The Palestinian Authority and Fatah actively desecrate the memory of the Holocaust by repeatedly comparing Israel’s defense measures against Hamas to Nazism.
During Operation Protective Shield in Gaza, the Palestinian Authority and Fatah actively desecrated the memory of the Holocaust by repeatedly comparing Israel’s measures against the Hamas terrorist organization to the Nazi genocide, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) reveals. The PMW findings were published this week in The Jerusalem Post.
According to a statement by Fatah official Issa Karake [Ma’an, July 25, 2014], who until recently served as PA Minister of Prisoners’ Affairs, “This Hebrew state did more evil and more horrifying things than what happened in the Nazi crematoria.”
Another example cited by PMW is an article written by Fatah leader and official PA daily columnist Yahya Rabah, who wrote in Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, the official PA daily (Aug. 3, 2014):
“[Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu is a descendant of the Nazis, worships Hitler’s ways and imitates him in all the Holocausts he has perpetrated.”
All quotes provided in the PMW Special Report were published during the 2014 Gaza operation and are from official PA and Fatah sources. Mahmoud Abbas, whom many consider to be a moderate Palestinian and a legitimate peace partner, is chairman of both the PA and Fatah, which formed a unity government with Hamas in the spring following a breakdown in U.S.-brokered negotiations with Israel.
Yad Vashem: ‘Abuse of Holocaust Imagery and Language’
Yad Vashem World Center for Holocaust Research condemned what it called “demagogic abuse of Holocaust imagery and language” as desecration of the memory of the Holocaust, PMW notes.
“As an institution dedicated to Holocaust remembrance, we are also gravely concerned by the demagogic abuse of Holocaust imagery and language which distorts the past as well as the current reality for political purposes,” Yad Vashem stated on July 24. “Exploiting these terms from the Holocaust, in order to incite and inflame hatred, desecrates the memory of the Holocaust.”
In addition to embracing comparisons between the Gaza operation and the Holocaust, PMW says, articles in the official PA daily also included demonization and hate speech against IDF soldiers, such as:
“Robotic soldiers from hell, burning with extremism like fiery devils, possessed by the culture of murder and death.” [Fatah MP and former PA Minister of Prisoners’ Affairs Issa Karake, Ma’an, July 25, 2014]
Using Hate Expressions to Define Israelis
PA and Fatah leaders and official news outlets used Holocaust comparisons and hate expressions to define Israelis and/or Israel’s behavior, the media watchdog adds. They claim, for instance, that Israel has perpetrated a “Holocaust unlike any that has been recorded,” has “surpassed Hitler’s massacres,” and is “blackmailing Germany, Europe and humanity with the Holocaust.”
The official PA daily, PMW continues, “expanded upon its use of Holocaust imagery by denying Israel’s right to exist,” saying, for example:
“This war has proved once again that Israel is a completely artificial state without historic or moral roots, a myth produced by the settlement wave – a fact that prevents it from living normally. As long as it exists, it will only produce things that are against humanity.” [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Aug. 3, 2014]
According to Jibril Rajoub, deputy secretary of the Fatah Central Committee, speaking July 14 on Awdah, an independent Palestinian TV channel, “[Israel is committing a] mass extermination as the Nazis did in Europe in the 1940s.”
“We are facing the largest mechanism of war, destruction and killing, which vies with the Nazi and fascist [mechanisms],” claimed Bakr Abu Bakr, member, Fatah Revolutionary Council, in Al-Hayat Al-Jadida on Aug. 7, 2014, PMW reports.
Other examples include:
“The execution of hundreds of Palestinian children in a Holocaust similar to the Nazi Holocausts.” [Yahya Rabah, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Aug. 9, 2014];
“Since 1948, Israel has murdered over two million Palestinian children. The number of Jewish children murdered in the Nazi Holocaust did not exceed a million and a quarter.” [Issa Karake, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 23]; and
The “new Nazis in the Israeli government of death use “white phosphorus and all existing types of poisons and biological and chemical weapons.” [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 26, 2014].
PMW also quotes Omar Hilmi Al-Ghoul, columnist for the official PA daily, who writes in an op-ed [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 26, 2014]:
“The warplanes, battleships and tanks of the Israeli army of death left no place untouched by their burning fire, bearing thousands of tons of dynamite, white phosphorus, and all existing types of poisons and biological and chemical weapons. Nothing is forbidden in the dictionary of the rogue State of Israel, and there are no moral, ethical or legal criteria in its insane war. All the cities, villages, homes, institutions and agricultural farms of the Palestinian ‘gentiles’ were included in the target bank of the chorus of new Nazis in the Israeli government of death. Isn’t it time that the world and those who advocate peace, democracy and human rights act to stop the Israeli Holocaust war?”
There have been no reports of Israel using white phosphorous or biological or chemical weapons, PMW notes.
‘Israeli Holocaust Targets Children’
According to Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, PMW continues, the “Israeli Holocaust deliberately targets children…. Children have become the fuel for Israel’s Holocaust and war against Gaza. They are now the largest balance in what the Israeli army calls the ‘target bank’ of the fighter planes in the Gaza Strip. In Gaza, children have become a target hunted by the Israeli warplanes.” July 15, 2014]
In yet another example, PLO Executive Committee Member and Head of the Department for Jerusalem Affairs Ahmed Qurei claims that the “Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis is the same as is being perpetrated by the occupation against our people, [but Israel’s] is even more severe, as they kidnap children, fight civilians inside their homes and places of worship, burn their crops and violate their human rights in the ugliest manner.” [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 6, 2014].