Love of the Land: The Mufti of Berlin

The Mufti of Berlin

Arab-Nazi collaboration is a taboo topic in the West.

Daniel Schwamenthal

Wall St. Journal

25 September 09

Berlin

One widespread myth about the Mideast conflict is that the Arabs are paying the price for Germany's sins. The notion that the Palestinians are the "second victims" of the Holocaust contains two falsehoods: It suggests that without Auschwitz, there would be no justification for Israel, ignoring 3,000 years of Jewish history in the land. It also suggests Arab innocence in German crimes, ignoring especially the fascist past of Palestinian leader Haj Amin al Husseini, who was not only Grand Mufti of Jerusalem but also Waffen SS recruiter and Nazi propagandist in Berlin. When a German journalist recently tried to shed some light on this history, he encountered the wrath of the Arab collaborators' German apologists.

Karl Rössel's exhibition "The Third World in the Second World War" was supposed to premier on Sept. 1 in the "Werkstatt der Kulturen," a publicly funded multicultural center in Berlin's heavily Turkish and Arab neighborhood of Neukölln. Outraged by the exhibition's small section on Arab complicity in Nazi crimes, Philippa Ebéné, who runs the center, cancelled the event. Among the facts Ms. Ebéné didn't want the visitors of her center to learn is that the Palestinian wartime leader "was one of the worst and fanatical fascists and anti-Semites," as Mr. Rössel put it to me.

The mufti orchestrated the 1920/1921 anti-Jewish riots in Palestine and the 1929 Arab pogroms that destroyed the ancient Jewish community of Hebron. An early admirer of Hitler, Husseini received Nazi funding—as did Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood—for his 1936-1939 Palestinian revolt, during which his thugs killed hundreds of British soldiers, Jews and also Arabs who rejected his Islamo-Nazi agenda. After participating in a failed fascist coup in Iraq, he fled to Berlin in 1941 as Hitler's personal guest. In the service of the Third Reich, the mufti recruited thousands of Muslims to the Waffen SS. He intervened with the Nazis to prevent the escape to Palestine of thousands of European Jews, who were sent instead to the death camps. He also conspired with the Nazis to bring the Holocaust to Palestine. Rommel's defeat in El Alamein spoiled these plans.

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Associated Press

Hezbollah terrorists practicing a familiar salute in 2008.

After canceling the exhibition, Ms. Ebéné clumsily tried to counter the impression that she had pre-emptively caved to Arab pressure. As a "non-white" person (her father is Cameroonian), she said, she didn't have to fear Arabs, an explanation that indirectly suggested that ordinary, "white," Germans might have reason to feel less safe speaking truth to Arabs.

Berlin's integration commissioner, Günter Piening, initially seemed to defend her. "We need, in a community like Neukölln, a differentiated presentation of the involvement of the Arabic world in the Second World War," Der Tagesspiegel quoted him as saying. He later said he was misquoted and following media criticism allowed a smaller version of the exhibit to be shown.

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Corbis

Palestinian leader Haj Amin al Husseini inspecting a Muslim SS parade in 1944.

Mr. Rössel says this episode is typical of how German historians, Arabists and Islam scholars deny or downplay Arab-Nazi collaboration. What Mr. Rössel says about Germany applies to most of the Western world, where it is often claimed that the mufti's Hitler alliance later discredited him in the region. Nothing could be further from the truth. In the Mideast, Nazis were not only popular during but also after the war—scores of them found refuge in the Arab world, including Eichman's deputy, Alois Brunner, who escaped to Damascus. The German war criminals became trusted military and security advisers in the region, particularly of Nazi sympathizer Gamal Nasser, then Egypt's president. The mufti himself escaped to Egypt in 1946. Far from being shunned for his Nazi past, he was elected president of the National Palestinian Council. The mufti was at the forefront of pushing the Arabs to reject the 1948 United Nations partition plan and to wage a "war of destruction" against the fledgling Jewish state. His great admirer, Yasser Arafat, would later succeed him as Palestinian leader.

The other line of defense is that Arab collaboration with the Nazis supposedly wasn't ideological but pragmatic, following the old dictum that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." This "excuse" not only fails to consider what would have happened to the Jews and British in the Mideast had the Arabs' German friends won. It also overlooks the mufti's and his followers' virulent anti-Semitism, which continues to poison the minds of many Muslims even today.

