Kevin Myers, the Nature of Anti-Semitism and the Media’s schadenfreude

Kevin Myers’ Sunday Times profile picture (Source: Youtube image grab)

On the 30th of July 2017, the Irish edition of the Sunday Times published a column by veteran journalist Kevin Myers, entitled “Sorry ladies — equal pay has to be earned”. The ensuing reaction has been a spectacle of extraordinary proportions, constituting one of the bigger media stories of 2017.

Myers was fired from his post as chief columnist with the Irish Sunday Times, within a few hours, after an outraged online response in Britain, and attacks in the media. Some British news outlets, such as the Guardian went as far as to label him a ‘Holocaust denier’, while Danny Cohen, a prior executive at the BBC, demanded that the Sunday Times prevent Myers from working for any ‘News UK’ publication again. Lionel Barber, the Financial Times’ editor, claimed that the article represented an expression of “undiluted anti-Semitism and misogyny”. The Irish media was no less hostile, and a rolling series of attacks would ensue over the next two weeks, while a number of senior politicians also lambasted his article.

Anti-Semitic Stereotyping

Ireland’s main Jewish community group, the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland, issued the most notable public statement in support of Kevin Myers, claiming that to call him “either an anti-Semite or a Holocaust denier is an absolute distortion of the facts”, adding that Myers has done “more than any other Irish journalist” to write “about details of the Holocaust over the last three decades.”

The Irish Times would however publish an op-ed by Caryna Camerino, a Canadian Jewish woman who has lived in Dublin for approximately a decade. The publication of the article appears to have been motivated as a harsh retort directed at both Myers, and the Jewish Representative Council’s defence of the journalist, which elements of the media treated in a seemingly incredulous manner. Camerino’s attack focused on biological sex: her “lady brain” could not understand the assertions of these “men” at the Council, and that they do not represent her. She did not address the strength of her own connections to Ireland’s Jewish community, other than to acknowledge that she is not religiously practicing, nor if she was aware of any substantive dissent.

Camerino latterly claims in her op-ed that she is a “real Jew” with real feelings, etc. Although the remark is not closely connected to her attack on the Jewish Council, the article ultimately presents an inference that the Council are somehow not truly entitled to express their opinions, in view of her trenchant attack which amounts to little more than an ad hominem, while, in a stark dichotomy, she, as an individual and authentically Jewish person, possesses that right. She comes close to making that point outright when criticising the Council for not giving “any recognition of Jewish diversity, humanity and individuality — the very things that get erased by anti-Semitic generalisations”.

Camerino is of course justified in claiming that she is firmly and unconditionally entitled to express her opinion, as that is very much the right of each individual under any truly free democratic state, but she cannot justly insist that others have no such right to speak on behalf of their community when they have been afforded the authority to advocate on such a collective’s behalf for quite some time. The head Council representative, Maurice Cohen, stated that they had consulted quite widely on the matter, and appear to have received little negative reaction from the people they represent.

The question as to whether or not Myers endorsed an anti-Semitic stereotype in his final Sunday Times article is perhaps not as clear-cut as it may at first seem. Myers stated in his typically combative manner:

“I note that two of the best-paid women presenters in the BBC — Claudia Winkleman and Vanessa Feltz, with whose, no doubt, sterling work I am tragically unacquainted — are Jewish. Good for them.

Jews are not generally noted for their insistence on selling their talent for the lowest possible price, which is the most useful measure there is of inveterate, lost-with-all-hands stupidity. I wonder, who are their agents? If they’re the same ones that negotiated the pay for the women on the lower scales, then maybe the latter have found their true value in the marketplace.”

Seth Barrett-Tillman, a lecturer in law at Maynooth University, asserted that Myers made a factual statement that was praiseworthy, and which could be tested for its veracity, in an RTE interview with Sean O’Rourke. By contrast, Julia Neuberger, Britiain’s first female Rabbi, described the assertion in Myers’ column as “absolutely gratuitous, not cleverly done, it’s blatant racism”, adding that “you have to give people a chance to rethink their own attitudes.” Maurice Cohen disagreed, arguing that Myers had “inadvertently stumbled into an antisemitic trope”.

