 80% of Iraqi Jewry - had emigrated from the country, most to Israel. The Farhud has been called the "forgotten pogrom of the Holocaust" and "the beginning of the end of the Jewish community of Iraq", a community that had existed for 2,600 years.
One denominator characterized the Nazi-Arab confluence , the joint Arab and Nazi-Arab conviction that the Jews constituted a menace by their very existence, and had to be exterminated.
The book covers the SS and Wehrmacht units of Bosnian Muslims that worked with the bloodthirsty and sadistic Croatian Ustasha in killing millions of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies in Yugoslavia.
And then the spreading of the Holocaust to North Africa (Where there were many Muslim Wehrmacht units), where Arabs sponsored by the Nazis brutally annihilated thousands of north African Jews. The Arab-Nazi collaboration puts the lie to the Islamic claim that the Arabs had nothing to do with the Holocaust and therefore should not suffer the indignity of tolerating a Jewish entity in their midst.
The author also in the last chapter describes the continuation of the Arab support for Nazi ideology after the Holocaust, and the refuge given to Egypt by Nazi war criminals, including Aribert Heim, Alfred Zingler and Johan Von Leers, who helped to build the Nazi propaganda, intelligence and military machine against Israel.
This is required reading to understand the roots of Arab hatred for Israel and Jews, in an age where the Jews of the Middle East are threatened with another Holocaust today, and the ideologies of the mufti, the Farhud and the Arab-Nazi alliance are the ideologies that drive Hamas, Hezbollah, the Islamic Brotherhood, Al Qaeda and the Khamenei regime in Iran.
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December 8, 2013A very detailed analysis of the development of the western civilizations influence on the occidental territories of planet earth especially oil resources and the confluence of Islam's descent into anarchy, butchery, and intrigue. Brings us forward to the Axis/Allied conflict for control of these vital lands and Nazi ideology's affinity for the Muslim Brotherhood's interpretation of Islam's own ideology.
April 11, 2014
About the Author: Edwin Black is a reporter for The New York Times.
Overview: This book describes how the Nazis cooperated with antisemitic Arabs during World War II.
Oil in the Middle East: Oil became important to European powers in the late 19th and early 20th century, because of the shift from coal to oil in naval vessels, and also the development of the internal combustion engine for trucks and tanks in armies. The Persian Gulf region had historically been important to Great Britain as a transit point for sailing to Asia. After oil was discovered in the Persian Gulf, Great Britain tried to increase its influence in the gulf region, offering to protect the Arabs from the Ottoman Turks. In 1908 the British Anglo-Persian Oil Company found oil in Iran.
Ottoman Empire: The Ottoman Empire of Sultan Abdulhamid II included the oil-rich province of Mosul in present-day Iraq. The Ottoman Empire was an ally of Germany in World War I. To develop their oil wealth, the Turks first turned to Germany’s Deutsche Bank. Great Britain and the Anglo-Persian Oil Company tried to steal these oil rights away from Deutsche Bank. During World War I, the British and French negotiated with each other on how to divide up the Ottoman Empire if they won the war against Germany and Turkey. This produced the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement. Under it, the Baghdad and Basra provinces would go to Great Britain, while Mosul and Syria would go to France.
British Support of Zionism: One of Europe’s main Zionists was Chaim Weizmann, who was born in 1874 in Russia. Weizmann studied chemistry in Germany and afterwards moved to Manchester, England. He lobbied James Arthur Balfour, for whom the 1917 Balfour Declaration was named. Other British leaders who supported a Jewish State in Palestine included David Lloyd George, Leo Amery, and Herbert Samuel. The Jews had supported Great Britain during World War I when the Zion Mule Corps fought at Gallipoli. Chaim Weizmann also won British goodwill when during the war he developed a fermentation process to make acetone for weapons.
Arab and Turkish Nationalism: Arab nationalist writer Sati al-Husri studied the ideas of German Idealist philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Fichte believed in basing nationalism upon a common language. Fichte’s ideas also influenced the Young Turks, who replaced the Islamic Caliphate with Turkish nationalism.
