Amin al-Husseini

Born around 1897 into a noble Jerusalemite family, Mohammed Amin al-Husseini studied in Islamic and Catholic schools before serving in the Ottoman army during World War I. After briefly supporting the Arab Kingdom of Syria, he returned to Jerusalem and led the 1920 Nebi Musa riots against Zionism, earning a prison sentence the British soon pardoned. In 1921 the British appointed him Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, a new role he used to rally Arab opposition to Jewish settlement while remaining a British ally through the mid-1930s. He fled Palestine in 1937 after leading the Arab revolt, moving through Lebanon and Iraq before settling in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, where he met Adolf Hitler and broadcast propaganda against Britain. After the war he resurfaced in Cairo, built the Holy War Army when denied command of the Arab League's forces, and helped establish the short-lived All-Palestine Government in Gaza in 1948. The loss of that war and the Palestinian exodus discredited his leadership; he was sidelined by the PLO's creation in 1964 and died in Beirut a decade later.