- POINT 1: Zionism is the ideological heir of Nazism.
- COUNTERPOINT: Zionism and Nazism are polar opposites. There is no similarity whatsoever between them. Whoever makes this claim exposes a profound ignorance of history.
- Supporting Evidence: Zionism is a movement for national liberation, based on the principle that the Jewish people, like other peoples, are entitled to their own homeland, to self-determination, independence and freedom from oppression.
- Supporting Evidence: Zionism was based on the principles of freedom, equality and human rights. "The State of Israel…will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants, irrespective of creed, race or gender; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture." Israel's Declaration of Independence [1]
- Supporting Evidence: Nazism, in contrast, was the totalitarian system established by Adolf Hitler in Germany between 1933 and 1945. It was based on racial supremacy, militarism and state terrorism, defined by the UN as: "a police state's practices against its own people to dominate through fear by surveillance, disruption of group meetings, control of the news media, beatings, torture, false and mass arrests, false charges and rumors, show trials, killings, summary executions and capital punishment." [2]
- Supporting Evidence: Nazism, in contrast, was based on genocide and the literal extermination of people who did not meet Nazi standards of racial purity and ability. It was especially directed against Jews whom Hitler regarded as the powerful secret source of all the evils facing the modern world. It was based on virulent, genocidal racism--anti-Semitism.
- Supporting Evidence: Zionism is a movement for national liberation, based on the principle that the Jewish people, like other peoples, are entitled to their own homeland, to self-determination, independence and freedom from oppression.
- COUNTERPOINT: The Palestinian national movement and radical Islam are the ideological heirs of Nazism.
- Supporting Evidence: Eminent historians such as Bernard Lewis observe that the anti-Semitism rampant in the Middle East today is as virulent or worse than that of 1930's Germany. [3]
- Supporting Evidence: According to Agence France Presse, Hitler's book, Mein Kampf, which spelled out his political aims and ideology,is printed, sold, and distributed by a Palestinian-Authority-controlled publisher. Before the outbreak of the current Intifada it ranked 6th on Palestinian best sellers' lists.(*) The following are excerpts from the Arab-language translation distributed in the Palestinian-Controlled territories:
"Adolf Hitler does not belong to the German people alone, he is one of the few great men who almost stopped the motion of history, altered its course, and changed the face of the world…. Hitler was a man of ideology who bequeathed an ideological heritage whose decay is inconceivable. This ideological heritage includes politics, society, science, culture, and war as science and culture… This National Socialism did not die with the death of its herald. Rather, its seeds multiplied under each star…"(**)
[4]
- Supporting Evidence: "The Protocols of The Elders of Zion", a Tsarist forgery used by the Nazis as one justification for the Holocaust has "shot to the top of the best-seller list" in the Arab world, particularly Egypt. The Sunday Herald reports that over 1000 copies of the book are sold each week in Cairo alone. [5]
- Supporting Evidence: Television stations throughout the Arab World aired "Horseman without a Horse", a dramatized version of the Tsarist forgery, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" during primetime throughout the month of Ramadan. "The Protocols of The Elders of Zion" was written by the Tsar's secret police to incite riots against Jews, and was used by the Nazis as one justification for the Holocaust. The Egyptian weekly, Roz al'Youssuf reviewed the 30-part series and said the following:
"For the first time, the series' writer courageously tackles the 24 Protocols of the Elders of Zion, revealing them and clarifying that they are the central line that still, to this very day, dominates Israel's policy, political aspirations, and racism…"
[6]
- Supporting Evidence: Supporting Evidence: The Covenant of the terrorist group Hamas, which now commands the support of over 25% of Palestinians, details a plan for Jewish world domination based on "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," the same forgery used by the Nazis to justify the final solution. The charter states explicitly:
"With their money, they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others. With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein. They were behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about, here and there. With their money they formed secret societies, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, the Lions and others in different parts of the world for the purpose of sabotaging societies and achieving Zionist interests. With their money they were able to control imperialistic countries and instigate them to colonize many countries in order to enable them to exploit their resources and spread corruption there.
You may speak as much as you want about regional and world wars. They were behind World War I, when they were able to destroy the Islamic Caliphate, making financial gain and controlling resources. They obtained the Balfour Declaration, formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains by trading in armaments, and paved the way for the establishment of their state. It was they who instigated the replacement of the League of Nations with the United Nations and the Security Council to enable them to rule the world through them. There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it."
[7]
- Supporting Evidence: Hamas' charter calls for the wholesale killing of Jews, quoting the hadith, "The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him." [8]
- Supporting Evidence: Palestinian religious leaders call for the genocide of the Jews and praise Hitler in their sermons. These are broadcast repeatedly on official PA television.
"They [the Jews] must be butchered and killed, as Allah the Almighty said: 'Fight them: Allah will torture them at your hands. Have no mercy on the Jews, no matter where they are, in any country. Fight them, wherever you are. Wherever you meet them, kill them." - Official Palestinian Authority Television broadcast of Sheik Ahmad Halabiya's sermon,2000 (*)
"Have no mercy on the Jews, no matter where they are, in any country. Fight them, wherever you are. Wherever you meet them, kill them. Wherever you are, kill those Jews and those Americans who are like them" - Official Palestinian Authority broadcast of Dr. Ahmad Abu Halabiya, Member of the PA appointed "Futwa Council" and former acting Rector of the Islamic University in Gaza. Sermon given Friday October 13, 2000.(**)
"Oh Allah, annihilate the Jews and their supporters." - Sheikh Ibrahim Madhi, PA-nominated religious leader. Sermon delivered at Gaza City's main Sheikh Ijlin Mosque, and broadcast on Palestinian Authority television. 12 April, 2002.(***)
[9]
- Supporting Evidence: The Arab press praises Hitler's extermination of the Jews.
"Our thanks go the late Hitler who wrought, in advance, the vengeance of the Palestinians upon the most despicable villains on the face of the earth. However, we rebuke Hitler for the fact that the vengeance was insufficient." - Egyptian daily Al-Ahab, April 18, 2001
[10]
- Supporting Evidence: Current Palestinian leaders praise Hajj Amin Al-Husseini, a Nazi war criminal indicted for the murder of tens of thousands of Jews, as their ideological model. Amin Al-Husseini formed the largest division in the third Reich and consulted with Hitler on the extermination of Arab Jewry.(*)
"Our hero Hajj Amin al-Husseini… lived in Cairo, and participated in the 1948 war, and I was one of his troops." - Yasser Arafat, Al Quds, Palestinian Authority daily newspaper. August 2, 2002(**)
[11]
- Supporting Evidence: Eminent historians such as Bernard Lewis observe that the anti-Semitism rampant in the Middle East today is as virulent or worse than that of 1930's Germany. [3]
- COUNTERPOINT: The comparison between Israel and Nazi Germany is ludicrous and offensive. Jews in Nazi Germany were persecuted and systematically exterminated for no crime besides their heritage. Israeli policies towards Palestinians are the result of an ongoing Palestinian terrorist campaign and 80-year goal to destroy Israel and drive out the Jews (according to Palestinian polls, 80% of Palestinians believe the destruction of Israel is the goal of the current Intifada).
- COUNTERPOINT: Zionism and Nazism are polar opposites. There is no similarity whatsoever between them. Whoever makes this claim exposes a profound ignorance of history.
- POINT 2: Israel uses past Jewish suffering to justify its inhumane treatment of the Palestinians.
- POINT 3: Zionists manufactured tragedies like the "Holocaust" to justify their occupation of Palestinian lands.
- COUNTERPOINT: It is morally despicable to claim that Zionists "manufactured" the Holocaust in which 6 million Jews were exterminated. The small group of Holocaust deniers has been legally censured in England and France for such distortions of the historical record.
- Supporting Evidence: "David Irving, a British Holocaust denier, sued American professor Deborah Lipstadt and her British publisher, Penguin Books, for libel in a 2000 London trial that made headlines around the world. Despite England's draconian libel laws, Lipstadt and Penguin not only won resoundingly, but also exposed the inner workings of the deniers, who distort 20th century history in order to promote 21st century antisemitism and white supremacy. …[T]he judge's historic opinion…found Irving to be a "right-wing pro-Nazi polemicist" who "deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence." [12]
- Supporting Evidence: "On February 27, 1998, a French court found 84-year-old [Roger] Garaudy guilty of violating a law that prohibits the questioning of crimes "against humanity." Also convicted for "racial defamation," he was fined 240,000 francs (roughly $40,000). These judgments stemmed from claims made in his 1995 book The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics, in which he denied that the Holocaust occurred, saying that Jews under Nazi control died of starvation and disease, not poison gas…Significantly, Garaudy, a convert to Islam, received support during the trial from anti-Semitic Muslims in the Middle East." [13]
- Supporting Evidence: "David Irving, a British Holocaust denier, sued American professor Deborah Lipstadt and her British publisher, Penguin Books, for libel in a 2000 London trial that made headlines around the world. Despite England's draconian libel laws, Lipstadt and Penguin not only won resoundingly, but also exposed the inner workings of the deniers, who distort 20th century history in order to promote 21st century antisemitism and white supremacy. …[T]he judge's historic opinion…found Irving to be a "right-wing pro-Nazi polemicist" who "deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence." [12]
- COUNTERPOINT: The claim that the Zionists 'manufactured' the Holocaust defies reality, common sense and morality. Non-Jews who lived through the Holocaust charge that these denials substitute fiction for history and border on insanity.
- Supporting Evidence: "We are surrounded today by fictions about the past, contrary to common sense and to an elementary perception of good and evil. As "The Los Angeles Times" recently stated, the number of books in various languages which deny that the Holocaust ever took place, that it was invented by Jewish propaganda, has exceeded one hundred. If such an insanity is possible, is a complete loss of memory as a permanent state of mind improbable? And would it not present a danger more grave than genetic engineering or poisoning of the natural environment? ,,,,,For the poet of the "other Europe" the events embraced by the name of the Holocaust are a reality, so close in time that he cannot hope to liberate himself from their remembrance….He feels anxiety, for he senses in this a foreboding of a not distant future when history will be reduced to what appears on television, while the truth, as it is too complicated, will be buried in the archives, if not totally annihilated." Lithuanian poet Czeslaw Milosz, Nobel Laureate Acceptance Speech, December 8 1980 [14]
- Supporting Evidence: "We are surrounded today by fictions about the past, contrary to common sense and to an elementary perception of good and evil. As "The Los Angeles Times" recently stated, the number of books in various languages which deny that the Holocaust ever took place, that it was invented by Jewish propaganda, has exceeded one hundred. If such an insanity is possible, is a complete loss of memory as a permanent state of mind improbable? And would it not present a danger more grave than genetic engineering or poisoning of the natural environment? ,,,,,For the poet of the "other Europe" the events embraced by the name of the Holocaust are a reality, so close in time that he cannot hope to liberate himself from their remembrance….He feels anxiety, for he senses in this a foreboding of a not distant future when history will be reduced to what appears on television, while the truth, as it is too complicated, will be buried in the archives, if not totally annihilated." Lithuanian poet Czeslaw Milosz, Nobel Laureate Acceptance Speech, December 8 1980 [14]
- COUNTERPOINT: The Holocaust had nothing to do with the world community's commitment to restoring the Jewish homeland in Palestine. The Balfour Declaration was issued twenty-four years BEFORE the Holocaust began and the Palestine Mandate was established 20 years BEFORE the Holocaust began. twenty-four years after the Balfour Declaration and twenty years after the establishment of the Palestine Mandate
- Supporting Evidence: The Balfour Declaration was issued in 1917; the League of Nations Palestine Mandate, committed to reconstituting the Jewish homeland, in 1920, twenty years before the rise of Nazism, WWII and the Holocaust.