Jews in Palestine: The Arab Muslims, Arab Christians, and Arab Jews had long lived in peace in the Middle East, as long as the Muslims were on top, and the non-Muslims accepted a second-class citizenship called dhimmitude. But during the twentieth century the Arab Muslims became less tolerant of Jews for several reasons:
• the influx of Ashkenazi Jews from Czarist Russia
• the influx of Ashkenazi Jews from Nazi Germany
• Ashkenazi Jews refused to accept dhimmitude
• the fear of a possible Jewish state
In fact, in July 1937 the British Peel Commission produced a white paper which called for the partition of Palestine into a Jewish State and an Arab State.
The Two Main Arab Clans in Palestine
• Nashashibi: willing to do business with the Jews
• Husseini: boycotted Jewish businesses and instigated pogroms against the Jews
Grand Mufti al-Husseini of Jerusalem: In 1921 British High Commissioner Herbert Samuel appointed al-Hajj Muhammad Amin al-Husseini to be the Mufti of Jerusalem, despite the fact that Husseini came in fourth in the election. The British had convinced the winner of the election, Sheik Jar-Alla, of the Nashashibi family and mayor of Jerusalem, to withdraw. Husseini had persuaded the British that he would be loyal to Britain and quell the Arab riots against the British and the Jews. In fact, Husseini was actually one of the main instigators of these riots! The British added Grand to his title, to increase his influence to stop the Arab riots. The British supported Husseini financially. Husseini had studied at Cairo’s al-Azhar University and opposed Zionism.
Assyrian Insurrection in Mosul Province: Mosul province was mostly Kurdish, but also included Arabs, Yazidis, Jews, and Assyrian Christians. The Assyrian Christians in Mosul province sought self-determination from the League of Nations, but were unsuccessful. In August 1933, the Iraqi army suppressed the Assyrian separatist insurrection against Baghdad. The Iraqi Motor Machine Gun Unit killed about 500-1000 men in about 60 Assyrian villages near the city of Simele. Afterwards, Kurdish tribesmen looted the villages.
The British Supply Nazi Germany with Oil: Germany got much of its oil from Olex, which was a wholly owned subsidiary of Britain’s Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Olex continued doing business with Germany, even after Hitler and the Nazis gained control of Germany. Standard Oil of New Jersey and Shell Oil also supplied the Nazis with oil during the 1930s. Even after the war began in 1939, Olex continued to distribute oil for the Nazis in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Croatia.
Early Approach to Germany: In the first years after the Nazis gained power in 1933, the Grand Mufti Husseini approached Germany for help, but Germany was not interested. The Germans were not interested, for several reasons:
• the Germans did not want to antagonize the British, whom they saw as Anglo-Saxon Aryans
• the Nazis had racial prejudice against Semitic peoples (not just Jews, but also Arabs)
• the Weimar holdovers were not anti-Jewish
• the Germans in Palestine were Christians, who believed in the brotherhood of man
• Germany didn’t need Middle-Eastern oil, because it got its oil from Romania.
House Arrest in Beirut: In October 1937 the British became fed up with Grand Mufti Husseini and had the French place him under house arrest in Beirut, Lebanon. In October 1939, Husseini escaped house arrest in Beirut by dressing as a veiled woman, and then went to Baghdad.
Later Approach to Germany: After arriving in Baghdad, Husseini told the Germans that they and the Arabs had three common enemies: the British, the Communists, and the Jews. Husseini offered to promote an anti-British Arab rebellion in the Middle East, provided that Germany came out against a Jewish homeland in Palestine. In 1943, when the British proposed to rescue four thousand Jewish children in Bulgaria by transporting them to Palestine, Husseini contacted both Bulgaria and German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop. He said that he opposed such a rescue, and suggested that instead the children be sent to Poland, where they would be under the strict supervision of the Nazis. Husseini similarly opposed the rescue of nine hundred Jewish children from Hungary, and 1800 Jewish children in Romania. Husseini also asked the German Luftwaffe to bomb a Zionist conference in Jerusalem on November 2, 1943, which was celebrating the anniversary of the 1917 British Balfour Declaration.
