Pierre Rehov’s The Third Testament: A shocking and terrifying discovery that could change the course of history is a thriller in every sense of the word. It’s a fast-paced, briskly plotted, twist-laden adventure spanning from rural Pennsylvania to Moscow to Indonesia, and imagining a scenario for international bloodshed and terror that sheds light on some commonly ignored but crucially important truths about the contemporary world.
Pierre Rehov has won deserved renown as a filmmaker. For nearly 20 years, he and his teams have explored the Middle East in order to illuminate facts from the field that the establishment media refuses to acknowledge. He has produced a steady stream of documentaries, both lengthy and brief, in defense of Israel and revealing of the truly chilling mindset and goals of the Palestinian jihadis so revered among American Leftists.
Lesser known, at least in the English-speaking world, but no less effective, is Pierre Rehov the novelist. He has written a number of successful novels in French, some of which have been translated into English, and all of which contain rich rewards for adventure aficionados. In The Third Testament, fluently and idiomatically translated by Robert Anderson, Rehov imagines Adolf Hitler leaving behind a secret third document accompanying the political testament and personal will he drafted shortly before he blew his brains out as Soviet troops approached his bunker in ruined Berlin. It is full of the fascination for the occult for which the Nazi monster and many of his henchmen were known, and partially in code.
Discovered by accident decades later by a bored Soviet archivist, it details nothing less than the Führer’s plan to return to earth in another body by means of various bizarre esoteric manipulations. On this The Third Testament turns; few, if any, of the principal players really believe that Hitler is going to return to earth, but many think that if they can convince a sufficient number of people that he has actually done so, they will be able to fashion a formidable fighting force for their own purposes.
The striking aspect of The Third Testament is that the Hitler-returns scheme sees him being reincarnated as a Muslim cleric, and using Islamic antisemitism as a hook to gather hordes of new followers. In this, of course, Rehov’s plot device simply mirrors reality. The Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, lived in Berlin from 1941 to 1945, met with Hitler, and was a close friend of Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Eichmann, and made pro-Nazi broadcasts in Arabic. Even in recent years, Mein Kampf has been a bestseller in Turkey, Bangladesh, and the Palestinian territories. In Indonesia, a statue of Hitler in a wax museum became “one of the favorite for our visitors to take selfies with.”
In Norway, according to Sputnik News, an imam was recently reported for hate speech for writing on Facebook that “Hitler let some Jews be so that the world would see how cruel this nation is and why it is necessary to kill them.” In a similar vein, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a teenage boy at Islamic Jihad’s “Sword of Jerusalem” summer camp declared: “We asked Hitler why he left some of you alive. He did so in order to show us how wicked you are.” This is a familiar trope: During the conflict between Israel and Hamas in May, Muslim Bollywood actress Veena Malik tweeted in Hitler’s persona: “I would have killed all the Jews of the world … but I kept some to show the world why I killed them.”
Also during that conflict, according to Time magazine, “within days of the conflict beginning last month in Israel and Gaza Twitter accounts linked to Iran were amplifying anti-Semitic messages in English, including the phrases ‘hitler was right’ and ‘kill all jews’ at a rate of 175 times per minute.” And a Muslim CNN reporter, Adeel Raja, tweeted (and quickly deleted) the phrase “The world today needs a Hitler.”
Related: This CNN Contributor Hates Israel So Much, He Praises Hitler For Killing Jews. Yes, Really.
All this comes from Islam’s core text, the Qur’an. The Jews in the Qur’an are called the strongest of all people in enmity toward the Muslims (5:82); they fabricate things and falsely ascribe them to Allah (2:79; 3:75, 3:181); they claim that Allah’s power is limited (5:64); they love to listen to lies (5:41); they disobey Allah and never observe his commands (5:13). They are disputing and quarreling (2:247); hiding the truth and misleading people (3:78); staging rebellion against the prophets and rejecting their guidance (2:55); being hypocritical (2:14, 2:44); giving preference to their own interests over the teachings of Muhammad (2:87); wishing evil for people and trying to mislead them (2:109); feeling pain when others are happy or fortunate (3:120); being arrogant about their being Allah’s beloved people (5:18); devouring people’s wealth by subterfuge (4:161); slandering the true religion and being cursed by Allah (4:46); killing the prophets (2:61); being merciless and heartless (2:74); never keeping their promises or fulfilling their words (2:100); being unrestrained in committing sins (5:79); being cowardly (59:13-14); being miserly (4:53); being transformed into apes and pigs for breaking the Sabbath (2:63-65; 5:59-60; 7:166); and more. They are under Allah’s curse (9:30), and Muslims should wage war against them and subjugate them under Islamic hegemony (9:29).
All this and more makes the setting for Hitler’s return in The Third Testament not just inspired from a novelistic point of view, but informative for the actual global situation, in shedding light on the little-noted phenomenon of Islamic antisemitism. In this, Pierre Rehov has performed a singular service. And given us a terrific read in the process.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member