Fatah official recognizes Holocaust, Jewish victimhood and suffering, but sows doubt about 6 million victims and equating Holocaust to Palestinian Nakba
Text posted on the official Fatah Facebook page, written by Secretary of Fatah’s Branch in Poland Khalil Nazzal
Published on the official Fatah Facebook page, on Jan. 24, 2020 and on official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida on Jan. 25, 2020
Posted text: “The weekly message
The Jewish Holocaust and the Palestinian Nakba (i.e., “the catastrophe,” the Palestinian term for the establishment of the State of Israel)
The 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi detention camp Auschwitz that the Nazi occupiers established in Germany (sic. In occupied Poland) during World War II is approaching. The camp was liberated on Jan. 27, 1945, by the Soviet forces, while they were pursuing Hitler's retreating armies towards their inevitable fate. The world was surprised by the horror of the crimes that were committed in this large prison, and which claimed an enormous number of victims from among the citizens of the states of Europe that were under occupation, and foremost among them Jews from a variety of nationalities. This was as part of the systematic Nazi policy that was meant to completely get rid of the Jews by many criminal means, including the use of poisonous gases as an efficient method of mass murder…
There are different versions regarding the number of Jewish victims who died as a result of the Nazi crimes in World War II, and while a number of historians say that the number reaches 6 million, others reduce this number and limit it to hundreds of thousands. Although we are convinced that every person who is murdered having done no wrong is equal to the destruction of all humanity, the argument about the number of victims does not stand up to the test of logic and ethics. And here we must emphasize the following issues:
- The Zionist occupation and settlement state is not the inheritor of the Jews' hardships and their suffering, as it is a state that relies on a racist idea that belittles human life and commits racial discrimination against our Palestinian people for no reason other than their being Palestinian. This idea is what led to the great Palestinian Nakba, and this is a crime from whose consequences our people is still suffering until now. In this, the idea that actually caused the Nakba is in line with the idea that caused the Holocaust, as the ideas of the hangmen overlap in all times and periods, and so too the victims’ suffering is similar, whether they were at Auschwitz or Deir Yassin (see note below –Ed.).
- We know that the official Western regime that deceives history contributes to the theft of the Jews' suffering and its exploitation for the benefit of the Zionist racist regime that the colonialist West established in an attempt to atone for the crime of the 'Holocaust.' However, it added an additional crime to its list of crimes, which is the crime of the Palestinian Nakba, the theft of Palestine from its residents and handing it over to the Zionist movement in order that it would sow destruction and terror in it. Moreover, while the criminal massacre against the Jews in Europe lasted for six years, the Nakba and the Zionist wounds have been continuing against Palestine and its people for decades, and the Western leaders are shamefully silent when it comes to Palestine, while we see them coming one after the other like school students when the settler government asks them to be present at the commemoration of the anniversary of the victims of World War II from 80 years ago…
- Just as courage and justice in World War II meant saving the Jews from the danger of eradication, so today they mean supporting the Palestinian right and rejecting the crimes that the occupation army and its settlers are committing against the Palestinian people. The ‘Antisemites' and the inhumane ones are those who support the policy of the occupation state and defend its crimes…
- Our people was not part of World War II (sic., there were Palestinians such as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin Al-Husseini who collaborated with the Nazis; see note below), so why does it need to bear the consequences of the crimes that Europe committed against its citizens from a variety of races and religions, and particularly against the Jews? Everyone knows that [during] this war Palestine was under British occupation that strove to establish a state for the world's Jews at the expense of our people and on the ruins of our homeland. Our people's efforts at the time were turned to resistance against the Zionist project and limited to the boundaries of historical Palestine, without losing its belonging to humanity and support for the oppressed, whoever they may be."
Deir Yassin - On April 9, 1948, Jewish fighters from the Irgun and Lehi military groups, part of the forces opening the blockaded road to Jerusalem, attacked the Arab village of Deir Yassin. When the battle was over, the village had fallen and in addition to the Arab fighters killed, 107 civilians were also killed. Narratives differ as to whether the civilians were killed in the crossfires or were intentionally murdered by the Irgun and Lehi fighters.
Haj Amin Al-Husseini - the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem at the time of the British Mandate. During World War II he moved to Berlin, where he was a Nazi collaborator and an associate of Hitler. Al-Husseini was on Yugoslavia's list of wanted war criminals, and was responsible for a Muslim SS division that murdered thousands of Serbs and Croats. When the Nazis offered to free some Jewish children, Al-Husseini fought against their release, and as a result, 5000 children were sent to the gas chambers.