Pro-Nazi Organizations in Iraq: In 1934, a medical doctor named Sami Shawkat founded the al-Futuwwa youth brigades, which distributed antisemitic literature. In 1938, Sami Shawkat became Iraq’s Minister of Education. In 1938 Sami Shawkat sent some of his al-Futuwwa youth brigades to Nuremberg, Germany to attend a Nazi Party rally. One of the leaders of al-Futuwwa was Yunus al-Sabawi, who had translated Hitler’s Mein Kampf into Arabic. Sami’s physician brother, Saib Shawkat, the director of the Royal Hospital in Baghdad, lead a pro-Nazi society called al-Muthanna, which had been founded in 1935.
Fritz Grobba: Dr. Fritz Grobba was at various times the German envoy to Iran, to Saudi Arabia, and Germany’s chargé d’affaires in Baghdad. Grobba was a liaison between Nazi Germany and Grand Mufti Husseini. Grobba succeeded in convincing Iraq to close its borders to Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. Grobba published Hitler’s Mein Kampf in installments in the Christian Iraqi newspaper al-Alem al Arabi. Grobba told the Iraqi people that Iraqi Jews were not true Iraqis, despite the fact that they had lived there for thousands of years.
Rashid Ali’s Coup in Iraq: In April 1941 there was a coup by the Golden Square army officers, who opposed being ruled by Great Britain. The coup removed Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Pasha al-Said, and installed Rashid Ali Galiani as the new Prime Minister. Rashid Ali threatened to give the Germans access to Iraqi oil fields unless the British blocked a Jewish State in Palestine.
Anglo–Iraqi War: In May 1941 the British Royal Air Force base near Lake Habbaniya in southern Iraq found itself under siege by Rashid Ali and the Iraqi army. The German Luftwaffe out of Rayak airbase in Vichy Syria supported the Iraqi army by bombing the British Habbaniya base. Eventually, the men in Habbaniya received British reinforcements from Palestine and Transjordan, including the 7th Gurkha Rifles and the 11th Sikh Regiment. Major Henry Glubb then lead the British forces from Habbaniya to Baghdad.
The Farhud: The Farhud was a pogrom against the Jews which took place during the Jewish holiday of Shavuot in June 1-2, 1941 in Baghdad, Iraq. It occurred during a chaotic time after the collapse of the government of Rashid Ali, but before the British established control of Baghdad. Two hundred Jews, including many Jewish children, were murdered. Hundreds of Jewish women were raped, and many Jewish homes were plundered and burned.
Overview: This book describes how the Nazis cooperated with antisemitic Arabs during World War II.
Oil in the Middle East: Oil became important to European powers in the late 19th and early 20th century, because of the shift from coal to oil in naval vessels, and also the development of the internal combustion engine for trucks and tanks in armies. The Persian Gulf region had historically been important to Great Britain as a transit point for sailing to Asia. After oil was discovered in the Persian Gulf, Great Britain tried to increase its influence in the gulf region, offering to protect the Arabs from the Ottoman Turks. In 1908 the British Anglo-Persian Oil Company found oil in Iran.
Ottoman Empire: The Ottoman Empire of Sultan Abdulhamid II included the oil-rich province of Mosul in present-day Iraq. The Ottoman Empire was an ally of Germany in World War I. To develop their oil wealth, the Turks first turned to Germany’s Deutsche Bank. Great Britain and the Anglo-Persian Oil Company tried to steal these oil rights away from Deutsche Bank. During World War I, the British and French negotiated with each other on how to divide up the Ottoman Empire if they won the war against Germany and Turkey. This produced the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement. Under it, the Baghdad and Basra provinces would go to Great Britain, while Mosul and Syria would go to France.
British Support of Zionism: One of Europe’s main Zionists was Chaim Weizmann, who was born in 1874 in Russia. Weizmann studied chemistry in Germany and afterwards moved to Manchester, England. He lobbied James Arthur Balfour, for whom the 1917 Balfour Declaration was named. Other British leaders who supported a Jewish State in Palestine included David Lloyd George, Leo Amery, and Herbert Samuel. The Jews had supported Great Britain during World War I when the Zion Mule Corps fought at Gallipoli. Chaim Weizmann also won British goodwill when during the war he developed a fermentation process to make acetone for weapons.
