****************** We were racists. We admired the Nazis. We were immersed in reading Nazi literature and books... We were the first who thought of a translation of Mein Kampf. Anyone who lived in Damascus at that time was witness to the Arab inclination toward Nazism.
****************** Sami al-Joundi, one of the founders of the ruling Syrian Ba'ath Party. In fact Nazism became very popular among the Arabs in the late 1920's.
The "Young Egypt" (Misr al-Fatah) movement, was founded in October 1933 by the lawyer Ahmed Hussein and its structure was based directly on the German Nazi party, with paramilitary Green Shirts, Nazi salute and translations of Nazi slogans.
Nazi supporters of this era included Ahmad Shukeiri, the first chairman of the PLO; Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat; and the founders of the Pan-Arab socialist Ba'ath Party of Syria and Iraq.
During the war, members of the Young Egypt spied on behalf of Rommel's Afrika Korps and a young lieutenant by the name of Anwar Sadat was tried and imprisoned. After the war, Gamal Abdul Nasser, another member of Young Egypt, was among the group of officers who led the July 1952 revolution in Egypt. The first step of the new regime after it had seized power--shades of Hitler--was to outlaw all the other political parties in Egypt. Sadat continued to express open admiration for Hitler in a letter he sent to the Egyptian daily Al Mussawar on September 18, 1953.
Hitler's definition of Zionism in Mein Kampf is endlessly quoted. "They [Zionists] do not have any intention to establish a Jewish state in Palestine in order to settle there. They only fight for one place in which they [can base] a central organization for carrying out their global plot, a city of refuge for criminals and a training center for the scoundrels of the future." This paragraph, cited in most anti-Zionist writings in the Arab world, bestows the weight of supreme authority.
Similarly, in answering the argument of "the Zionists" that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are a fabrication, Mein Kampf is quoted as proof of their authenticity, which settles the matter, given that Hitler's authority has assumed canonical status. Mein Kampf, incidentally, continues to be published in numerous editions in the Arab world, especially in Egypt.
Remember it is not poverty that produces terrorists, its lies.
