PA daily op-ed acknowledges the Holocaust, but claims that Israel’s crimes exceed those of the Nazis

Op-ed by Jamil Abd Al-Nabi

Headline: "The Holocaust"

"To this day, Israel has at every opportunity exploited the Holocaust, in which the Palestinians of course had no part and no blame, even though they are the ones that paid a heavy price. I do not now intend to deny or corroborate the details of what is now known as the Holocaust, and we the Palestinians are not the ones that need to wage this battle as part of our struggle against the Israeli occupation, as we show no sympathy for the murder of innocents, regardless of who the murderer is, and regardless of who the murdered is. Our problem is with the Zionist movement, and Israel must not divert our moral compass. We must not help Israel to present us as people who show sympathy for murderers. This of course does not mean that the principle of investigating every detail connected to this same Holocaust should be defined as a crime. This also does not mean that we agree to Israel’s immoral use of the Jewish victims’ souls in an attempt to continue to apply pressure to the world's conscience to divert its attention from [Israel's] repeated crimes against the Palestinians on the one hand, and in order to blackmail [the world] to obtain as much material and moral support as possible on the other hand…

The Zionist movement understood – before the establishment of Israel and also afterwards – that it is important to create a certain world opinion as a precondition for the success of any idea. It acted vigorously, while exploiting all the money and media it could, in order to turn the establishment of Israel, and afterwards the protection of it, into an idea accepted by the world…

The time has come for us to pay attention to the importance of this field, that Israel has used well in its aggression against us. It is a mistake to continue to think that world opinion is useless when in truth it has great significance.

In a few days, Israel will hold a conference on the Holocaust in occupied Jerusalem. Dozens of dignitaries from the world, heads of state, ministers, and representatives of European monarchs will be present at it. If there will be determination, we will be able to use this conference to present the Palestinian holocaust that the Palestinian people has undergone and is still undergoing, and not for a short period of time – as the Nazis did in Europe – but rather as a daily practice and deliberate state policy that receives [official] backing, which Israel is implementing without anyone noticing (this paragraph was highlighted by being placed on the daily's front page, which usually only shows op-ed excerpts –Ed.).

For instance, we can turn the streets of Jerusalem and its outskirts, through which the convoys of visitors will pass, into exhibits of pictures of our side’s victims. We can attempt to present the visitors with a different picture of a holocaust in our time, which is being committed by the side that continues to pretend to cry over the old Holocaust. We can do this by screening films in the streets and paths, or by making them accessible to the visitors, and afterwards turn this act of struggle activity into a concerted and daily act. In this area we must derive benefit from the reality of the Palestinian people that is scattered throughout the world. This means that we can present the Palestinian story not only in the narrow halls of politics, but rather in all of the world's states and before the eyes of all of the world's peoples. Our embassies, which are in almost all the world's states, must turn this method of struggle into a daily plan and cooperate with the Palestinian communities, which will undoubtedly be prepared and ready if they find someone who will hold their hand, direct them, and provide them with what is necessary for this effort.

It is illogical that the side of the aggressor will continue to be portrayed as a victim, while the victim continues to provide it with fuel for its false narrative through uncalculated statements or even a number of unclear forms of struggle (apparently referring to militant statements and the use of violence -Ed.). Israel is exploiting this in order to distort the truth – that we are victims of an apartheid state that has used and still uses all types of violence and crimes, which are liable to be comparable to or even exceed the crime that the Nazis committed in the Holocaust, in which victims were eliminated in the most heinous ways. This is a crime we condemn, and we do not identify with those who committed it, but its victims have died and returned to their Lord. Their suffering ended with their death, while there is an entire people that has been uprooted from its land and that continues to suffer after 72 years from the consequences of this crime (i.e., the Holocaust). Israel continues to refuse to acknowledge its responsibility for [the Palestinian people's] expulsion and suffering, and moreover, it has not for one moment of history – from the Nakba (i.e., “the catastrophe,” Palestinian term for the establishment of the State of Israel) to this day – ceased committing massacres against [the Palestinian people]."