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Jews Provoked the Holocaust, Palestinian Leaders Say (Again)
PA President Mahmoud Abbas gestures during a meeting in Ramallah, in the West Bank August 18, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamad Torokman/Pool
JNS.org – Palestinian Arab leaders can’t seem to make up their minds about the Holocaust. Sometimes they say it never happened. Sometimes they say it did happen, but Israel’s behavior is even worse. And sometimes—such as last week—they say the Jews themselves provoked the Holocaust.
Yasser Abu Sido, a senior official of the Palestinian Authority’s ruling party, Fatah, said on an Egyptian television program on Feb. 23 that “Hitler had obvious reasons” for perpetrating the Holocaust.
The Jews’ own provocative behavior was the reason, according to Abu Sido. “They planned to take control of Germany. They started to bring down Germany in terms of the economy and moral values.” That was why “Hitler reacted by making the Jews go on the streets and lick the sidewalks. They know this very well.”
Abu Sido’s blame-the-Jews approach to the Holocaust echoes words spoken repeatedly by P.A. chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
In an April 30, 2018 speech to the Palestinian National Council, Abbas explained the “reasons” why Jews were massacred throughout history, from the pogroms of the Middle Ages to the Holocaust. He began by dismissing the idea that antisemitism had anything to do with it. “Why did this happen? They say ‘it is because we are Jews,’ but that must be false,” he said, because “there were Jews in Arab countries. Why wasn’t there ever one incident against Jews [there] because they’re Jews? Not even once.” (An obvious falsehood.)
The real reason for the Holocaust, Abbas said, was the Jews’ own “social behavior, [charging] interest and financial matters.” Those Jewish actions are what provoked the Nazis, he claimed.
Just last year, the P.A. chairman repeated that perspective in a speech to Fatah’s Revolutionary Council (on Aug. 24, 2023). “They say that Hitler killed the Jews because they were Jews and that Europe hated the Jews because they were Jews. Not true,” Abbas asserted. “[The Nazis] fought [the Jews] because of their social role, and not their religion… The [Nazis] fought against these people because of their role in society, which had to do with usury, money and so on and so forth.”
Somehow, that train of thought coexists peacefully in Abbas’s mind alongside the view he articulated in his infamous PhD dissertation-turned-book, “The Other Side: The Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism,” published in 1984. There he argued that fewer than one million Jews were killed by the Nazis, and they were the victims of a secret partnership between David Ben-Gurion and Adolf Hitler. Asked about the book by a Lebanese television interviewer in 2013, Abbas insisted that he stands by what he wrote, and even has written “seventy more books that I still haven’t published” on the topic.
It’s bad enough that mainstream P.A. leaders such as Abbas and Abu Sido believe such crazy things. But what is at stake is more than just a grotesque distortion of history; their rhetoric can help set the stage for further atrocities—because the logic behind the Holocaust comments by Abbas and Abu Sido is remarkably similar to the position that they and their P.A. colleagues have taken regarding the Oct. 7 pogrom.
Abbas and other P.A. leaders have characterized Oct. 7 as a “response to the occupation.” They have said the attack “did not happen in a vacuum.” They have portrayed Gaza as a “prison” from which Hamas was trying to “break free.” Every such justification is another way of saying that Israel’s own behavior was to blame for provoking the attack.
In a sense, Abbas is being consistent: The Jews provoked the pogroms of the Middle Ages. The Jews provoked the Holocaust. And the Jews provoked the murders, gang-rapes and beheadings of Oct. 7. That’s the common thread in all of his thinking on these subjects.
Blaming the Jews for their persecutors’ actions is not just adding insult to the injuries that the pogromists inflicted. It incites further violence by justifying whatever Arab terrorists do to Jews in the future. Such an extreme and irrational perspective—which is promulgated by P.A. leaders, disseminated by the P.A.-controlled media and taught in the P.A.’s schools—may be the single greatest threat to hopes for Arab-Israeli peace.
Originally published by The Jewish Journal.
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Israel to Issue 54,000 Call-Up Notices to Ultra-Orthodox Students
Haredi Jewish men look at the scene of an explosion at a bus stop in Jerusalem, Israel, on Nov. 23, 2022. Photo: Reuters/Ammar Awad
Israel’s military said it would issue 54,000 call-up notices to ultra-Orthodox Jewish seminary students following a Supreme Court ruling mandating their conscription and amid growing pressure from reservists stretched by extended deployments.
The Supreme Court ruling last year overturned a decades-old exemption for ultra-Orthodox students, a policy established when the community comprised a far smaller segment of the population than the 13 percent it represents today.
Military service is compulsory for most Israeli Jews from the age of 18, lasting 24-32 months, with additional reserve duty in subsequent years. Members of Israel’s 21 percent Arab population are mostly exempt, though some do serve.
A statement by the military spokesperson confirmed the orders on Sunday just as local media reported legislative efforts by two ultra-Orthodox parties in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition to craft a compromise.
