When it emerged in mid-March that the perpetrator of a deadly suicide attack on American troops in Afghanistan had come from Germany, the American media showed little interest. A closer look at the bomber's itinerary reveals that it bears a remarkable resemblance to that of none other than Murat Kurnaz: the supposed "innocent man" who America is accused of having held without cause at Guantánamo for five years.

 
For the details, see my new article on World Politics Review here.

Did the Amin al-Husaini, the "Grand Mufti" of Jerusalem, know about the Nazis' ongoing program to exterminate European Jews when he lived in Berlin from 1941-1945? In my recent review of Klaus Gensicke's Der Mufti von Jerusalem und die Nationalsozialisten, I questioned whether a visit by a member of the Mufti's entourage to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin could be taken as proof that the Mufti also knew what was transpiring in the death camps further to the East, such as Auschwitz and Treblinka.

 
But Wolfgang G. Schwanitz, A German historian of the Middle East, has found more compelling evidence: namely, the Mufti's own words. "Up to now we have exterminated around three million of them" -- this, according to memoirs of the Mufti published in Damascus in 1999, is what Heinrich Himmler told him in the summer of 1943.

 
For the details, see Wolfgang G. Schwanitz's new article on World Politics Review here. 

The German Minister of Justice who in 2002 famously compared George Bush to Adolf Hitler. Däubler-Gmelin continues to play an important role in German and European politics. As turns out, moreover, her own father, Hans Gmelin, was a high-ranking Nazi official in the German satellite state of Slovakia during the Second World War. For the details, see my new article on World Politics Review here.

See my new translation on World Politics Review here.

Apart from the sheer mass of the Clintons’ earnings, perhaps the most intriguing revelation contained in the recent release of the Clinton tax data was that Bill Clinton received a whopping $15 million advance for what would become his autobiography, My Life. Who would pay such an enormous sum to Bill Clinton — thus, in effect, erasing in one fell swoop the well-known financial burden of his outstanding legal fees? The answer is that Germany’s Bertelsmann Corporation would.

 
For the details, see my new article on Pajamas Media here.

My discussion of a new book in German by the historian Klaus Gensicke. In Policy Review magazine here. 

“At the age of 19, Murat Kurnaz vanished into America’s shadow prison system in the war on terror. He was from Germany, traveling in Pakistan, and was picked up three months after 9/11. But there seemed to be ample evidence that Kurnaz was an innocent man with no connection to terrorism. The FBI thought so, U.S. intelligence thought so, and German intelligence agreed.” Thus intoned CBS correspondent Scott Pelley on Sunday night in introducing the 60 Minutes report on former Guantánamo inmate Murat Kurnaz. But the problem with CBS’s claim is that there is, on the contrary, ample evidence that Kurnaz was indeed connected to terrorist circles and had left Germany to fight with the Taliban, just as US authorities have maintained.

 
For the details, see my new report on Pajamas Media here.

Has a Jew who accuses another Jew of “cowardice” and “self-hatred” in the face of anti-Semitism thereby himself committed an act of anti-Semitism? In the strange, through-the-looking-glass world of French justice: apparently he has.

 
For the details, se my new article on Pajamas Media here.

According to Pierre Heumann of the weekly Die Weltwoche, Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey has a "subtle" approach to her job.

When it is a matter of deciding between Swiss business interests and the upholding of human rights, her answer is: "we can do both!"