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Mahmoud Abbas’ “Israel committed 50 holocausts” – is fundamental to PA ideology

Itamar Marcus  |
  • Israelis are “carrying out the Hitleresque Holocaust” - The official PA daily 

  • “Today this fascist [Israeli] government, which is the new Nazis, is the living and recognizable model of the fascist and Nazi thinking of the desire for expansion” - Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub  

  • Israeli prisons for Palestinian terrorists are “Nazi occupation’s bastilles” - Shari'ah Judge Nasser Al-Qirem 

  • “You filled the world with screams about how you are the victims of Nazism… I see you committing against the Palestinians acts of cruelty that are worse than the cruelty of the Nazis” - Palestinian journalist Ziyad Abd Al-Fattah  

  • “This Nazi state, the Nazi occupation state, this oppressive state… this Nazi entity” - PA Director of the Jordan Valley Settlement Portfolio Mutaz Bisharat 

  • “The racist colonialist occupation system’s detention camps have become most similar to the Nazi crematoriums” - The official PA daily 

  • “This is barbarity, this is wildness, this is the new Nazism that we learned about in books on Hitler” - Fatah Revolutionary Council member Omar Al-Haroub 

  • “Israel has repeated Kristallnacht” - The official PA daily 

  • Israel is a “Nazi” state, shares goals with “Nazi Germany and its allies” - The official PA daily 

When Mahmoud Abbas at his joint conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that Israel “committed 50 holocausts” it was not a slip of the tongue from the PA leader. Comparing Israelis to Nazis and Israeli policies to the Holocaust is fundamental to PA/Fatah ideology. 

Not surprisingly, following widespread international condemnation especially in Germany, Abbas backtracked and the PA official news agency WAFA released a statement: “President Mahmoud Abbas reaffirm[s] that the Holocaust is the most heinous crime in modern human history.” [Wafa, English edition, Aug. 17, 2022]

However, Palestinian Media Watch has documented for years the centrality in PA ideology of comparing Israel to Nazis. For example, the PA has said Israeli prisons for terrorists are “similar to the Nazi crematoriums,” and that Israel is worse than the Nazis. 

The following are some recent examples: 

Israel is carrying out “Hitleresque holocaust” against the Palestinians and Arabs 

“All the colonialists who acceded to the Zionist movement’s intimidation are stateless and a mix of ethnic groups from the various states of the world. The supporting pillar that unites them is carrying out the western colonialist conspiracy that the US is leading, and carrying out the Hitleresque holocaust anew against the Palestinian Arab people and the peoples of the Arab world.” 

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Feb. 16, 2022] 

Israel “surpasses German Nazism” 
“We stand against an ultra-fascist ethnic cleansing state… in its crimes it surpasses German Nazism. This is a state that is led by savage highway robbers who are only connected to humanity in their [external] appearance. They are more similar to cannibalistic prehistoric man.”  

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida,  
column by regular columnist Omar Hilmi Al-Ghoul
, Feb. 10, 2022] 

Top Fatah official: Zionism “is the ugly face of Nazism” 
Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub: “The ugly face of Nazism, which is this Zionism and this racist fascist occupation… The time has come for the new Nazis who are working to eliminate the Palestinian people to leave or to be confronted.”  

[Facebook page of Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub and Official PA TV Live, March 18, 2022] 

Top Fatah official to Israel: If you are not “the new Nazis, what are you?” 
Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub
: “The Israelis are looking for words I said, and it is said that I said of the occupation that they are new Nazis - and if not, then what are you? Tell us, explain to us.” 

[Official PA TV Live, March 28, 2022] 

Israel is “reenacting the German Nazi Holocaust in a new way” 
“For 74 years the various governments of Israel have committed ethnic cleansing…  whose supporting pillar is ethnic cleansing and reenacting the German Nazi Holocaust in a new way against the Palestinians.”  

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida,  
column by regular columnist Omar Hilmi Al-Ghoul
, Feb. 22, 2022] 

  Israeli prisons for terrorists are “matching copy of the source of Auschwitz and the death camps.”  
Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub: “[
Israelis are] the new Nazis who are committing acts of terror officially, and whose prisons are a matching copy of the source of Auschwitz and the death camps.”  

