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How the Holocaust is remembered in the land of Anne Frank
(JTA) — You’d think that in a country so closely identified with Anne Frank — perhaps the Holocaust’s best-known victim — cultivating memory of the genocide wouldn’t be a steep challenge.
That’s why a recent survey, suggesting what the authors called a “disturbing” lack of knowledge in the Netherlands about the Holocaust, set off alarm bells. “Survey shows lack of Holocaust awareness in the Netherlands,” wrote the Associated Press. “In the Netherlands, a majority do not know the Holocaust affected their country,” was the JTA headline. “The Holocaust is a myth, a quarter of Dutch younger generation agree,” per the Jerusalem Post.
“Survey after survey, we continue to witness a decline in Holocaust knowledge and awareness. Equally disturbing is the trend towards Holocaust denial and distortion,” Gideon Taylor, the president of the Conference of Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, which conducted the study, said in a statement.
Like other recent studies by Claims Conference, the latest survey has been challenged by some scholars, who say the sample size is small, or the survey is too blunt a tool for examining what a country’s residents do or don’t know about their history. Even one of the experts who conducted the survey chose to focus on the positive findings: “I am encouraged by the number of respondents to this survey that believe Holocaust education is important,” Emile Schrijver, the general director of Amsterdam’s Jewish Cultural Quarter, told JTA.
One of the scholars who says the survey doesn’t capture the subtleties of Holocaust education and commemoration in the Netherlands is Jazmine Contreras, an assistant professor of history at Goucher College in Maryland. Contreras studies the historical memory of the Holocaust and Second World War in Holland. In a Twitter thread earlier this week, she agreed with those who say that “the headline that’s being plastered everywhere exaggerates the idea that young people in NL know nothing about the Holocaust.”
At the same time, she notes that while the Netherlands takes Holocaust education and commemoration seriously, it has a long way to go in reckoning with a past that includes collaboration with the Nazis, postwar antisemitism, a small but vocal far right and a sense of national victimhood that often downplays the experience of Jews during the Shoah.
“It’s such a complex issue,” Contreras told me. “There’s no one answer to how the Holocaust is remembered in the Netherlands.”
Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and I took the opportunity to speak with Contreras not only about Dutch memory, but how the Netherlands may serve as an example of how countries deal with Holocaust memory and the national stories they tell.
Our interview was edited for length and clarity.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency: Tell me a little bit about when you saw the survey, and perhaps how it didn’t mesh with what you know about the Netherlands?
Jazmine Contreras: My major problem is that every single outlet is picking up this story and running a headline like, “Youth in the Netherlands don’t even know the Holocaust happened there. They cannot tell you how many people were killed, how many were deported.” And I think that’s really problematic because it paints a really simplistic picture of Holocaust memory and Holocaust education in that country.
There are multiple programs, in Amsterdam, in other cities, in Westerbork, the former transit camp. They have an ongoing program that brings survivors and the second generation to colleges, to middle schools and primary schools all across the country. And they also have in Amsterdam a program called Oorlog in Mijn Buurt, “War in My Neighborhood,” and basically young people become the “memory bearers” — that’s the kind of language they use — and interview people who grew up and experience the war in their neighborhood, and then speak as if they were the person who experienced it, in the first person.
You also have events around the May 4 commemoration remembering the Dutch who died in war and in peacekeeping operations, and a program called Open Jewish Houses [when owners of formerly Jewish property open their homes to strangers to talk about the Jews who used to live there]. It’s really amazing: I’ve actually been able to visit these formerly Jewish homes and hear the stories. And, of course, the Anne Frank House has its own slew of programming, and teachers talk a lot about the Holocaust and take students to synagogues in places like Groningen, where they have a brand new exhibit at the synagogue. They are taking thousands at this point. The new National Holocaust Names Memorial is in the center of Amsterdam.