- Question: Please explain to this audience, some of which is Jewish, why you need to deny the murder of members of their families in order to promote your national goals.
- Supporting Evidence: The Balfour Declaration was issued in 1917; the League of Nations Palestine Mandate, committed to reconstituting the Jewish homeland, in 1920, twenty years before the rise of Nazism, WWII and the Holocaust.
- COUNTERPOINT: It is morally despicable to claim that Zionists "manufactured" the Holocaust in which 6 million Jews were exterminated. The small group of Holocaust deniers has been legally censured in England and France for such distortions of the historical record.
- POINT 4: Zionists collaborated with the Nazis to drive Jews out of Europe and arouse the sympathy of the West.
- COUNTERPOINT: Zionist Jews did not collaborate with the Nazis. Nazis exterminated Zionist and non-Zionist Jews. The Nazis were opposed to the idea of a Jewish State. Their preference was the elimination of Jews altogether. The Arab leadership collaborated with the Nazis.
- Supporting Evidence: "Germany stood for uncompromising war against the Jews. That naturally included active opposition to the Jewish national home in Palestine....Germany would furnish positive and practical aid to the Arabs involved in the same struggle....Germany's objective [is]...solely the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere....In that hour the Mufti would be the most authoritative spokesman for the Arab world. The Mufti thanked Hitler profusely." - Record of the Conversation Between the Fuhrer and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem on November 28, 1941. [15]
- Supporting Evidence: "Germany is consequently ready to give all her support to the oppressed Arab countries in their fight against British domination, for the fulfillment of their national aim to independence and sovereignty and for the destruction of the Jewish National Home in Palestine." - Joachim Von Ribbentrop, Foreign Minister of Nazi Germany. Letter to Hajj Amin Al-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. April 28, 1942. [16]
- Supporting Evidence: "The National Socialist Movement of Greater Germany has, since its begining, inscribed upon its flag the fight against world Jewry. It has, therefore, followed with particular sympathy the struggle of the freedom-loving Arabians, especially in Palestine, against the Jewish interlopers. It is in the recognition of this enemy and of the common struggle against him that lies the firm foundation of the natural alliance that exists between National-Socialist-Greater Germany and the freedom-loving Moslems of the whole world." - Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer-SS appointed by Hitler to implement the extermination of European Jews. Letter to Hajj Amin Al-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. November 2, 1943. [17]
- Supporting Evidence: "Himmler issued a prohibition in respect of cases in the future, that no Jew should be permitted to emigrate to Palestine from territories under German control… Palestine was the only country which could be considered for the absorption of a greater number of Jewish women and children." - Dieter Wisliceny, Nazi SS officer, deputy to Adolf Eichmann, 26 July 1926.. Note presented at the Eichmann trial. [18]
- Supporting Evidence: "Germany stood for uncompromising war against the Jews. That naturally included active opposition to the Jewish national home in Palestine....Germany would furnish positive and practical aid to the Arabs involved in the same struggle....Germany's objective [is]...solely the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere....In that hour the Mufti would be the most authoritative spokesman for the Arab world. The Mufti thanked Hitler profusely." - Record of the Conversation Between the Fuhrer and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem on November 28, 1941. [15]
- COUNTERPOINT: Palestinian Arab leadership was involved in the Nazi Holocaust against Jews and became allies of Nazi Germany. The Mufti of Jerusalem, the Palestinian Arabs' leader, was a Nazi collaborator who assisted in the liquidation of Croatia and Hungary's Jews. He was funded by the Nazi government to extend the Holocaust to the Middle East and succeeded in massacring hundreds of Jews. Yasser Arafat was the Mufti's protégé, and under the Mufti's tutelage, received training from a nazi commando.
- Supporting Evidence: "The Mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and had been a collaborator and adviser of Eichmann and Himmler in the execution of this plan. ... He was one of Eichmann's best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures. I heard him say, accompanied by Eichmann, he had visited incognito the gas chamber of Auschwitz." - Dieter Wisliceny, Nazi SS officer, deputy to Adolf Eichmann, 26 July 1946. [19]
- Supporting Evidence: Haj Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti or supreme religious leader of Jerusalem and the former President of the Supreme Moslem Council of Palestine pledged, "To solve the question of the Jewish elements in Palestine and in other Arab countries as required by national interests, and in the same way as the Jewish question in the Axis lands is being solved." In 1944 in a radio broadcast from Berlin the Mufti exhorted Arabs to, "Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history, and religion." [20]
- Supporting Evidence: Haj Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti or supreme religious leader of Jerusalem and the former President of the Supreme Moslem Council of Palestine organized "Nazi Scouts" based on "Hitler Youth."(*) In 1936, the Mufti led orchestrated violence against the British and the Jews, killing 2,394 Jews and 610 of the British.(**) Jews and other political opponents. The Nazi regime in Germany and the Italian fascists supported the violence, sending "millions of dollars to the mufti."(***)In addition, the Mufti worked strenuously to prevent European immigration to Palestine, preventingJews from escaping the impending terror against them.(****) Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the "Final Solution", visited him in Palestine in September 1937 and they worked together throughout the war years.(*****) [21]
- Supporting Evidence: The Mufti visited Auschwitz and hoped to bring a similar method to the Middle East. In his memoirs, Husseini wrote, "Our fundamental condition for cooperating with Germany was a free hand to eradicate every last Jew from Jerusalem and the Arab world. I asked Hitler for an explicit undertaking to allow us to solve the Jewish problem in a manner befitting our national and racial aspirations and according to the scientific methods innovated by Germany in the handling of its Jews. The answer I got was: 'The Jews are yours.' [22]
- Supporting Evidence: In 1945, Yugoslavia sought to indict the Mufti as a war criminal for his role in recruiting 20,000 Muslim volunteers for the SS, who participated in the killing of Jews in Croatia and Hungary. He escaped from French detention in 1946, however, and continued his fight against the Jews from Cairo and later Beirut. He died in 1974. Fearful that increased Jewish immigration to Palestine would damage Arab standing in the area, the mufti engineered the bloody riots against Jewish settlement in 1929 and 1936. [23]
- Supporting Evidence: "I tried, upon the initiative of a group of the Joint from Bratislava, to influence Eichmann and Himmler to prevent the extermination of the Jews of Europe. One plan was the rescue of Jewish children, whose emigration to Palestine was to be carried out via Romania. Eichmann, with the approval of Himmler, gave an order to bring about ten thousand Jewish children from Poland to Theresienstadt… the Grand Mufti… protested vigorously to Himmler, using the argument that these Jewish children would, within a few years become adults and would strengthen the Jewish elements in Palestine. Following this, Himmler [as he told me] forbade the whole operation and even issued a prohibition in respect of cases in the future, that no Jew should be permitted to emigrate to Palestine from territories under German control….In this way any chance of reaching a compromise on the question of the Jews in Hungary came to nought, since Palestine was the only country which could be considered for the absorption of a greater number of Jewish women and children." - Dieter Wisliceny, Nazi SS officer, deputy to Adolf Eichmann, 26 July 1926. [24]
- Supporting Evidence: "The mufti barely escaped trial for treason by fleeing to Egypt in 1946. There he made young Yasser Arafat, then living in Cairo, his protege. The mufti secretly imported a former Nazi commando officer into Egypt to teach Mr. Arafat and other teenage recruits the fine points of guerrilla warfare. Mr. Arafat learned his lessons well; the mufti was so proud of him he even pretended the two of them were blood relations." -- Washington Times [25]
- Supporting Evidence: "The Mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and had been a collaborator and adviser of Eichmann and Himmler in the execution of this plan. ... He was one of Eichmann's best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures. I heard him say, accompanied by Eichmann, he had visited incognito the gas chamber of Auschwitz." - Dieter Wisliceny, Nazi SS officer, deputy to Adolf Eichmann, 26 July 1946. [19]
- COUNTERPOINT: Zionist Jews did not collaborate with the Nazis. Nazis exterminated Zionist and non-Zionist Jews. The Nazis were opposed to the idea of a Jewish State. Their preference was the elimination of Jews altogether. The Arab leadership collaborated with the Nazis.
- POINT 5: The Naqba and the Holocaust are similar because both are seminal events in the consciousness of each people.
- COUNTERPOINT: The Naqba and the Holocaust are not remotely comparable. To draw a parallel between them is a distortion of history and morally repugnant.
- Supporting Evidence: The Naqba probably is the seminal event in Palestinian identity since Palestinian national consciousness began to form only after 1920, largely in opposition to Zionism. There had never been a Palestinian Arab nation or distinct Palestinian people before that time. In contrast, the seminal events in Jewish history date back to Biblical times and Jewish history continued, uninterrupted, for the next 3000 years. The Holocaust was one of the most tragic events in Jewish history-but so were the Jewish defeats and expulsions by the Babylonians, the Romans and Christian Spain.
- Supporting Evidence: Palestinians were not helpless victims of the Naqba. They chose to go to war and mounted a full-scale military attack against the Jews. In contrast, the Jews of Europe never armed and initiated hostilities against Germany or any other European nation. They were a small religious minority. The German Reich adopted a policy of exterminating every Jewish man, woman and child in Europe.
- Supporting Evidence: Palestinians were not defenseless victims. They were surrounded by friendly nations who took up arms in 1948 for their cause and who offered them sanctuary. In contrast, Jews were not surrounded by friendly nations that gave them refuge, or suppied them with armies and arms to defend themselves. The Jews literally were abandoned by the world.
- Supporting Evidence: Palestinian refugees have suffered, but to draw a parallel between them - losing their homes, not being allowed to resettle in neighboring Arab states and the indignities that caused - and Holocaust victims is absurd and repugnant. During the Holocaust, Jews had no options. While Palestinian Arabs could have stayed in Israel, as 150,000 of them did, and become citizens of the Jewish state, Jews had no recourse. They did not just lose their homes. They were dispossessed, enslaved, tortured and 6 million were slaughtered, 2/3 of European Jewry.
- Supporting Evidence: Palestinians are not helpless victims of the Jews. They have been organized and have had the support of Arab nations since the 1920's. They could have had a state many times-in 1937, 1947, 1979, 2000, but each time, their leaders rejected compromise and partition, and instead gambled and chose war or violence to dismantle the Jewish state and claim all of Palestine. Each time, they have been defeated in wars they began. Jews were never hostile to Germany. They were an integral minority in German society.
