As we follow the unfolding story in Egypt, we are torn between hope and
fear, hope that democracy will gain a toehold, fear that the fundamentalist
Moslem Brothers could take control of Egypt. Perhaps you have heard the Moslem
Brothers are the oldest and largest radical Islamic group, the grandfather of
Hezbollah, Hamas, and al-Qaeda.
What you haven’t been told is this: the Moslem Brothers were a small,
unpopular group of anti-modern fanatics unable to attract members,
until
they were adopted by Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich beginning in the
1930s. Under the tutelage of the Third Reich, the Brothers started
the
modern jihadi movement, complete with a
genocidal
program against Jews. In the words of
Matthias
Kuntzel, “The significance of the Brotherhood to Islamism is comparable to
that of the Bolshevik Party to communism: It was and remains to this day the
ideological reference point and organizational core for all later Islamist
groups, including al-Qaeda and Hamas.”
What is equally ominous for Jews and Israel is that despite Mubarak’s
pragmatic co-existence with Israel for the last 30 years, every Egyptian leader
from
Nasser,
through Sadat, to Mubarak, has enshrined
Nazi
Jew-hatred in mainstream Egyptian culture, out of both conviction and
political calculation. Nasser, trained by Nazis as a youth, spread the
genocidal conspiracy theories of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, making it
a best seller throughout the Arab world. On the Ramadan following 9/11, Mubarak
presided over a 30-week long
TV series dramatizing
the Elders and its genocidal message.
It is impossible to assess the danger posed by a takeover of Egypt today by
the Moslem Brothers without knowing that
Nazism
launched the Brothers and is still at their core. This response to modernity
and to Jews was not predetermined by Egyptian history or culture. It was
Germany under Hitler that changed the course of history for Egypt and the Middle
East.
How do we know all this? We know it because the Third Reich was a
meticulous keeper of records. We have the memos, the
planning documents, the budgets, even photos and
films of the Reich’s
spectacularly success campaign, implemented by the Moslem Brothers, to turn the
Middle East into a hotbed of virulent Jew-hatred. We have the minutes, the
photo and the
memo
of understanding, when Hitler and the head of the Moslem Brothers in
Palestine, the
Mufti of
Jerusalem, shook hands on a plan for a Final Solution in the Middle
East.
We have the records of this meeting, in which Hitler and the head of the
Moslem Brothers in Palestine shook hands on a Final Solution for the Middle East
– years before the creation of Israel.
The
Moslem Brothers helped Hitler succeed in genocide by slamming shut the door
to safety in Palestine. This was a key part of the success of the Final
Solution. The anti-Jewish riots in Palestine that lead the British to cave to
Arab pressure and shut off Jewish escape are well known — how many of us know
they were funded by Hitler? Winston Churchill protested the closing of
Palestine to the Jews in the House of Commons, arguing against the appeasement
of Nazi-funded Arab violence :
“So far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country and
multiplied till their population has increased more than even all world Jewry
could lift up the Jewish population. …We are now asked to submit, and this is
what rankles most with me, to an agitation which is fed with foreign money and
ceaselessly inflamed by Nazi and by Fascist propaganda.”
Who knows how many Jews would have escaped Hitler if the Jewish National
Home in Palestine had remained open to them?
We do know that without the work of Hitler’s allies, the Moslem Brothers,
many signs indicate that
Israel would
have been a welcome neighbor in the Middle East, but this path was closed
off by Moslem Brotherhood terrorism. This is not ‘ancient history.’ According
to Prime Minister
Netanyahu,
Yasser Arafat (born Mohammed Al-Husseini, in Cairo) adopted the name Yasser to
honor the Moslem Brothers’ terror chief, who threw moderate Palestinians into
pits of scorpions and snakes, eliminated the entire Nashashibi family of
Jerusalem because they welcomed Jews into Palestine, and drove forty thousand
Arabs into exile. The corpses of their victims would be left in the street for
days, a shoe stuck in their mouth, as a lesson for any Arab who believed in
tolerating a Jewish homeland. Arafat as a member of the Moslem Brothers was
directly
trained
by Nazi officers who were
invited
to Egypt after the fall of Hitler in Europe.
