Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Nice Work There

The U.S. Holocaust Museum (USHMM) today removed from its website the falsified biography of the Holocaust era Mufti of Jerusalem. The Museum was criticized for blurring the line between facts and opinion, and in so doing, opening the door to Holocaust denial.

The father of Palestinian nationalism, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Hussayni, was a terrorist and a Nazi collaborator, indicted at the Eichmann Trial. The Museum wrote a web biography which presented al-Hussayni as a moderate supporter of non-violence. Falsifying and omitting key facts from the historical record, including photographs of Hussayni conferring with Hitler, the Holocaust Museum attempted to exonerate him from well documented charges of Nazi collaboration. The Museum’s website stated that his “controversial…relationship with Hitler’s government…has led some to label him a Nazi collaborator and war criminal….”

Within hours of the widespread dissemination to the press and public of HMWatch's press release describing the Museum's whitewash of the Mufti, the Museum removed the article.

The Museum still does NOT have in its archives the infamous November 28, 1941 photograph of the Mufti meeting with Hitler when he obtained Hitler's assurance to exterminate the Jews of the Middle East. Nor does the Museum have a factual biography of the Mufti and his role in creating the Nazi-Palestinian alliance.

1 comment:

Suzanne Pomeranz said...

You left out the very well-put last paragrah:

"We applaud the Museum for removing the meretricious article and call on them to post an accurate one and to break their silence on the roots and connections of current Muslim anti-Semitism and Nazism."

"Meretricious" - what a great word - "attracting attention in a vulgar manner" - describes exactly what the museum did in publishing the article in the first place!