PA hijacks Nazi terminology to demonize Israel and Jews
“Israel has repeated Kristallnacht”
Israeli “detention camps have become most similar to the Nazi crematoriums”
As part of the Palestinian Authority’s relentless demonizing of Israel and Jews, it often invokes Nazi era terminology to try to conjure a parallel between the actions of the Nazi’s and the actions of Israel or Jews.
Rewriting the story of the wide scale riots of Israeli Arabs that started on May 10 in the Israeli city of Lod, regular columnist Bassem Bahoum commented:
“Before the eyes of the world Israel has repeated Kristallnacht, the night on which members of the Nazi party in Germany burned and destroyed the Jews’ stores and property, and this was when it let fascist extremist groups destroy the property of Palestinians in Lod, Jaffa, Haifa, and Acre.”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, May 17, 2021]
Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, was a pogrom against Jews carried out by Nazi forces and civilians throughout Germany on the night of November 9-10, 1938. Jewish homes, hospitals and schools were ransacked and demolished. In the course of the riots, 267 synagogues were destroyed and over 7,000 Jewish businesses were damaged or destroyed.
The PA comparison between Kristallnacht and the alleged actions of Israel and Jews, implies that hundreds of mosques or shops belonging to Israeli Arabs were destroyed, ransacked and burned to the ground.
The real statistics, from the start of the Israeli Arab riots on May 10 through May 16, show the opposite. While there were some acts of violence carried out by Israeli-Jews, all of which was condemned by the Israeli government and police, the reality was wide scale violence carried out by Arab Israelis, focused on attacking their Jewish neighbors and their property. Here are some of the statistics:
10 synagogues were wholly or partly burnt. No mosques were burnt.
While Arab rioters used 28 mosques to stockpile rocks and Molotov cocktails, no such similar use was made of synagogues.
While Arab rioters used 22 mosques to direct the violence and the rioters, no such similar use was made of synagogues.
Arab rioters set fire to 112 Jewish homes while 1 Arab home was set ablaze by an Israeli Arab who mistook the target for a Jewish house.
386 Jewish homes were plundered. No Arab homes were plundered.
673 Jewish homes were damaged, while 13 Arab homes were damaged.
849 cars belonging to Jews were set ablaze compared to 13 Arab owned cars.
In 5,018 events Jews were attacked by Arab rioters throwing stones compared to 41 events in which Arabs were attacked by Jewswith stones.
[Walla, Independent Israeli news site, May 16, 2021]
Given the real statistics, it is clear that the PA distorted the events, turning the Jewish victims into aggressors, and the Arab aggressors into victims. Describing widespread Arab Israeli rioting as Israelis/Jews emulating Kristallnacht, is nothing but a despicable libel.
Palestinian Media Watch has documented many similar comparisons, in which the PA equates Israeli actions to Nazi atrocities and Israeli leaders to Nazis, in recent months. In one instance, the Palestinian self-proclaimed “human rights defender” falsely claimed that Israel has turned the city of Hebron into a Nazi style ghetto. In another incident, a host on official Palestinian Authority TV claimed that Israeli Member of Parliament Naftali Bennett, Head of the Yemina party, is doing to the Palestinians what “Eichmann did to the Jews of Austria.” These in addition to scores of additional examples.
Just recently, Fatah Revolutionary Council member and regular columnist for the official PA daily Muwaffaq Matar pushed the libel that “the racist colonialist occupation system’s detention camps have become most similar to the Nazi crematoriums”:
“The racist colonialist occupation system’s detention camps have become most similar to the Nazi crematoriums, even without the smoke of tangible fire. This is because the executioners are attempting to turn our brothers and sons, the prisoners, into dust in the form of man. They are striving to kill the prisoners’ spirit through diseases, psychological torture, the negation of rights, and abuse of their human dignity.”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 18, 2021]
Here again, the PA comparison is an fundamental libel.
A similar comparison of Israel to Nazi criminals was voiced by PLO and Fatah official Hanna Issa. Apparently commenting on the International Criminal Court’s decision to investigate Israel for war crimes, Issa claimed the UN will also try Israelis as Nazi criminals were tried in the Nuremberg trials:
Secretary-General of the PLO Islamic-Christian Council for Jerusalem and the Holy Sites Hanna Issa: “If the international community is serious, the [UN] Security Council will begin to establish a special criminal court to try and punish the Israeli war criminals who committed war crimes against the Palestinian people, and [the process] will conclude with [the court] issuing its decision, as happened in the Nuremberg trials when they tried Hitler (sic.), and the like.”
[Official PA TV, Palestine This Morning, March 29, 2021]
The following is a longer excerpt of the article mentioned above:
Excerpt of an op-ed by Bassem Barhoum, regular columnist for the official PA daily
Headline: “Fascist Israel is standing against an undefeatable people”
“What is new is that the world has begun to clearly see the truth of fascist and racist Israel. It has seen that Israel has become a state that is similar to the fascist states that appeared in Europe in the 1930s. Before the eyes of the world Israel has repeated Kristallnacht, the night on which members of the Nazi party in Germany burned and destroyed the Jews’ stores and property, and this was when it let fascist extremist groups destroy the property of Palestinians in Lod, Jaffa, Haifa, and Acre (sic., while some Jewish violence occurred, it was in response to ongoing violent riots by Israeli Arabs in these cities) to the point that the owners of the Zionist project in the West were heard for the first time saying ‘This is not the Israel that we wanted.’”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, May 17, 2021]
The Nuremberg trials - military tribunals of Nazi war criminals for their part in the Holocaust. The trials were held in Nuremberg, Germany, by the Allied forces following World War II. The most famous of the trials was the International Military Tribunal that ran from Nov. 20, 1945 - Oct. 1, 1946, in which 24 top Nazi leaders were tried of whom 12 were sentenced to death by hanging.
Note that Hitler was not tried in the Nuremberg trials because he committed suicide before World War II ended.
Hanna Issa also serves as Fatah Revolutionary Council member.