“We want to burn you alive. That is all we are working for” – message from Palestinians who burned swastika/Star of David effigy to Israelis
Palestinians ignite flaming swastika inside Star of David
Palestinian population echoes the PA’s demonization of Israelis as being “like the Nazis”
When challenged, organizers replied: “Yes, we want to burn you (plural -Ed.) alive. That is all we are working for.”
Israeli criticism of Palestinians in the town of Beita who burned an effigy of the Star of David with a Nazi swastika has prompted an outrageous response from the organizers: “You [Israelis] are worse than Hitler and the Nazis … Yes, we want to burn you alive.”
The shocking response came on Facebook page ‘Beita Victory’, which had posted the original pictures of the effigy being made and burned, along with flaming torches carried by supporters, including children.
While the response might seem surprising, it echoes directly the Palestinian Authority’s messages and education. When the PA honors and rewards Palestinian terrorist murderers, as Palestinian Media Watch has documented repeatedly, and Mahmoud Abbas’ advisor tells viewers of official PA TV all the reasons Islam mandates fighting and killing Israelis, it should not be surprising that a Palestinian Facebook page promotes burning Jews alive.
The effigy that was burned, which equated Israel with Nazis, should not be surprising either.
So far this year Palestinian Media Watch has uncovered 16 separate instances of Palestinian official sources comparing Israel to a Nazi state, or accusing Israel of waging a Holocaust against the Palestinians. This amounts to libel against Israel and the Israeli people and is clear incitement to violence against innocent Israelis.
Among them was this cartoon of Benjamin Netanyahu depicted as Hitler:
Netanyahu is Hitler - Fatah cartoon
Headline: “He killed the Palestinians with the weapon of racism!”
Text on cartoon: “Adolf Netanyahu”[Website of the Fatah Commission of Information and Culture, Feb. 16, 2021]
In May, Fatah Revolutionary Council member Omar Al-Haroub claimed on PA TV: Israel is waging ‘the new Nazism’
“This is barbarity, this is wildness, this is the new Nazism that we learned about in books on Hitler – today we are seeing it and we are witness to it in the Palestinian streets from this despicable occupation… The occupation and the Zionist movement are based on killing and crimes.”
[Official PA TV, May 18, 2021]
The current Israeli Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, has also been accused of acting like a Nazi. In April, Official PA TV host Nasser Al-Lahham told viewers:
“This is what Nazism did to the Jews: They wrote to them “Get out!” Now the Jewish terrorist organizations are writing to the Arabs a “price tag,” “get out!” What Hitler did to them - they [the Jews] are doing exactly the same to the Palestinians. What Eichmann did to the Jews in Austria, they’re doing - Naftali Bennett is doing to us, exactly. They have copied the experience.”
[Official PA TV, From the Israeli Archive, April 6, 2021]
The burning of an effigy at Beita followed exactly the PA teaching that Israeli is a Nazi state.
Text and images on the Facebook page ‘Beita Victory’ showed the effigy being built, and later burning, along with a large number of flammable torches for supporters to hold. The aim of the event, according to the Facebook page, was to “harass” Israel:
“The torch unit is improving its abilities to harass [Israel] in a new way currently at Jabal Sbeih (i.e., mountain in the West Bank where the Jewish town of Evyatar is located)”
[Facebook page “Beita victory,” Aug. 14, 2021]
Images of the effigy burning prompted shock from Israelis, among them the Israeli activist Ayelet Lash who posted an image of the burning effigy to Facebook, commenting “They [Arabs] want to burn us alive.”
Beita Victory posted a screenshot of Lash’s post to their page, adding the message:
“Yes, we want to burn you (plural -Ed.) alive. That is all we are working for.”
They added:
It should be noted that the burning of the hexagram (i.e., Star of David) caused a large commotion in the Israeli media.
Thanks to the guardians of the mountain for this idea that shocked their [Zionist] entity.”
[Facebook page “Beita victory,” Aug. 15, 2021]
The following day, Beita Victory bolstered their demonization of Israeli as a Nazi state, posting an image of a child holding a Palestinian flag walking on the Israeli flag, commenting:
“You [Israelis] are worse than Hitler and the Nazis. You have risen in crime beyond any murderer in history.
You act sad about Hitler and do things worse than him.”
[Facebook page “Beita victory,” Aug. 15, 2021]
It is clear from the images at Beita that the constant repetition of the allegation that Israel is a Nazi state which deserves to be overthrown has convinced the Palestinians that it is so, rapidly diminishing any chance of peace between the Israeli and Palestinian people.
Below are the remaining examples of Nazi comparison made by PA and Fatah officials in 2021 so far.
