Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (35 page)

Arabs and Muslims, be careful not to lose this opportunity. Be on guard so you do not succumb to the Allies' deception in order that holy Palestine can be freed from colonization and Jewification. Have no fear of your enemies and their propaganda. Keep in mind that never in history have you contended with the Jews without the Jews being the losers. God has decided that there will be no firm order for the Jews and that no state will emerge for them. Perhaps you have been called to see that it does not happen. Have no doubt that we will gain victory against the Jews despite the strong help they are receiving from the cruel and awful Allies. God helps those to victory who help him! We will win and our countries will be liberated from the Allies' claws.93

On November 7, Berlin in Arabic reported on an exchange of telegrams between the Mufti and Kilani and Ribbentrop in which they celebrated "the bonds of friendship linking Greater Germany with the Arab people."94 Yet exchanges of congratulatory telegrams were not a substitute for military victory.

The general tone of the Berlin broadcasts remained grim. On November 17, Berlin in Arabic announced that the Arab cause had "entered a new phase." It was facing"a crisis more serious and more acute than was ever produced by imperialism." This crisis had been caused by "a conspiracy in London, Moscow and Washington, in which the plotter proclaimed that they were laying the foundation of a new regime, a new regime evolved by the English, the Americans, the Bolsheviks and the Jews! This new regime encompasses all the continents of the world, engulfs both land and sea." The place of the Arab cause in this new regime was "nil!" Demonstrations and protests were "worn out weapons ... like the sword and the spear compared with heavy guns and tanks in modern warfare." As a result of the American presence in North Africa and the Middle East, the Arabs faced "a new foe which must be fought with new weapons." The British, too, were no longer influenced by Arab protests and demonstrations. The Jewish question in the Middle East had been "a local problem with hope of a solution, but today the Jews work with the support of the British, Americans and Bolsheviks all combined." So it was now"futile to attempt to solve the Jewish problem with old methods or to consider it a local problem." Words alone would not succeed in the fight against "the devil of the Jewish press."95 As a result of the success of the Allies on all fronts in the war in 1943, the Arabic-language propaganda broadcasts argued, the balance of power between Arabs and Jews was shifting in favor of the latter. In these broadcasts, the turning of the tide against Nazi Germany was synonymous with the growth of the power of international Jewry and its ability to achieve its goals in Palestine. This conspiratorial explanation of the shifting balance of forces in the war offered an answer to a question posed by the pro-Axis Muslims, namely, how was it possible for the Jews in the Middle East to become powerful enough to establish a state in Palestine? The answer lay in the Nazi interpretation of World War II as "the Jewish war." It was the war and the anti-Hitler coalition supposedly controlled by the Jews that made it possible for them to achieve what they could not have achieved on their own. The ironic corollary of this view was an underestimation of the actual political and military abilities of the Jews living in Palestine.

From November 28 to December 1, 1943, in Tehran, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met together for the first time. On December 5,VFA voiced the argument, common in Nazi propaganda in Germany, that the Jews brought these seeming political opposites together. "Had it not been for the Jews, neither London, Washington nor Moscow would have been linked together. The British imperialists would never have agreed with the Bolsheviks and the American capitalists would never have been friendly with the Allies or Bolshevist Russia." Without offering any explanation of how or why it would come about, the broadcast asserted, "The day will come soon when Britain, America, the Jews and the Bolsheviks will be completely wiped out and then every country will have her freedom, prosperity and independence." The Arabs should "support the countries which will save the world from the tyranny of the democracies and the evils of Bolshevism," that is, Nazi Germany, Japan, and their remaining allies.96 In "The Jews," a further comment about the significance of the Tehran conference, the Berlin in Arabic broadcast of December 8 stated that it was learned "in Berlin from Jerusalem" that "Churchill and Roosevelt, on their way back from Tehran stayed in Palestine to confer with Jewish leaders." There they supposedly "agreed to realize demands presented by American and British Jews, which aim at spreading Jewish influence in the Arab countries." Indeed, "the basic topic of discussion in Tehran was the establishment of the Jewish National Home in Palestine."97 Every one of these assertions was false. Roosevelt and Churchill did not travel to Jerusalem after the Tehran conference. The main topic of discussion in Tehran involved plans for an invasion of Europe from the west in spring 1944. The subject of a Jewish state in Palestine was not discussed in Tehran or immediately afterwards. Of course, if it had been, it would not have constituted evidence that the Jews were the glue of the anti-Hitler coalition any more than the fact that issues regarding Turkey and Yugoslavia were discussed proved that they were in charge. Indeed, the fact that the issue of a Jewish state in Palestine was not discussed in Tehran indicated both that the Jews had little power to put it on the agenda and that it was peripheral to the primary concerns of the Allied leaders at that point. Although the establishment of a Jewish state may have been peripheral to the Allied leaders, the issue remained foremost in Husseini's mind. On December 9, he spoke on Berlin in Arabic, saying that "the wiping out of what is called the `Jewish National Home' and the freeing of all the Arab countries from the tyranny and exploitation of the Moslem countries is a principled [sic] part of the policy of mighty Germany which cannot be changed."98

