Himmler letter to mufti found

While it is known that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Hussein went to Germany in 1941 and met with Nazi hierarchy including Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler and Joachim von Ribbentrop, whom he urged to extend the solution for the Jewish problem to the Arab world, it was not known until recently that a telegram from Himmler to the grand mufti was stored in the archives of the National Library in Jerusalem. Library archivists discovered the telegram, believed to have been sent in 1943, and containing the promise that Germany would stand firmly by the Arabs in Mandatory Palestine in their fight against the “criminal” Balfour Declaration. The cable also states that the National Socialist movement, since its very inception, has made the fight against world Jewry a guiding principle and has been closely following the battle of freedom-seeking Arabs against the Jewish invaders. The cable appears to vindicate an assertion made in October 2015 by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when addressing the 37th World Zionist Congress. Netanyahu stated at that time that prior to meeting the mufti, Hitler had not intended to kill off all the Jews, only to expel. them. It was only after listening to the mufti that he decided to exterminate the Jewish people. Several historians dispute Netanyahu’s claim, because five months before Hitler met the mufti, the Nazis invaded Russia and engaged in the wholesale slaughter of Jewish communities. • Greer Fay Cashman