Friends Of Democracy's Battle. (1948). United States: (n.p.).] Vol. VI, No. 15. August 1, 1948.
NY COURT BLASTS ARAB APOLOGIST KATIBAH, GRAND MUFTI LINKED WITH NAZIS; JUSTICE CHARGES LATTER 'KINDLED FLAMES OF POGROM'
On May 5, 1948, Hon. Maurice Simmons, Justice of the Court of Special Sessions (New York), dismissed a complaint for criminal libel made by Habib I. Katibah against the publisher of the New York Daily Mirror. The complaint was based upon ...a Winchell column published in the Mirror on May 16 , 1947. Mr. Justice Simmons ' opinion upon which his dismissal of the complaint was based, is so revealing of Katibah and his associates that we feel that we are performing a public service by publishing the greater part of it.
We quote:
While the determination of the future political status of Palestine was the subject of debate before the Assembly of the United Nations at Lake Success, New York, in which the par- ticipants were primarily the representatives of the Arab nations and the Jewish Agency, there was published in the May 16th , 1947 issue of the New York Daily Mirror the follow- ing column:
'WALTER WINCHELL IN NEW YORK; Meet the Arabianazis ...
Corporation brought by Habib L. Katibah was dismissed recently by Judge Maurice Simmons following a hearing in a Manhattan Magistrate's Court. The suit was based upon unflattering statements about Katibah which appeared in two Walter Winchell columns in Hearst's morning paper, the N. Y. Mirror. Simmons, after examining the evidence linking Katibah with pro-Nazis and anti-Semitic propagandists, held that charges made in the Winchell columns "were a very feeble understatement."
[...]
Indicative of the essence of his propaganda and the calibre of his collaborators is the leading article authored by him, and other contributions in the July 15th, 1936 issue of the WORLD MONTHLY, chief pro-Arab ́mouthpiece in America.
One of these scripts by DR. FAUD SHATARA identified in Winchell's column as president of the Arab National League, of which complainant was ex-ecutive director and secretary, is entitled 'Palestine Belongs to the Arabs,' and bears the imprint of the swastika, which at that time was casting its sinister shadow over the European Continent. These two opening articles are reinforced by those of anonymous writers, from which latter typical excerpts are:
'No one can deny that the most brutal wars in all history were fought by the Crusaders in the name of the Cross. The wild beasts of Europe had no more conception of Christianity than the people of the Old Stone Age . . . The land which witnessed a great deal of the Crusaders ' savageness and brutality is witnessing today another horrible con- quest of a peaceful, God-fearing people. British soldiers are massacring innocent children and women in the Holy Land. Zionism and Jewish capital[sic] add to the misery inflicted upon the owners of Palestine. Thus we see a Crusade repeated, but not in the name of the Cross this time. It is rather in the name of ...'
'Palestine can never become Jewish. It belonged to the Arabs. It still belongs to them; it shall always belong to them; and there is no power on earth that will ever succeed in taking it away from them. The Jews never had a home and never will have one....'
'Will Mussolini and Hitler fall for "British scheming? There a no question that Mussolini is determined to fight to the end. He does not believe in starting and quitting . He did not quit one in fight yet. Hitler has won every battle he waged diplomatically; so he will not th quit.'
'No sensible observer can believe that Hitler will arrive at his objective by by force . He loves peace and thinks that peaceful efforts are more resourceful than force.'
[...]
..the fez that crowns his brow lacks the traditional crescent of the Orient. It is replaced by a swastika in flaming red Bedeck- wing both fez and swastika is the accolade,
'THE HITLER OF PALESTINE.' BENEATH THE PORTRAIT IS THE OLYMPIAN COMMENDATION, 'BENITO'S SINCERE FRIEND AND HITLER'S SYMPATHIZER.'
[...]
The MUFTI, the FUEHRER and IL DUCE, these are the trinity of humanitarians who fill pedestals in KATIBAH'S Hall of Fame. The caption of complainant's article heralds the Grand Mufti as 'His Eminence, Haj Ameen El Husseini, the head of the Supreme Moslem Council of Palestine and President of The Arab Higher Committee ...'
- Grand Mufti confers with Hitler -
Each of its phrases is headily perfumed with laudation of his Arabian demi - God - the great leader and patriot, with whom he boasts he was closely associated in the work of the Arab National League. He charges that 'Zionism is a criminal ....
But more of this Mufti who seeks to stand astride the Arab World as the direct lineal descendant of Mahomet, True Pro _ phet of Allah. The exhibits in this proceeding drape his figure with the guilt of abhorrent criminality, as do the archives of the Allied War Crimes Commission.
Through the tragic web of the recent decades runs the black thread of his Machiavellian designs and deeds, which have earned for him the title of 'THE MURDEROUS MUFTI.'
In his striving to seize power in Palestine he instigated the assassination of the influential NASHISHIBI family , respected by all the Palestinian Arabs. His gangsters purged hundreds of other leading Islamites , whom he regarded as obstacles to the attainment of his evil goals. Until his irruption in the Holy Land, both Jew and Arab had lived in friendly neighborliness.
Not only did he kindle the flames of pogrom and massacre in the Middle East, but he joined hands with HITLER, MUSSOLINI and HIROHITO to balk the allies.
Warned in 1937 of his impending arrest for the murder of thousands of Arabs, Britons and Jews, he fled Jerusalem.
In October, 1941 he discussed in Italy with MUSSOLINI, CIANO and ALFIERI a proposed Arab-Italian collaboration against the Allies . Under the supervision of GOEBBELS he broadcast against the Allied cause from Berlin and also directly from Rome, and by transcription from Tokyo.
