PCG's Stephen Flurry Responding to Netanyahu's Mufti Comments

Recently Prime Minister Netanyahu shocked a lot of people when he insinuated that Hitler had not wanted to exterminate the Jews until he had a meeting with Haj Amin al-Husseini. Of course this was not true. It was Hitler and the Nazis who chose to commit genocide against the Jews. It is inaccurate and morally troubling to blame some Palestinian mufti for the Holocaust.

So naturally PCG's Stephen Flurry felt the need to discuss this incident in a Trumpet Daily broadcast (October 22, 2015).

It is true that Haj Amin al-Husseini collaborated with the Nazis during World War II as, shamefully, so many others did. But unfortunately this historical fact is being used to dehumanize the Palestinian people today. This bitter historical fact is used emotively to make people loath Palestinians and be suspicious of them. This historical fact is being used for present day needs instead of being analyzed on its own terms.

Let's see what Stephen Flurry has to say in this broadcast.

He says that this historical anecdote which falsely accused a Palestinian of inciting the Holocaust has overshadowed Netanyahu's speech which discussed the tensions regarding the Temple Mount.

But if someone says something so inflammatory as accusing a Palestinian of starting the Holocaust what are those who listen to him supposed to do? Just pretend he didn't say it? So naturally journalists who are entrusted to keep people informed go to historians and ask them about this accusation. The historians say tat Netanyahu was completely wrong. Are the journalists supposed to just down play it and hide it? Of course not. 

Maybe Netanyahu took it too far, Stephen Flurry says. This is a rare criticism of Netanyahu. It is a sign of just how wrong Netanyahu was to say these words that even PCG would not wholeheartedly defend him. But because Netanyahu is right wing and PCG is right wing as well the PCG leadership have tended to view Netanyahu in a favorable way. These words of his will not change that. (6 minutes.)

Stephen Flurry says people not knowing about Haj Amin al-Husseini's collaboration with the Nazi regime is the real story. He says not many people know this history. But the fact of his collaboration with the Nazi regime is well known and well documented for anyone who wished to investigate this issue. Stephen Flurry emotively presents his story as being unknown but that is far from true.

But it is intriguing that Stephen Flurry thinks his listeners do not know about Haj Amin al-Husseini. It shows he assumes his target audience is not aware of Haj Amin al-Husseini. He is not looking for people who are well informed about this issue but rather those who do not know and are thus less able to rebut any incorrect information PCG might produce.

Stephen Flurry accuses historians and journalists of covering up the information of Haj Amin al-Husseini's collaboration with the Nazi regime. (12-14 minutes.) This is hyperbolic nonsense. The information is about what he did during World War II is widely available to anyone who wishes to investigate this issue.

In fact Netanyahu himself wrote about Haj Amin al-Husseini in a 1993 book and linked Haj Amin al-Husseini to the Holocaust previously.

Netanyahu had written feverishly on the Mufti’s collaboration with Nazi Germany in his 1993 book, A Durable Peace, citing dubious testimony by one of Adolph Eichmann’s underlings that the “Mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry.” (In his 1961 trial in Jerusalem, Eichmann denied that Husseini played any such role or that he knew him well.) The long-dead Palestinian patriarch has been one of Netanyahu’s favorite boogeymen ever since, helping him implicate the Palestinians in crimes that had nothing to do with the occupation or settler-colonial domination. Back in 2012, in a speech before the Israeli Knesset, Netanyahu claimed the Mufti was “one of the leading architects of the Final Solution.” And a year later, at Bar Ilan University, Netanyahu attempted to draw a direct line between Nazi Germany and the Palestinian national struggle. (Max Blumenthal, Painting Palestinians as Nazis, Netanyahu Incites Wave of Vigilante Violence, AlterNet, October 22, 2015.)

In this broadcast Stephen Flurry said that Haj Amin al-Husseini was closely aligned with some of the Nazi leaders. Eichmann's denial regarding Haj Amin al-Husseini's alleged prominence among the Nazis was not mentioned by Stephen Flurry.