Myers is a particularly intelligent and educated individual, who appears to be knowledgeable on the topic of anti-Semitism. He clearly tapped into a stereotype that is often used as a means of detraction, but the context in which it is presented is genuinely peculiar. The stereotype appears to have been applied as a means of praise toward Jewish people, rather than as an expression of hostility. He argued that individuals should take proper recompense for their labours and talents.

While Camerino suggested that Myers traded in negative characterisations of Jewishness, and in anti-Semitic conspiracism, Myers did not appear to make out that Jewish people are greedy and controlling in the two relevant paragraphs, which were otherwise quite sarcastic, if not genuinely unpleasant, although it might be argued that this contrast is merely a façade, and that the journalist traded on an undercurrent of the sentiment of Jewish greed to generate a reaction from the reader.

Stereotypes can sometimes feature some level of truth since cultures frequently diverge, and talents quite often get directed into different professions and other varying spheres of activity. Stereotypes nonetheless generalise and can act to typecast minorities. They can be damaging and potentially dangerous, even when presented in a positive manner. However, Camerino denied Myers’ subsequent claim that Jewish people achieve a great deal in certain areas of endeavour, which he said that he admired — a sentiment which seems genuine because he has occasionally expressed similar views for some time. Myers elaborated in a BBC interview, after the controversy erupted, stating that Jewish financial institutions historically did better because they were more trustworthy. Camerino’s claim would seem to be questionable since it is hardly a secret that Jewish people do achieve a level of notable prestige in academia, health and finance, and she unnecessarily cast Myers’ philosemitism as anti-Semitism in its own right.

Some critics have argued that motivation matters little when such an author trades in damaging stereotypes. Rabbi Neuberger sought the opportunity to explain to Myers why such sentiments are so offensive. However, few would not accept that motivation denotes levels of blameworthiness, where accidental wrongdoing is usually treated very differently to acts of malice. Legal systems also make a distinction between such acts. If Myers is guilty of negligence, where he should have known of the harm of the stereotype, as Neuberger seems to have suggested, then that assertion contrasts to no small extent with claims that he is an outright bigot/anti-Semite.

If Myers did intend to trade on negative stereotyping then he was crossing an ethical boundary but the paragraphs are ultimately too vague to make a firm judgement on the matter. Occasionally, anti-Semites proffer a backhanded compliment as a prelude to an attack, but in Myers’ case it did not occur. In cases were such descriptions lead to anti-Semitic expression, conspiracies are invoked to suggest that Jewish people control a given area of industry, that they run a “cabal” for their own mutual benefit, which not only excludes non-Jewish people from betterment in the same field, but is used for nefarious means and excessive gain.

Myers’ remark ultimately constitutes an anti-Semitic stereotype, and was problematic without any clarification because it could be seen as an endorsement. It leaves Myers justly open to criticism, but the surrounding contextual indeterminacy should have mitigated against such an intensive reaction, because it was not expressed by a person with a notable prior record of hostility toward the Jewish people — quite the opposite in fact. Given Myers’ prior record of support for certain Jewish issues, he should be afforded the benefit of the doubt when claiming that the comment was not motivated by hostility. However, the controversy began in Britain where few would be familiar with Myers’ record of philosemitism.

The equal pay debate

Kevin Myers’ by now infamous Sunday Times 30th July article focused on the row over the diverging sums paid to male and female performers and presenters at the BBC. He argued that men tend receive better remuneration than women because they frequently work harder, and take fewer days off work due to medical issues. He asked:

“Is it because men are more charismatic performers? Because they work harder? Because they are more driven? Possibly a bit of each… men usually do work harder, get sick less frequently and seldom get pregnant.”

The National Women’s Council of Ireland (NWCI) harshly attacked the Sunday Times’ subsequent apology for running the offending Myers article, arguing that:

“The article clearly displayed discriminatory views on both gender and religious grounds, yet the apology today made no reference to the misogynistic and sexist views expressed in the article. The apology presented the Sunday Times with the opportunity to redress the views expressed, and the offence caused to women. This opportunity was clearly not taken. By its omission, in our view the apology gives licence to further similar sexist views to be expressed in its newspaper in the future.”