Like the pro-democracy demonstrators out in the streets of Cairo this week,
immediately after World War I, Egypt was filled with hopes for developing a
modern, tolerant society. The Egyptian revolution of 1919 united the country’s
Moslems, Christians and Jews around the slogan, “Liberty, Equality,
Brotherhood.” The constitution of 1923 was completely secular, establishing a
constitutional monarchy. It took Western democracy as a model and worked for the
equal status of women. Jews were an accepted part of public life. There were
Jewish members of parliament. The Zionist movement was accepted with
“considerable sympathy,” because the government’s priority was to maintain good
relations between the three most important religious groups – Moslems, Jews and
Christian Copts. Today the Jews are gone and the Copts are viciously
persecuted. But in 1919, there was even an Egyptian section of the
International Zionist Organization. Its founder, Leon Castro, a Jew, was also
the spokesman of the largest Egyptian political party, the Wafd, related to the
largest opposition party taking part in this week’s demonstrations.
When in March 1928, the charismatic preacher Hassan al-Banna founded the
Moslem Brotherhood in Egypt, it was a flop. It promoted world domination by
Islam and the restoration of the Caliphate, focusing on a complete subjugation
of women. In its first decade, the Moslem Brothers attracted only 800
members.
Then Hitler ascended to power. A branch of the Nazi party was set up in
Cairo. The Egyptian government was told that if they did not begin to persecute
their Jews, Germany would boycott Egyptian cotton. When the government caved and
began a press campaign and discriminatory measures against Jews, they were
rewarded by Germany becoming the second largest importer of Egyptian goods. The
Egyptian public was impressed by the propaganda about Germany’s economic
progress and impressive Nazi mass marches. The pro-fascist Young Egypt movement
was founded in 1933. Abdel Nasser, later Egypt’s most famous leader, was a
member and remained loyal to Nazi ideology for the rest of his career. During
the war there was a popular street song in the Middle East, “
Allah in
heaven, Hitler on earth.”
In the 1930’s, the Third Reich poured men, money, weapons and propaganda
training into the Moslem Brotherhood. It was the Reich that taught the
fundamentalists to focus their anger on the Jews instead of women. By war’s end,
thanks entirely to Hitler’s tutelage and direct support, the brotherhood had
swelled to a million members and Jew-hatred had become central
to mainstream Arab culture. Iranian Ayatollah
Khomeini listened daily
to the Nazi propaganda broadcast from Berlin by Moslem Brother Haj Amin
al-Husseini. So did every Arab with a radio, throughout the war, as it was the
most popular programming in the Middle East. Thanks to Hitler, the Moslem
Brothers enshrined antisemitism as the main organizing force of Middle East
politics for the next 80 years.
Egyptian society has lived in Hitler’s world of hate ever since. According
to leading expert on the Third Reich’s fusion with Islamism in Egypt,
Matthias
Kunztel, “On this point (Jews), the entire Egyptian society has been
Islamized. In Egypt the ostracism and demonization of Jews is not a matter of
debate, but a basic assumption of everyday discourse. As if the
Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty had never been signed, Israel and Israelis are
today totally boycotted…be it lawyers, journalists, doctors or artists…all
Egyptian universities, sports associations, theatres and orchestras.” “If there
is one theme in contemporary Egypt which unites Islamists, Liberals, Nasserites
and Marxists, it is the collective fantasy of the common enemy in the shape of
Israel and the Jews, which almost always correlates with the wish to destroy
Israel.”
In launching the Moslem Brother’s modern jihadi movement, Hitler did far
more than enshrine antisemitism in the Middle East. As if some kind of divine
punishment, the creation of jihadism also sabotaged the move towards modernity
and representative government, ruining hopes for freedom and prosperity for the
Arab people. The Brothers were the excuse for Mubarak’s 30 years of emergency
rule. The Brothers were central to both PLO and Hamas, killing all hope for
peaceful coexistence and prosperity for the Palestinian people. They had an
early role in founding the
Ba’ath
Party in Syria and Iraq, turning those countries over to kleptocratic
tyrants. Moslem Brothers
taught
Osama bin Laden, and their philosophy is considered the foundational
doctrine of al-Qaeda.
Will history repeat itself? Or will the Egyptian people take back their
country, throw off Hitler’s long shadow, and begin again on the hopeful path to
democracy and a decent life that they began at the beginning of the modern
era?
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