- Supporting Evidence: The Naqba probably is the seminal event in Palestinian identity since Palestinian national consciousness began to form only after 1920, largely in opposition to Zionism. There had never been a Palestinian Arab nation or distinct Palestinian people before that time. In contrast, the seminal events in Jewish history date back to Biblical times and Jewish history continued, uninterrupted, for the next 3000 years. The Holocaust was one of the most tragic events in Jewish history-but so were the Jewish defeats and expulsions by the Babylonians, the Romans and Christian Spain.
- COUNTERPOINT: The Naqba and the Holocaust are not remotely comparable. To draw a parallel between them is a distortion of history and morally repugnant.
- POINT 6: Palestinians were not responsible for the supposed suffering of Jews in Europe. Jews flourished as a protected people under Muslim rule in Arab lands. Arabs should not have to bear the cost of compensating the Jews for what happened to them in Europe.
- COUNTERPOINT: Arabs have not had to pay any price for Jewish suffering in Europe. In the post-World Wars I and II settlements, Arab Muslims got independent nations that covered 99.998% of the Middle East. Minorities like the Kurds and Maronite Christians did not get any independent sovereign states.
- Supporting Evidence: British officials "saw no incompatibility between furthering both Zionist and Arab aspirations. The Jews, they reasoned, would receive only a small slice of the former Ottoman domains, Palestine; the Arabs would not mind, as they would be receiving the vast reaches of Arabia and Greater Syria (including parts of Mesopotamia)." Historian Benny Morris [26]
- Supporting Evidence: "No race [the Arabs] has done better [in the post war settlements] out of the fidelity with which the Allies redeemed their promises….Owing to the tremendous sacrifices of the Allied Nations…the Arabs have already won independence in Iraq, Arabia, Syria, and Trans-Jordania, although most of the Arab races fought throughout the war for the Turkish oppressors….The Palestinian Arabs [in particular] fought for Turkish rule." Prime Minister Lloyd George [27]
- Supporting Evidence: "Remember another thing: the Arab people gained a large slice of the planet. Not thanks to its skills or its great virtues, but because it conquered and murdered and forced those it conquered to convert during many generations. But in the end the Arabs have 22 states. The Jewish people did not have even one state. There was no reason in the world why it should not have one state." Historian Benny Morris January 2004 [28]
- Supporting Evidence: British officials "saw no incompatibility between furthering both Zionist and Arab aspirations. The Jews, they reasoned, would receive only a small slice of the former Ottoman domains, Palestine; the Arabs would not mind, as they would be receiving the vast reaches of Arabia and Greater Syria (including parts of Mesopotamia)." Historian Benny Morris [26]
- COUNTERPOINT: Arabs in the Palestine Mandate did not have to pay a price or give up their homeland because of Jewish suffering.. To the contrary, for the first time in their history, they were given the opportunity to create a state in 1948. They rejected this offer.
- Supporting Evidence: "Palestine within its present borders, following a transitional period of two years from I September 1947, shall be constituted into an independent Arab State, an independent Jewish State, and the City of Jerusalem…." UNSCOP Report 1947 Part A # 1 [29]
- Supporting Evidence: "The Arabs rejected the United Nations Partition Plan so that any comment of theirs did not specifically concern the status of the Arab section of Palestine under partition but rather rejected the scheme in its entirety." ….." UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine, Secretariat General Report, July 30, 1949. [30]
- Supporting Evidence: "Palestine within its present borders, following a transitional period of two years from I September 1947, shall be constituted into an independent Arab State, an independent Jewish State, and the City of Jerusalem…." UNSCOP Report 1947 Part A # 1 [29]
- COUNTERPOINT: The claim that Jews flourished under Muslim rule is rather like a Southern plantation owner claiming that blacks and whites got along just fine until the Civil War came and slavery ended. In fact, Jews were third-class citizens, officially known as "dhimmis" in a system similar to apartheid, throughout Muslim lands. They were an often brutally oppressed minority for centuries until, with the coming of Zionism, they began to assert their rights.
- Supporting Evidence: "A non-Muslim in an Islamic state is required to pay jaziya, which in the Koranic language is a Humiliation Tax. In fact, the life of an unbeliever is a series of humiliations in a Muslim country….Since it is the Islamic way of life which requires an unbeliever to yield way to the Muslim when they happen to be walking on the same path, it can be safely called the forerunner of the South African apartheid." Anwar Shaikh (Muslim reformer) [31]
- Supporting Evidence: "The dhimmi were forbidden to strike a Muslim, carry arms, ride horses, build new houses of worship or repair old ones and they had to wear distinctive clothing." Historian Benny Morris [32]
- Supporting Evidence: "Mass violence against Jews, akin to the pogroms in Western Europe were rare but they did occur. In 1066 nearly 3000 Jews were massacred in Granada, Spain. In Fez, Morocco, some 6000 Jews were murdered in 1033, an massacres took place again in 1276 and 1465. There were massacres in…Persia in 1839 and 1867 and in Baghdad in 1828. The Jewish quarter of Fez was almost destroyed in 1912 by a Muslim mob." Historian Benny Morris [33]
- Supporting Evidence: "God has cast us into the midst of this people, the nation of Ishmael, who persecute us severely, and who devise ways to harm us and debase us…None has matched [them] in debasing and humiliating us…" Maimonides, Jewish sage, 12th century, during the reputedly Golden Age of Jewish Muslim relations [34]
- Supporting Evidence: "The Arabs often wrong the Jews publicly. But if the Arab is a respectable man, he will cause no injury….We may not raise a hand against a Turk, nor against an Arab…If one of them gives a Jew a blow, the Jew goes away cowering and does not dare open his mouth lest he receive worse blows. That is the way the Sephardis behave, who have become accustomed to the situation. But the Ashkenazi Jews, for whom it is not customary…" do not. "The Christians also must suffer such indignities. If a Jew makes a Turk angry, then latter beats him shamefully and dreadfully with his shoe, and nobody delivers the Jew from his hand. Nor is it otherwise with the Christians." Gedaliah, Polish Jewish immigrant to Palestine, 1716 [35]
- Supporting Evidence: "I never saw the curse denounced against the children of Israel more fully brought to bear than in the East….Where they are considered rather as a link between animals and human beings, than as men possessed of the same attributes, warmed by the same sun, chilled by the same breeze, subject to the same feelings, and impulses, and joys, and sorrows, as their fellow-mortals." Julia Pardoe, 1836 [36]
- Supporting Evidence: "The attitude of the Muslims toward the Christians and the Jews is that of a master towards slaves, whom he treats with a certain lordly tolerance so long as they keep their place. Any sign of pretension to equality is promptly repressed," H.E.W. Young, British Vice Consul in Mosul 1909 [37]
- Supporting Evidence: " In 1884, the Sultan of Morocco said Jews had to work on Shabbat, could only "clean foul places and latrines," had to part with merchandise at half-price and accept counterfeit coinage, to name a few of the provisions. [38]
- Supporting Evidence: "A non-Muslim in an Islamic state is required to pay jaziya, which in the Koranic language is a Humiliation Tax. In fact, the life of an unbeliever is a series of humiliations in a Muslim country….Since it is the Islamic way of life which requires an unbeliever to yield way to the Muslim when they happen to be walking on the same path, it can be safely called the forerunner of the South African apartheid." Anwar Shaikh (Muslim reformer) [31]
- COUNTERPOINT: Jews received the same abuse for centuries in Palestine, up to the time the Zionists began to come in 1881.
- Supporting Evidence: "The Muslim Arabs hate [the Jews] perhaps less than they hate all other non-Muslims, but they despise them as they do not despise any other creature…in the world." Eliezer Ben Ben-Yehuda
- Supporting Evidence: "[I]t is not without reason that the poor Jew, even in the 19th century, lives from day to day in terror of his life," a British official wrote after Muslim zealots mercilessly attacked, raped and sacked property of Jews in Jerusalem and Jews in [Safed] were massacred in 1834. [39]
- Supporting Evidence: "The Jews of Palestine were designated as inferior (in law as well as custom), segregated by appearance and residence, subject to discrimination and abuse, and liable to sporadic and not infrequent violence. Lynching-that is, group assault--…happened often enough and then with impunity, to constitute an immanent, imminent menace," Historian David. S. Landes. [40]
- Supporting Evidence: "There were rules: Jews had to pass Muslims on their left side, because that was the side of Satan. They had to yield the right of way, step off the pavement to let the Arab go by, above all make sure not to touch him in passing, because this could provoke a violent response….any demonstration of alternative forms of worship, had to be avoided so synagogues were placed in humble hidden places, and the sounds of Jewish prayer carefully muted." Historian David Landes [41]
- Supporting Evidence: "Like the miserable dog without an owner he [the Jew] is kicked by one because he crosses his path, and cuffed by another because he cries out-to seek redress he is afraid, lest it bring worse upon him; he thinks it better to endure than to live in the expectation of his complain being revenged upon him." Consul William T. Young to Colonel Patrick Campbell, May 25, 1839 [42]
- Supporting Evidence: In Libya, then known as Tripolitania, Jews were considered as property of their Arab masters, who would bequeath the Jews to their heirs upon death. Writing in 19th century Syria, one Jew lamented, "When a Jew walked among them [the Muslims] in the market, one would throw a stone at him in order to kill him, another would pull his beard, yet another spit on his face He became the symbol of abuse." In 1884, the Sultan of Morocco said Jews had to work on Shabbat, could only "clean foul places and latrines," had to part with merchandise at half-price and accept counterfeit coinage, to name a few of the provisions. - Middle East Digest - September 1999. [43]
- Supporting Evidence: "The Muslim Arabs hate [the Jews] perhaps less than they hate all other non-Muslims, but they despise them as they do not despise any other creature…in the world." Eliezer Ben Ben-Yehuda
- COUNTERPOINT: Arabs committed massacres and ethnic cleansing of Jews in Palestine well before the establishment of the State of Israel.
- Supporting Evidence: In 1834: "Anti-Jewish violence reached its height during the rebellion of the Arab farm workers that broke out in 1834 against the rule of Muhammed Ali. In the course of these riots, the rebels also attacked the Jews living in major cities. Over a period of several weeks, they rampaged against the Jews of Safed, looting their property, destroying their homes, desecrating their synagogues and study houses, and raping, beating, and in many cases killing Jews." Historian Arie Morgenstern [44]
- Supporting Evidence: Arab riots, began in 1919, almost 30 years before the establishment of the state of Israel, were aimed at stopping Jewish immigration to the Palestinian mandate and at persuading the current Jewish residents to leave. One riot in 1929 killed 135 Jews, wounded 350, and forced more than 700 Jews to flee their homes in Hebron. The Arab riots of 1936-1939 killed 547 Jews and 494 Arab opponents of the Mufti. - The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Middle East Conflict, p 107-109 [45]
- Supporting Evidence: In 1834: "Anti-Jewish violence reached its height during the rebellion of the Arab farm workers that broke out in 1834 against the rule of Muhammed Ali. In the course of these riots, the rebels also attacked the Jews living in major cities. Over a period of several weeks, they rampaged against the Jews of Safed, looting their property, destroying their homes, desecrating their synagogues and study houses, and raping, beating, and in many cases killing Jews." Historian Arie Morgenstern [44]
- COUNTERPOINT: Palestinian Arab leadership was involved in the Nazi Holocaust against Jews and became allies of Nazi Germany. The Mufti of Jerusalem, the Palestinian Arabs' leader, was a Nazi collaborator who assisted in the liquidation of Croatia and Hungary's Jews. (http://www.chuckmorse.com/arab_nazi_connection.html) He was funded by the Nazi government to extend the Holocaust to the Middle East and succeeded in massacring hundreds of Jews. Yasser Arafat was the Mufti's protégé, and under the Mufti's tutelage, received training from a nazi commando.