Numerous studies over the years have found that British men contribute a higher number of work-hours than women although it should be noted that women also take on a greater share of household chores, which nullifies or reverses this discrepancy. The male-female divergence in work hours is echoed in the US and across the world. British studies have also found that women take more sick days from the workplace than men. Such a divergence in work practices will probably have a significant impact on the long-term development of careers.

Whether or not Myers holds misogynist views, his largely factual assertions appear to have caused most offense, but they can be backed up by well-known evidential findings. As such, what the NWCI purports to be “misogynistic and sexist views” are in fact evidence based, even if they can be unpalatable, particularly when advanced with a biting sarcasm.

Kathy Sheridan, an Irish Times columnist, put a hostile spin on the Myers controversy. Sheridan took Myers to task for his attitude to women and feminism. Although Myers has made acidic comments about feminism, he does not appear to have argued for any curtailment of freedoms and opportunities for women. He railed against what he claimed was a misandrist bias in the Irish courts system. He had also objected to the rigid insistence on absolute equality.

When addressing the present controversy, Myers claimed in interviews that equality is not a natural feature of relations, and that people who diverge in terms of biologically sexual orientation have different strengths and weaknesses. Accordingly, there should not be so much emphasis on divergent rates of success and uptake within the various professions. He also denied that he believed women to be inferior to men.

Myers’ claims are offensive to some but they are not without some objective validity in view of the findings of a number of scientific studies. In terms of psychological behaviourism, women diverge more dramatically from men in nations with a high human development index, where policies to ensure equal freedoms and opportunity are in place. Related studies indicate that women focus on spheres of interest that are more socialised than that of men, and hence favour person-orientated occupations, while men focus interest on objects, and display a preference for subjects like science and mathematics. This divergence was again found to be most prevalent in nations that possess a high rating on the developmental index, suggesting that conditions which allow for greater freedom of opportunity bring about an intensified polarisation when it comes to occupations.

These findings have some compatibility with somewhat traditional views on the sexes, although they do not affirm in any way that women are in any way inferior to men. Nonetheless, such studies may make difficult reading for many social theorists, who are committed to the belief that culture, rather than biology, is the principle determinant in the divergences of behaviour between the sexes.

Defining Holocaust denial

On the 4th of March 2009, the Irish Independent published an article (‘I’m a Holocaust denier, but I also believe the Nazis planned the extermination of the Jewish people’), in which Kevin Myers argued that Holocaust deniers, such as Bishop Richard Williamson, should not be punished, and voiced some qualified support for such people. The article was removed from the Independent‘s website on the day that the present controversy exploded.

Myers has been called a Holocaust denier, particularly in the left-wing British media, but others disagree. An in-depth examination of the phenomenon of Holocaust denial reveals that Myers cannot be regarded as a Holocaust denier in any meaningful sense of the term, and that it was applied as a rhetorical device to justify his libertarian stance on freedom of speech.

Myers stated that “there was no holocaust (or Holocaust, as my computer software insists)”, because the majority of “Jewish victims of the Third Reich were not burnt in the ovens in Auschwitz. They were shot by the hundreds of thousands in the Lebensraum of the east, or were worked or starved to death in a hundred other camps, across the Reich.”

Myers also claimed that it was unlikely that exactly six million Jewish people were murdered by the NAZIs but he nonetheless affirmed that it was a particularly substantive genocide, stating that “millions of Jews were murdered”. He claimed:

“I’m a holocaust denier; but I also believe that the Nazis planned the extermination of the Jewish people, as far as their evil hands could reach.”

A person who engages in Holocaust denial claims that there was no systemic and logistically very substantive attempt to exterminate European Jewry. Holocaust deniers will never allow for anything more than a small fraction of the six million that are reliably estimated to have been murdered. They must also necessarily deny the existence of the death camps, often by denying that they were used for systematic killing. This description is in accord with the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) statement on the topic:

“Holocaust denial is discourse and propaganda that deny the historical reality and the extent of the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis and their accomplices…

Holocaust denial may include publicly denying or calling into doubt the use of principal mechanisms of destruction (such as gas chambers, mass shooting, starvation and torture) or the intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people.”

Holocaust deniers tend to present Hitler and the NAZIs in a positive light, and often claim that Hitler never planned to exterminate Jews. Myers stated the opposite in both respects.