The mufti "invented a new form of Jew-hatred by recasting it in an Islamic mold," according to German scholar Matthias Küntzel. The mufti's fusion of European anti-Semtism—particularly the genocidal variety—with Koranic views of Jewish wickedness has become the hallmark of Islamists world-wide, from al Qaeda to Hamas and Hezbollah. During his time in Berlin, the mufti ran the Nazis' Arab-language propaganda radio program, which incited Muslims in the Mideast to "kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history and religion." Among the many listeners was also the man later known as Ayatollah Khomeini, who used to tune in to Radio Berlin every evening, according to Amir Taheri's biography of the Iranian leader. Khomeini's disciple Mahmoud Ahmadinejad still spews the same venom pioneered by the mufti as do Islamic hate preachers around the world.

Muslim Judeophobia is not—as is commonly claimed—a reaction to the Mideast conflict but one of its main "root causes." It has been fueling Arab rejection of a Jewish state long before Israel's creation.

"I am not a Mideast expert," Mr. Rössel told me, but "I wonder why the people who so one-sidedly regard Israel as the region's main problem never consider how the Mideast conflict would have developed had it not been influenced by fascists, anti-Semites and people who had just returned from their Nazi exile."

Mr. Rössel may not be a "Mideast expert" but he raises much more pertinent questions about the conflict than many of those who claim that title.

Mr. Schwammenthal is an editorial writer for The Wall Street Journal Europe.

Love of the Land: The Mufti of Berlin

Honest Reporting - Nazi Fetishist Suspended by HRW

Nazi Fetishist Suspended by HRW

Human Rights Watch's weapons "expert" suspended following outcry over bizarre "hobby".

Last week we reported on the outing of Human Rights Watch's Marc Garlasco as a collector of Nazi memorabilia. To recall, Garlasco has appeared regularly in the media, touted as a military "expert". Garlasco played a prominent role in promoting the 2006 Gaza Beach Libel, which wrongly blamed Israel for a "massacre" of Palestinians. (See HonestReporting's interactive Big Lies presentation for more on this story.)

Initially, HRW used every means available to defend Garlasco, including, as revealed by Harry's Place blog, resorting to creating a fake "activist" with a Middle Eastern sounding name to post comments defending Garlasco on various blog sites.

Mark Gardner of the CST blog addresses HRW's response, which involved attacking Jewish and pro-Israel organizations rather than the very legitimate concerns arising from Garlasco's collecting of Nazi memorabilia.

Garlasco himself wrote a piece for The Huffington Post defending his bizarre "hobby". Even associates of HRW, however, such as Helena Cobban, who sits on HRW's Middle East advisory board have been suitably disturbed.

HRW has finally succumbed to pressure by suspending Garlasco (pictured here wearing a Nazi-themed sweatshirt) with pay "pending an investigation," according to HRW's associate director Caroll Bogert. "We have questions about whether we have learned everything we need to know," she said.

The New York Times, however, adds its own bias in its report:

The suspension comes at a time of heightened tension between, on one side, the new Israeli government and its allies on the right, and the other side, human rights organizations that have been critical of Israel. In recent months, the government has pledged an aggressive approach toward the groups to discredit what they argue is bias and error.

As in the case of the Gaza Beach libel, many of HRW's reports that Garlasco wrote or contributed to have been found to be academically unsound and methodologically faulty, as documented by NGO Monitor. Concern over this issue should not be dependent on one's political views. Yet the New York Times continues to muddy the waters with the implication that genuine concerns over Garlasco's professionalism as well as his extra-cirricular activities are driven solely by a right-wing agenda.

The NY Times continues by interviewing not those organizations that have expressed these concerns but a left-wing academic who states:

he did not believe that Mr. Garlasco's interest in memorabilia could support allegations of "premeditated bias." He said, however, that Human Rights Watch's credibility might have been wounded because Mr. Garlasco's hobby "has armed the right-wing fanatics" who "work day and night to demonize any individual or organization that raises questions about the military practices of Israel when they end up even with unintended civilian casualties."

The NY Times is a prime example of a media outlet that has supported and followed HRW's lead without question. Could this attempt to smear those organizations that have questioned HRW and Garlasco be the NY Times's way of deflecting the real question for the newspaper - its reliance and support for potentially discredited anti-Israel sources?