From its beginnings in the 1920S to the end, Nazi propaganda included falsehoods about its adversaries and remained silent about its setbacks. The combination was evident in anti-Communist broadcasts in late December 1943. On the twenty-second, Berlin in Arabic updated the traditional anti-Semitic myth that Jews kidnapped Christian children to reenact the crucifixion at Easter time. The Nazi version charged that "Jews in Southern Italy are collecting children and sending them to Russia." These children were "literally snatched from their mothers." The British and Americans had taken away men, and "the Russians kidnap the children."99 On December 29, VFA warned that Russian success in Egypt would mean "torture, poverty, loss of public security, and famine all over the country." Indeed, if VFA "had the power, we would have ordered the death and the slaughter of every Bolshevik and everything Bolshevik in Egypt because these Bolsheviks wish us evil." loo

While full of lurid details about events that had not happened, the VFA broadcast of December 25 used one short paragraph to review the military events of 1943. It told its listeners: "German and Japanese forces adopted defensive tactics while the Allies took the offensive hoping to destroy the strength of Axis forces. They were unsuccessful in these efforts, both in Europe and the Far East," and were now undertaking "extensive air raids on civilians in Germany." 101 This was not the kind of radio journalism that inspired confidence among sophisticated, well-informed, moderate listeners in the Arab countries. Arab listeners knew that the Germans and Italians had been driven from Northern Africa, Mussolini had been deposed, Italy had surrendered, the Red Army had won enormous battles in Stalingrad and Kursk, and that the tide of the war had turned against Japan in Asia and the Pacific. Yet they did not learn any of that from Nazi Arabic radio. These broadcasts featured passion, partisanship, solidarity, simplicity, and hatred over objectivity, complexity, and factual reporting. If they swayed the undecided at all, it was by appealing to their hatreds and passions. Their main purpose was to reinforce the already convinced, whether victory or defeat appeared imminent.

The VFA broadcast of December 28 struck an Islamist note. It expressed disappointment that its message had not found greater resonance among Arabs and Muslims. The coming of the New Year evoked "glorious memories of our forefathers who, through Islam, taught the world the finest principles of humanity, civilization and greatness." Though the great powers were fighting "to secure their future position;" Muslims had been "to a great extent stagnant and apathetic." The broadcast admonished its listeners: "Moslems had become so confused" that many"no longer know their friends from their enemies." Worse, "many Moslems have helped their enemies and have become hostile to their real friends, and this is unfortunate." Believers should take Mohammed the Prophet as their model. On the eve of Islam, he was deserted by "sly enemies who had been waiting to seize an opportunity to destroy him and his message." He did not fear them but "continued to struggle to impart the teachings of God to his fellow followers, and God gave him victory over his enemies." Mohammed's example demonstrated that arms and force were not the only important factor. Rather, "faith, determination and perseverance are the main factors of victory." For the New Year, Muslims should remember their "glorious past" and seek "cooperation among all the Moslem nations so that a real Islamic world-unity may be realized for the good of the Moslems. 11102 The broadcast implied that Arabs and Muslims had strayed from Mohammed's example and failed to display unity.