Deniers assert that if a Jewish genocide did take place, it resulted in the death of no more than a few tens of thousands, to hundreds of thousands, of Jewish people, so that any supposed Holocaust was no more significant than the several other substantive genocides of the era, which would include peoples of Christian and non-Semitic Eastern European religious and racial identities. By attempting to lessen and relativise the unique scale of Jewish suffering, which was fostered by a particularly vicious and non-evidential form of animus that was central to the worldview of National Socialism, where the destruction of German/European Jewry represented a priority for Hitler as stated in 1922, with their persecution commencing as soon as the NAZI party took power in 1933, Holocaust deniers ultimately attempt to negate the unsocial status afforded to anti-Semitic statements, and related conspiracies, in the post-Holocaust period.

Myers questioned the exactness of the Holocaust’s figure of six million dead in his article, to argue that people may be punished for questioning such a figure, and may limit academic endeavour, but still noted that millions were killed. By contrast, Holocaust deniers must fundamentally question the grand scale of the murderous campaign, to present a coherent theory that Jewish people were not singled out for a particular and quite uniquely murderous programme, although it should be remembered that other minorities suffered to some extent in a similar fashion, particularly the Gypsies of Eastern Europe. Myers did not question the NAZIs intent to exterminate European Jewry. He in fact acknowledged that was the very plan of the Third Reich.

However, Myers’ stance is somewhat questionable in other respects. Some historians have estimated that the death toll is slightly less than six million, but have not been branded as ‘Holocaust deniers’ by any party, nor have they been sought by the authorities, while institutions commemorating the terrible episode are not rigid in the assertion that exactly six million people died. Furthermore, Holocaust denial laws tend to be designed to specifically act against the trivialisation of the event and the gross under-representation of the genocide’s scale, rather than to enshrine any sort of exact figure on the death toll that would bind academic study into the future.

Although Myers’ March 2009 article is clearly not anti-Semitic, it is nonetheless problematic. It treated a sensitive subject in a harsh and unnecessarily contentious manner, and made a claim that more Jews were killed by death squads than in the gas installations of the Auschwitz death sub-camps, to point out that the name of the NAZI extermination programme is invalid. Myers stated:

“For if the word is to have any literal validity at all, it must be related to its actual meaning, which comes from the Greek words holos, ‘whole’, and caust, ‘fire’. Most Jewish victims of the Third Reich were not burnt in the ovens in Auschwitz. They were shot by the hundreds of thousands in the Lebensraum of the east, or were worked or starved to death in a hundred other camps, across the Reich.

This programme was begun informally by Nazi armies in 1941, and only took organised form after the Wannsee conference in January 1942. Thus was born one of the most satanic operations in world history, in which millions of Jews were murdered. To be sure, you can use the term holocaust to describe these events, but only as a metaphor.”

Myers’ assertion concerning the modes of genocide is technically correct but rather misleading since there were several other death camps besides Auschwitz, with gassing and crematorium facilities, the mode of murder and disposal to which Myers seems to accord with his definition of the word ‘Holocaust’. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has estimated that almost three million Jewish people were murdered in death and concentration camps, while some were also murdered external to such facilities by gas. While not all those killed in such camps would have been cremated, it clearly was one of the predominant modes of bodily disposal especially after Hitler decided to proceed with the total annihilation of Jewry in December 1941. Its symbolism formed a unique motif for this particular programme of extermination, especially in view of the opposition in Jewish religious law to such burial practices. Myers may still cast such an argument as the use of a ‘metaphor’ but in truth it was much more. The numerous crematoria, and the open fire pits at Treblinka, constituted an elemental part of the NAZIs schema of destruction, which from 1942 were devised to cover up and efficiently dispose of many thousands of people on a daily basis in the camps.

Myers acknowledged in private email correspondence that the tone of the article was ill-judged. He received emails of support from anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists, which he denounced. Myers also claims that the article’s headline was written by an editor, as is often the case with publications. To the best of my knowledge, this claim has not been rejected by the Irish Independent.

Myers elaborated, to claim that his defence of Holocaust denial was based on freedom of speech, rather than any particular agreement with the essential tenets of Holocaust denial:

“I’m a holocaust denier; but I also believe that the Nazis planned the extermination of the Jewish people, as far as their evil hands could reach. And because the Nazis lost, the free-speech party won. So, this means that the bishop can believe, and even publicly state, if he wants, that Auschwitz was an ice-cream parlour and the SS was a dance troupe.