Honest Reporting - Nazi Fetishist Suspended by HRW

Israel Matzav: More from Helena Cobban on Marc Garlasco

More from Helena Cobban on Marc Garlasco

Helena Cobban, a member of Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa advisory committee, has more to say about Nazi memorabilia collector Human Rights Watch's chief 'military analyst' (and I put that term in scare quotes because I question his credentials, as Cobban herself did earlier) Marc Garlasco. Cobban still hasn't seriously considered the possibility that Garlasco's Nazi fetish shows that he is incapable of carrying out an unbiased inquiry of Israel's actions, but she's becoming increasingly annoyed with HRW's circling the wagons.

It is complete garbage highly misleading for Garlasco to suggest that his obsessively pursuit of the "hobby" of collecting-- and lovingly displaying with almost pornographic attention to detail-- various swastika-adorned military memorabilia from the Nazi era in any way makes him a better investigator of current military events.

He claims that, "I've never hidden my hobby." But when I spoke with Iain Levine, who's the head of all HRW's programs and thus Garlasco's supervisor's supervisor, he said he had no inkling that Garlasco had such a hobby "until Tuesday morning."

Garlasco writes,

I deeply regret causing pain and offense with a handful of juvenile and tasteless postings I made on two websites that study Second World War artifacts (including American, British, German, Japanese and Russian items).

The websites in question are titled German Combat Awards and Wehrmacht-awards. From a quick scan through them they don't, actually, seem to cover many non-German items at all.

Also, one of those allegedly "juvenile" postings was presumably this one, made in 2005: "The leather SS jacket makes my blood go cold it is so COOL!” Garlasco was 34 or 35 years old at the time. He'd been working for HRW for two years by then. It was only four years ago.

Hard to make a claim of "youthful indiscretion", based on such facts. ... I would like to have the opportunity to discuss these issues with Garlasco, in person. I asked Levine if I could have access to him. Hasn't happened yet.

I'd like to make a few last points here:

1. I do not claim to know what Garlasco's attitude is toward the Nazi-era military memorabilia that he so obsessively collects. He clearly seems to have a collector's zeal, or obsession, and to spend a lot of time pursuing this hobby. 7,734 posts on Wehrmacht Awards since March 2004, and compiling a 450-page guide to one small sub-branch of Nazi-era badges are not the signs of a casual collector. The comment shown above, made on Wehrmacht Awards in 2005, indicates some open-ness, at the very least, to the idea that one could entertain and express fondness for specifically SS memorabilia.

Also, using 'Flak88' seems like a signal of possible pro-Hitler proclivities to others in that part of the collecting world, who would be quite aware that '88' is their insiders' code for Heil Hitler.

To my mind, this does not prove that Garlasco's a "Nazi sympathizer", or an anti-Semite. But his participation on these sites-- including interactions there with people who clearly do seem to be Nazi sympathizers-- is extremely disturbing in itself.

Marc Garlasco, an anti-Semite? I would say that fair-minded people might consider that conclusion. Will Helena Cobban? Will Human Rights Watch consider the possibility that Garlasco, together with the previous incidents involving Whitson and Stork so taints their work in this region that they ought to bow out or at least start over again with new personnel who don't come to the job with preconceived notions of right and wrong?

Israel Matzav: More from Helena Cobban on Marc Garlasco

Love of the Land: HRW's Iron Cross Up

HRW's Iron Cross Up

Media Backspin/Honest Reporting
13 September 09

Human Rights Watch's Garlasco situation is taking a turn towards the absurd. Now,Harry's Place exposes what appears to be HRW sock puppetry on blogs critical of their colleague:

I would like to know if staffers at Human Rights Watch created a fake ‘activist’ with a Middle Eastern sounding name to forward its statements, to support arguments made by HRW officials, and to smear critics. I can’t tell you any more than this: but I think that someone at Human Rights Watch ought to investigate.

Were Human Rights Watch to be found to have engaged in such immoral and unethical behaviour, it would call into question their suitability as a monitor of global human rights abuses. The type of sockpuppetry that I suspect may have taken place at Human Rights Watch amounts to the propagation of a fiction.

Not everyone associated with HRW is amused with Garlasco's Nazi memorabilia collection, which Garlasco defends. Collecting World War 2 medals and uniforms isn't illegal, but Helena Cobban is notanbly rankled. The journalist, who is associated with HRW, writes:

But to have him doing work on human rights in the daytime, while carrying on with this intensively pursued hobby in the evening? That is bizarre, and disturbing.

