The Mufti’s Men: Haj Amin al-Husayni and SS Parachute Expeditions to Palestine and Iraq, 1944–1945

The Haj Amin al-Husayni, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and leader of the Palestinian Arab cause, accepted help from Nazi Germany during the Second World War. This article looks at the orders he provided to SS-trained commandos who parachuted into Palestine and Iraq in 1944. The agents’ task was to organize an insurgency against the Jewish community in Palestine and to attack Iraqi Jews, although the latter were not necessarily sympathetic to Zionism. The infiltrators also had poisons that were likely intended for the Tel Aviv water system, although this is not clear evidence that Husayni was extending the Shoah into Palestine.