That is the nature of free speech. Any one of us should be able to declare any old counter-factual and even offensive nonsense, without being sent to jail, provided we preach hatred for no one. It’s a free and equal world.”

While legitimate concerns can arise over freedom of speech, and Myers is justified in raising the issue, there are also legitimate reasons for the existence of Holocaust denial laws.' The Holocaust is treated differently to other major events in history. Significant numbers of people, and a number of organisations, denied the Third Reich’s criminal actions. They did so for politically motivated reasons rather than due to an innocent scepticism. By attempting to disprove the Holocaust, they invariably endorse further clichéd anti-Semitic conspiracies, often arguing that the story of the Holocaust is part of a plot of the Jews to silence criticism of their activities, to increase their supposedly privileged status, and thereby to increase their power internationally for malefic purposes. The Holocaust is denied to invoke further hatred of this group, and often to legitimise the beliefs of Hitler and the National Socialist movement.

Myers also took issue with the double-standards of the authorities, which tend to ignore Islamic anti-Semitism while prosecuting its Western equivalent. He somewhat paradoxically criticised such beliefs — a stance that no genuine Holocaust deniers would adopt:

“Across Europe, there are countless Islamic madrasahs, in which imams regularly preach hatred for Jews, and where the holocaust is routinely denied. Which member-state of the EU will pursue such conveyors of hate, or seek the extradition of an imam who says that the holocaust was a Zionist hoax?”

… the EU has tolerated the creation of an informal historiographical apartheid. So, on the one hand, a single, eccentric (and possibly deranged) Christian bishop may be hounded for his demented historical beliefs: but on the other, there is a deafening silence over the widespread and virulent distortion of the ‘holocaust’ by Islamic preachers.”

Although some of Myers’ assertions in the March 2009 Irish Independent article may be questioned, the assertions are not motivated by anti-Semitism — in fact quite the contrary if the reader goes beyond the journalist’s astonishingly bombastic claim that he is a Holocaust denier. Myers places freedom of speech above all else, and frequently railed against all sorts of political/media consensuses, which seems to have motivated his defence of Holocaust deniers, such as Bishop Williamson. It is clear that Myers ultimately acted to deny the Holocaust as a rhetorical device, based on two effective technicalities of minor significance, to make a point about freedom of speech and Holocaust Denial laws. This viewpoint appears to have been the reading behind the intent behind Myers’ article at the time, despite the fact that his piece justifiably raised strong objections.

Published at Crethi Plethi.

Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini’s Initiatory Role in the Extermination of European Jewry

(Updated - 23rd October)

Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been harshly criticised in recent days for highlighting what he believes to be the role of Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem during the British Mandate era, in encouraging the initiation of the most destructive phase of the Holocaust. The position of Grand Mufti affords the highest authority on religious law in Sunni Muslim nations.

During a speech at the 37th World Zionist Congress in Jerusalem this week, Netanyahu claimed that Hitler originally intended to expel European Jews but changed his mind due to the influence of al-Husseini. The Mufti argued that the expulsion of the Jews would lead to their migration to Mandatory Palestine, which he had a leading role in violently opposing. Netanyahu stated that Hitler was persuaded to exterminate Europe’s Jewry at a meeting between the two men on the 28th November 1941.

The Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husaini, meets with Adolf Hitler,
 November 28th, 1941

The claim has been widely criticised. Some elements in the media presented Netanyahu as somehow making trouble, for example RTE titled its article on the controversy: “Netanyahu provokes Holocaust row” when in fact the Mufti’s relationship with Hitler was only referred to briefly in the speech. The thrust of criticism concerned Arab-Palestinian incitement from the Mufti’s era to the present, which media outlets ignore.

Fatah-PLO lambasted Netanyahu's comments, unsurprisingly perhaps, given al Husseini's heroic status in Arab-Palestinian society. Carlos Latuff, an illustrator who deals in anti-Israel propaganda, mocked Netanyahu over the episode. Latuff makes near-continual use of Holocaust imagery to demonise the Jewish State’s role in the Israeli-Arab conflict.