Even more so when you realize that a lot of the work he has done has involved dealing with Israeli officials and citizens, and analyzing the IDF's operations . . . .

Now, as y'all no doubt know, I'm on the Middle East advisory committee of Human Rights Watch. And I've been very disturbed indeed by the attacks the young, aggressively rightwing Israeli organization NGO Monitor has launched against the work HRW has done on the IDF's combat behavior.

But right now, I'm looking at this page on NGO Monitor's website, and agreeing with much of what they have there on this topic.

At the CST blog, Mark Gardner best articulates why Garlasco's hobby remains problematic for HRW:

But, if Garlasco wants to immunise his daughter (and all our children) from Nazism, then fetishising Nazi medals for public consumption is a stupid way of going about it. You do not fight Nazism by helping to promote the marketplace for Nazi medals and trinkets and accoutrements. You do not fight Nazism by presenting its soldiers as brave, handsome, fresh faced youths – and you most certainly do not fight Nazism by normalising the wearing of Nazi-themed sweatshirts as Marc Garlasco does in this picture:

Does he wear this sweatshirt in front of his daughters? Does he wish more people would walk about wearing such items? Does he – or his HRW colleagues – think that it is appropriate for a man with his role to do so? Does he wear it when he meets Israeli Army officials?

Worst of all, however, is not Garlasco’s behaviour in all of this. Worst of all, is the reaction of Human Rights Watch. None of the concerns that I have outlined above seem to matter to HRW. Their defence is all embracing, and their condemnation of his critics lacks the remotest empathy with why Jews, or any other people, might express concern at Garlasco’s behaviour in view of his role as one their leading (anti) Israel experts.

Instead of engaging with the issues, HRW resort to the public equivalent of giving Jews the finger.

Read Gardner's

Love of the Land: HRW's Iron Cross Up

Israel Matzav: Human Rights Watch defends a Nazi fetish

Human Rights Watch defends a Nazi fetish

Shavua tov, a good week to everyone.

NGO Monitor rips Human Rights Watch's defense of HRW investigator Marc Garlasco's Nazi fetish.

HRW’s defense seeks to justify Garlasco’s behavior by claiming, “many military historians including former and active-duty US service members, collect memorabilia from [the Nazi era].” But the collecting of Nazi memorabilia is not simply an innocent hobby engaged in by “students of military history.” It is highly controversial and in many European countries, it is illegal. Such trade is banned on many internet sites and from auction houses. Christies’ Chairman has stated that Nazi memorabilia, is “the only thing we categorically will not sell.” Writer Susan Sontag likens its collection to pornography and the Simon Wiesenthal Center notes it “glorifies the horrors of Nazi Germany.”

...

According to HRW’s response, “Garlasco’s own family’s experience on both sides of the Second World War has led him to collect military items related to both sides . . .” While Garlasco’s interest may have been a result of his family history, his hobby borders on the obsessive and is one-sided. He has posted thousands of comments on Nazi memorabilia sites including Germancombatawards (981 posts) and Wehrmacht-awards (7735 posts). In one post, he notes that he takes his collection of medals (many of which are swastika-adorned) out on a yearly basis to admire and photograph. He has even gone so far as to say he would “kill” to obtain a piece. [2] HRW claims Garlasco also collects US Airforce memorabilia. Research conducted by NGO Monitor could not find any evidence that Garlasco’s interest in US military memorabilia approaches the level to which he is devoted to Nazi paraphernalia.

HRW’s defense also claims that Garlasco collects “German Air Force medals and other objects (not from the Nazi Party or the SS, as falsely alleged).” Yet, Garlasco’s screen logo is a picture of a German badge with a swastika. In a 2005 comment, responding to a posting of a photo of a leather SS jacket, Garlasco wrote, “That is so cool! The leather SS jacket makes my blood go cold it is so COOL!” The jacket owner replies, “Great feedback mein Freund! . . . Gott mit uns [God is with us]!].

Most disturbingly, Garlasco’s screen moniker is Flak88. While this is the name of a German anti-aircraft gun (alarming on its own), the number 88 is a code for “Heil Hitler” and is used by neo-Nazis to identify themselves. The same screen name, Flak 88, was adopted by a poster at the white power website, stormfront.org. It is reasonable to conclude that Garlasco would have been fully aware of this symbolism when he chose this name. He even uses it on his license plate (a practice which is banned in Germany) and as a screen name on websites unrelated to his Nazi collection.