The exemption issue has grown more contentious as Israel’s armed forces in recent years have faced strains from simultaneous engagements with Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Houthis in Yemen, and Iran.
Ultra-Orthodox leaders in Netanyahu’s brittle coalition have voiced concerns that integrating seminary students into military units alongside secular Israelis, including women, could jeopardize their religious identity.
The military statement promised to ensure conditions that respect the ultra-Orthodox way of life and to develop additional programs to support their integration into the military. It said the notices would go out this month.
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Influential Far-Right Minister Lashes out at Netanyahu Over Gaza War Policy
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich sharply criticized on Sunday a cabinet decision to allow some aid into Gaza as a “grave mistake” that he said would benefit the terrorist group Hamas.
Smotrich also accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of failing to ensure that Israel’s military is following government directives in prosecuting the war against Hamas in Gaza. He said he was considering his “next steps” but stopped short of explicitly threatening to quit the coalition.
Smotrich’s comments come a day before Netanyahu is due to hold talks in Washington with President Donald Trump on a US-backed proposal for a 60-day Gaza ceasefire.
“… the cabinet and the Prime Minister made a grave mistake yesterday in approving the entry of aid through a route that also benefits Hamas,” Smotrich said on X, arguing that the aid would ultimately reach the Islamist group and serve as “logistical support for the enemy during wartime”.
The Israeli government has not announced any changes to its aid policy in Gaza. Israeli media reported that the government had voted to allow additional aid to enter northern Gaza.
The prime minister’s office did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. The military declined to comment.
Israel accuses Hamas of stealing aid for its own fighters or to sell to finance its operations, an accusation Hamas denies. Gaza is in the grip of a humanitarian catastrophe, with conditions threatening to push nearly a half a million people into famine within months, according to U.N. estimates.
Israel in May partially lifted a nearly three-month blockade on aid. Two Israeli officials said on June 27 the government had temporarily stopped aid from entering north Gaza.
PRESSURE
Public pressure in Israel is mounting on Netanyahu to secure a permanent ceasefire, a move opposed by some hardline members of his right-wing coalition. An Israeli team left for Qatar on Sunday for talks on a possible Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal.
Smotrich, who in January threatened to withdraw his Religious Zionism party from the government if Israel agreed to a complete end to the war before having achieved its objectives, did not mention the ceasefire in his criticism of Netanyahu.
The right-wing coalition holds a slim parliamentary majority, although some opposition lawmakers have offered to support the government from collapsing if a ceasefire is agreed.
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Australia Police Charge Man Over Alleged Arson on Melbourne Synagogue
Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks to the media during a press conference with New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon at the Australian Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, Aug. 16, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Tracey Nearmy
Australian police have charged a man in connection with an alleged arson attack on a Melbourne synagogue with worshippers in the building, the latest in a series of incidents targeting the nation’s Jewish community.
There were no injuries to the 20 people inside the East Melbourne Synagogue, who fled from the fire on Friday night. Firefighters extinguished the blaze in the capital of Victoria state.
Australia has experienced several antisemitic incidents since the start of the Israel-Gaza war in October 2023.
Counter-terrorism detectives late on Saturday arrested the 34-year-old resident of Sydney, capital of neighboring New South Wales, charging him with offenses including criminal damage by fire, police said.
“The man allegedly poured a flammable liquid on the front door of the building and set it on fire before fleeing the scene,” police said in a statement.
The suspect, whom the authorities declined to identify, was remanded in custody after his case was heard at Melbourne Magistrates Court on Sunday and no application was made for bail, the Australian Broadcasting Corp reported.
Authorities are investigating whether the synagogue fire was linked to a disturbance on Friday night at an Israeli restaurant in Melbourne, in which one person was arrested for hindering police.
The restaurant was extensively damaged, according to the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, an umbrella group for Australia’s Jews.
It said the fire at the synagogue, one of Melbourne’s oldest, was set as those inside sat down to Sabbath dinner.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog went on X to “condemn outright the vile arson attack targeting Jews in Melbourne’s historic and oldest synagogue on the Sabbath, and on an Israeli restaurant where people had come to enjoy a meal together”.
“This is not the first such attack in Australia in recent months. But it must be the last,” Herzog said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the incidents as “severe hate crimes” that he viewed “with utmost gravity.” “The State of Israel will continue to stand alongside the Australian Jewish community,” Netanyahu said on X.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese late on Saturday described the alleged arson, which comes seven months after another synagogue in Melbourne was targeted by arsonists, as shocking and said those responsible should face the law’s full force.
“My Government will provide all necessary support toward this effort,” Albanese posted on X.
Homes, schools, synagogues and vehicles in Australia have been targeted by antisemitic vandalism and arson. The incidents included a fake plan by organized crime to attack a Sydney synagogue using a caravan of explosives in order to divert police resources, police said in March.
The post Australia Police Charge Man Over Alleged Arson on Melbourne Synagogue first appeared on Algemeiner.com.