Moshe Zimmermann, of Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, went as far as to argue that Netanyahu is a Holocaust denier:

“Any attempt to deflect the burden from Hitler to others is a form of Holocaust denial”

Such a charge is a nonsense since Netanyahu didn’t deny Hitler’s responsibility for the Holocaust. Holocaust Deniers deny that the Holocaust occurred, suggest there was no intent to exterminate European Jews, or minimise or relativise the dimension of the episode by presenting it as a fairly typical genocide for the period. The term is not used for those who argue that Hitler may have been influenced by other allied elements.

Associated Press failed to note that Moshe Zimmermann has a record for applying offensive Holocaust terminology to Jewish political opponents. He described Hebron’s Jewish children as ‘Hitlerjugend’ (Hitler Youth). Such behaviour is often deemed to be objectionable since it trivialises the scale and cruelty of the Holocaust. Thus, it is most peculiar for Associated Press to claim that Zimmermann is a prominent expert on anti-Semitism. His expertise in fact focuses on German history, and is regarded as one of the most extreme anti-Israel propagandists in Israeli academia.

Netanyahu later clarified that he had no intention of absolving Hitler of his responsibility for the extermination programme but wished to highlight “the role played by the Mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini, a war criminal, in encouraging and goading Hitler, Ribbentrop, Himmler and others to exterminate European Jewry.”

Associated Press wrote that unnamed historians disagreed with Netanyahu’s claim of the Mufti’s role:

“Historians quickly noted that the Nazi Final Solution was already well underway at this point, with several concentration camps up and running. Hitler had previously repeatedly declared his lethal intentions for the Jews.”

Such claims are not in keeping with the known timeline of the Holocaust, and also conflates the nature of concentration camps. There were concentration camps in NAZI Germany going back to the middle 1930s but they were not extermination camps. Camps with the principle purpose of committing mass murder are known to have only been built after the Wannasee Conference of January 1942, which marked a major turning point in the Holocaust.

Hitler had indeed declared a lethal intent towards the Jewish race, such as in a January 1941 speech but it was clearly a threat of extermination should war spread internationally. Hitler’s private speech to Nazi Leaders 20 days after his meeting with al-Husseini attests to his wish for extermination to finalise the ‘Jewish Question’. It is important to note that this was after war had spread to the United States and the USSR. Hitler appeared to believe that powerful international Jewish financiers were out to destroy the Reich and the Germanic people. His stance may have been propagandistic but the NAZIs projected many of their own character defects upon a notional Jewish collective which was described as genocidal in intent.

There is no consensus among historians as to when NAZI Germany decided upon extermination rather than a mix of expulsion, starvation and genocide. Arguments tend to vary, favouring the middle of 1941 or closer to the end of 1941 as the turning point in this horrific episode. Critics might argue that Netanyahu pointed to a specific meeting as turning Hitler’s opinion toward extermination rather than expulsion. However, it appears to be incorrect to point to the existence of genocidal methodologies prior to al-Husseini’s visit, as a refutation of Netanyahu’s stance.

It is worth noting that an expulsion strategy was adopted at the time as a solution to the ‘Jewish Question’. Mass genocide was systematic in the newly NAZI-occupied areas of Eastern Europe which had an immensely destructive impact on the regional Jewish populaces but this strategy does not appear to have been envisaged as the primary solution for ending European Jewry's presence. Professor Peter Longerich, a scholar of the Holocaust, argues that it is difficult to place the exact date of transition toward a programme of pure extermination:

“In mid-1941, Hitler ordered the deportation of Jews from the Greater German ‘Reich’ to Eastern European ghettos. Ten thousand German Jews were sent to Lodz, Minsk and Riga between October 1941 and February 1942. From March 1942 they were deported to ghettos in the Lublin district. Hitler was thus putting into practice his plan, developed at the start of 1941, to deport the Jews to occupied Soviet territories. But he did not wait for his original precondition to be fulfilled — military victory over the Soviet Union’s Red Army.

In autumn 1941, the Nazi regime extended the policy of mass murder to areas outside the Soviet Union. In so doing they drew on experience gained from the defunct T4 ‘euthanasia’ programme. From this point, fixed and mobile gas chambers were to be used to murder Jews. At Chelmno, from December 1941, specially adapted buses (Gaswagen) were used for this purpose. In March 1942, Belzec extermination camp went into operation, killing Jews from Lublin and Galicia.

