u/AcanthisittaFancy469

Been having some thoughts & I wanted to kick it to this page.

I have been working through the debate hosted by Lex Fridman between Benny Morris, Steven Bonnell, Normand Finkelstein & Mouin Rabbani. It’s a 5 hour debate on Israel/Palestine. While there is endless material to digest there was one piece that threw me off. Finkelstein claimed that Amin al-Husseini’s connections with the Nazis wasn’t worth a paragraph in a book.

For all that Finkelstein claims to abide by fact/research & he puts a great deal of effort to present this characteristic in interviews, this claim seemed foolish (to put it nicely)

Al-Husseini had meetings with Hitler & Himmler - he also worked to spread Nazi propaganda via radio to the Middle East during WW2. This helped spread European antisemitism (The Protocols & Blood Libels (Norwich 1144)) to the Middle East. These beliefs are wide spread today. - He also assisted in forming a Palestinian youth organization called the ‘Nazi Scouts’.(I didn’t believe this at first) - He would also pen to European leaders discouraging them from sending their Jewish populations to Mandate Palestine during the war. He claimed that better locations were Poland, where Jews were actively being killed. - He also had discussions for extending Germany’s final solution to the Middle East. Al-Husseini would also help form the ‘Hanjars’. A Bosnian Muslim unit in the Waffen SS who would help to kill some 90% of Bosnian Jews. They would also assist in the killing of Jews in Croatia/Hungary.

What’s happening here? Is Normand just dishonest? Disingenuous? Lying? For all that he puts on this image of being so well read/informed I find it hard to believe that he is unaware of this history.

For what it’s worth, I remember seeing a video of Finkelstein pledging support for the Houthis whose founding slogan includes ‘Curse be upon the Jews’.

Recently finished this thousand page history on antisemitism & I desperately recommend this read.

The book is a lot. It’s nuanced, detailed, hairsplitting and some 1,000 pages long, but it has helped me tremendously in understanding much of the popular wave of antisemitism we are experiencing today. Wistrich largely focuses on the 20th century but there is plenty on antisemitism in the ancient & medieval worlds.

He gives nuanced histories of right wing hatred and focuses a lot on left wing hatred. Something that I think has taken the lead today. I didn’t realize that many of the talking points we hear are not new.

He breaks down the history of how the UN had treated Israel, the apocalyptic/religious missions of Hamas/Hezbollah. (The claim that these groups are merely motivated by Palestinian hardship is provably false).

One of the most practically useful dimensions of the book were the discussions on how Zionism’s perception started from an 18th century movement inside Judaism in the wake up emancipation’s failures, antisemitism, pogroms & the religious challenges the enlightenment presented to it becoming a mindless buzzword meant to describe some mystical, all powerful, all rich, elite class of people (Jews) who control the world and are responsible for all bad things. Wistrich walks the reader through 20th century Nazi & Soviet propaganda campaigns used to bring about this modern image of Zionism.

Highly recommended read. It’s helped ground me amidst the surge in antisemitism we see today.

On Normand Finkelstein

A Lethal Obsession (Wistrich)