Fatah Official: Israel is a fascist Nazi state
Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub: “This situation requires we [Fatah] take a position and also the international community, which understands the scope of the fascist and Nazi state terror that is being carried out against the Palestinians… We are convinced that the conflict [with Israel] has reached the stage that either the world will give us a solution or we will continue the cycle of blood and killing…
We [Fatah] are the ones who brought about the outbreak of the revolution – us, us, us! … We hope that the international community will pick up on the [emotional] turmoil and the feeling of bitterness that exists among all the Palestinians, who have begun to defy death and prefer death over a life of humiliation, suffering, and hardships under the rule of the neo-Nazis…”
[Facebook page of the Fatah Commission of Information and Culture, May 20, 2021]
Riots in mixed cities were Israel waging a ‘Kristallnacht’ on the Israeli Arabs
“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 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]
Israel is committing a holocaust
“O beloved Palestine, sleep has been stolen from my eyes for a number of days as the lowly ones (i.e., Israelis) bomb with thousands of rockets to harm my people, to kill my children, and to burn the women and the elderly. All the people are being thrown into a holocaust that the stories of history have not spoken about, but we are seeing it before our eyes!”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, official PA daily, May 17, 2021]
PA Ambassador: Israel is a “Nazi” state, Jews “conspired with the Nazis” to create it
What the forces of the populist right-wing and its allies – and foremost among them the Israeli occupation state – are doing today rests on… ideological principles that express a new Nazi and fascist spirit based on racism and national and religious extremism. This is in accordance with false worldviews supported by Zionist capitalist forces that strive for what Nazi Germany and its allies – Mussolini, Franco, and others – strove for 76 years ago, namely the persecution of peoples whose source is not in their alleged race.
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, May 10, 2021]
Official PA daily op-ed: Israeli prisons are just like “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]
PLO official compares Israelis to Nazis:
“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]
Op-ed in official PA daily: Israel is most similar to Nazi Germany
“Approximately 73 years after its foundation, Israel is becoming a state most similar to Nazi Germany, a technologically advanced but ideologically failed state.”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, March 29, 2021]
Official PA TV compares Israel to Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa
Official PA TV host: “Daily acts on the ground, violence by the settlers, ongoing attacks by the occupation – these are different forms of discrimination and inequality, which we sometimes saw in the Nazi regime and also in the apartheid regime in South Africa. Now the occupation state is repeating them and implementing them.”
[Official PA TV, Palestine This Morning, March 22, 2021]
Hebron has been “Judaized” into a “ghetto that is similar to the Nazi period,” activist on PA TV.
Association of Human Rights Defenders member Badi’ Dweik: “The occupation has significantly succeeded in Judaizing a large part of Hebron and turning Hebron into a ghetto. Therefore we must dismantle this ghetto, which is the settlements, and which is similar to the Nazi period…”
[Official Palestinian Authority TV, Mar 1, 2021]
Op-ed in official PA daily: Israel's treatment of Palestinians is worse than the Nazi’s treatment of Jews
“The Palestinians in the Interior (i.e., Palestinian term for Israel) / the 1948 Arabs are those who stayed on the land after the first stage of the occupation of Palestine (i.e., the establishment of the modern State of Israel in 1948), and they are those who experienced ugly treatment and inhumane methods from the occupier that were used against them to expel them from their land and force them to leave. Means more cruel and despicable than what the Nazis did to the Jews were used against them. Therefore, the suffering of the Arabs of the Interior is no less intense than the suffering that their refugee and uprooted brothers dealt with.”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Feb. 11, 2021]
PA Min. of Justice compares ICC prosecution of Israelis with Nuremberg prosecution of Nazi leaders
PA Minister of Justice Muhammad Al-Shalaldeh: “The International [Criminal] Court (ICC) has full authority for judging and extradition. The Israeli settlers, or the Israeli war criminals… There will be a list of names that may begin - We can investigate the [Israeli] prime minister… The ICC will act according to a legal plan, according to the legal measures for extradition and prosecution, and there were experiences with this after World War II: the court in Nuremberg and in Tokyo for prosecuting and punishing the Nazis.”
[Official PA TV, Palestine This Morning, Feb. 7, 2021]
PA TV host: Palestinians welcomed Jews escaping the Nazis, but Jews “betrayed” 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. 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]
Fatah Central Committee Secretary Rajoub: Netanyahu is “the ugly face of Mussolini and Hitler”
Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub: “[After Trump’s election,] the American administration [was] cooperating with the path of the fascist right-wing that is being led by Netanyahu, the ugly face of Mussolini and Hitler… [The Israelis] have exploited the issue of the Holocaust… They were slaughtered in Europe. It was a despicable massacre, and we all oppose it and do not accept it, but we did not do it! Neither we as Arabs nor we as Muslims. What is happening in Palestine is a second holocaust. We are 14 million people who are being eliminated and erased geographically, historically, humanly, religiously, and culturally. The slaughter- of course, in the 21st century [the occupation] can’t do what was done in the 1940s, but what is the difference? … They are the criminals. They are the murderers. They are the lowly ones. They are doing what happened to them to the Palestinians.”
[Facebook page of Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub, Jan. 20, 2021]