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PA Leaders Appropriate the Holocaust as Crime Against Palestinians
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (C) alongside Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (L) and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, July 26, 2023. Photo: Reuters/Palestinian Presidents’ Office
For years, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has been defining its situation as a Holocaust-like tragedy that is happening to Palestinians.
Now, senior PA leaders are invoking the Holocaust to say that the Palestinian experience is on a level worse than the atrocities committed against the Jews. This is all in an effort to demonize the Jewish people, and thus to incite violence against them.
In an interview with the Voice of Palestine posted on Facebook on Feb. 10, Mahmoud Al-Habbash, who is PA leader Mahmoud Abbas’ Advisor on Religious Affairs and Islamic Relations, said:
It may be that what the Palestinian people is experiencing now was not experienced by humanity in World War II, and was not experienced by humanity during [any] war. The tragedies, massacres, and holocaust in the operation by Israel, the occupation state, in the Gaza Strip did not happen even in World War II, which they speak about all the time, about the Holocaust that they underwent. Now they are committing a worse and more criminal holocaust against the Palestinian people. [emphasis added]
In another post on Facebook, the same Al-Habbash, who is also the PA’s Supreme Shariah judge and the chairman of the Supreme Council for Shariah Justice, introduced another video of his with text that said:
The Gaza Strip is being subjected to a holocaust and famine as a result of the Israeli aggression and the war of annihilation that Israel is carrying out under American auspices. [emphasis added]
In the video of his interview with Egyptian Extra TV News on Feb. 24, Al-Habbash went on to say:
We stand before a holocaust, facing a massacre, facing a human tragedy that is taking place before the eyes of the world, and there are still those, and more precisely the US, who are continuing to give a green light for this aggression to continue claiming more lives. [emphasis added]
Another PA official of significance, Mundir Mar’i, who is a Palestinian National Council member, said in a YouTube video posted on the Falestinona channel, which serves Fatah’s Information and Culture Commission in Lebanon:
I compare Netanyahu to [Joseph] Goebbels, who was the Nazi propaganda minister … Now we are going in the same direction and on the same path. Goebbels was the propaganda minister, and now he has parallels in the form of Benjamin Netanyahu, [Israeli Minister of Finance Bezalel] Smotrich, and [Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar] Ben Gvir. [emphasis added]
The Palestinian National Council, which is the legislative body of the PLO, made further use of the term Nazi in a statement:
March 8 [2024] [i.e., International Women’s Day] is arriving this year at a time when the women of Palestine are experiencing the darkest days in modern history, both in the West Bank and in Jerusalem [sic., apparent intent is “and in the Gaza Strip”], and are suffering at the Nazi military checkpoints. [emphasis added]
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, March 9, 2024]
These statements follow a CBC interview with Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub in which he said:
The scope of the aggression against the Gaza Strip is unprecedented in history. In other words, there has been no precedent to the scope of the victims, the scope of the destruction, and the scope of the killing and genocide, even in World War II. [emphasis added]
[Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub, Facebook page, Feb. 3, 2024]
The attempts by these PA officials to reframe the Holocaust as a Palestinian experience is part of their subversive campaign to paint the Jewish people as the monster, and thus to justify terror. By drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis, the campaign reveals itself as one of the manifestations of antisemitism described by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).
It is time for the world to recognize the Palestinian Authority’s antisemitism, and to begin condemning it.
The author is a contributor to Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article first appeared.
The post PA Leaders Appropriate the Holocaust as Crime Against Palestinians first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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After False Dawns, Gazans Hope Trump Will Force End to Two-Year-Old War
Palestinians walk past a residential building destroyed in previous Israeli strikes, after Hamas agreed to release hostages and accept some other terms in a US plan to end the war, in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
Exhausted Palestinians in Gaza clung to hopes on Saturday that US President Donald Trump would keep up pressure on Israel to end a two-year-old war that has killed tens of thousands and displaced the entire population of more than two million.
Hamas’ declaration that it was ready to hand over hostages and accept some terms of Trump’s plan to end the conflict while calling for more talks on several key issues was greeted with relief in the enclave, where most homes are now in ruins.