- Supporting Evidence: Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Jews were killed in Europe because the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the political and religious leader of the Arabs in the Palestinian Mandate, lobbied the Nazis not to allow them to emigrate. "I tried, upon the initiative of a group of the Joint from Bratislava, to influence Eichmann and Himmler to prevent the extermination of the Jews of Europe. One plan was the rescue of Jewish children, whose emigration to Palestine was to be carried out via Romania. Eichmann, with the approval of Himmler, gave an order to bring about ten thousand Jewish children from Poland to Theresienstadt… the Grand Mufti… protested vigorously to Himmler, using the argument that these Jewish children would, within a few years become adults and would strengthen the Jewish elements in Palestine. Following this, Himmler [as he told me] forbade the whole operation and even issued a prohibition in respect of cases in the future, that no Jew should be permitted to emigrate to Palestine from territories under German control….In this way any chance of reaching a compromise on the question of the Jews in Hungary came to nought, since Palestine was the only country which could be considered for the absorption of a greater number of Jewish women and children." - Dieter Wisliceny, Nazi SS officer, deputy to Adolf Eichmann, 26 July 1946. [46]
- Supporting Evidence: "The Mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and had been a collaborator and adviser of Eichmann and Himmler in the execution of this plan. ... He was one of Eichmann's best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures. I heard him say, accompanied by Eichmann, he had visited incognito the gas chamber of Auschwitz." - Dieter Wisliceny, Nazi SS officer, deputy to Adolf Eichmann, 26 July 1926. [47]
- Supporting Evidence: Haj Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti or supreme religious leader of Jerusalem and the former President of the Supreme Moslem Council of Palestine pledged, "To solve the question of the Jewish elements in Palestine and in other Arab countries as required by national interests, and in the same way as the Jewish question in the Axis lands is being solved." In 1944 in a radio broadcast from Berlin the Mufti exhorted Arabs to, "Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history, and religion." [48]
- Supporting Evidence: Haj Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti or supreme religious leader of Jerusalem and the former President of the Supreme Moslem Council of Palestine organized "Nazi Scouts" based on "Hitler Youth." In 1936, the Mufti led orchestrated violence against Jews killing over 1000 Jews and other political opponents. The Nazi regime in Germany and the Italian fascists supported the violence, sending millions of dollars." In addition, the Mufti worked strenuously to prevent European immigration to Palestine so Jews could escape the impending terror against them. Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the "Final Solution", visited him in Palestine and they worked together.
- Supporting Evidence: The Mufti visited Auschwitz and hoped to bring a similar method to the Middle East. In his memoirs, Husseini wrote, "Our fundamental condition for cooperating with Germany was a free hand to eradicate every last Jew from Jerusalem and the Arab world. I asked Hitler for an explicit undertaking to allow us to solve the Jewish problem in a manner befitting our national and racial aspirations and according to the scientific methods innovated by Germany in the handling of its Jews. The answer I got was: 'The Jews are yours.' [49]
- Supporting Evidence: In 1945, Yugoslavia sought to indict the Mufti as a war criminal for his role in recruiting 20,000 Muslim volunteers for the SS, who participated in the killing of Jews in Croatia and Hungary. He escaped from French detention in 1946, however, and continued his fight against the Jews from Cairo and later Beirut. He died in 1974. Fearful that increased Jewish immigration to Palestine would damage Arab standing in the area, the mufti engineered the bloody riots against Jewish settlement in 1929 and 1936. [50]
- Supporting Evidence: "The mufti barely escaped trial for treason by fleeing to Egypt in 1946. There he made young Yasser Arafat, then living in Cairo, his protege. The mufti secretly imported a former Nazi commando officer into Egypt to teach Mr. Arafat and other teenage recruits the fine points of guerrilla warfare. Mr. Arafat learned his lessons well; the mufti was so proud of him he even pretended the two of them were blood relations." -- Washington Times [51]
- Supporting Evidence: Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Jews were killed in Europe because the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the political and religious leader of the Arabs in the Palestinian Mandate, lobbied the Nazis not to allow them to emigrate. "I tried, upon the initiative of a group of the Joint from Bratislava, to influence Eichmann and Himmler to prevent the extermination of the Jews of Europe. One plan was the rescue of Jewish children, whose emigration to Palestine was to be carried out via Romania. Eichmann, with the approval of Himmler, gave an order to bring about ten thousand Jewish children from Poland to Theresienstadt… the Grand Mufti… protested vigorously to Himmler, using the argument that these Jewish children would, within a few years become adults and would strengthen the Jewish elements in Palestine. Following this, Himmler [as he told me] forbade the whole operation and even issued a prohibition in respect of cases in the future, that no Jew should be permitted to emigrate to Palestine from territories under German control….In this way any chance of reaching a compromise on the question of the Jews in Hungary came to nought, since Palestine was the only country which could be considered for the absorption of a greater number of Jewish women and children." - Dieter Wisliceny, Nazi SS officer, deputy to Adolf Eichmann, 26 July 1946. [46]
- COUNTERPOINT: There is a long tradition of contempt and humiliation for non-Muslims, especially Jews, in Islamic society, a blatant racism typical of apartheid. It is the main reason Arabs could not tolerate Jewish sovereignty in any part of Palestine.
- Supporting Evidence: "Palestinian leaders and preachers, guided by history and religion, have traditionally seen the Jews as an inferior race whose proper place was as an abased minority in a Muslim polity; and the present situation, with an Arab under Jewish rule, is regarded as a perversion of nature and divine will." - Benny Morris in The New Republic, 4/11/03. [52]
- Supporting Evidence: "Palestinian leaders and preachers, guided by history and religion, have traditionally seen the Jews as an inferior race whose proper place was as an abased minority in a Muslim polity; and the present situation, with an Arab under Jewish rule, is regarded as a perversion of nature and divine will." - Benny Morris in The New Republic, 4/11/03. [52]
- COUNTERPOINT: Arabs have not had to pay any price for Jewish suffering in Europe. In the post-World Wars I and II settlements, Arab Muslims got independent nations that covered 99.998% of the Middle East. Minorities like the Kurds and Maronite Christians did not get any independent sovereign states.
- POINT 7: Jews accuse anti-Zionists of being anti-Semitic. This is an ugly canard used to silence opposition to Israel.
- COUNTERPOINT: This is not a canard to silence opposition. Too often, it is true and criticism of Israel is only a thinly veiled form of bigotry and racist hatred against Jews.
- Supporting Evidence: "The anti-Zionist becomes an overt anti-Semite as soon as he goes beyond criticism of the policies of the Jerusalem government (a favorite activity of the Israelis themselves) and challenges the very existence of the State of Israel. For to refuse the Jews their right to nationhood is to perpetuate their bondage. To "de-Zionize" Israel would be like trying to "de-Helvetize" Switzerland. The fact that Israel has an Arab minority is shocking only to those for whom the idea of a Jewish majority in any country is intolerable." - Jacques Givet, "The Anti-Zionist Complex" [53]
- Supporting Evidence: "You declare, my friend, that you do not hate the Jews, you are merely 'anti-Zionist.' And I say, let the truth ring forth from the high mountain tops, let it echo through the valleys of God's green earth: When people criticize Zionism, they mean Jews--this is God's own truth." - Martin Luther King Jr. [54]
- Supporting Evidence: "The anti-Semite rejoices at any opportunity to vent his malice. The times have made it unpopular, in the West, to proclaim openly a hatred of the Jews. This being the case, the anti-Semite must constantly seek new forms and forums for his poison. How he must revel in the new masquerade! He does not hate the Jews, he is just 'anti-Zionist'!" - Martin Luther King Jr. [55]
- Supporting Evidence: "[T]here is much in Israel's foreign and defense policy that can be and should be vigorously challenged. But where anti-Semitism and views that are profoundly anti-Israel have traditionally been the primary preserve of poorly educated right-wing populists, profoundly anti-Israel views are increasingly finding support in progressive intellectual communities. Serious and thoughtful people are advocating and taking actions that are anti-Semitic in their effect if not their intent." Lawrence Summers, Harvard University President, "Address at Morning Prayers," September 17 2002.
- Supporting Evidence: : "During the recent UN Conference on Racism (2001) held in Durban, South Africa, we were all shocked by the attacks on Jews, Israel and Zionism. The United States of America stood up against these vicious attacks. Once again, the words of [Martin Luther] King ran through my memory, 'I solemnly pledge to do my utmost to uphold the fair name of the Jews-because bigotry in any form is an affront to us all.'" Congressman John Lewis, January 2002 [56]
- Supporting Evidence: "There is no difference whatever between anti-Semitism and the denial of Israel's statehood. Classical anti-Semitism denies the equal right of Jews as citizens within society. Anti-Zionism denies the equal rights of the Jewish people its lawful sovereignty within the community of nations. The common principle in the two cases is discrimination." - Abba Eban, New York Times, November 3, 1975
- Supporting Evidence: "The anti-Zionist becomes an overt anti-Semite as soon as he goes beyond criticism of the policies of the Jerusalem government (a favorite activity of the Israelis themselves) and challenges the very existence of the State of Israel. For to refuse the Jews their right to nationhood is to perpetuate their bondage. To "de-Zionize" Israel would be like trying to "de-Helvetize" Switzerland. The fact that Israel has an Arab minority is shocking only to those for whom the idea of a Jewish majority in any country is intolerable." - Jacques Givet, "The Anti-Zionist Complex" [53]
- COUNTERPOINT: This is not a canard to silence opposition. In the 1970's, the Soviet Union launched an anti-Zionist campaign as part of its assault on the West, and branded Zionism racist and imperialist. It was a thinly veiled anti-Semitism, but it became rooted in Leftist ideology.
