Submitted by Elliott A Green, Oct 24, 2007 11:09

Hillel Halkin might have delved deeper into the careers of George Antonius and his patron, Charles R Crane. Stephen Wise was right about him, since Antonius, for all his gift of elegant English, was an associate of Haj Amin el-Husseini, the British-appointed mufti of Jerusalem who was leading the so-called Arab Revolt of 1936-38. This revolt involved the murder of many Jews in Israel, and of even more Arabs who belonged to factions rival to Husseini's.
As for Charles R Crane, he was a sympathizer of Hitler and a fanatic Judeophobe. He had Antonius arrange meetings for hm with Husseini [often simp[ly called "the Mufti"] at which he discussed the need to form a worldwide Muslim-Christian front against the Jews, for which he wanted the Mufti's help.
Antonius was the Middle Eastern representative of Crane's private foreign policy agency, the Institute of Current World Affairs. Antonius went to work for Crane after leaving the British administration of the mandate for the Jewish National Home in Palestine. Antonius never stopped admiring Husseini even after Husseini had clearly declared his pro-Nazi sympathies. Antonius never criticized the Mufti for this pro-Nazi stand.
Albright was clearly right in calling Antonius a propagandist rather than an academic scholar. More information about Antonius' career and documents from his archive [now in the Israel State Archives] are found in my article:
Elliott A Green, "The Curious Careers of Two Advocates of Arab Nationalism," Crossroads, no. 33 (Jerusalem 1992)

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