The exact date on which the leadership of the Nazi regime decided to convert the as-yet-unplanned intention to exterminate all European Jews into a concrete programme is not documented and is still the subject of controversy among historians. It is likely that it was not the consequence of a single decision, but of a longer process.”

A multifaceted strategy for resolving the “Jewish Question” was not novel. Konstantin Pobedonostsev, a leading Russian political figure of the late 19th Century, famously remarked on what he saw as the desired fate of the then three-million Jews living in Imperial Russia: “one-third will die, one third will leave the country, and the last third will be completely assimilated within the Russian people.”

Al-Husseini was in contact with the Third Reich since 1933, and testimony, such as that of Eichmann’s assistant, Dieter Wisliceny establishes that he had a role in encouraging a Holocaust extermination programme, rather than expulsion as a means for Hitler to be rid of the Jewish people:

"Adolf Eichmann’s deputy, , stated at his Nuremberg trial that the mufti’s importance “must not be disregarded[.] … [T]he Mufti had repeatedly suggested to … Hitler, Ribbentrop and Himmler, the extermination of European Jewry"

Andre Steiner also relayed a conversation with Wisliceny in Bratislava, June 1944:

"When acting as adviser on Jewish affairs to the Slovakian government, Wisliceny is believed to have said that “the Mufti was one of the instigators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and was a partner and adviser to Eichmann and Hitler for carrying out this plan.” (citation from the book “Israel: The Will to Prevail,” by Danny Danon, 2012).

Some prominent historians have cast doubt on the accuracy of Wisliceny’s statement however, arguing that the timelines suggest the Mufti’s meeting with Hitler came too late, although Wisliceny suggests that al-Husseini influenced other members of the Third Reich as well.

Bernard Wasserstein’s book ‘Britain and the Jews of Europe, 1939-1945’, asserts that the Third Reich precluded Jews being allowed to emigrate to British-Mandatory Palestine due to the NAZI alliance with the Mufti — in March 1941, Hitler agreed to this condition, and a few months later the Nazis ended the legal emigration of Jews from areas under German control, for which they often extorted substantial sums of money.

During 1941, leading NAZI members were advocating the deportation of Jews to the USSR, to free up space for German citizens. Hitler finally agreed to the proposal at the end of September 1941. At some point between October and December, NAZI policy would crystallise into an approach solely constituting extermination. Little wonder that some historians believe that the Mufti’s visit was a pivotal moment in the Holocaust.

The book ‘Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East’, authored by Wolfgang G. Schwanitz and Barry Rubin, points to Hitler being open to emigration as a solution to the “Jewish Question” in 1941. The book vividly illustrates (see pages 20–22) the influence that the Mufti brought to bear in helping initiate a mass extermination programme, albeit a contention that is controversial amongst other historians:

“Hitler had to decide precisely how “the very last” of the Jews were to leave Germany. As late as 1941, Hitler thought this could happen, in the words of Hermann Göring in July, by “emigration or evacuation.” Yet since other countries refused to take many or any Jewish refugees, Palestine was the only possible refuge, as designated by the League of Nations in 1922. If that last safe haven was closed, mass murder would be Hitler’s only alternative.

The importance of the Arab-Muslim alliance for Berlin, along with the grand mufti’s urging, ensured that outcome"

The question is one of intentionality. Holocaust deniers would like to believe that Hitler and the Third Reich did not possess the most murderous ambitions toward the Jewish people, and would not have preferred to murder world Jewry rather than merely expel such people. The intensity of Hitler's hatred led him to see Jews as an international threat, and believed that such a concentration in Palestine might cause further trouble, as asserted during his meeting with al Husseini. Yet the scale of murderous ambition would have an impact on the number of Jewish people ultimately killed in the Holocaust.

The issue is one of intent to destroy the entire Jewish populace in Europe, and perhaps the Middle East and elsewhere. The NAZIs murdered a large number of Jews up until 1941 but also entertained expelling them to other parts of the world. The Holocaust is often deemed to have begun in 1941 when death squads murdered Jews en masse in Eastern Europe. A report by a senior member of the Einsatzgruppen states that the death squad killed 137,346 people in Lithuania between the start of July 1941 and the end of November that same year. Thus, the Reich was using ever more lethal efforts to handle Jewish populaces.