- Supporting Evidence: "During the 1970's, an especially blatant and vulgar brand of anti-Semitism became a unifying global ideology of the totalitarian Left. Couched in the language of opposition to Zionism, this anti-Semitism became the preferred vehicle of the Soviet Union and its clients in international forums for political assaults against the democratic nations-most obviously, Israel, but ultimately all the West, and especially the United States. 'Anti-Zionism' was promoted by an intense propaganda campaign the Soviet Union launched early in the decade…." Daniel Patrick Moynihan (former US Senator and UN Ambassador) 1981 [57]
- Supporting Evidence: "Although Stalin said that anti-Semitism was the most dangerous sequel of cannibalism, his name will remain associated with an absurd variety of anti-Semitism born in certain socialist countries under the new name of anti-Zionism…a sad, reactionary, and very dangerous phenomenon." Reporter (the official organ of the Union of Czechoslovak Journalists), Prague, March 1969 [58]
- Supporting Evidence: "It would be tempting to see in this propaganda nothing more than bigotry of a quite traditional source that can, sooner or later, be overcome. But the anti-Israel, anti-Zionist campaign is not uninformed bigotry, it is conscious politics. We are dealing here not with the primitive but with the sophisticated, with the world's most powerful propaganda apparatus-that of the Soviet Union and the dozens of governments which echo it. Further, this fact of world politics creates altogether new problems for those interested in the fate of democracies in the world and of Israel in the Middle East. It is not merely that our adversaries have commenced an effort to destroy the legitimacy of a kindred democracy through the incessant repetition of the Zionist-racist lie. It is that others can come to believe it also. Americans among them." Daniel Patrick Moynihan (former US Senator and UN Ambassador) 1981 [59]
- Supporting Evidence: "During the 1970's, an especially blatant and vulgar brand of anti-Semitism became a unifying global ideology of the totalitarian Left. Couched in the language of opposition to Zionism, this anti-Semitism became the preferred vehicle of the Soviet Union and its clients in international forums for political assaults against the democratic nations-most obviously, Israel, but ultimately all the West, and especially the United States. 'Anti-Zionism' was promoted by an intense propaganda campaign the Soviet Union launched early in the decade…." Daniel Patrick Moynihan (former US Senator and UN Ambassador) 1981 [57]
- COUNTERPOINT: This is not a canard to silence opposition. Too often, anti-Zionism is a thinly veiled attack on Jews or Judaism, as even the Catholic Church recently noted. Those criticized for espousing anti-Semitic points of view should be judged on the merit of what they say and in what context they say it.
- Supporting Evidence: "The Catholic Church condemned anti-Zionism as a cover for anti-Semitism in a joint statement issued by a forum of Catholic-Jewish intellectuals this week (July 4 2004)…. 'We oppose anti-Semitism in any way and form, including anti-Zionism that has become of late a manifestation of anti-Semitism,' the statement said. Haaretz, July 9 2004 [60]
- Supporting Evidence: "The Catholic Church condemned anti-Zionism as a cover for anti-Semitism in a joint statement issued by a forum of Catholic-Jewish intellectuals this week (July 4 2004)…. 'We oppose anti-Semitism in any way and form, including anti-Zionism that has become of late a manifestation of anti-Semitism,' the statement said. Haaretz, July 9 2004 [60]
- COUNTERPOINT: This is not a canard. Arab leaders indiscriminately merge criticism of Israeli policies with anti-Semitism. When Europeans tried to introduce a UN resolution condemning anti-Semitism in July 2004, they were "shocked" by Arab attitudes and intransigence.
- Supporting Evidence: "Arab states at the United Nations are trying to foil a proposal to raise a vote condemning anti-Semitism in the General Assembly this September. At a closed meeting held recently in New York, UN ambassadors from Arab and EU countries met and the Arabs made clear that they do not accept the initiative for the UN General Assembly to condemn anti-Semitism.The blunt language used by the Arabs describing their opposition, and their plans to use diplomatic means to prevent the resolution from reaching a vote, shocked the Europeans, said a UN source." Ha'aretz, July 28 2004 [61]
- Supporting Evidence: "According to UN sources, the Arab delegates were also critical of a UN seminar on anti-Semitism held last month. A senior Western diplomat said that among the Arabs who spoke with the Europeans was PLO observer Nasser al Kidwe, and he was particularly outspoken in his objections to a UN General Assembly resolution on anti-Semitism. The source said Kidwe attacked the content of UN Secretary general Koffi Anan's speech to the seminar last month, particularly Annan's pride in the cancelation of the 1975 Zionism equals racism resolution. "The Europeans were depressed when they left the meeting," said the source." Ha'aretz, July 28 2004 [62]
- Supporting Evidence: "Arab states at the United Nations are trying to foil a proposal to raise a vote condemning anti-Semitism in the General Assembly this September. At a closed meeting held recently in New York, UN ambassadors from Arab and EU countries met and the Arabs made clear that they do not accept the initiative for the UN General Assembly to condemn anti-Semitism.The blunt language used by the Arabs describing their opposition, and their plans to use diplomatic means to prevent the resolution from reaching a vote, shocked the Europeans, said a UN source." Ha'aretz, July 28 2004 [61]
- COUNTERPOINT: This is not a canard. Arab leaders' attacks on Israel have always been indistinguishable from anti-Semitism.
- Supporting Evidence: Arab denunciations of Israel are often pointedly anti-Semitic. In a recent speech given by the Saudi official investigating the terrorist attacks of September 11, the minister of police accused the Jews of perpetrating the attacks. The English-language translator translated "Jews" as "Zionists" because it is more politically correct. This leaves no ambiguity about the true meaning of Arab Anti-Zionism. [63]
- Supporting Evidence: "The bond between Judaism and Zionism is primordial, ever since Judaism and Zionism became coupled in the sense that one cannot be separated from the other, representing two sides of the one coin." Umar Rushdi, "Zionism and Its Foster Child Israel," Cairo 1965
- Supporting Evidence: Zionism is "…the odious character which, in ancient times, struck root among a group of Hebrews and made them hated and despised in every place in which lived or to which they came. We refer to the character of aggressiveness, unjust demands selfishness. This is an ancient disease of the people, which has never left them." Abbas Mahmud al-Aqqad, "World Zionism," Cairo, 1956 [64]
- Supporting Evidence: Arab denunciations of Israel are often pointedly anti-Semitic. In a recent speech given by the Saudi official investigating the terrorist attacks of September 11, the minister of police accused the Jews of perpetrating the attacks. The English-language translator translated "Jews" as "Zionists" because it is more politically correct. This leaves no ambiguity about the true meaning of Arab Anti-Zionism. [63]
- COUNTERPOINT: This is not a canard to silence opposition. Often, Israel is judged by a different, higher, standard that is not used for judging any other nation.
- Supporting Evidence: "What is the equivalent of anti-Semitism is the singling out of the Jewish nation for divestment, boycott, UN condemnation or other sanctions, in face of, and despite its far better record on human rights than any other nation in the Middle East and most other nations in the world." Alan Dershowitz [65]
- Supporting Evidence: "We are unanimous, however, in our condemnation of this [divestment] petition as a one-sided and counter-productive attempt to delegitimize Israel. No less than the Palestinians, Israel has a right to exist free from violence. To place blame solely on Israel for the current situation, and to demand unilateral concessions without showing any concern for the safety and well-being of its citizens, is unjust. Reasonable people should work for a peacefully negotiated solution based upon respectful dialogue, rather than single out Israel for partisan attack." University of California anti-Divestment from Israel petition. [66]
- Supporting Evidence: "What is the equivalent of anti-Semitism is the singling out of the Jewish nation for divestment, boycott, UN condemnation or other sanctions, in face of, and despite its far better record on human rights than any other nation in the Middle East and most other nations in the world." Alan Dershowitz [65]
- COUNTERPOINT: This is not a canard to silence opposition. Too often, it is true and criticism of Israel is only a thinly veiled form of bigotry and racist hatred against Jews.
- POINT 8: Arabs are Semites and therefore cannot be anti-Semitic.
- COUNTERPOINT: This claim perversely distorts the meaning of the term ant-Semitism. True, Arabs are Semites, but the term was coined and is still used to refer specifically to hatred of Jews. Anti-Semitism means hatred of Jews in all languages.
- Supporting Evidence: an·ti-Sem·ite (a n t -s m t , n t -) n. One who discriminates against or who is hostile toward or prejudiced against Jews. - The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language [67]
- Supporting Evidence: "The term anti-Semite was coined in Germany in 1879 by Wilhelm Marrih to refer to the anti-Jewish manifestations of the period and to give Jew-hatred a more scientific sounding name." [68]
- Supporting Evidence: an·ti-Sem·ite (a n t -s m t , n t -) n. One who discriminates against or who is hostile toward or prejudiced against Jews. - The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language [67]
- COUNTERPOINT: This claim perversely distorts the meaning of the term ant-Semitism. True, Arabs are Semites, but the term was coined and is still used to refer specifically to hatred of Jews. Anti-Semitism means hatred of Jews in all languages.
- POINT 9: Palestinians are not anti-Semitic
- COUNTERPOINT: Today, anti-Semitism-demonizing and dehumanizing Jews-is a pronounced feature of radical Palestinian groups and of the Palestinian Authority whose official organs denigrate Jews-not just Israelis-and call for their slaughter.
- Supporting Evidence: "Depictions of Jews in Arab and Muslim media are akin to those of Nazi Germany, and medieval blood libels, including claims that Jews use Christian and Muslim blood in preparing their holiday foods-have become prominent and routine." Bill Bennett, Jack Kemp, Jeanne Kirkpatrick Open Memorandum April 24, 2002 [69]
- Supporting Evidence: We do not read in the Jerusalem Post, as we do in the Arab dailies, that Palestinians are "monkeys" and "vampires." Nor is there a sizeable literature in Israel-as there is in the Arab world-devoted to proving their enemies are subhuman. Real racism and hatred exist in the present conflict, but they are expressed almost entirely by Arabs, not Jews. Had a paper in Tel Aviv alleged that Arabs drink blood and are related to primates, the world's outrage would be second only to the moral indignation in Israel itself." Historian Victor David Hanson. 2002 [70]
- Supporting Evidence: According to Agence France Presse, Hitler's book, Mein Kampf, which spelled out his political and ideologic program ,is printed, sold, and distributed by a Palestinian-Authority-controlled publisher. Before the outbreak of the current Intifada it ranked 6th on Palestinian best sellers' lists.(*) The following are excerpts from the Arab-language translation distributed in the Palestinian-Controlled territories:
"Adolf Hitler does not belong to the German people alone, he is one of the few great men who almost stopped the motion of history, altered its course, and changed the face of the world…. Hitler was a man of ideology who bequeathed an ideological heritage whose decay is inconceivable. This ideological heritage includes politics, society, science, culture, and war as science and culture… This National Socialism did not die with the death of its herald. Rather, its seeds multiplied under each star…"(**)
[71]
- Supporting Evidence: The Covenant of the terrorist group Hamas, which now commands the support of almost on half of all Palestinians, (*) details a plan for Jewish world domination based on "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," the same forgery used by the Nazis to justify the final solution. The charter states explicitly:
"With their money, they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others. With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein. They were behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about, here and there… They were behind World War I… They were behind World War II… It was they who instigated the replacement of the League of Nations with the United Nations and the Security Council to enable them to rule the world through them. There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it." (**)
[72]
- Supporting Evidence: "Allah the almighty has called upon us not to ally with the Jews or the Christians, not to like them, not to become their partners, not to support them, and not to sign agreements with them." Dr. Ahmad Abu Halabiya, Friday sermon broadcast by the PA on October 13, 2000 [73]
- Supporting Evidence: "Have no mercy on the Jews, no matter where they are, fight them, wherever you are. Wherever you meet them, kill them. Wherever you are, kill the Jews, the Americans, who are like them, and those who stand by them. They are all in one trench against the Arabs and the Moslems. ... It is forbidden to befriend Israelis or to aid them. Don't love them or enter into agreement with them, don't help them or sign accords with them. Anyone who does this is one of them. This is the word of Allah, blessed be He." Transcript from Friday, October 13, 2000, sermon at the Zayed bin Sultan Aal Nahyan mosque in Gaza. The speaker is Dr. Ahmad Abu Halabiya, Member of the PA appointed "Fatwa Council" and former acting Rector of the Islamic University in Gaza. [74]
- Supporting Evidence: "Corruption is part of the nature of the Jews. So much so that it is only on rare occasions that one finds corruption in which Jews were not behind it… Their intense love of money and accumulating wealth is well known and they do not care what method is used to achieve it. They are likely to use the lowliest and most convenient methods to achieve their objectives.... If one studies their history, it becomes apparent that the Jews were subjected to losses and expulsion as a result of their wickedness and their despicable acts. All this occurred after their true nature and their responsibility for destroying the world was revealed... Since this is their mode of behavior, they have focused their efforts on developing their plotting mentality, as they believe the secret of their survival lies in their control over the economies of the countries which opened their gates before them." - Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, Official PA newspaper. November 7, 1998.