It is bizarre enough for a “human rights” activist to choose the name of a gun as an internet screen name and for his car license plate. Coupled with the neo-Nazi iconography, however, the adoption of “Flak88” as Garlasco’s alter ego is evidence at the very least of highly questionable moral judgment.

Read the whole thing.

The next time you read a Human Rights Watch report that is critical of Israel, please think about the chances that someone like Marc Garlasco is going to give Israel a fair hearing.

Israel Matzav: Human Rights Watch defends a Nazi fetish

Israel Matzav: Human Rights Watch tries to duck

Human Rights Watch tries to duck

Human Rights Watch has issued a response to the discovery that Marc Garlasco, their chief military researcher for Israel, is a collector of Nazi memorabilia. The response tries to avoid the issue by claiming that Garlasco collects war memorabilia generally.

HRW emphatically denied that Garlasco was a Nazi sympathizer because he "collected German [as well as American] military memorabilia."

HRW said the "accusation is demonstrably false and fits into a campaign to deflect attention from Human Rights Watch's rigorous and detailed reporting on violations of international human rights and humanitarian law by the Israeli government."

Garlasco, HRW said in a statement, "has never held or expressed Nazi or anti-Semitic views."

According to the statement Garlasco's grandfather was conscripted into the German army during the war and served as a radar operator on an anti-aircraft battery.

"He never joined the Nazi Party, and later became a dedicated pacifist," the statement said, adding that his Garlasco's great-uncle was an American B-17 crewman, who survived many attacks by German anti-aircraft gunners.

"Garlasco own family's experience on both sides of the Second World War has led him to collect military items related to both sides, including American 8th Air Force memorabilia and German Air Force medals and other objects [not from the Nazi Party or the SS]," the statement said.

HRW said Garlasco was the author of a monograph on the history of German Air Force and Army anti-aircraft medals and a contributor to Web sites that promote serious historical research into WWII.

"To imply that Garlasco's collection is evidence of Nazi sympathies is not only absurd but an attempt to deflect attention from his deeply felt efforts to uphold the laws of war and minimize civilian suffering in wartime," the statement read. "These falsehoods are an affront to Garlasco and thousands of other serious military historians."

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Israel Matzav: Human Rights Watch tries to duck

Israel Matzav: HRW researcher Marc Garlasco: Nazi fetishist or ‘serious military historian’?

HRW researcher Marc Garlasco: Nazi fetishist or ‘serious military historian’?

You decide:

More here.
Israel Matzav: HRW researcher Marc Garlasco: Nazi fetishist or ‘serious military historian’?

Israel Matzav: HRW's Israel investigator a Nazi-obsessed collector?

HRW's Israel investigator a Nazi-obsessed collector?

Omri Ceren reports on the curious case of Marc Garlasco, Human Rights Watch's Israel investigator who seems to have a fettish for Nazi memorabilia.

There are two Marc Garlascos on the Internet. One is a top human rights investigator who, having joined Human Rights Watch after several years with the Pentagon, has become known for his shrill attacks on Israel. The other is a Marc Garlasco who's obsessed with the color and pageantry of Nazism, has published a detailed 430 page book on Nazi war paraphernalia, and participates in forums for Nazi souvenir collectors.

Both Marc Garlascos were born on September 4, 1970. Both have Ernst as their middle name. Both live in New York, NY. Both have a maternal grandfather who fought for the Nazis. I've put links and screenshots on all this after the jump, and you can click through for full-sized versions. It's hard to escape the conclusion that both Marc Garlascos are the same person.

Bloggers and activists concerned about Israel have been baffled and frustrated by the first Garlasco almost since he joined HRW. On his public photography site he posts gratuitous Palestinian and Lebanese death porn in between galleries of cute Western-looking kids playing soccer (no link - keeping his kids out of it). He provides a seemingly never-ending stream of interviews to all kinds of outlets, where he spins tales about ostensible Israeli atrocities. The only problem is that many of these tales - per Soccer Dad and IsraPundit and Elder of Ziyon and NGO Monitor and CAMERA and LGF - are biased and inaccurate. That doesn't stop Garlasco from putting them into the kind of HRW reports that make their way into international anti-Israel condemnations and academic anti-Israel dissertations.

Israel Matzav: HRW's Israel investigator a Nazi-obsessed collector?

