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Netanyahu has Nazi genes and imitates Hitler's racism

Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik  |
Official PA daily:
Israeli PM Netanyahu
"imitates Hitler's racism,"
which he acquired "genetically
from the days of the Nazis
and the Aryan race
"

by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
 
Following this PMW report, Israeli PM Netanyahu rebuked the PA for making
Nazi comparisons.
 
Last week, just a few days before International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the official Palestinian Authority daily published an op-ed demonizing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The op-ed claimed that Netanyahu has Nazi genes and uses Hitler-style racism against the Palestinians:

"It is possible that Netanyahu has preserved it [racism] and acquired it genetically from the days of the Nazis and the Aryan race."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 22, 2014]
 
The reason Netanyahu is compared to Hitler is because Netanyahu "is demanding that the Palestinians recognize the Jewishness of the State of Israel," - a "Jewishness," which is racist, the writer states, claiming that even Jews don't "enjoy equal treatment" in Israel:

"Instead of Netanyahu disassociating himself from any act that would remind him of Hitler's racism, he imitates it and wants to replicate it against the people of Palestine, its inhabitants and nation and even against the citizens of the State of Israel themselves!"
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 22, 2014]
 
Last year, after a Palestinian prisoner claimed that Israel's treatment of prisoners "is identical to what the Nazi Germans did to the Jews during the Holocaust," another regular columnist for the official PA daily chose to react to this claim by making the following accusation against Israelis:

"Are you not ashamed, oh tyrants, of what you talk about to this day (i.e., the Holocaust), in order to win the world's sympathy and to extort hundreds of millions of dollars from the Germans specifically and the Europeans in general?" 
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 24, 2013]

As the above examples illustrate, it is not uncommon for the PA to accuse Israel of imitating Holocaust crimes or to claim that Israel uses the Holocaust as a tool for political and financial gain. However, the PA also often expresses admiration for Hitler.

Earlier this year, Palestinian Media Watch reported that the official PA daily published an op-ed that argued that "history is a great lie written by the victors... Had Hitler won, Nazism would be an honor that people would be competing to belong to."

In 2011, the PA-associated educational youth magazine Zayzafuna published an essay from a teenager that presented Hitler as an admirable role model:

"I turned to the next door; there Hitler awaited me. I said, 'You're the one who killed the Jews?'
He [Hitler] said: 'Yes. I killed them so you would all know that they are a nation which spreads destruction all over the world. And what I ask of you is to be resilient and patient, concerning the suffering that Palestine is experiencing at their hands.'
I said [to Hitler]: 'Thanks for the advice.'"
 [Zayzafuna, February 2011] 

Following PMW's exposure of the essay, UNESCO stopped its funding of the magazine.

Recently, the same youth magazine, whose Advisory Board includes PA Deputy Minister of Education Jihad Zakarneh and the Head of the Media Department of the PA Ministry of Education, Abd Al-Hakim Abu Jamous, published a collection of wisdom sayings, which it claimed were said by Hitler, apparently with the purpose of presenting Hitler as a sharp-witted and wise person.

The following is a longer excerpt of the op-ed in the official PA daily, written by regular columnist and Fatah official Yahya Rabah:

"Benjamin Netanyahu, the current Prime Minister of Israel, is trying to create his own political lexicon, which is different than all his predecessors'... And he is demanding that the Palestinians recognize the Jewishness of the State of Israel! I believe that any Palestinian, ordinary as he may be, and any Israeli with any common sense, can ask Netanyahu, as a kind of challenge, what is his definition of the Jewishness of the Israeli state? ... Does Israel really recognize all its Jewish citizens as Jews, like the Falash Mura [Ethiopian] Jews for instance? And do the Arab Jews - Palestinians, Iraqis, Yemenites and Moroccans - enjoy equal treatment in Israel? I believe that when Netanyahu will broach this topic it will give off a very bad odor of racism. It is possible that Netanyahu has preserved it and acquired it genetically from the days of the Nazis and the Aryan race... Instead of Netanyahu disassociating himself from any act that would remind him of Hitler's racism, he imitates it and wants to replicate it against the people of Palestine, its inhabitants and nation and even against the citizens of the State of Israel themselves!"
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 22, 2014]

Excerpt from op-ed by official PA daily columnist Adel Abd Al-Rahman:

"Samer Al-Issawi ended his 227 day long hunger strike in the Israeli occupation's prisons after negotiating an awe-inspiring deal with the prison authorities, who agreed to release hero Samer in eight months...
The extraordinary empty stomach battle, carried out by the DFLP member, is indescribable, since nothing remained of hero Al-Issawi but skin and bones and a head with a mind in it that didn't lose, for even a moment, its memory, identity, [national] belonging and the goals of his battle - so much so that he surprised the court judges two days ago [April 22, 2013] when he exposed his bones and told them: 'My situation is identical to what the Nazi Germans did to the Jews during the Holocaust!' In other words: Are you not ashamed, oh tyrants, of what you talk about to this day (i.e., the Holocaust), in order to win the world's sympathy and to extort hundreds of millions of dollars from the Germans specifically and the Europeans in general?
The empty stomach battle carried out by the prisoners of freedom, specifically Samer Al-Issawi... is valuable help for the struggle for freedom because it reveals the ugly fascist face of the Israeli occupation that went further than Hitler's Nazi Holocaust."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 24, 2013]

Note: Samer Al-Issawi - belonged to the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine DFLP. Was serving a sentence of 26 years in prison for attempted murder by manufacturing and distributing explosives and shooting at civilian vehicles in 2002, but was released in October 2011 as part of the Shalit prisoner exchange deal brokered between the Israeli government and Hamas. In that deal, Israel released 1,027 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who had been held hostage by Hamas for more than 5 years. Al-Issawi was re-arrested in 2012 for violating the conditions of his release. In protest he began a hunger strike. He was released again in December 2013.
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