- Supporting Evidence: "Notice, oh worshippers of Allah, the Jews are the most loathsome creatures on the face of the earth. For the Christians, despite their abominations, asked of Omar bin Al-Khattab one condition from among four-not to permit the Jews to live in Palestine. We want people like [Saladin] to liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque…." Sheik Ibrahim Mudeiris, Friday sermon on PA TV August 15, 2003 [75]
- Supporting Evidence: "Depictions of Jews in Arab and Muslim media are akin to those of Nazi Germany, and medieval blood libels, including claims that Jews use Christian and Muslim blood in preparing their holiday foods-have become prominent and routine." Bill Bennett, Jack Kemp, Jeanne Kirkpatrick Open Memorandum April 24, 2002 [69]
- COUNTERPOINT: Historically, the Arabs living in what became the Palestine Mandate oppressed and brutalized Jews.
- Supporting Evidence: "The Jews of Palestine were designated as inferior (in law as well as custom), segregated by appearance and residence, subject to discrimination and abuse, and liable to sporadic and not infrequent violence. Lynching-that is, group assault--…happened often enough and then with impunity, to constitute an immanent, imminent menace," according to Harvard historian David. S. Landes. [76]
- Supporting Evidence: "[I]t is not without reason that the poor Jew, even in the 19th century, lives from day to day in terror of his life," a British official wrote after Muslim zealots mercilessly attacked, raped and sacked property of Jews in Jerusalem and Jews in [Safed] were massacred in 1834. [77]
- Supporting Evidence: "The Jews of Palestine were designated as inferior (in law as well as custom), segregated by appearance and residence, subject to discrimination and abuse, and liable to sporadic and not infrequent violence. Lynching-that is, group assault--…happened often enough and then with impunity, to constitute an immanent, imminent menace," Historian David. S. Landes. [78]
- Supporting Evidence: "There were rules: Jews had to pass Muslims on their left side, because that was the side of Satan. They had to yield the right of way, step off the pavement to let the Arab go by, above all make sure not to touch him in passing, because this could provoke a violent response….any demonstration of alternative forms of worship, had to be avoided so synagogues were placed in humble hidden places, and the sounds of Jewish prayer carefully muted." Historian David Landes [79]
- Supporting Evidence: "Like the miserable dog without an owner he [the Jew] is kicked by one because he crosses his path, and cuffed by another because he cries out-to seek redress he is afraid, lest it bring worse upon him; he thinks it better to endure than to live in the expectation of his complain being revenged upon him." Consul William T. Young to Colonel Patrick Campbell, May 25, 1839 [80]
- Supporting Evidence: "The Jews of Palestine were designated as inferior (in law as well as custom), segregated by appearance and residence, subject to discrimination and abuse, and liable to sporadic and not infrequent violence. Lynching-that is, group assault--…happened often enough and then with impunity, to constitute an immanent, imminent menace," according to Harvard historian David. S. Landes. [76]
- COUNTERPOINT: The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, founder of the Palestinian National movement and leader of the Palestinian Arabs prior to the establishment of Israel, was a Nazi who aided in the extermination of European Jewry and planned to eradicate Middle Eastern Jews.
- Supporting Evidence: Speaking of the founder of the Palestinian National movement, a former SS officer said, "The Mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and had been a collaborator and adviser of Eichmann and Himmler in the execution of this plan. ... He was one of Eichmann's best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures. I heard him say, accompanied by Eichmann, he had visited incognito the gas chamber of Auschwitz." - Dieter Wisliceny, Nazi SS officer, deputy to Adolf Eichmann, 26 July 1946. [81]
- Supporting Evidence: In 1941, the Mufti of Jerusalem fled to Germany where he served as a consultant on the "Jewish Question." He tried to persuade Hitler and other Nazi leaders to extend their anti-Jewish program to the Arab world. After visiting Auschwitz, he expressed his hope to "employ the same method" to "solve the problems of the Jewish element in Palestine and other Arab countries."(*) The Mufti of Jerusalem received millions of dollars from Nazi Germany and Italian fascists for his violence against the Jews between 1936 and 1939. The German SS provided financial and logistical support for anti-Semitic programs in Palestine. (**) [82]
- Supporting Evidence: "Our fundamental condition for cooperating with Germany was a free hand to eradicate every last Jew from Palestine and the Arab world. I asked Hitler for an explicit undertaking to allow us to solve the Jewish problem in a manner befitting our national and racial aspirations and according to the scientific methods innovated by Germany in the handling of its Jews. The answer I got was: 'The Jews are yours.'" Mufti of Jerusalem, Memoirs [83]
- Supporting Evidence: Speaking of the founder of the Palestinian National movement, a former SS officer said, "The Mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and had been a collaborator and adviser of Eichmann and Himmler in the execution of this plan. ... He was one of Eichmann's best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures. I heard him say, accompanied by Eichmann, he had visited incognito the gas chamber of Auschwitz." - Dieter Wisliceny, Nazi SS officer, deputy to Adolf Eichmann, 26 July 1946. [81]
- COUNTERPOINT: Today, anti-Semitism-demonizing and dehumanizing Jews-is a pronounced feature of radical Palestinian groups and of the Palestinian Authority whose official organs denigrate Jews-not just Israelis-and call for their slaughter.
- POINT 10: Israel uses Nazi-like tactics against the Palestinians
- COUNTERPOINT: This comparison can be made only out of sheer ignorance about the Nazi enterprise and about Israel's current war against terrorism. The Palestinians today do not remotely resemble the Jews of Europe. The Jews were peaceful, patriotic, law-abiding citizens in the countries where they lived. They did not arm themselves, call for the murder of their countrymen, initiate hostilities, terrorism and slaughter against those countries' innocent civilians, or declare their right to take over those countries and expel or exterminate their citizens. Yet this is precisely what Palestinians have unleashed against Israel and it is precisely what Israel is trying to combat.
- Supporting Evidence: Hamas Charter: "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it" (Introduction) "The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him." (cited in Article 8) The day that enemies usurp part of Moslem land, Jihad becomes the individual duty of every Moslem. In face of the Jews' usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised. (Article 15) [84]
- Supporting Evidence: "The issues of Jerusalem, the refugees and sovereignty are one and will be finalized on the ground and not in negotiations. At this point it is important to prepare Palestinian society for the challenge of the next step because we will inevitably find ourselves in a violent confrontation with Israel in order to create new facts on the ground. [...] I believe that the situation in the future will be more violent than the Intifada." - Abu-Ali Mustafa of the Palestinian Authority. July 23, 2000 (two months before the outbreak of the current Intifada). [85]
- Supporting Evidence: "The struggle will continue until all of Palestine is liberated." - Yasser Arafat, PLO Chairman (Voice of Palestine, 11 November 1995)
- Supporting Evidence: "No one can complain about what Hamas and Jihad are doing. I say that it is the right of every Palestinian to struggle so long as there is a single Israeli soldier in the land of Palestine." - Farouk Qaddumi, head of the P.L.O.'s Political Department (Al-Musawar, 30 September 1994)
- Supporting Evidence: "Our enemy is a lowly enemy. The Palestinian people know there is a state that was established through coercion and it must be destroyed. This is the Palestinian way." - Farouk Qaddumi, head of the P.L.O.'s Political Department. (Reuters, 10 August 1994)
- Supporting Evidence: "We must face the fact that we are dealing here with a rigid state of mind (rejectionism and anti-Semitism) and that the failure of the Oslo peace process has not been so much the result of this or that negotiator's tactics or timing... It goes much deeper. The genocidal strain in this kind of fundamentalist rejectionism is older than the settlements, older than the state of Israel. It reflects the spirit of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who...fled to Berlin... begging Himmler to let him handle his version of the final solution in Palestine against the Jewish settlers." - Britain's Lord Weidenfeld to the House of Lords, July 13, 2001. [86]
- Supporting Evidence: "I have come away from my examination of the history of the (Palestinian-Israeli) conflict with a sense of the instinctive rejectionism that runs like a dark thread through Palestinian history." - Benny Morris, "The Rejection" in The New Republic, April 11, 2003. [87]
- Supporting Evidence: Hamas Charter: "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it" (Introduction) "The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him." (cited in Article 8) The day that enemies usurp part of Moslem land, Jihad becomes the individual duty of every Moslem. In face of the Jews' usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised. (Article 15) [84]
- COUNTERPOINT: The comparison between Israeli and Nazi tactics is ludicrous. Given that Israel uses more restraint than any other nation-including democracies-- has used against far less provocation. It has tried valiantly to maintain humanitarian values and spare innocent civilians in the face of a terrorist war. The Nazi goal, in contrast, was to enslave, starve and exterminate all its enemies, Jews and enemy peoples alike. From the bombing of London with its huge civilian population to the battles in Stalingrad to the brutal suppression of the Warsaw Uprising, the Nazis showed no concern for civilian populations. Contrast that with the Israeli army's standards.
