JOURNALfor the STUDYof ANTISEMITISM

298 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 3:295
by hate, specifically Jew hating. Representatives of Nazi Germany began
visiting the Middle East. The German head of Hitler Youth visited Iraq.
Arab youth organizations popped up, designed after Hitler Youth and promoting
the similarities between Nazis and the pan-Arab renaissance.
“Anyone who drove through Arab territory with a swastika pennant
had nothing to fear and was met with rapturous cheers,” the authors state. 7
Comments like these support other reports of the popularity of the Nazis in
the Middle East. They also bring up the question that although there is
anecdotal evidence of collusion of the population, can the level of support
be quantified? Since most of the evidence is from the German report, we
once again miss the firsthand contemporary Arab translations that might
provide some quantifiable evidence. The reason we cannot completely trust
only the German reports is twofold. First, using the previous example of
“rapturous cheers” for the swastika, it is possible that after the Mufti terrorized
his Arab opposition into silence, there was an obligation to conform.
Imagine in Tripoli during the 2011 uprising refusing to cheer Gadafi while
in the midst of Gadafi supporters.
Next, there is a term in Arabic called taqiyya. The principle of taqiyya
allows Muslims to lie with honor if they believe it protects the goals of their
faith. Lying to the Germans in some situations may have been strategic. We
know today that some of Arab leaders’ comments in English can be contradicted
by the same leader’s comments in Arabic.
Nowhere in Nazi Palestine does it state that all Palestinians were
antisemitic Nazis. There are a few stabs at measuring the amount of sympathy
for Nazis. There were 2,500 German settlers living in Palestine—members
of the Templar Society (Templars), a Christian group. Where 5% of
non-Jewish Germans outside of Germany belonged to the Nazi Party, 17%
of the German Palestinian Templars were Nazis. The authors later quote a
“British situation analysis concluding that 95% of the population of Iraq
was also quite positively disposed toward Germany.” 8 In 1942, Germany
sent Persian spies to assess the situation in Iran. They reported that 90%
were in support of Germany. Robert Satloff 9 estimates that possibly up to
90% of Arabs might have been indifferent to the fate of the Jews. That still
left 10%, or millions of people, to support the Nazi persecution of the Jews.
The love affair between Hitler and the Arab world did not start out
smoothly. Many Arabs had stars in their eyes. They projected their hopes of
a liberator onto Hitler and were blind to the racist discrimination that would
most likely be in store for them. In the beginning, the Germans were not in
7. Mallmann and Cüppers, Nazi Palestine, 30.
8. Mallmann and Cüppers, Nazi Palestine, 39.
9. Robert Satloff, Among the Righteous (Perseus Group, PublicAffairs, 2006).