PA lies: Palestinians welcomed Jews escaping the Nazis, but Jews “betrayed” them
Immigrant Jews escaping Europe in the 1920s were “a colonialist project wanting to kill the Palestinians”
Official PA TV is currently broadcasting a program called From the Israeli Archive, which discusses history based on parts of an Israeli documentary series from 1981, Pillar of Fire. Palestinian Media Watch has documented that the PA’s program misinterprets - and at times even mistranslates - the original narration so it presents a Palestinian and even an antisemitic perspective.
In a new episode, the PA correctly describes the incitement used by the Nazis to create hatred toward the Jews, such as “Jews are like rats” and “spread diseases, rob the wealth of Germany,” however distorts the Nazi genocide of Jews as merely “the expulsion of the Jews.”
In a description similar to Aesop’s tale The Farmer and the Snake, which teaches that kindness to evil will be met by betrayal, the PA TV narrator claims the Arabs gave the Jews escaping the Nazis “fresh water to drink and fed them oranges,” but were deceived as the Jews “betrayed the hand that was extended to help them”:
Official PA TV host: “How was the expulsion (i.e., the Nazi genocide) of the Jews carried out? German [Nazi] Minister of Propaganda Goebbels, together with Hitler, disseminated that the Jews are like rats: They spread diseases, rob the wealth of Germany, and must be expelled... They reached the land of Palestine hungry, sick, lacking everything, infected with typhus and malaria. We gave them fresh water to drink and fed them oranges, and they betrayed the hand that was extended to help them.”
[Official PA TV, From the Israeli Archive, Feb. 2, 2021]
This portrayal of a generous welcome is a complete distortion of history. In fact, while Jews were fleeing Europe following the rise of the Nazi party in 1933, Arabs regularly attacked and killed Jews in British Palestine, climaxing in an intensive Arab terror campaign from 1936-1939. The Arab terror convinced Britain to cut off almost all Jewish immigration in May 1939 – the infamous British White Paper – in spite of protests such as Liberal British MP James Rothschild who warned in parliament that "for the majority of the Jews who go to Palestine it is a question of migration or of physical extinction." [House of Commons Debates, Volume 347 column 1984] In fact, the British White Paper, brought on by Arab pressure was a death sentence for vast numbers of European Jews.
Later in the PA TV program, the host jumps back in time to the Jewish immigration to Palestine in the1920s again claiming falsely that Jews were welcomed. This likewise is a distortion of events as even at that time Jews in pre-state Israel were subjected to ongoing waves of Arab violence, and Jewish immigrants were not welcomed by the local population. The additional libel is the false assertion that Jews were coming as part of a “colonial project” and with the goal “to kill the Palestinians.”
Official PA TV host: “In Palestine there were only very few Jews who arrived fleeing diseases, hunger, and fear. The people of Palestine welcomed them at the ports of Haifa and Jaffa, and they began to live here. But in 1929 [the Arabs] discovered that they were not people escaping who wanted to find refuge among the Palestinian people, but rather they are a colonialist project that wants to kill the Palestinians.”
[Official PA TV, From the Israeli Archive, Feb. 2, 2021]
Note that although the PA TV host talks about Jews arriving in the ports of Haifa and Jaffa prior to 1929, the port of Haifa only opened in 1933.
The following is from the official PA TV program From the Israeli Archive:
Official PA TV host: “This episode is titled ‘The Expulsion of the Jews from Germany,’ and we saw in previous episodes how they were expelled from Poland, and how they were expelled from Russia, and their expulsion from most of the areas. Germany also had significant influence because it had the second largest Jewish community after they left Russia. Russia had the largest Jewish community in the world. Afterwards America had the largest Jewish community in the world, and now it has the largest Jewish community in the world. Germany had the second largest Jewish community in the world, and now Palestine has the second largest Jewish community in the world.
How was the expulsion (i.e., the Nazi genocide) of the Jews carried out? German [Nazi] Minister of Propaganda Goebbels, together with Hitler, disseminated that the Jews are like rats: They spread diseases, rob the wealth of Germany, and must be expelled. This is the first time that Israel is publishing these testimonies from the archive on how the situation of the Jews was in Germany. And as we said, they reached the land of Palestine hungry, sick, lacking everything, infected with typhus and malaria. We gave them fresh water to drink and fed them oranges, and they betrayed the hand that was extended to help them (sic., Jews in pre-state Israel were subjected to ongoing waves of Arab violence). Let us watch this episode on the situation of the Jews in Germany, after we saw their situation in Poland and how they forced them to drink the water with the pigs there…
In Palestine there were only very few Jews who arrived fleeing diseases, hunger, and fear. The people of Palestine welcomed them at the ports of Haifa and Jaffa, and they began to live here. But in 1929 [the Arabs] discovered that they were not people escaping who wanted to find refuge among the Palestinian people, but rather they are a colonialist project that wants to kill the Palestinians, and of course the ideas of [Zionist leader Ze’ev] Jabotinsky confirm this (sic., Jabotinsky proposed an integrated state with the Arabs). In 1929 the demonstrations began in Hebron and Jerusalem (i.e., the lethal 1929 Arab Riots) and the expulsion of the Jews began, because they came to take control of the land and expel the Arabs from it, and not to seek refuge among them.”
[Official PA TV, From the Israeli Archive, Feb. 2, 2021,
about episode 7 of the Israel Broadcasting Authority documentary “Pillar of Fire”
on the history of Zionism and the establishment of the modern State of Israel]