1946 June 24 - article post Mufti's escape
The St. Louis Star and Times , St. Louis, Missouri, Monday, June 24, 1946, Page 12
Can Third-Rate Hitlers Bluff London?
The escape of Haj Amin el Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, to the palace of King Farouk of Egypt ought to send the British back to scratch to re-study their policy In Southwestern Asia. With the face-framing beard of a Yankee sea-captain and the mockingly baleful eyes of a Nero, this man is a political killer, ambitious to be an Arab Hitler. Will London knuckle under to the likes of him? Potentially, the mufti is as serious a trouble-maker athwart the Empire "lifeline" as was Mussolini.
A look at the map shows the importance of the territory in which he is influential Egypt, Palestine, Trans-Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Saudi-Arabia and the lesser Arab states.
That is a great bastion lying between Europe and India, between Russia and the Arabian Sea a dangerous part of the world in which to have an anti-British firebrand on the loose. Experienced in radio rabble-rousing as well as Intrigue, the mufti is no tenderfoot trouble-maker.
Bitterly anti-Zionist, he had a big part in stirring up riot after riot among the Palestinian Arabs. In the '20s and '30s, thousands of Jews, Arabs and Britishers died in this fighting, and London virtually surrendered when it went back on its promise to admit Jews to the Holy Land. During the last war the mufti was on the Axis side. He virtually took over Iraq, starting a "revolution" which was not put down until British troops besieged Baghdad.
However, he slipped through their fingers and got to Paris from which he "escaped" while London was talking about trying him as a war criminal to show up finally in Cairo where he' claimed sanctuary in the royal palace.
Although the western powers no longer grant sanctuary to fugitives as unquestion-ingly as in the Middle Ages, the right to it is still respected by Egyptian law. Further, Egypt as the foremost of the Arab states
may be unwilling to give up the mufti. The question for the British is whether they want to risk further Arab antagonism by demanding his person or whether they want to ' leave him free in Cairo just 225 miles from Jerusalem to stir up more trouble. Either choice is a nasty one, but London can't duck and dodge much longer. It is not only the mufti who is insolent toward the Foreign Office.
Most of the Arab League is with him. The League's tin-horn kinglets are threatening unless they can have their own way in Palestine and elsewhere to preach a holy war or to join up with the Russians.
Well, London can't be too surprised by the show since it helped in preparing the performers. Had Britain's soldier-politicians followed democratic lines among the Arabs between wars, they might be less worried now.
Unfortunately, they dealt with racketeering, tyranical overlords. Instead of cultivating the good will of the impoverished people of the Arab world people not particularly anti-British or anti-Jewish deals were made with their exploiters. Millions and millions were paid to the princelings for Middle Eastern oil, but for their people life continued as bitter as ever.
No doubt, it seemed easier to appeasement-minded governments like those of Baldwin and Chamberlain to make bargains with the ruling clique without insisting on the disinfectants of political and social reforms. Yet this easy way left the Arab peoples in misery and ignorance and strengthened the Influence of men like the mufti.
Will, the Labor government continue in this self-defeating pattern, or will it take a second look and then break with the past as it is doing in India? Granted that the mufti and his kind can make trouble, surely Great Britain is not to be bluffed by such miniature Hitlers after burying the real thing under the ruins of Berlin!
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