Palestinian Authority Calls Israelis Nazis, but Palestinian Arabs Have a Long History of Nazi Connections

The Palestinian Authority (PA) has long described the Israelis as “Nazis” or “even worse than the Nazis.” But it does not bother to conceal the Palestinian Arabs’ long connections to the real Nazis. More on those connections can be found here: “Palestinian Authority Boasts of Hitler as a Palestinian Ally, While Branding Israel as ‘Nazi,’” by Ephraim D. Tepler, Palestinian Media Watch, October 20, 2026:

The Palestinian Authority does not bother to conceal its connections to Adolf Hitler. On the contrary, it is actually proud of them. The PA is boasting that Haj Amin Al-Husseini, whom it calls “one of the most prominent Palestinian leaders of the 20th century,” had actively sought Adolf Hitler’s support during World War II.

Official PA TV narrator: “In the heart of Jerusalem, one of the most prominent Palestinian leaders of the 20th century was born—Haj Muhammad Amin Al-Husseini… who became a symbol of the Palestinian struggle for decades… In 1929, he stood at the forefront of the opposition to the Zionist attempts to take over the Al-Buraq Wall (i.e., the Western Wall of the Temple Mount), which led to the outbreak of the Al-Buraq Rebellion (i.e., the 1929 Arab riots, 133 Jews murdered)… In 1941, he found refuge in Germany, where he worked to gain Hitler’s support for the Palestinian cause… With the beginning of the Nakba (i.e., “the catastrophe,” the establishment of Israel) in 1948, he was one of the fiercest opponents of the [plan for] the partition of Palestine…[Grand Mufti of Jerusalem] Haj Amin Al-Husseini remains one of the most prominent figures… who contributed to strengthening the Palestinian identity.”

[Official PA TV, From History, Aug. 23, 2026]

PA TV here even described Al-Hussein’s [sic] arrival in in Hitler’s Germany as finding “refuge,” turning the Nazi regime into a welcoming sanctuary in its account of Palestinian history….

This makes the PA’s constant branding of Israel as “Nazi” particularly obscene. Its officials and media hurl Nazi libels at the Jewish state while its own television glorifies a Palestinian icon who actually lived in Berlin during World War II and was a close ally of Hitler.

Al-Husseini collaborated closely with Nazi Germany and helped recruit volunteers for three Waffen-SS divisions in the Balkans. The largest and most notable of these was the 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar (1st Croatian), which was comprised primarily of Bosnian Muslims. That divison primarily operated in the Balkan theater, and their actions included the a counterinsurgency campaign against the Yugoslav Partisans under Josip Broz Tito. They operated mainly in Croatia, at the time a fascist Axis puppet state. The Handschar Division was famous for its savagery and brutality, carrying out mass atrocities against civilians, especially Jews and Serbs. The division destroyed entire villages suspected of harboring or sympathizing with the resistance. At the end of the war, many of their officers were extradited to Yugoslavia, where they were tried and executed for war crimes.

Before arriving in Germany in the fall of 1941, al-Husseini was in Baghdad, where he helped to instigate the “Farhud” of June 1-2, 1941, a pogrom in the city that resulted in the deaths of five hundred Jews, all while simultaneously spreading Nazi propaganda. In return, he received financial support from Berlin, as well as funding from fascist Italy. He also supported the coup attempt in Iraq by the pro-Nazi Rashid Ali that ultimately failed. Al-Husseini then proceeded to travel to Nazi-occupied Europe, and reached Berlin in November 1941. Once in Germany, the Nazis provided him with several residences and a monthly salary of 90,000 Reichsmark (at a time when most Germans reported a yearly income of less than 1,500 Reichsmark). The enormous size of Husseini’s monthly salary indicates the importance the Nazi regime attached to him and his entourage.

During his four-year stay in Berlin, in addition to his long and friendly meeting with Hitler, al-Husseini worked closely with senior Third Reich officials. Among others, he met with foreign minister Joachim Von Ribbentrop and Adolf Eichmann. He also had several meetings with SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, the principal architect of the Holocaust. In 1943, the SS Reichsführer wrote al-Husseini a letter in which he decried the “Jewish invaders” in Palestine, and sent his “warm wishes for your continued struggle.”

As for Hajj Amin al-Husseini himself, he was declared to be a war criminal for his role in broadcasting propaganda for the Nazis, inciting Arabs to murder Jews, and raising the three divisions of Waffen-SS troops. At the end of World War II, French authorities arrested al-Husseini in the French occupation zone of Germany. In 1946, he evaded the Allied authorities and fled to Egypt, where he received political asylum. From Cairo, he opposed the United Nations partition plan for Palestine and attempted to direct Arab resistance during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. His political standing suffered significantly after the Arab forces failed to prevent the creation of Israel.

Nor was Hajj Amin al-Husseini the only Arab with ties to the Nazis. After the war, Nazi war criminals found safe havens in Egypt and Syria, where the leaders of both countries were happy to welcome Nazis who had murdered Jews. Alois Brunner was an Austrian SS commander and Adolf Eichmann’s top aide, responsible for deporting over 128,000 European Jews to concentration and death camps. He fled to Egypt and then to Syria. In Damascus, he lived under the alias Dr. Georg Fischer, and the Ba’athist regime granted him protection. He served as a security and intelligence advisor, training Syrian secret police in Nazi interrogation and torture methods. The Syrians were most appreciative of his very particular expertise.

Other Nazi war criminals to whom the Arabs gave refuge included Aribert Heim (known as “Doctor Death,” who served as an SS physician at Mauthausen, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen concentration camps, where he conducted brutal medical experiments on prisoners. Heim escaped capture by the Allies and eventually fled to Egypt in the 1960s. He settled in Cairo, converted to Islam, adopted the name Tarek Hussein Farid (“Uncle Tarek”), and lived quietly there until dying, still unpunished, in 1992. And then there was Franz Stangl, the commandant of the Sobibor and Treblinka extermination camps, co-responsible for the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of people. After the war he fled first to Syria, where he lived openly for several years, with the Arab government’s protection, until he relocated to Brazil.

This history of Haj Amin al-Husseini, the leader of the Palestinian Arabs for many decades, who raised three Waffen SS divisions consisting of Bosnian Muslims, encouraged Hitler in a face-to-face meeting to murder the Jews, and befriended Eichmann, makes the Palestinian Authority’s insistence that Israelis are the real Nazis particularly outrageous. “Palestinian” officials and media hurl libels at the Israelis, constantly describing them as Nazis, while its own television glorifies al-Husseini, who lived in Berlin throughout the World War II and did everything he could to help the Nazi cause. And after the war, some of the worst Nazi war criminals — including Alois Brunner and Adibert Heim — found refuge, and sinister employment, in the Arab states of Egypt and Syria.