I think, again, this idea that children are growing up without having exposure to Holocaust memory, or knowledge of what happened in the Netherlands, is a bit skewed. I think we get into a dangerous area if we’re painting the country with a broad brush and saying nobody knows anything about the Holocaust.
Have you anecdotal evidence or seen studies of Dutch kids about whether they’re getting the education they need?
Anecdotally, yes. I was invited to attend a children’s commemoration that they do at the Hollandsche Schouwburg theater in Amsterdam, which is the former Dutch theater that was used as a major deportation site. And it’s children who put on a commemoration themselves. Again, not every child is participating in this, but if they’re not participating in the children’s commemoration, then they’re doing the “War in My Neighborhood” program, or they’re doing Open Jewish Houses, or they’re taking field trips. That’s pretty impressive to me, and it’s pretty meaningful. They want to help participate in it in the future. They want to come back because it leaves a lasting impression for them.
Let’s back up a bit. Anne Frank dominates everyone’s thinking about Holland and the Holocaust. And I guess the story that’s told is that she was protected by her neighbors until, of course, the Nazis proved too powerful, found her and sent her away. What’s right and what’s wrong about that narrative?
Don’t forget that Anne Frank was a German Jewish refugee who came to the Netherlands. And I think that part of the story is also really interesting and left out. She’s this Dutch icon, but she was a German Jewish refugee who came to the Netherlands, and the Dutch Jewish community was single-handedly responsible for funding, at Westerbork, what was first a refugee center. I think that’s really complicated because now we also have a discourse about present-day refugees and the Holocaust.
Jazmine Contreras, an assistant professor of history at Goucher College, specializes in Dutch Holocaust memory. (Courtesy)
I’ve also never quite understood the insistence on making her an icon when the end of the story is that she’s informed on and dies in a concentration camp. The idea that the Franks were hidden here fits really well into this idea of Dutch resistance and tolerance, and her diary often gets misquoted to kind of represent her as someone who had hope despite the fact that she was being persecuted. In the 1950s, her narrative gets adopted into the U.S., and we treat it as this globalizing human rights discourse.
We don’t talk about the fact that she’s found because she’s informed upon, and we don’t talk about the fact that you had non-Jewish civilians who were informers for a multitude of reasons, including ideological collaboration and their own financial gain.
And when it was talked about most recently, it was about a discredited book that named her betrayer as a Jew.
That was a huge controversy.
I get the sense from your writing that the story the Dutch tell about World War II is very incomplete, and that they haven’t fully reckoned with their collaboration under Nazi occupation even as they emphasize their own victimhood.
On the national state level, they have officially acknowledged not only the extensive collaboration, but the failure of both the government and the Crown to speak out on behalf of Dutch Jews. [In 2020, Prime Minister Mark Rutte formally apologized for how his kingdom’s wartime government failed its Jews, a first by a sitting prime minister.] Now, the question is, what’s happening in broader Dutch society?
Unfortunately, there was an increase in voting for the Dutch far right, although they’ve never managed to get a majority or even come close to it.
Something else that’s happening is that many ask, “Why should Dutch Jews get separate consideration after the Second World War, a separate victimhood, when we were all victimized?” The Netherlands is unique because it’s occupied for the entirety of the Second World War — 1940 to 1945. There is the civil service collaborating, right, but there’s no occupation government. So it’s not like Belgium. It’s not like France, not like Denmark. And there was the Hunger Winter of 1944-45 when 20,000 civilians perished due to famine. You have real victimhood, so people ask, “Why are the Jews so special? We all suffered.”
And at the same time, scholarship keeps emerging about the particular ways non-Jewish Dutch companies and individuals cooperated with the Nazis.
The NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam, which has done so much of this research, found that Jews who were deported had to pay utility bills for when they weren’t living there. You have a huge controversy around the the Dutch railway [which said it would compensate hundreds of Holocaust victims for its role in shipping Jews to death camps]. The Dutch Red Cross apologized [in 2017 for failing to act to protect Jews during World War II], following the publication of a research paper on its inaction. A couple of decades ago, the government basically auctioned off paintings, jewelry and other Jewish possessions, and in 2020 they started the effort to give back pieces of art that were in Dutch museums. Dienke Hondius wrote a book on the cold reception given to survivors upon their return. Remco Ensel and Evelien Gans also wrote a book on postwar Jewish antisemitism.