“It’s happy news, it saves those who are still alive,” said 32-year-old Saoud Qarneyta, reacting to Hamas’ response and Trump’s intervention. “This is enough. Houses have been damaged, everything has been damaged, what is left? Nothing.”
GAZAN RESIDENT HOPES ‘WE WILL BE DONE WITH WARS’
Ismail Zayda, 40, a father of three, displaced from a suburb in northern Gaza City where Israel launched a full-scale ground operation last month, said: “We want President Trump to keep pushing for an end to the war, if this chance is lost, it means that Gaza City will be destroyed by Israel and we might not survive.
“Enough, two years of bombardment, death and starvation. Enough,” he told Reuters on a social media chat.
“God willing this will be the last war. We will hopefully be done with the wars,” said 59-year-old Ali Ahmad, speaking in one of the tented camps where most Palestinians now live.
“We urge all sides not to backtrack. Every day of delay costs lives in Gaza, it is not just time wasted, lives get wasted too,” said Tamer Al-Burai, a Gaza City businessman displaced with members of his family in central Gaza Strip.
After two previous ceasefires — one near the start of the war and another earlier this year — lasted only a few weeks, he said; “I am very optimistic this time, maybe Trump’s seeking to be remembered as a man of peace, will bring us real peace this time.”
RESIDENT WORRIES THAT NETANYAHU WILL ‘SABOTAGE’ DEAL
Some voiced hopes of returning to their homes, but the Israeli military issued a fresh warning to Gazans on Saturday to stay out of Gaza City, describing it as a “dangerous combat zone.”
Gazans have faced previous false dawns during the past two years, when Trump and others declared at several points during on-off negotiations between Hamas, Israel and Arab and US mediators that a deal was close, only for war to rage on.
“Will it happen? Can we trust Trump? Maybe we trust Trump, but will Netanyahu abide this time? He has always sabotaged everything and continued the war. I hope he ends it now,” said Aya, 31, who was displaced with her family to Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.
She added: “Maybe there is a chance the war ends at October 7, two years after it began.”
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Mass Rally in Rome on Fourth Day of Italy’s Pro-Palestinian Protests
A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator waves a Palestinian flag during a national protest for Gaza in Rome, Italy, October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Claudia Greco
Large crowds assembled in central Rome on Saturday for the fourth straight day of protests in Italy since Israel intercepted an international flotilla trying to deliver aid to Gaza, and detained its activists.
People holding banners and Palestinian flags, chanting “Free Palestine” and other slogans, filed past the Colosseum, taking part in a march that organizers hoped would attract at least 1 million people.
“I’m here with a lot of other friends because I think it is important for us all to mobilize individually,” Francesco Galtieri, a 65-year-old musician from Rome, said. “If we don’t all mobilize, then nothing will change.”
Since Israel started blocking the flotilla late on Wednesday, protests have sprung up across Europe and in other parts of the world, but in Italy they have been a daily occurrence, in multiple cities.
On Friday, unions called a general strike in support of the flotilla, with demonstrations across the country that attracted more than 2 million, according to organizers. The interior ministry estimated attendance at around 400,000.
Italy’s right-wing government has been critical of the protests, with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni suggesting that people would skip work for Gaza just as an excuse for a longer weekend break.
On Saturday, Meloni blamed protesters for insulting graffiti that appeared on a statue of the late Pope John Paul II outside Rome’s main train station, where Pro-Palestinian groups have been holding a protest picket.
“They say they are taking to the streets for peace, but then they insult the memory of a man who was a true defender and builder of peace. A shameful act committed by people blinded by ideology,” she said in a statement.
Israel launched its Gaza offensive after Hamas terrorists staged a cross border attack on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 people hostage.
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Hamas Says It Agrees to Release All Israeli Hostages Under Trump Gaza Plan
Smoke rises during an Israeli military operation in Gaza City, as seen from the central Gaza Strip, October 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
Hamas said on Friday it had agreed to release all Israeli hostages, alive or dead, under the terms of US President Donald Trump’s Gaza proposal, and signaled readiness to immediately enter mediated negotiations to discuss the details.