Harav Hutner and The Mufti of Jerusalem

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First a brief background.....

Harav Yitzchok Hutner was best known for being the Rosh Yeshiva of Chaim Berlin. 

He was born in Warsaw and his background was Chassidish (Gerer) and Litvish..and as a bachur he learned by Harav Nosson Tzvi Finkel in the Slabodka Yeshiva in Lithuania.

 He later joined some of the bochrim of Slabodka to establish the Chevron Yeshiva in Eretz Yisrael and narrowly escaped the 1929 Chevron Massacre because he happened to be away for the weekend. 

While in Eretz Yisrael he became very close to Harav Avraham Yitzchok Kook z"l ..and became his talmid .... when Rav Hutner was about to publish his sefer "Torat Ha'Nazir" he made sure to get a haskama from Harav Kook.

After the chevron pogrom, Rab Hutner returned to Warsaw and moved to Germany and studied philosophy at the University of Berlin... where he became close to two future rabbinical giants, Harav JB Soloveitchik and Rav Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the future Lubavitcher Rebbe....

There were rumors that Rav Hutner subsequently became a fierce opponent of Chabad, but that has been quashed since there are letters in existence today that show that he corresponded regularly with the Lubavitcher Rebbe  throughout his lifetime, seeking his views on a variety of halakhic, chassidic and kabbalistic subjects, and occasionally seeking his blessing. Harav Hutner also had several lengthy private audiences with the Lubavitcher Rebbe, during which they conversed for long periods of time, and that is all well documented.

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In the late 1960s he began to visit Israel again, planning to build a new yeshiva there. On 6 September 1970, he and his wife, daughter, and son-in-law Yonasan David were returning to New York on TWA Flight 741 when their flight was hijacked by the PFLP Palestinian terrorist organization. 

The terrorists freed the non-Jewish passengers and held the Jewish passengers hostage on the plane for one week, after which the women and children were released and sent to Cyprus. The hijacked airplanes were subsequently detonated. 

The remaining 40-plus Jewish men – including Hutner, David, and two students accompanying Hutner, Meir Fund and Yaakov Drillman – and male flight crew continued to be held hostage in and around Amman, Jordan; Hutner was held alone in an isolated location while Jews around the world prayed for his safe release. The terrorists tried to cut off his beard, but were stopped by their commanders. Hutner was reunited with the rest of the hostages on 18 September, and was finally released on 26 September and flown together with his family members to Nicosia, Cyprus. 

Rav Yitzchok Hutner and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohamed Amin al-Husseini

Rav Hutner as Rosh Yesivah of Chaim Berlin.... changed course and started to blame the Zionists for everything, and In an article in The Jewish Observer October 1977, Rav Hutner blamed the Zionists for making the Mufti an anti-Semite and blamed the Zionists for the Mufti’s influence on Hitler.

This article was published in all the anti-Zionist publications and Rav Hutner became a hero by the Satmarers....

Since this quote came up this week in a well known Chareidie hebrew magazine, which i will not name, I decided to put this in context of a historic perspective..

 “years ago, it was still easy to find old residents of Yerushalyim who remembered cordial relations they had maintained with the Mufti in the years impending creation of a Jewish State.Once the looming reality of the State of Israel was before him, the Mufti spared no effort at influencing Hitler to murder as many Jews as possible in the shortest amount of time. This shameful episode, where the founders and early leaders of the State were clearly a factor in the destruction of many Jews, has been completely suppressed and expunged from the record.”

Both of these statements are not only inaccurate but absurd….

I will quote from the above quote and answer …

Rav Hutner: “years ago, it was still easy to find old residents of Yerushalyim who remembered cordial relations they had maintained with the Mufti in the years impending creation of a Jewish State

DIN: Way back In April of 1920, when al-Husseini was just 23 years old, teaching at the Rashidiya School in East Jerusalem, he was charged with inciting Arabs against the Jews and implicated as a leader of the  1920 Nebi Musa riots. He was sentenced in absentia to 10 years (he had escaped to Syria) by a military court.

1920 was 28 years before the establishment of the State.

A year later in 1921, the anti-Semitic British pardoned him and Herbert Samuel, the British High Commissioner appointed him Grand Mufti of Jerusalem a position he used as a platform to promote his hatred against Jews.

During the  1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine he fled Palestine and took refuge in the French Mandate of Lebanon and the Kingdom of Iraq, until he established himself in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. 

There wasn’t a Jew in the entire world who remembered “cordial relations with the Mufti in the years impending the creation of a Jewish State” as Rav Hutner related..

This is Satmar propaganda that was and is constantly being reported in the Satmar Yiddish weekly Der Yid … for Rav Hutner to have repeated this rubbish is appalling.

Rav Hutner: “Once the looming reality of the State of Israel was before him, the Mufti spared no effort at influencing Hitler to murder as many Jews as possible in the shortest amount of time.”

DIN: What????

So Rav Hutner is saying that it was the “Mufti that influenced Hitler to murder Jews in the shortest amount of time.”??

What ???

So let’s take a look at the facts..

The exiled Mufti met Hitler in 1942..

Let’s remember that Hitler in 1942 was dominating most of Europe. 

Austria and Luxembourg were completely incorporated into Germany. Germany seized territories from Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, Belgium, and the Baltic states, German military forces occupied Norway, Denmark, Belgium, northern France, Serbia, parts of northern Greece, and vast tracts of territory in eastern Europe. Italy, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Finland, Croatia, and Vichy France were all either allied to Germany or subject to heavy German influence.

Let’s also remember that The British were occupying Palestine..and fully  entrenched .

There was no "looming reality of the State of Israel before him”

No one person in the entire world thought that Zionists were a threat to anyone...

What the Mufti wanted in his meeting with Hitler in 1942 is recorded for posterity ….

 We all now know what the Mufti said and what Hitler answered…

Let’s not forget that the Arabs were Germany’s natural friends, because they had the same enemies, namely the English and the Jews.The Mufti at this time, in 1942, at this meeting, was firmly convinced that Germany would win the war and that the Arab cause would then prosper, he was not worried about the Zionists … 

he wanted that Hitler should defeat the British to establish another Arab State..in Palestine..

No where in the entire conversation did the Mufti “influence Hitler to murder as many Jews as possible in the shortest amount of time” …. 

This was all made up and repeated so many times that the regular "joe shmo" believes this now,,,

Thank G-d for google...now even a child can see that this is rubbish .....

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