Palestinians’ Holocaust "has been burning for more than 70 years"; Zionists conspired with the Nazis – op-ed
Excerpt of an op-ed by Muwaffaq Matar, Fatah Revolutionary Council member and regular columnist for the official PA daily
Headline: “The Holocaust and the victim’s victims”
“No free person who is reasonable and fair in his judgment, outlook, and humanitarian principles, would accept the fact that the Palestinian people will be the victim’s victim. This is because Jews of many nationalities had an injustice inflicted on them at the level of the Holocaust, which is a crime against humanity by all standards, and the international community will remain with a mark of disgrace on its forehead if it does not hurry to put out the holocaust that has been burning for more than 70 years and will continue to throw the Palestinians into its furnaces.
The Palestinian people will not agree to be the greatest victim of the conflict between the colonialist forces in World War II, and will not be silent about its consequences being at the expense of [the Palestinian people’s] existence, freedom, independence, and sovereignty…
As a cultured people, we were and still are identifying through our human outlook with the human rights issues of the world without relating to the religion of the oppressor, his race, gender, or nationality.
The Palestinian people was the first to identify with the victims of the racist Nazis and the Holocaust against the Jews of Europe(sic., Palestinian leaders such as Haj Amin Al-Husseini were active Nazi collaborators; see note below). Our people’s principles and the value of humanity obligate condemning the crime of the Holocaust, as it is a crime against humanity and a mark of disgrace on the forehead of its perpetrators. But the international community – which has agreed that the Palestinian people be the next victim since the Jewish problem in Europe was resolved at its [the Palestinian people’s] expense, and it returned to impose its will in the implementation of [UN] partition resolution number 181 (see note below –Ed.) that was issued in 1947 and the implementation of all the resolutions that the UN and the [UN] Security Council have issued regarding the Palestinian cause –will bear on its forehead a second historical mark of disgrace, which in our eyes is more terrible. This is because the goal of ‘the new holocaust’ is to put an end to the existence of the people of Palestine on its historical and natural homeland.
[PA] President of the Palestinian people Mahmoud Abbas… was the first to condemn the Holocaust and reveal the facts of the collaboration between the Zionist movement and the Nazis in this crime in order to achieve larger and more extensive immigration of the persecuted Jews from Europe to Palestine, in his book The Secret Connections Between the Nazis and Zionism (sic., only one agreement was made between the sides – the 1933 Haavara Agreement easing the process for Jews escaping Germany for the Land of Israel)…
Here in Palestine the heirs of the Zionist movement ignited a holocaust against the Palestinian people after the Holocaust plot they ignited with the Nazis in Europe to burn the Jews. However, our struggle for victory, achieving our independence, and realizing peace will extinguish all of these holocausts forever and restore humanity’s true image.”
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.
UN Resolution 181 (the UN partition plan for Palestine) was passed by the UN General Assembly in 1947. It called for the partition of the British Mandate of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem as a separate entity under the rule of a special international body. The Arab state was meant to be comprised of the western Galilee, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, and the remaining territory of the Mandate west of the Jordan River would be the state of Israel - Jordan (known at the time as Transjordan) had already been established in what had been the part of the Mandate that was east of the Jordan River. The resolution was accepted by the Jewish Agency for Palestine, but Arab leaders and governments rejected it, and launched a war to destroy Israel.