Material evidence is somewhat contradictory. Construction in October 1941 of the Second phase of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, which would be used for mass extermination the following year, was first intended to ease the prison population, but on the other hand, the first mass killings at Auschwitz took place in September 1941, when prisoners were murdered by gas in the basement of one building.

Rudolf Hoess, the commander of Auschwitz, asserted under questioning 1946, that he was summoned to Berlin to speak to Heinrich Himmler in the summer of 1941. He claimed that Himmler told him that Hitler had given the order for the extermination of the Jewish people, and Auschwitz was chosen for that purpose.

This meeting likely came after Hermann Goering's July 31st order to the more senior figure of Reinhard Heydrich, to prepare plans “for the implementation of the aspired final solution of the Jewish question” in all German-occupied areas of Europe. Such a plan would not necessarily conflict with a plan to deport Jews to Russia, although Adolf Eichmann would later relay (presumably the same order) that Heydrich had told him the following month that "the Führer has ordered the physical extermination of the Jews." However, Gord McFee argues that Hitler was likely indecisive, given the delay in the plans. Hitler’s delayed decision to agree to the mass deportation of Jews to Russia in September suggests that he considered different options to resolve the ‘Jewish Question’.

An active policy of expulsion paralleled murderous policy. As Holocaust specialist Professor David Cesarani noted:

“The autumn of 1941 is one of the strangest and most difficult periods to get a hold of… In the Soviet Union you have got the most radical conceivable kind of ethnic cleansing which is the mass shooting of populations, particularly the Jewish population. You have the crystallization of an idea in Berlin that during the war itself the Jews are going to be removed from the sphere of influence of the Third Reich, which I think at that point means after the defeat of the Soviet Union, which is imminent, dumping them in Siberia, not actually killing them… Tens of thousands of Jews are being massacred, but people are thinking of sending Jews alive to somewhere else where they may die, but they may not.” 

A diary entry by Joseph Goebbels, of the 12th of December, affirms a substantive change in Hitler’s thought: "Führer has decided to make a clean sweep. He prophesied to the Jews that if they again brought about a world war, they would live to see their annihilation in it." This position was echoed in an article published in 1943.

The closest to an outright order for extermination is a note that Heinrich Himmler made in his appointment diary, in the aftermath of the December 18th meeting with Hitler. Himmler wrote: "Jewish Question—to be exterminated as partisans" seemingly in response to Hitler’s belief that “New York Jews” were waging war against the Third Reich, and must now collectively suffer the consequences.

While it is correct to suggest that Netanyahu exaggerated the likely role of al-Husseini in Hitler’s decision to extend the Holocaust programme’s reach, and to claim that other factors would have likely had a substantive impact on Hitler’s decision-making, especially the spread of war to the US, it nonetheless appears to be correct to assert that the Mufti had a significant influence on the Reich when it came to migration policy, including a direct complicity in the deaths of many thousands of Jewish children.

Al Husseini's influence would extend to the establishment of a Bosnian-Muslim Waffen SS division in 1943, and planning to institute a Jewish extermination programme in Palestine, which was prevented by Rommel’s defeat by the British at El Alamein, as attested in the book ‘Nazi Palestine: The Plans for the Extermination of the Jews of Palestine’, by Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cüppers.

“Arise. O sons of Arabia, fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them. Their spilled blood pleases Allah, our history and religion. That will save our honor.” — Haj Amin al-Husseini, radio broadcast, May 1942.

Al-Husseini may not have merely encouraged an extermination programme - there is less historical debate in the fact that he collaborated in efforts to implement such policy, and systematically promoted the NAZI cause in the Arab world. Although the media has presented a white-wash of the Mufti's behaviour, perhaps this week’s argument will encourage some renewed interest in this issue, which has been all too often ignored.

“…The sole German objective in the region will be to liquidate all Jews who live in Arab countries under the patronage of Great Britain.” — Adolf Hitler to Hajj Amin al-Husseini, November 28, 1941.

Also published at Crethi Plethi.