Arab and Turkish Nationalism: Arab nationalist writer Sati al-Husri studied the ideas of German Idealist philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Fichte believed in basing nationalism upon a common language. Fichte’s ideas also influenced the Young Turks, who replaced the Islamic Caliphate with Turkish nationalism.
Jews in Palestine: The Arab Muslims, Arab Christians, and Arab Jews had long lived in peace in the Middle East, as long as the Muslims were on top, and the non-Muslims accepted a second-class citizenship called dhimmitude. But during the twentieth century the Arab Muslims became less tolerant of Jews for several reasons:
• the influx of Ashkenazi Jews from Czarist Russia
• the influx of Ashkenazi Jews from Nazi Germany
• Ashkenazi Jews refused to accept dhimmitude
• the fear of a possible Jewish state
In fact, in July 1937 the British Peel Commission produced a white paper which called for the partition of Palestine into a Jewish State and an Arab State.
The Two Main Arab Clans in Palestine
• Nashashibi: willing to do business with the Jews
• Husseini: boycotted Jewish businesses and instigated pogroms against the Jews
Grand Mufti al-Husseini of Jerusalem: In 1921 British High Commissioner Herbert Samuel appointed al-Hajj Muhammad Amin al-Husseini to be the Mufti of Jerusalem, despite the fact that Husseini came in fourth in the election. The British had convinced the winner of the election, Sheik Jar-Alla, of the Nashashibi family and mayor of Jerusalem, to withdraw. Husseini had persuaded the British that he would be loyal to Britain and quell the Arab riots against the British and the Jews. In fact, Husseini was actually one of the main instigators of these riots! The British added Grand to his title, to increase his influence to stop the Arab riots. The British supported Husseini financially. Husseini had studied at Cairo’s al-Azhar University and opposed Zionism.
Assyrian Insurrection in Mosul Province: Mosul province was mostly Kurdish, but also included Arabs, Yazidis, Jews, and Assyrian Christians. The Assyrian Christians in Mosul province sought self-determination from the League of Nations, but were unsuccessful. In August 1933, the Iraqi army suppressed the Assyrian separatist insurrection against Baghdad. The Iraqi Motor Machine Gun Unit killed about 500-1000 men in about 60 Assyrian villages near the city of Simele. Afterwards, Kurdish tribesmen looted the villages.
The British Supply Nazi Germany with Oil: Germany got much of its oil from Olex, which was a wholly owned subsidiary of Britain’s Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Olex continued doing business with Germany, even after Hitler and the Nazis gained control of Germany. Standard Oil of New Jersey and Shell Oil also supplied the Nazis with oil during the 1930s. Even after the war began in 1939, Olex continued to distribute oil for the Nazis in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Croatia.
Early Approach to Germany: In the first years after the Nazis gained power in 1933, the Grand Mufti Husseini approached Germany for help, but Germany was not interested. The Germans were not interested, for several reasons:
• the Germans did not want to antagonize the British, whom they saw as Anglo-Saxon Aryans
• the Nazis had racial prejudice against Semitic peoples (not just Jews, but also Arabs)
• the Weimar holdovers were not anti-Jewish
• the Germans in Palestine were Christians, who believed in the brotherhood of man
• Germany didn’t need Middle-Eastern oil, because it got its oil from Romania.
House Arrest in Beirut: In October 1937 the British became fed up with Grand Mufti Husseini and had the French place him under house arrest in Beirut, Lebanon. In October 1939, Husseini escaped house arrest in Beirut by dressing as a veiled woman, and then went to Baghdad.