Stephen Flurry complains that so many people are making too much of an issue out of those comments. Perhaps he should complain to Netanyahu for making the inaccurate statement in the first place.

Stephen Flurry complains that Palestinians revere Haj Amin al-Husseini. (16 minutes.)

Stephen Flurry fearfully talks about those who (he says) have a desire to destroy Israel and to annihilate Jews. (16-17 minutes.)

Cites a speech Netanyahu made two weeks ago at Bar Ilan University. Most people don't know about this history, he emotively insists. (17 minutes.)

Complains that President Obama is blaming Israel instead of just the Palestinians alone as Stephen Flurry seems to wish was the case.

Says that the Palestinians are incited by a lie that Israelis are up to something bad against Al Aqsa Mosque. (25 minutes.)

This conveniently ignores the many fact that in recent times many Muslims have been forbidden by the Israeli authorities from entering Al Aqsa while more Jews are being allowed to visit while Palestinians have been increasingly forced from entering their own place of worship. 

In 2012, age restrictions were imposed on Muslim worshippers on just three occasions, a figure that rose to eight in 2013. In 2014, however, Israeli authorities imposed age restrictions for Muslim worshippers on 41 occasions – a five-fold increase from the preceding year.

In addition, Israel closed the compound to all Muslim worshippers and visitors for one day on October 30, 2014, the first such full closure in 14 years. ...

Meanwhile, the number of Jews visiting Al-Aqsa Mosque compound has markedly risen over recent years. According to official police statistics, the number of Jewish visitors to the site in 2009 was 5,658 – in 2014, this had almost exactly doubled to 10,906. (Ben White, Don’t believe Bibi - Israel has already changed the ‘status quo’ at Al-Aqsa, Middle East Eye, October 23, 2015.)

Also some of those Jews have been praying there contrary to the agreement the State of Israeli agreed to after the Six Day War as is shown in the following Reuters report.

As the group of Orthodox Jews came near the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem's Old City, one began to mumble while staring down at his mobile phone. Another looked up in awe, eyes half shut in concentration. The woman's lips moved silently.

Asked afterwards whether they had prayed, a violation of an 800-year-old ban on non-Muslim worship at the holy site, two of the group said they had done so in their hearts, while the woman declared proudly: "I prayed with my mouth moving."

Monday's visit to the compound known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as Temple Mount was low-key by most standards - no fighting broke out, no one was ejected by the police, everyone left calmly and life returned to normal.

But in critical ways it cut to the heart of an issue fuelling the worst violence between Palestinians and Israel in years: whether the status quo at the site, also known as the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, is being properly enforced. (Luke Baker, With secret prayers, Jews challenge 'status quo' at Jerusalem holy site, Reuters, October 26, 2015. Also relevant is this Twitter post.)

So while some Muslims have been forbidden to enter Al Aqsa these surreptitious prayers are happening as well further inflaming the terrible situation.

Only a few extremists have tried to pray within Al Aqsa in this way. Traditionally Jewish religious authorities forbade Jews from going there. 

And so Stephen Flurry's discussion of this topic comes to an end. After this is an ad followed by Stephen Flurry talking about something else irrelevant to this topic.

After the broadcast Stephen Flurry wrote an article about Netanyahu's inflammatory comments.

The mufti met with Hitler in November 1941. By that point, the killing of Jews had already begun on the eastern front. But the “final solution” wasn’t made official until two months AFTER the mufti’s visit with Hitler. So whether or not the conversation between Hitler and the grand mufti happened exactly the way Netanyahu says, one thing we know for certain is that the mufti was definitely an ENTHUSIASTIC supporter of the final solution! (Stephen Flurry, Benjamin Netanyahu and the Grand Mufti: What Is the Real Controversy?, October 23, 2015.)

The supposed conversion Netanyahu talked about simply did not happen. Why does Stephen Flurry pretend Netanyahu just might be correct? There is no dispute. Netanyahu was simply inaccurate and wrong to say that Haj Amin al-Husseini inspired the Holocaust. It is demagogic nonsense to blame him as an originator of the Holocaust.