- Supporting Evidence: The Israeli army has one of the strictest rules of engagement of any country in the world. The US military may use an Israeli training program to teach troops ethical codes of conduct for operating in civilian areas. "The new Israeli software is designed in part to prevent soldiers from making mistakes that cost civilians their lives… The software seeks to inculcate respect for some basic humanitarian principles." [88]
- Supporting Evidence: The Israeli army has one of the strictest rules of engagement of any country in the world in terms of protecting civilians.. One example is the battle at the Jenin refugee camp in May 2002. Despite its overwhelming firepower superiority to the terrorists hiding in Jenin, the Israeli army fought house to house in a booby-trapped and extremely crowded refugee camp in order to minimize the loss of civilian lives. The army could have flattened the city from afar without losing a single soldier but instead lost 23 of its own soldiers in what was described as the fiercest fighting the IDF saw in 20 years. Few countries besides Israel faced with such open hostility and constant terrorism would take such risks to its own soldiers when eliminating terrorists in populated areas with so relatively few civilian casualties. [89]
- Supporting Evidence: The Israeli military takes every possible precaution to avoid injuring civilians. While 80% of Israelis killed between Sept. 27, 2000 and July 22, 2003 were civilians, only 36% of Palestinians killed were civilians, according to the Institute of Counter-Terrorism. [90]
- Supporting Evidence: The Nazis did not try their own soldiers for excessive violence or brutality.. In contrast, the Israeli military brings charges against soldiers accused of violating its humanitarian standards, investigates, tries and punishes them if they are found guilty.
- Supporting Evidence: Since the Intifada began, 473 investigations have been conducted and "65 indictments have….been filed against soldiers, 30 for property crimes, 20 for violent crimes and 15 for shooting a Palestinian to death or causing grievous injuries. Eighteen of the cases involve soldiers' operations at roadblocks." Ha'aretz, April 12, 2003(*) In contrast, the Palestinians celebrate and heroicize suicide bombers and other terrorists, exalting them as sheehads or religious martyrs. [91]
- Supporting Evidence: "The Israeli Supreme Court, by all accounts one of the finest in the world, has played a far greater role in controlling the Israeli military than any court in history has ever played in the conduct of military affairs, including in the United States." Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz [92]
- Supporting Evidence: "Has the High Court of Justice succeeded in this difficult task of striking a proper balance between the protection of human rights and Israel's right to defend itself against existential threats? Many think it has failed. Palestinians and Israeli human rights organizations claim that the HCJ gave in to populist, militant public opinion, and did not find the courage to withstand the dangerous tendency toward legitimize the infringement of basic human rights. Right-wing criticism, on the other hand, accuses the HCJ of endangering the lives of Israeli soldiers and ruling against Israeli interests just for the sake of preserving its reputation abroad as a defender of human rights. A former Cabinet member has recently demanded that the Chief Justice be removed from office. In my view, the HCJ is doing the best that can be done under these very difficult circumstances. The detention and other measures that were put in place and others even more Draconian that were seriously proposed in the U.S. in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, indicate that few courts in other countries, if any, could have done better than this under similar conditions." Israel Gilead, Dean, Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem [93]
- Supporting Evidence: The Israeli army has one of the strictest rules of engagement of any country in the world. The US military may use an Israeli training program to teach troops ethical codes of conduct for operating in civilian areas. "The new Israeli software is designed in part to prevent soldiers from making mistakes that cost civilians their lives… The software seeks to inculcate respect for some basic humanitarian principles." [88]
- COUNTERPOINT: It is the Palestinian leadership, not Israel, that has uses Nazi-like methods. The Palestinians TARGET innocent civilians, murdering them for no other reason than that they are Jewish, just as the Nazis did.
- Supporting Evidence: 80% of Israelis killed between Sept. 27, 2000 and July 22, 2003 were civilians. Only 36% of Palestinians killed were civilians, according to the Institute of Counter-Terrorism. This is because Israel targets terrorists while Palestinians target civilians. [94]
- Supporting Evidence: Palestinians, not Israelis target children and women. 57.7% of all Israeli civilians killed between September 2000 and May 2002 were children under the age of 15 while 11.7% of Palestinians killed were in that age bracket. In the same period, 25% of Israelis killed were women while only 2.8% of Palestinians were women. [95]
- Supporting Evidence: Palestinians, not Israelis attack civilian centers in order to create maximal carnage. In the past three years alone Palestinian terrorists have attacked an ice cream parlor (May 2002), a University cafeteria (July 31, 2002), a Pizzeria (August 2001), Popular teen night clubs (April 30, 2003; June 1, 2001), Commuter buses (15 since October 2000, often timed for when schoolchildren are on them), a school playground (May 28, 2002), and children's bedrooms (November 11, 2002).
- Supporting Evidence: 80% of Israelis killed between Sept. 27, 2000 and July 22, 2003 were civilians. Only 36% of Palestinians killed were civilians, according to the Institute of Counter-Terrorism. This is because Israel targets terrorists while Palestinians target civilians. [94]
- COUNTERPOINT: It is the Palestinian leadership, not Israel, that has Nazi-like goals-the expulsion or extermination of Jews.
- Supporting Evidence: "You understand that we plan to eliminate the state of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian State. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion; the Jews will not want to live among us Arabs! I have no use for Jews. They are and remain Jews." - Yassir Arafat, speech to Arab diplomats in the Spiegel Salon at the Grand Hotel in Stockholm, Sweden, Jan 30, 1996. [96]
- Supporting Evidence: "The Oslo Accords were a Trojan horse; the strategic goal is the liberation of Palestine from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea." - Faisal Husseini, PA Administrator for Jerusalem Affairs, July 13, 2001. [97]
- Supporting Evidence: "At this stage we talk about a state within the 1967 borders, but this is not the end of the story.... because I aspire, historically, culturally and geographically, to a unified Palestine. ...It can be established through peace, if the Israelis accept the logic of a [unified] democratic Palestinian state. If they don't accept this logic, then the logic of history will lead to a confrontation [ie war]." - Bilal Al-Hassan, representing the position of the Palestinian left, Al-Jazeera, November 17, 2000. [98]
- Supporting Evidence: "You understand that we plan to eliminate the state of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian State. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion; the Jews will not want to live among us Arabs! I have no use for Jews. They are and remain Jews." - Yassir Arafat, speech to Arab diplomats in the Spiegel Salon at the Grand Hotel in Stockholm, Sweden, Jan 30, 1996. [96]
- COUNTERPOINT: It is the Palestinian leadership, not Israel, that has adopted Nazi-like methods. They have resurrected the same anti-Semitic literature, racist incitement and dehumanization that the Nazis used against the Jews in the 1930's.
- Supporting Evidence: Eminent historians such as Bernard Lewis observe that the anti-Semitism rampant in the Middle East today is as virulent or worse than that of 1930's Germany. [99]
- Supporting Evidence: According to Agence France Presse Hitler's Autobiography, Mein Kampf is printed, sold, and distributed by a Palestinian-Authority-controlled publisher. Before the outbreak of the current Intifada it ranked 6th on Palestinian best sellers' lists. (*) The following are excerpts from the Arab-language translation distributed in the Palestinian-Controlled territories:
"Adolf Hitler does not belong to the German people alone, he is one of the few great men who almost stopped the motion of history, altered its course, and changed the face of the world…. Hitler was a man of ideology who bequeathed an ideological heritage whose decay is inconceivable. This ideological heritage includes politics, society, science, culture, and war as science and culture… This National Socialism did not die with the death of its herald. Rather, its seeds multiplied under each star…" (**)
[100]
- Supporting Evidence: "The Protocols of The Elders of Zion", a Tsarist forgery used by the Nazis as one justification for the Holocaust has "shot to the top of the best-seller list" in the Arab world, particularly Egypt. The Sunday Herald reports that over 1000 copies of the book are sold each week in Cairo alone. [101]
- Supporting Evidence: Television stations throughout the Arab World aired "Horseman without a Horse", a dramatized version of the Tsarist forgery, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" during primetime throughout the month of Ramadan. "The Protocols of The Elders of Zion" was written by the Tsar's secret police to incite riots against Jews, and was used by the Nazis as one justification for the Holocaust. The Egyptian weekly, Roz al'Youssuf reviewed the 30-part series and said the following:
"For the first time, the series' writer courageously tackles the 24 Protocols of the Elders of Zion, revealing them and clarifying that they are the central line that still, to this very day, dominates Israel's policy, political aspirations, and racism…"
[102]
- Supporting Evidence: The Covenant of the terrorist group Hamas, which now commands the support of over 30% of Palestinians according to a 2004 poll,(*) details a plan for Jewish world domination based on "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," the same forgery used by the Nazis to justify the final solution. The charter states explicitly:
"With their money, they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others. With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein. They were behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about, here and there. With their money they formed secret societies, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, the Lions and others in different parts of the world for the purpose of sabotaging societies and achieving Zionist interests. With their money they were able to control imperialistic countries and instigate them to colonize many countries in order to enable them to exploit their resources and spread corruption there.
You may speak as much as you want about regional and world wars. They were behind World War I, when they were able to destroy the Islamic Caliphate, making financial gains and controlling resources... They obtained the Balfour Declaration, formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains by trading in armaments, and paved the way for the establishment of their state. It was they who instigated the replacement of the League of Nations with the United Nations and the Security Council to enable them to rule the world through them. There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it."
[103]
- Supporting Evidence: Hamas' charter calls for the wholesale killing of Jews, quoting the hadith, "The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him." [104]
- Supporting Evidence: Palestinian religious leaders call for the genocide of the Jews and praise Hitler in their sermons. These are broadcast repeatedly on official PA television.
"They [the Jews] must be butchered and killed, as Allah the Almighty said: 'Fight them: Allah will torture them at your hands. Have no mercy on the Jews, no matter where they are, in any country. Fight them, wherever you are. Wherever you meet them, kill them." - Official Palestinian Authority Television broadcast of Sheik Ahmad Halabaya's sermon (*)
"Have no mercy on the Jews, no matter where they are, in any country. Fight them, wherever you are. Wherever you meet them, kill them. Wherever you are, kill those Jews and those Americans who are like them" - Official Palestinian Authority broadcast of Dr. Ahmad Abu Halabiya, Member of the PA appointed "Futwa Council" and former acting Rector of the Islamic University in Gaza. Sermon given Friday October 13, 2000.(**)
"Oh Allah, annihilate the Jews and their supporters." - Sheikh Ibrahim Madhi, PA-nominated religious leader. Sermon delivered at Gaza City's main Sheikh Ijlin Mosque, and broadcast on Palestinian Authority television. 12 April, 2002.(***)
[105]
- Supporting Evidence: The Arab press praises Hitler's extermination of the Jews.
"Our thanks go the late Hitler who wrought, in advance, the vengeance of the Palestinians upon the most despicable villains on the face of the earth. However, we rebuke Hitler for the fact that the vengeance was insufficient." - Egyptian daily Al-Ahab, April 18, 2001
[106]
- Supporting Evidence: Current Palestinian leaders praise Hajj Amin Al-Husseini, a Nazi war criminal indicted for the murder of tens of thousands of Jews, as their ideological model. Amin Al-Husseini formed the largest division in the third Reich and consulted with Hitler on the extermination of Arab Jewry.(*)
"Our hero Hajj Amin al-Husseini… lived in Cairo, and participated in the 1948 war, and I was one of his troops." - Yasser Arafat, Al Quds, Palestinian Authority daily newspaper. August 2, 2002 (**)
[107]
- Supporting Evidence: The comparison between Israel and Nazi Germany is ludicrous and offensive. Jews in Nazi Germany were persecuted and systematically exterminated for no crime besides their heritage. Israeli policies towards Palestinians are the result of an ongoing Palestinian terrorist campaign and 80-year goal to destroy Israel and drive out the Jews (according to Palestinian polls, 80% of Palestinians believe the destruction of Israel is the goal of the current Intifada).
