We have a double holiday in Israel: Victory Day and Independence Day. The second holiday would have been impossible without the first. The Hitler army was stopped not only at Stalingrad, but also near Alexandria in Egypt, in November 1942.
At this point, the Jews of Palestine were preparing to evacuate to Mount Carmel and keep all-round defense there. Well, the leader of the Palestinian people, Amin al Husseini, rubbed his hands, anticipating the genocide of the Jews of Egypt, Palestine and of entire Middle East. After all, this is what Hitler promised him during the meeting a year before, in November 1941. Amin carefully wrote about this event in his diary. Hitler told Amin in secret that he was preparing a grand attack on the Middle East.
It seems that this “secret” of Hitler was known to his soldiers and officers. As a teenager, I accidentally found a German pocket atlas of WWII times. His owner used a pencil to draw a big arrow through the Caucasus to the Middle East, to Palestine, and another arrow through the Caucasus to India. The flank attack of the Germans on Stalingrad was supposed to cover the Caucasian group of Germany from striking the rear and further encirclement.
Then, in the summer of 1942, Rommel launched a grand offensive from Tunisia, through Libya to Egypt. In the summer of 1942, the Nazis created in Athens the Einzatzgruppe Aegypten, specifically to exterminate the Jews of Palestine and the Middle East. In July, the group was ready to sail to Palestine, where it was supposed to join the Rommel’s corps.
True, in November 1942 there was a misfire: because of the attack on Stalingrad, Hitler had no reserves to support his African corps, and the Germans were defeated near El Alamein, in the “gates” of Egypt.
This story was continued after World War II. In 1946, the British, together with the French, released Amin from custody (he was in custody awaiting trial in Nuremberg), and then transferred the Palestinian leader to Egypt and Palestine. In 1946–47, the British Empire prepared a group of Muslim Brotherhood goons. During the War of Independence, this group of «militants» stuck out in the Negev, in the rear of the Egyptian army, and prepared for the «cause.» But the Egyptian army was defeated and fled from Israel. The thugs fled, too.
In the spring of 1948, the leader of the Palestinians urged his people to flee from the territory where the control passed to the Jews. Palestinians fanned the Deir Yassin incident to encourage people to obey the leader’s call. Amin had a goal: to push the wavering Arab regimes and force them to get involved in an adventure against the Jews, which they did not want. He managed to raise a widespread Islamist wave of demonstrations and pogroms against the Jews.
Frightened rulers of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Transjordan rushed to the war, trying to divide Palestine among themselves. Since each of the rivals suspected the other in an attempt to grab a bigger piece of Palestine, their actions were not coordinated. And no one intended to create a Palestinian state in the territory they occupied.
On top of this, the Jews of Arab countries were forced to flee massively from pogroms, often in pursuance of government decrees. And they fled mainly to Palestine / Israel.
In preparation for the genocide of the Jews of Palestine, the British transferred their Arab Legion, commanded by the British subject Glubb and numerous British officers and noncommissioned officers, to the Transjordan King Abdullah. It was the most efficient of the six Arab armies that took part in the War of Independence.
Trying to destroy Israel in the bud, the British Empire and Amin al Husseini really brought disaster to the Palestinian people. This disaster the Palestinians called the «Nakba». The anti-Semites have now blamed their actions on the victim of aggression, that is, on Israel.
From our point of view, the Second World War has not ended, it continues to this day. So, Victory Day and Independence Day are sad holidays for us.