The United States Monitor Service on March 4th, 1944 recorded his message to the Arab World:
'Arabs! Arise as one and fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wher- ever you find them . This pleases God, history and religion. This saves your honor. God is with you.'
[...]
On November 3rd, 1943, in one of his numerous exhortations to the Arabs, he broadcast from Berlin:
'The treaty of Versailles was a disaster for the Germans as well as Europe. But the Germans know how to get rid of the Jews. That which brings us close to the Germans and sets us up in their camp is that up to today the Germans never harmed any Moslem and are fighting our common enemy who persecute the Arabs and the Moslems.'
On the front page of the WIENER ILLUSTRIERTE ZEITUNG, in 1943, he is photographed in the regalia of a Moslem potentate reviewing a group of Mohammedan Storm Troopers, whom he had recruited in Yugoslavia to fight with the Nazi Army.
DR. SHATARA, whose article in the WORLD MONTHLY is headlighted by Pamphlet by Ahmad Hussein, Egyptian propagandist for the Arab cause..
.. the swastika, was linked intimately with the complainant in pro-Arab strategy, propaganda and ideology. As already stated, SHATARA was President and KATIBAH the executive director and secretary of the ARAB NATIONAL LEAGUE. The latter revered him 'as one of the great leaders of Arab-Americans.' The subterranean activities of the former won for him the imprimatur of the DEUTSCHE WECKRUF UND BEOBACHTER, official organ of FRITZ KUHN'S GERMAN-AMERICAN BUND the little Fuehrer, convicted and jailed by our Courts and later deported to Germany.
SHATARA sowed the seeds of subversion with the notorious KURT MERTIG, the would - be Storm Trooper, condemned and incarcerated for inciting a riotous assembly, where he had distributed copies of the infamous tract known as the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion.'
SHATARA associated with the slimy creatures, bigoted, traitorous or semi- psychotic, who filled the letter - boxes of the public and their own reptilian news sheets , with corrosive Fascistic un-American propaganda. Immediately after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the agents of the FBI being hot on his heels, he commited suicide. This Arabian patriot also fills a niche in his disciple's Hall of Fame.
THE WORLD SERVICE of March, 1938, published in Erfurt, Germany, by the official German Propaganda Office, recommended to our people that we help save America from the folly of other nations by having them subscribe and contribute to the support of certain organizations, included in which are the JAPANESE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE and the ARAB NATIONAL LEAGUE.
There was nothing in Winchell's column that had not already been published in leading newspapers and periodicals and which had not been presented to the American public by its Representatives in Congress. The sources for Winchell's articles are authoritative and impressive. The substance of the accusations made by him had appeared in both the European and American press, sponsored by distinguished journalists and publicists. What Winchell did was to fashion verbal bayonets from this mass of published subversive material. With these weapons he struck at the nest of alien pro-Nazi, pro-Fascist and pro-Arab reptiles, who were poisoning the arteries of American public opinion. His bitter, unorthodox and epigram- matic words helped arouse millions from their lethargy to a knowledge of the menace that was at work in our homeland. His barbed words were bullets, aimed at the vitals of a strange tribe of saboteurs, who had trooped here from their feudal lands in the Middle East...
The personalities excoriated by Winchell presumably were diplomatic or political figures, involved in a transaction of vital historial import.
The situation is summarized in the opening paragraph of the columnist's article:
'For many months now the front pages of the world have been crowded with the blow by blow description of a struggle which has finally reached the United Nations..
The problem has been how to find a place under the warm Palestinian sun for the living skeletons who, from 1933 had suffered from the foul tortures of Hitler's fevered brain.'
Here was a new story of global dimension , resonant in press, screen and radio. The columnist's attack was levelled at a system, an ideology, the Arab world itself. Not the private lives of the individuals paragraphed, but their public performances were inveighed against.
The late Justice Bright of the Southern District of New Yotk said: "If the public is to be aided in forming its judgment upon matters of public interest by a free interchange of opinions signal public service. A paradoxical it is essential that honest criticism and comment, no matter how foolish or prejudiced, be privileged.' ..
And further: 'The accused article itself can hardly be called a scientific monograph. It bears evidence, as Judge Crane wrote in the Briarcliff case..
... Complainant takes umbrage at the use of the hybrid terms, 'Arabashtid,' 'Arabigots' and the other verbal ephemera, which seems to spring in such promiscuous profusion from the caustic quill of this stormy petrel of columnar journalism.
The Winchell-ogism 'Arabashtid' is not found in the Oxford dictionary of English or in Mencken's opus on American Slang. Grant that this exotic linguistic concoction is the equivalent of the words with the I.Q. of Mortimer Snerd could find therein any denigration of the chastity of the mothers of the Arabian group of representatives. Let it again be stressed that this verbal barrage was levelled not at individuals , as such, but at the political principles and powers that they represented.
The Court is compelled to the conclusion that complainant has failed to establish a prima facie case either of criminal libel or of conspiracy to commit a crime.
By their timely unmasking of the motives and background of the Arabian agents, participating in the dispute before the United Nations Assembly, the defendants rendered a phenomenon of recent years has been the attempt by the spokesman of absolute rulers and totalitarian states to use our courts in an endeavor to sup press the freedom of our press, a freedom which is non-existent in autocratic regimes.
In the present proceeding this Court will not sanction any such attempt to undermine this pillar of the American Bill of Rights.
The motion of the defendants to dismiss the complaint is granted.