- Supporting Evidence: In Nazi controlled Europe, Jews were rapidly stripped of all their rights as human beings-possessions and businesses confiscated, fired from employment, all belongings expropriated, herded into ghetto-prisons and then box cars that were destined for extermination camps or just massacred. They were not surrounded by friendly nations that could give them refuge or supply them with armies and arms to defend themselves. They didn't even have the option of compromise or surrender. They were persecuted and slaughtered-not because of anything they had done, not because they had risen up in arms to destroy Germany, but simply because they were Jews, a race the German Reich planned to exterminate.
- Supporting Evidence: Eminent historians such as Bernard Lewis observe that the anti-Semitism rampant in the Middle East today is as virulent or worse than that of 1930's Germany. [99]
- COUNTERPOINT: This comparison can be made only out of sheer ignorance about the Nazi enterprise and about Israel's current war against terrorism. The Palestinians today do not remotely resemble the Jews of Europe. The Jews were peaceful, patriotic, law-abiding citizens in the countries where they lived. They did not arm themselves, call for the murder of their countrymen, initiate hostilities, terrorism and slaughter against those countries' innocent civilians, or declare their right to take over those countries and expel or exterminate their citizens. Yet this is precisely what Palestinians have unleashed against Israel and it is precisely what Israel is trying to combat.
- POINT 11: It is a myth that the Palestinian Authority produces anti-Semitic and anti-Israel textbooks and media.
- COUNTERPOINT: The myth is that the Palestinian Authority is NOT officially and unofficially promoting anti-Semitism. Today, anti-Semitism-demonizing and dehumanizing Jews-is a pronounced feature of radical Palestinian groups and of the Palestinian Authority whose official organs denigrate Jews-not just Israelis-and call for their slaughter.
- Supporting Evidence: "Depictions of Jews in Arab and Muslim media are akin to those of Nazi Germany, and medieval blood libels, including claims that Jews use Christian and Muslim blood in preparing their holiday foods-have become prominent and routine." Bill Bennett, Jack Kemp, Jeanne Kirkpatrick Open Memorandum April 24, 2002 [108]
- Supporting Evidence: We do not read in the Jerusalem Post, as we do in the Arab dailies, that Palestinians are "monkeys" and "vampires." Nor is there a sizeable literature in Israel-as there is in the Arab world-devoted to proving their enemies are subhuman. Real racism and hatred exist in the present conflict, but they are expressed almost entirely by Arabs, not Jews. Had a paper in Tel Aviv alleged that Arabs drink blood and are related to primates, the world's outrage would be second only to the moral indignation in Israel itself." Historian Victor David Hanson. 2002 [109]
- Supporting Evidence: According to Agence France Presse Hitler's book, Mein Kampf is printed, sold, and distributed by a Palestinian-Authority-controlled publisher. Before the outbreak of the current Intifada it ranked 6th on Palestinian best sellers' lists. (*) The following are excerpts from the Arab-language translation distributed in the Palestinian-Controlled territories:
"Adolf Hitler does not belong to the German people alone, he is one of the few great men who almost stopped the motion of history, altered its course, and changed the face of the world…. Hitler was a man of ideology who bequeathed an ideological heritage whose decay is inconceivable. This ideological heritage includes politics, society, science, culture, and war as science and culture… This National Socialism did not die with the death of its herald. Rather, its seeds multiplied under each star…" (**)
[110]
- Supporting Evidence: The Covenant of the terrorist group Hamas, which now commands the support of almost on half of all Palestinians, (*) details a plan for Jewish world domination based on "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," the same forgery used by the Nazis to justify the final solution. The charter states explicitly:
"With their money, they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others. With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein. They were behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about, here and there… They were behind World War I… They were behind World War II… It was they who instigated the replacement of the League of Nations with the United Nations and the Security Council to enable them to rule the world through them. There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it." (**)
[111]
- Supporting Evidence: "Allah the almighty has called upon us not to ally with the Jews or the Christians, not to like them, not to become their partners, not to support them, and not to sign agreements with them." Dr. Ahmad Abu Halabiya, Friday sermon broadcast by the PA on October 13, 2000 [112]
- Supporting Evidence: "Have no mercy on the Jews, no matter where they are, fight them, wherever you are. Wherever you meet them, kill them. Wherever you are, kill the Jews, the Americans, who are like them, and those who stand by them. They are all in one trench against the Arabs and the Moslems. ... It is forbidden to befriend Israelis or to aid them. Don't love them or enter into agreement with them, don't help them or sign accords with them. Anyone who does this is one of them. This is the word of Allah, blessed be He." Transcript from Friday, October 13, 2000, sermon at the Zayed bin Sultan Aal Nahyan mosque in Gaza. The speaker is Dr. Ahmad Abu Halabiya, Member of the PA appointed "Fatwa Council" and former acting Rector of the Islamic University in Gaza. [113]
- Supporting Evidence: "Corruption is part of the nature of the Jews. So much so that it is only on rare occasions that one finds corruption in which Jews were not behind it… Their intense love of money and accumulating wealth is well known and they do not care what method is used to achieve it. They are likely to use the lowliest and most convenient methods to achieve their objectives.... If one studies their history, it becomes apparent that the Jews were subjected to losses and expulsion as a result of their wickedness and their despicable acts. All this occurred after their true nature and their responsibility for destroying the world was revealed... Since this is their mode of behavior, they have focused their efforts on developing their plotting mentality, as they believe the secret of their survival lies in their control over the economies of the countries which opened their gates before them." - Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, Official PA newspaper. November 7, 1998.
- Supporting Evidence: "Notice, oh worshippers of Allah, the Jews are the most loathsome creatures on the face of the earth. For the Christians, despite their abominations, asked of Omar bin Al-Khattab one condition from among four-not to permit the Jews to live in Palestine. We want people like [Saladin] to liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque…." Sheik Ibrahim Mudeiris, Friday sermon on PA TV August 15, 2003 [114]
- Supporting Evidence: Current Palestinian leaders praise Hajj Amin Al-Husseini, a Nazi war criminal indicted for the murder of tens of thousands of Jews, as their ideological model. Amin Al-Husseini formed the largest division in the third Reich and consulted with Hitler on the extermination of Arab Jewry.(*)
"Our hero Hajj Amin al-Husseini… lived in Cairo, and participated in the 1948 war, and I was one of his troops." - Yasser Arafat, Al Quds, Palestinian Authority daily newspaper. August 2, 2002 (**)
[115]
- Supporting Evidence: "Depictions of Jews in Arab and Muslim media are akin to those of Nazi Germany, and medieval blood libels, including claims that Jews use Christian and Muslim blood in preparing their holiday foods-have become prominent and routine." Bill Bennett, Jack Kemp, Jeanne Kirkpatrick Open Memorandum April 24, 2002 [108]
- COUNTERPOINT: Palestinian Authority textbooks praise suicide bombers, dehumanize Jews and deny Israel's legitimacy. They do not prepare students for peaceful co-existence in a two-state solution.
- Supporting Evidence: "Barely after the new [PA prepared] books appeared, there came a hailstorm of criticism from western experts -- despite some progress on the moderation of the tone that everyone acknowledged. Whoever reads the books will confirm: the idea of peace is nowhere to be found. The peace process and the Oslo treaties are never mentioned. There are calls for religious tolerance, but only between Muslims and Christians. Jews appear only in an historical context. Their connection to the Holy Land is stuck in antiquity. The Jewish resettlement of Palestine is called "infiltration". There is no direct appeal to terrorism, but certainly "Palestine's Martyrs" are glorified, including "The Engineer Ayash", who dispatched suicide bombers in the 1990s and killed dozens of Israelis. The State of Israel does not exist. Its name appears on no map, terms such as "green line", "the interior of the country" or the "1948 land" are used repeatedly. Cities founded by Israel, such as Tel-Aviv, are never mentioned. The name of the State of Palestine and the emblem of Arafat's Palestinian Authority are everywhere, such as on the book covers. This state would seem to stretch from Jordan to the Mediterranean." German newspaper Die Zeit, June 7 2002 [116]
- Supporting Evidence: On November 15, 2000 the French Socialist delegate Francois Zimeray placed an inquiry to the EU Commission. He wanted to know why an educational system was being financed, when its text books were "nothing less than antisemitic propaganda, which, in any EU Member State, would be prohibited under the law on 'incitement to racial hatred'" German newspaper Die Zeit, June 7 2002 [117]
- Supporting Evidence: In PA authorized textbooks, "There is no attempt to encourage reconciliation with Israel. Israel is presented exclusively as inhumane and greedy... The struggle for the liberation of Palestine is presented mainly as a military one... The Feda'I and Shahid [martyr] are praised as the spearhead of this struggle... Jihad continues to be glorified and martyrs praised, with special attention given to the martyrs of Palestine." - The Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace in 2001. [118]
- Supporting Evidence: "More than 60 new Palestinian Authority textbooks have been translated into English and excerpted by the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace, whose web site is located at http://www.edume.org. The PA continues its policy of educating its students to liberate all of Palestine (from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea), as its schools prepare their students for an independent Palestinian state. The PA school system envisions a Palestinian state that replaces the state of Israel - no mention of a two state solution in the 60 new textbooks of the Palestinian Authority." David Bedein, Israel Resource news Agency February 2002 [119]
- Supporting Evidence: "Barely after the new [PA prepared] books appeared, there came a hailstorm of criticism from western experts -- despite some progress on the moderation of the tone that everyone acknowledged. Whoever reads the books will confirm: the idea of peace is nowhere to be found. The peace process and the Oslo treaties are never mentioned. There are calls for religious tolerance, but only between Muslims and Christians. Jews appear only in an historical context. Their connection to the Holy Land is stuck in antiquity. The Jewish resettlement of Palestine is called "infiltration". There is no direct appeal to terrorism, but certainly "Palestine's Martyrs" are glorified, including "The Engineer Ayash", who dispatched suicide bombers in the 1990s and killed dozens of Israelis. The State of Israel does not exist. Its name appears on no map, terms such as "green line", "the interior of the country" or the "1948 land" are used repeatedly. Cities founded by Israel, such as Tel-Aviv, are never mentioned. The name of the State of Palestine and the emblem of Arafat's Palestinian Authority are everywhere, such as on the book covers. This state would seem to stretch from Jordan to the Mediterranean." German newspaper Die Zeit, June 7 2002 [116]
- COUNTERPOINT: The myth is that the Palestinian Authority is NOT officially and unofficially promoting anti-Semitism. Today, anti-Semitism-demonizing and dehumanizing Jews-is a pronounced feature of radical Palestinian groups and of the Palestinian Authority whose official organs denigrate Jews-not just Israelis-and call for their slaughter.
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