The following evening, Athens in Arabic attacked the Egyptian prime minister for fostering disunity. According to the broadcast, Nahas Pasha called for toleration of the Jews. Drawing on quotations from the Koran, the broadcast summarized Mohammed's attitude toward the Jews and asserted that while Islam had treated the Jews "with tolerance and leniency ... the Jews fought Islam secretly, till Mohammed lost all patience with them and expelled them from Arab countries, openly fighting them." In modern times, the Jews had lived peacefully with Arabs, "but now Jews have again become hostile to the Arabs." Nahas Pasha's words were "not compatible with the doctrines of our religion." That is, Islam properly understood did not favor toleration of the Jews.103 On the same evening, VFA also attacked Nahas Pasha. For a station that regularly obliterated the distinction between politics and religion it made the odd argument that Nahas Pasha had "no right" to talk about such issues "because such religious speeches should be given only by those of Al Azhar [University]." He had made "several mistakes in speaking on religion," for example, saying that "the Jews have their religion and that the Moslems have theirs," thus implying that the two religions and peoples could coexist. Where, the VFA announcer wondered, did Nahas Pasha get an idea like that? "Neither Mohammed nor the Koran said anything like this. On the contrary, the Koran cursed the Jews for their evils. Mohammed also hated them because they wanted to kill him. They also wanted to poison him and actually put poison into his food, but they did not succeed." It concluded that the British had ordered Nahas Pasha to make the statement and regretted that he was "lowering himself to the extent of helping the Jews who are the worst enemies of the Moslems." 104 The VFA ended 1943 on this note of Islamist militancy, drawing a straight line from the Koran to modern anti-Semitism and support for Nazism. In so doing it expressed a core element of Nazi Germany's Arabic-language propaganda: it found in its interpretation of Islam a common ground based on hatred of the Jews.

In 1943, Franklin Roosevelt and the United States joined the Jews as primary hate objects of Nazi propaganda. The anti-Semitic conspiracy theory within Germany presumed to explain why the Americans and British continued to persist in an alliance with the Soviet Union. In the propaganda aimed at the Middle East the fantasy of the Jews as the power behind the scenes was presented as the reason why Franklin Roosevelt had decided to intervene militarily in North Africa to help thwart Axis plans there. The debate over Zionism remained a marginal element in propaganda aimed at the German audience. In adapting the core elements of Nazism's anti-Jewish conspiracy theory to the circumstances of the Middle East, the print and radio Arabic-language propa ganda transformed several thousand Zionists in Britain and the United States and the small Jewish community in Palestine into powerful players in the global drama of World War II and, indeed, one of the driving forces of the Allied war against Nazi Germany. Here, too, radical anti-Semitism was a blend of hatred and political interpretation of ongoing events.

CHAPTER 7

"The Americans, the British, and the Jews
Are All Conspiring against Arab Interests"

Propaganda from 1944 to Spring 1945

lthough the military battles of World War II in North Africa had ended in 1943, Nazi Arabic-language propaganda continued with unabated intensity. The Germans, as well as the Americans and British, knew that their attacks on Zionism were popular among a broad segment of the Middle Eastern public and that their explicit attacks on the Jews were finding a positive reception among a smaller audience that shared their radical anti-Semitism. Judging from the content of the last year and a half of their broadcasts, the Nazis also believed that their most fervent supporters in the Middle East were the Islamists, who accepted the idea that there indeed was an elective affinity between National Socialism and the Islam of its imaginings. At modest cost and with a now-established staff, the regime took aim at what some American and British officials believed was an, if not the, Achilles' heel of Allied policy in the region, namely, the association of Britain and especially the United States with the Jews and with Zionism. Leading American military and diplomatic officials also feared that this identification carried with it the risk of offending the Arabs and Muslims to such an extent that added troops would have to be diverted from the war in Europe to Palestine and Egypt or that Allied pipelines might be sabotaged. Early in the war, Hitler had described the spread of anti-Semitism to other countries and regions as an important element in a strategy to win the war. If its purpose was to split the Grand Alliance, it failed. Its success lay in offering an explanation rooted in radical anti-Semitism about why the Allies were winning and why the Axis was losing the war and what the consequences would be for Arabs and Muslims.