Later Approach to Germany: After arriving in Baghdad, Husseini told the Germans that they and the Arabs had three common enemies: the British, the Communists, and the Jews. Husseini offered to promote an anti-British Arab rebellion in the Middle East, provided that Germany came out against a Jewish homeland in Palestine. In 1943, when the British proposed to rescue four thousand Jewish children in Bulgaria by transporting them to Palestine, Husseini contacted both Bulgaria and German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop. He said that he opposed such a rescue, and suggested that instead the children be sent to Poland, where they would be under the strict supervision of the Nazis. Husseini similarly opposed the rescue of nine hundred Jewish children from Hungary, and 1800 Jewish children in Romania. Husseini also asked the German Luftwaffe to bomb a Zionist conference in Jerusalem on November 2, 1943, which was celebrating the anniversary of the 1917 British Balfour Declaration.
Pro-Nazi Organizations in Iraq: In 1934, a medical doctor named Sami Shawkat founded the al-Futuwwa youth brigades, which distributed antisemitic literature. In 1938, Sami Shawkat became Iraq’s Minister of Education. In 1938 Sami Shawkat sent some of his al-Futuwwa youth brigades to Nuremberg, Germany to attend a Nazi Party rally. One of the leaders of al-Futuwwa was Yunus al-Sabawi, who had translated Hitler’s Mein Kampf into Arabic. Sami’s physician brother, Saib Shawkat, the director of the Royal Hospital in Baghdad, lead a pro-Nazi society called al-Muthanna, which had been founded in 1935.
Fritz Grobba: Dr. Fritz Grobba was at various times the German envoy to Iran, to Saudi Arabia, and Germany’s chargé d’affaires in Baghdad. Grobba was a liaison between Nazi Germany and Grand Mufti Husseini. Grobba succeeded in convincing Iraq to close its borders to Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. Grobba published Hitler’s Mein Kampf in installments in the Christian Iraqi newspaper al-Alem al Arabi. Grobba told the Iraqi people that Iraqi Jews were not true Iraqis, despite the fact that they had lived there for thousands of years.
Rashid Ali’s Coup in Iraq: In April 1941 there was a coup by the Golden Square army officers, who opposed being ruled by Great Britain. The coup removed Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Pasha al-Said, and installed Rashid Ali Galiani as the new Prime Minister. Rashid Ali threatened to give the Germans access to Iraqi oil fields unless the British blocked a Jewish State in Palestine.
Anglo–Iraqi War: In May 1941 the British Royal Air Force base near Lake Habbaniya in southern Iraq found itself under siege by Rashid Ali and the Iraqi army. The German Luftwaffe out of Rayak airbase in Vichy Syria supported the Iraqi army by bombing the British Habbaniya base. Eventually, the men in Habbaniya received British reinforcements from Palestine and Transjordan, including the 7th Gurkha Rifles and the 11th Sikh Regiment. Major Henry Glubb then lead the British forces from Habbaniya to Baghdad.
The Farhud: The Farhud was a pogrom against the Jews which took place during the Jewish holiday of Shavuot in June 1-2, 1941 in Baghdad, Iraq. It occurred during a chaotic time after the collapse of the government of Rashid Ali, but before the British established control of Baghdad. Two hundred Jews, including many Jewish children, were murdered. Hundreds of Jewish women were raped, and many Jewish homes were plundered and burned.
November 10, 2020
"The Arab-Nazi Axis" - A Construct of Convenience
Edwin Black has produced another volume combining his twin passions, Holocaust and Middle East studies, attempting to synthesize them into one grand narrative. As usual, he (or more properly his hard-working research team) marshal an impressive array of data spanning continents, cultures, and historic eras. That's why I'm obliged to offer two stars in recognition, for effort. I've enjoyed other books of his, but I'm afraid he's struck more of his thumb than the nail with this one. Despite an impressive attempt to do so, he has not convincingly established that Arab = Nazi, nor the existence of a coordinated "Islamo-Nazi" alliance. This book is also a recapitulation of much of his earlier works, as well as other "Islamo-Nazi" efforts. Since Black has enjoined us to read his entire work from the beginning or "walk away," I'll build my critique sequentially.
In his overview of the militant rise of Islam by the sword, I couldn't help but be reminded how Christendom built its own empire by similar methods, using Christian kings to conquer European pagans, launch the Crusades, and bring the One True Holy Faith to the Incas and Aztecs. One might offer that Iberian Christendom owes its militant fiber through imitation of the Arab conquest of Spain; even so, it shows jihad is by no means a concept limited to readers of the Koran. In writing (page 14) that "written language emerged not from the need to worship a god, sing praise, honor a family, immortalize sagas, or express love - but from the need for commercial accounting," we see the crude reductionism to follow throughout. I'm sure Chinese readers (if any) might dispute this point.