[Official PA TV, May 5, 2022]  

Top PA official Rajoub: Israeli government is “the new Nazis” 
Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub:
Today this fascist [Israeli] government, which is the new Nazis, is the living and recognizable model of the fascist and Nazi thinking of the desire for expansion.” 

[Facebook page of Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub,  
Jan. 2, 2022] 

PA Shari'ah Judge compares Israel to Nazis 
Shari'ah Judge Nasser Al-Qirem:
“Where is the [Arab] nation? Why is it not responding to what is happening to the thousands of prisoners and detainees in the Nazi occupation’s bastilles (i.e., prisons)?” 

[Official PA TV, Feb. 11, 2022] 

Palestinian journalists demonize Israel: You are worse than the Nazis

Palestinian journalist Ziyad Abd Al-Fattah: “You filled the world with screams about how you are the victims of Nazism, that they persecuted you all around the world, and so on and so forth… I see you committing against the Palestinians acts of cruelty that are worse than the cruelty of the Nazis.” 

[Official PA TV, 11 Days, Oct. 18, 2021] 

Israel is “committing worse things against the Palestinians” than the Holocaust 

Palestinian journalist Ahmed Issa: “Now the true face of this [Zionist] project is being revealed. When this state was established, the international community identified with it as if it were an answer to the Holocaust, or [as if] it saves the Jews worldwide from massacres. Now it is committing worse things against the Palestinians.” 

[Official PA TV, Personal Encounter, Nov. 12, 2021] 

PA TV: What Eichmann did to the Jews, Israeli MP Bennett is doing to us 

Official PA TV host Nasser Al-Lahham: “This is what Nazism did to the Jews… 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- [Israeli Parliament Member] Naftali Bennett is doing to us, exactly. 

[Official PA TV, From the Israeli Archive, April 6, 2021] 

Israel is a “Nazi entity” according to PA official 
PA Director of the Jordan Valley Settlement Portfolio Mutaz Bisharat:
“This Nazi state, the Nazi occupation state, this oppressive state… this Nazi entity that does not want there to be a Palestinian presence here.” 

[Official PA TV, Reporters in the Field, July 7, 2021] 

Israel is the “new Nazism” says Fatah official 
Fatah Revolutionary Council member Omar Al-Haroub:
“This is barbarity, this is wildness, this is the new Nazism that we learned about in books on Hitler.”  

[Official PA TV, May 18, 2021] 

Israel strives to be like “Nazi Germany and its allies – Mussolini, Franco, and others” 
“[What] the Israeli occupation state – are doing today rests on… ideological principles that express a new Nazi and fascist spirit based on racism … supported by Zionist capitalist forces that strive for what Nazi Germany and its allies – Mussolini, Franco, and others – strove for 76 years ago.” 

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, May 10, 2021] 

“Israel has repeated Kristallnacht” alleges official PA daily 
“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. 

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] 

Israeli “detention camps have become most similar to the Nazi crematoriums” Fatah Revolutionary Council member and regular columnist for the official PA daily Muwaffaq Matar: “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] 

Official PA TV equates Israel to Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa
Official PA TV host:
 “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] 

Then Israeli PM Netanyahu compared to Hitler 

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] 

PA Min. of Justice equates ICC prosecution of Israelis with Nuremberg prosecution of Nazi leaders 

PA Minister of Justice Muhammad Al-Shalaldeh: “The ICC will act according to a legal plan [against Israel], 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]‎ 

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… 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] 

Fatah official: Israel is “carrying out a number of holocausts” 
Fatah Central Committee member, Fatah Commissioner of Mobilization and Organization in the West Bank, and PLO Central Council member Jamal Muhaisen:
"The Israeli government is also carrying out a number of holocausts against the Palestinian people... There is more than one holocaust that is being committed against the Palestinian people.” 

[Official PA TV News, Jan. 21, 2020] 

Jibril Rajoub also serves as Head of the PLO Supreme Council for Youth and Sports, Chairman of the Palestinian Football Association, Chairman of the Palestine Olympic Committee, and Chairman of the Palestinian Scout Association (PSA). 

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