Israel circulates Hitler photo to battle critics

By Allyn Fisher-Ilan
Reuters
Wednesday, July 22, 2009; 4:10 PM

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel has ordered its diplomats to use an old photograph of a former Palestinian religious leader meeting Adolf Hitler to counter world criticism of a Jewish building plan for East Jerusalem.





Israeli officials said on Wednesday Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told Israeli ambassadors to circulate the 1941 shot in Berlin of the Nazi leader seated next to Haj Amin al-Husseini, the late mufti or top Muslim religious leader in Jerusalem.

One official said Lieberman, an ultranationalist, hoped the photo would "embarrass" Western countries into ceasing to demand that Israel halt the project on land owned by the mufti's family in a predominantly Arab neighborhood in East Jerusalem.

Israel captured East Jerusalem in 1967, annexing it as part of its internationally unrecognized claim to Jerusalem as its capital.

Some diplomats opposed Lieberman's move, arguing it could earn Israel stiffer world criticism for seeming to sidestep the wider conflict it faces with the Palestinians who want East Jerusalem as capital of a future state, another official said.


Asked why Lieberman issued the order, a spokesman said: "because it's important for the world to know the facts" and would not elaborate.

The United States and Europe this week protested the plan by private Israeli developers to build 20 apartments on the land which Israel says was bought by an American-Jewish millionaire as well as Israel's threats to demolish Palestinian homes that could leave thousands homeless.

The controversy has complicated an Israeli rift with the U.S. over its refusal to meet President Barack Obama's demands to halt Jewish settlement building throughout the West Bank so that stalled peace talks may resume.

About half a million Israelis live in the settlements built in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, areas that are home to some three million Palestinians.

An official in Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's government accused Lieberman of "political bankruptcy" in ordering the distribution of the Husseini-Hitler photograph.

"It's an old story that has its own circumstances and doesn't apply to the present," Adnan al-Husseini, the Palestinian Authority-appointed governor of Jerusalem, and a relative of the late mufti, told Reuters.

Israel's Yad Vashem memorial to the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust said Husseini supported Nazi Germany to try to win backing for Arab nationalistic goals and that he lobbied for the extermination of Jews in North Africa and Palestine.

Jewish Leader Banned From Obama Meeting

Wednesday, July 22, 2009 12:00 PM

By: Ronald Kessler

Ever since President Barack Obama took office, Jewish leaders have been asking for a meeting with him. The White House, apparently thinking Jewish support for Obama was in the pocket, put them off. But a major Jewish leader says that after Newsmax.com reported on deep concerns in the Jewish community about Obama’s Middle East initiatives and statements, the White House responded quickly by asking 14 top Jewish leaders to meet with the president on July 13.

Yet that important Jewish leader, Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, says he was barred from attending the meeting because of criticism he aimed at Obama.

In June, Newsmax reported that Klein and Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, believed Obama’s Jewish support was eroding as a result of his recent Middle East activities.

“The Hoenlein and Klein interviews [with Newsmax] got the ball really rolling,” Klein tells Newsmax. “This meeting was called because they were getting very worried that more and more Jewish people are expressing concern about Obama’s policies on Israel. The White House wanted to stop the bleeding, as expressed in Newsmax interviews and picked up elsewhere.” Klein says that “Newsmax was a significant factor in this meeting happening.”

At 3 p.m. on July 13, Obama met for 45 minutes with Hoenlein, whose organization represents 50 major Jewish groups, and 13 other Jewish leaders. Klein, whose organization of 30,000 members is the oldest pro-Israel group in the country, was not invited. According to press reports, only Jewish leaders known to be sympathetic to Obama were invited to the meeting.

Klein’s White House contacts told him flat out that he was shunned because of his strong criticism of Obama. In his June interview with Newsmax, Klein said that Obama may be the “most hostile president to Israel” ever.

“They said to me, ‘How do you expect us to invite you to a meeting with the president when you keep criticizing the president?’” Klein says.

Klein found the White House response to him surprising, and “remarkable that the president has said he wants to be bipartisan and reach out to people who don’t agree with him and that he wants to hear all good ideas, even if they’re different from his.”

Klein also found it ironic that he was chastised for criticizing the president, and banned from a meeting with top Jewish leaders, at the same time Obama has argued for sitting down and negotiating with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Klein said he told White House aides, “You won’t allow me in the meeting to discuss issues. And you want to negotiate with these evil haters of America, but I can’t be at a meeting where I would express my concerns very respectfully and responsibly?”

Klein says he has talked to several people who attended the off-the-record meeting. He was told that though the meeting was amicable, Obama was asked why he is pressuring Israel and not the Arabs on contentious issues.

Obama, Klein says, responded that he is dealing firmly and forthrightly with the Arabs but the media are not emphasizing that.

Klein says the Jewish leaders did not bring up important matters about some of Obama’s statements, including his use of mistaken statistics and analogies in his Cairo speech in June.

As a child of survivors of the Holocaust, Klein says he was particularly offended by Obama’s comparison of the suffering of Palestinians with the Nazis’ murder of more than 6 million Jews during the Holocaust. This issue was not raised, nor was Obama’s claim that America has an astonishing 7 million Muslims.

Klein said Obama’s claim showed a willingness by him to use phony figures to support a tilt toward Muslims.

“Every major survey shows there’s between 1.5 million and 2.5 million Muslims in America,” Klein says. “Where does he get the number 7 million? This is the number that the Arab propagandists promote. There’s no legitimate survey that shows a number of that nature.”

Liberal groups at the meeting were pleased with Obama’s responses, Klein says. Others, like the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, expressed concerns.

Since his Newsmax interview in June, Klein doubts Obama’s meeting with a select group of Jewish leaders will help him. Klein thinks Jewish support for Obama has dwindled even more in the past month.

“In my own experience of speaking to many different people and speaking to synagogues around the country in the last few weeks, I’m seeing an acceleration of concern about Obama’s position on Israel,” Klein says. “Even supporters of Obama who voted for him are telling me that they’re beginning to have concerns about him.”

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Dudes, you can say what ever you want too, but Obamagog HATES Israel and if you can't see it, you are so blind in love with this guy you need some major help.

I mean we need 22,000 New Troops in Both WAR Theaters as WE SPEAK and this Big Eared Clown is DIS'ing a Major Middle Eastern Ally that is Armed to the Teeth.

I am telling you homies, the juice is in the pudding when Old Boy plants him self in Jerusalem as the Messiah.

I mean we are 22,000 Combat Troops short in Iraq and Afghanistan and North Korea and Iran are breathing down our necks about Nukes and this Nut Bag wants to give the Finger to Israel ????

I am lost on this one man .... there is only ONE Explanation and I have already said it.

I guess Old Buddy Hugo and New Buddy Castro will toss in 11,000 Troops Each .....

This is Pathetic people .... just reekingly pathetic.

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Perspective on why that photo is not a simple cheap sentimental appeal: http://thebulletin.us/articles/2009/07/2...235614.txt

Quote:Some background: Zionists founded the Shimon Hatzadik neighborhood in 1891 by purchasing the land from Arabs, then, due to Arab riots and Jordanian conquest, abandoned the area. Amin al-Husseini, Jerusalem's pro-Nazi mufti, put up a building in the 1930s that later served as the Shepherd Hotel (not to be confused with the renowned Shepheard's Hotel in Cairo). After 1967, the Israelis designated the land "absentee property." Irving Moskowitz, an American businessman, bought the land in 1985 and rented the building to the border police until 2002. His company, C and M Properties, won final permission two weeks ago to renovate the hotel and build apartments on the land.

its pretty sad they have to point the obvious out