We cruise along through the rise of Islam, the evolution of human civilization in Iraq, the lust of British oil companies for the lifeblood of oil under Arabia's thin skin of sand, the trickery by which France and Britain obtained Greater Syria from the Turks and partitioned it between themselves, and an overview of Zionist history apparently culled from Israeli high school texts. The first half ends with the entire Arab world, seething with revolt, looking as one nation toward the rise of the Brown Messiah in Berlin: a literary allusion that must ignore the great flux of Arab thought and politics to make its point.
Black is quite right that Germany's interest in the Middle East was built around the needs of its own military-industrial complex. The Ruhr Valley required oil, the Berlin banks needed markets, and the feeble hands of the Ottomans were "unworthy" to hold the treasures of a region "up for grabs." Thus we come to the rise of Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, and his starry-eyed romance with the simultaneous New Prophet from Branau am Inn. Here is the heart of Black's thesis, as he outlines the development of the Mufti's career in British-occupied Palestine, support for the militants of the Arab Revolt, leading to the Mufti's expulsion from Palestine and, like the Boll Weevil, looking for a home. He found it in Berlin, but his subsequent Halacha SS-regiment was composed not of Palestinian Arabs but Muslim Bosniaks. And here we come to the central problem of Black's presentation.
Black slights the diversity of opinion among Palestinians. Deep fissures between clans and political elites precluded the kind of unity Black envisions for them. If they were truly so united - around the Grand Mufti or any other figure - the Arab Revolt would not have floundered, nor would their resistance to Israel ten years later have collapsed so completely. For an informative look at the range of attitudes in the Arab world, I recommend Gilbert Achcar's "The Arabs and the Holocaust." To equate all of Arab political thought of the period to the Grand Mufti is ramming an elephant into a foxhole.
In his recounting of Arab attitudes toward Jewish minorities under German North African occupation, or of anti-Semitic mobs whipped up into "farhud" in Baghdad and other German-friendly locations, we find the same attitudes of east Europeans, also colonized nations with a tradition of taking out their frustrated patriotism on "internal foreigners." Black also recounts some of this in portraying the Bosniak alliance with the Nazi-collaborating Ustasha of Croatia, but in all this accumulation of tragedy he leaves the real historic question going a-begging: should Arabs and Muslims be equated with "Nazi?" Only if one wants to feed on the current fad of Islamophobia and find historical pretext for arming Israel to the teeth and unending Western war on the Islamic world.
Well, yes, I hear, but - these states are not now enemies of Israel and the West, are they? Yet such politically convenient Holocaust-linkage leaves the whole subject in moral confusion. The former Axis allies of eastern Europe like Croatia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, the Baltic States - and even occupied Ukraine and Poland - have not even yet come to terms with the behavior of their own peoples under Nazi rule. Is Romania to be judged by the Bucharest pogrom - also in 1941; or Latvia by its two SS divisions? The Catholic Church by the Ustasha priests who blessed crimes against humanity in Croatia, or whipped up the Polish mob at Kielce? Ukrainian nationhood to be challenged for the Lvov pogrom of 1939? The Baltic States seem readily forgiven by the West for their anti-Semitic cleansings in these years - "just an over-reaction to brutal Soviet occupation" - yet we're to sharpen the blade of historical memory for Palestinians over the Grand Mufti. If so, then did the SS-supplying Bosniaks and Kosovars "deserve" their crushing by Milosevic to atone for fascist-era crimes? For the record, there were more Jews left in Iraq after the war than in several European nations together. Let's also conveniently forget the pro-Axis, anti-Semitic sentiment common in Latin America of the period - Juan Peron as the "Grand Mufti" of anti-Yanqui nationalism - as this was later a necessary staging ground for cold war allies.