Love of the Land: The Latest Human Rights Watch Bombshell

The Latest Human Rights Watch Bombshell

Noah Pollak

Contentions/Commentary

08 September 09

I’m a believer in the truth of O’Sullivan’s First Law, formulated some years ago by the former editor of National Review, John O’Sullivan:

All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing. I cite as supporting evidence the ACLU, the Ford Foundation, and the Episcopal Church. The reason is, of course, that people who staff such bodies tend to be the sort who don’t like private profit, business, making money, the current organization of society, and, by extension, the Western world.

The law holds true for human-rights organizations as well, many of which over time have become staffed and led by people far more impassioned about condemning democratic societies than repressive or despotic ones. Human Rights Watch has earned the attention it has been receiving lately because it is the leader in this trend. And nowhere in the organization is O’Sullivan’s Law more apparent than in HRW’s Middle East staffers. They are fetishists, people who have an obsession with a certain country (Israel) and with a certain cause (condemning Western militaries). How many reports has HRW issued about Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s successful three-week offensive to neutralize Hamas’s rocket war against Israeli civilians? I’ve lost count, although I have heard that HRW’s forthcoming report—perhaps the fourth or fifth on Cast Lead—will document a few instances in which Palestinian homes were vandalized by IDF soldiers. Graffiti spray-painted on a wall during a war is a pressing human-rights issue in the Middle East? Is vandalism even a human-rights issue? Only if you’re an Israel-obsessive.

So we get to Marc Garlasco, HRW’s “senior military analyst” and a frequent critic of Israel. Garlasco, as disclosed by Omri at Mere Rhetoric, has an interesting avocation: he writes about and collects Nazi paraphernalia. He has contributed almost 8,000 posts to a Nazi web forum called Wehrmacht Awards under the handle “Flak88,” with his collection of swastikas and Nazi medals all lovingly photographed and posted online. Garlasco’s Nazi hobby is actually quite ambitious: he wrote a 400-page book on Nazi military awards, and his car’s license plate is personalized—it reads “Flak88.”

A Nazi-memorabilia hobby sure is a strange one for a professional human-rights activist to have. Are there any senior staffers at PETA who moonlight as collectors of fur coats and leg-hold traps? Garlasco must know how odd this looks because he maintains aphotography website that contains pictures of many diverse things—but no tip-off that one of his favorite photography subjects is . . . Nazi medals.

The more we learn about Human Rights Watch, the more the mask slips. There is Sarah Leah Whitson, the intifada-era activist for Palestine and apologist for terrorism; Joe Stork, the radical leftist and anti-Zionist; and now Garlasco, the Nazi-memorabilia collector.

Love of the Land: The Latest Human Rights Watch Bombshell

Life in Israel: Two Sides of the Coin

Two Sides of the Coin

While one former Nazi (John Demjanjuk) is being deported from his home back to Germany where he might get some of what he deserves (he is wanted for the murder of 29,000 Jews in Sobibor - how can he possibly get what he deserves for that?), another former Nazi is being given the royal treatment by Jews in the Holy Land.

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Life in Israel: Two Sides of the Coin

The adventures of 'Milton' - Nazi spy in Eretz Israel - Haaretz - Israel News

The adventures of 'Milton' - Nazi spy in Eretz Israel

By Yossi Melman, Haaretz Correspondent
Tags: Israel news, Nazi, spy

Twelve years ago, a friend handed an envelope to Gad Shimron. At the time, Shimron was the Israeli daily Ma'ariv's correspondent in Germany, and he was occupied with tying up loose ends as the end of his stint in Germany loomed. He didn't bother looking at the contents of the envelope.

It was only a few years ago that Shimron finally got around to looking inside the envelope, when he moved from one apartment to another. In the envelope, shimron discovered a historical treasure, which he incorporated into his new novel "The Templer's Lover from Emek Refa'im" (Matar) - which tells the story of a love affair between a Hadassah nursing school student and a Jerusalem German Colony native, which sparked uproar in the thirties and forties.

The book combines fictional details with historical fact as Shimron exposes a historical event that has never before been published: the story of a spy for the Abwehr - a Nazi intelligence organization - who operated in Palestine while it was under a British mandate during World War II. The documents in the fateful envelope were apparently from this spy's operations dossier. The spy's code name was Milton.

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The adventures of 'Milton' - Nazi spy in Eretz Israel - Haaretz - Israel News