The blade of history cuts more ways than one. Black wields it to suit his agenda, which he has every right to do. But however much he tries to rationalize it with reams of data he's constructed an inverted pyramid, reduced to one narrow point that simply won't stand under its own weight. In closing let me return to his complaint against the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, as to why it would not assist him in memorializing the Baghdad Farhud and other anti-Semitic Arab actions of the period. The answer should be obvious, if he took his historical review seriously: the last thing an imperial power needs, walking after British boots across the oilfields of Mesopotamia, is to link Arab nationalism to enemy movements, and create yet another self-fulfilling anti-Semitic, anti-Western "axis."
Edwin Black has produced another volume combining his twin passions, Holocaust and Middle East studies, attempting to synthesize them into one grand narrative. As usual, he (or more properly his hard-working research team) marshal an impressive array of data spanning continents, cultures, and historic eras. That's why I'm obliged to offer two stars in recognition, for effort. I've enjoyed other books of his, but I'm afraid he's struck more of his thumb than the nail with this one. Despite an impressive attempt to do so, he has not convincingly established that Arab = Nazi, nor the existence of a coordinated "Islamo-Nazi" alliance. This book is also a recapitulation of much of his earlier works, as well as other "Islamo-Nazi" efforts. Since Black has enjoined us to read his entire work from the beginning or "walk away," I'll build my critique sequentially.
In his overview of the militant rise of Islam by the sword, I couldn't help but be reminded how Christendom built its own empire by similar methods, using Christian kings to conquer European pagans, launch the Crusades, and bring the One True Holy Faith to the Incas and Aztecs. One might offer that Iberian Christendom owes its militant fiber through imitation of the Arab conquest of Spain; even so, it shows jihad is by no means a concept limited to readers of the Koran. In writing (page 14) that "written language emerged not from the need to worship a god, sing praise, honor a family, immortalize sagas, or express love - but from the need for commercial accounting," we see the crude reductionism to follow throughout. I'm sure Chinese readers (if any) might dispute this point.
We cruise along through the rise of Islam, the evolution of human civilization in Iraq, the lust of British oil companies for the lifeblood of oil under Arabia's thin skin of sand, the trickery by which France and Britain obtained Greater Syria from the Turks and partitioned it between themselves, and an overview of Zionist history apparently culled from Israeli high school texts. The first half ends with the entire Arab world, seething with revolt, looking as one nation toward the rise of the Brown Messiah in Berlin: a literary allusion that must ignore the great flux of Arab thought and politics to make its point.
Black is quite right that Germany's interest in the Middle East was built around the needs of its own military-industrial complex. The Ruhr Valley required oil, the Berlin banks needed markets, and the feeble hands of the Ottomans were "unworthy" to hold the treasures of a region "up for grabs." Thus we come to the rise of Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, and his starry-eyed romance with the simultaneous New Prophet from Branau am Inn. Here is the heart of Black's thesis, as he outlines the development of the Mufti's career in British-occupied Palestine, support for the militants of the Arab Revolt, leading to the Mufti's expulsion from Palestine and, like the Boll Weevil, looking for a home. He found it in Berlin, but his subsequent Halacha SS-regiment was composed not of Palestinian Arabs but Muslim Bosniaks. And here we come to the central problem of Black's presentation.
Black slights the diversity of opinion among Palestinians. Deep fissures between clans and political elites precluded the kind of unity Black envisions for them. If they were truly so united - around the Grand Mufti or any other figure - the Arab Revolt would not have floundered, nor would their resistance to Israel ten years later have collapsed so completely. For an informative look at the range of attitudes in the Arab world, I recommend Gilbert Achcar's "The Arabs and the Holocaust." To equate all of Arab political thought of the period to the Grand Mufti is ramming an elephant into a foxhole.
In his recounting of Arab attitudes toward Jewish minorities under German North African occupation, or of anti-Semitic mobs whipped up into "farhud" in Baghdad and other German-friendly locations, we find the same attitudes of east Europeans, also colonized nations with a tradition of taking out their frustrated patriotism on "internal foreigners." Black also recounts some of this in portraying the Bosniak alliance with the Nazi-collaborating Ustasha of Croatia, but in all this accumulation of tragedy he leaves the real historic question going a-begging: should Arabs and Muslims be equated with "Nazi?" Only if one wants to feed on the current fad of Islamophobia and find historical pretext for arming Israel to the teeth and unending Western war on the Islamic world.
Well, yes, I hear, but - these states are not now enemies of Israel and the West, are they? Yet such politically convenient Holocaust-linkage leaves the whole subject in moral confusion. The former Axis allies of eastern Europe like Croatia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, the Baltic States - and even occupied Ukraine and Poland - have not even yet come to terms with the behavior of their own peoples under Nazi rule. Is Romania to be judged by the Bucharest pogrom - also in 1941; or Latvia by its two SS divisions? The Catholic Church by the Ustasha priests who blessed crimes against humanity in Croatia, or whipped up the Polish mob at Kielce? Ukrainian nationhood to be challenged for the Lvov pogrom of 1939? The Baltic States seem readily forgiven by the West for their anti-Semitic cleansings in these years - "just an over-reaction to brutal Soviet occupation" - yet we're to sharpen the blade of historical memory for Palestinians over the Grand Mufti. If so, then did the SS-supplying Bosniaks and Kosovars "deserve" their crushing by Milosevic to atone for fascist-era crimes? For the record, there were more Jews left in Iraq after the war than in several European nations together. Let's also conveniently forget the pro-Axis, anti-Semitic sentiment common in Latin America of the period - Juan Peron as the "Grand Mufti" of anti-Yanqui nationalism - as this was later a necessary staging ground for cold war allies.
The blade of history cuts more ways than one. Black wields it to suit his agenda, which he has every right to do. But however much he tries to rationalize it with reams of data he's constructed an inverted pyramid, reduced to one narrow point that simply won't stand under its own weight. In closing let me return to his complaint against the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, as to why it would not assist him in memorializing the Baghdad Farhud and other anti-Semitic Arab actions of the period. The answer should be obvious, if he took his historical review seriously: the last thing an imperial power needs, walking after British boots across the oilfields of Mesopotamia, is to link Arab nationalism to enemy movements, and create yet another self-fulfilling anti-Semitic, anti-Western "axis."
December 7, 2018
Edwin Black is brilliant. The amount of information he manages to include in a book is impressive.
July 3, 2025
(3.5 stars rounded up to 4)
This is a detailed account of the events, politics and ideological background that led to the Farhud.
It is an excellent birds eye view of the run up to the Farhud and the immediate aftermath of the Farhud. That is the strongest part of the book.
The rest of the book is OK, but too much was in a dry style which at times was boring and hard to read.
This is a detailed account of the events, politics and ideological background that led to the Farhud.
It is an excellent birds eye view of the run up to the Farhud and the immediate aftermath of the Farhud. That is the strongest part of the book.
The rest of the book is OK, but too much was in a dry style which at times was boring and hard to read.
November 14, 2025
To understand the conflicts of the Middle East today this book is simply essential reading. The chapters uncover a forgotten or camouflaged history of the Mandate era through to modern day.
The book is very well written and Mr Black to be congratulated on his in-depth knowledge of both the Middle Eastern and European history.
I reiterate : Essential reading!
The book is very well written and Mr Black to be congratulated on his in-depth knowledge of both the Middle Eastern and European history.
I reiterate : Essential reading!
March 30, 2024
Four stars, and only because the book was in want of a skilled editor (paragraphs repeated, verbatim, in two places, etc.). Otherwise, this book was incredible: well-researched, rich in detail and accounts, and shocking. This book is not for the faint of heart, and I struggled through some chapters because the facts were far more gruesome than anything I'd ever heard (or could have imagined), especially in learning about the Ustaše. But it's a history that needs to be told / read / learned / understood—and, what's more, it brings so much clarity to the tragic evolution of events in the Middle East today.
July 24, 2011
I have read several of Edwin Black's books and have been a big fan. Both IBM and the Holocaust and War Against the Weak were fantastically thorough. However, I felt like he bulked this one up with far too much material from his previous efforts on Middle East oil. I would have preferred a shorter, more focused book. All in all it was still a worth while read.
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