So a lot has been happening, a lot of controversies, and, thanks to all of this research, a lot happening in order to rectify the situation.
It sounds like a mixed story, of resistance and collaboration, and of rewriting the past but also coming to terms with it.
There’s a really complex history here of both wanting to present it as “everybody’s a victim” and that the resistance was huge. In fact, the data shows 5% of the people were involved in resistance and 5% were collaborators. So it’s not like this wholesale collaboration or resistance was happening. It was only in 1943, when non-Jewish men were called up for labor service in Germany, that they got really good at hiding people and by then it was too late.
Right. My colleagues at JTA often note that the Nazis killed or deported more Dutch Jews per capita than anywhere in occupied Western Europe — of about 110,000 Jews deported, only a few thousand survived.
Yes, the highest percentage of deportation in Western Europe.
A room at the Anne Frank House museum where she and her family hid for two years during the Holocaust in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. (Photo Collection Anne Frank House)
Since this week is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, let me ask what Holland gets right and wrong compared to maybe some other European countries with either similar experiences or comparable experiences.
The framing of that question is difficult because there’s so many unique points about the Holocaust and the occupation in the Netherlands. Again, it was occupied for the entirety of 1940-45. You have a civil service that was willing to sign Aryan declarations. The queen, as head of a government in exile in London, is basically saying, “Do what you need to just to survive.”
One of the big problems is there are people like Geert Wilders [a contemporary right-wing Dutch lawmaker] who practice this kind of philo-Semitism and support of Israel, but it’s really about blaming the Muslim population for antisemitism and saying none of it is homegrown. They don’t have to talk about the fact that there was widespread antisemitism in the aftermath of the Holocaust.
In the Netherlands they’re not instituting laws around what you can and can’t say about the Holocaust like in Poland [where criticizing Polish collaboration has been criminalized]. There are so many amazing educational initiatives and nonprofit organizations that are doing the work. And even these public controversies ended up being outlets for the production of Holocaust memory when survivors, but mostly now the second and third generations, use that space to talk about their own family Holocaust history.
Tell me about your personal stake in this: How did the Holocaust become a subject of study for you?
I specialize in Dutch Holocaust memory. I’m not Jewish, but my grandparents on my mother’s side are Dutch. For my first project I looked at relationships between German soldiers and Dutch women during the war during the occupation, and I eventually kind of made my way into the post war, when these children of former collaborators were still very marginalized in Dutch society. It ties into this. I do interviews with members of the Jewish community, children of resistance members and children of collaborators and how these memory politics play out.
What is the utility of events like International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the major Holocaust memorials in educating the public about the Holocaust and World War II?
International Holocaust Remembrance Day and May 4 result in the production of new memories about the Holocaust and the Second World War. I was at the 2020 International Holocaust Remembrance Day commemoration when the prime minister formally apologized. It was a really big moment, and it allowed the Jewish community, and the Roma and Sinti community, a space to remember and to share in that and to speak to it as survivors and the second and third generation.
Unlike the United States, the Netherlands is a small, insular country, so the relationship between the public and the media and academics is so close. So in the weeks before and the weeks after these memorials, academics, politicians and experts are publishing pieces about memory. That’s useful to the production of new memories and information about the Holocaust.
But what about the other days of the year? Will putting a monument in the center of Amsterdam actually change how people understand the Holocaust? That is a question that I think is harder to answer. The new monument features individual names of 102,000 Jews and Roma and Sinti and visually gives you the scope of what the Holocaust looked like in the Netherlands. But does that matter if somebody lives outside of Amsterdam and they’re never going to see this monument?
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The post How the Holocaust is remembered in the land of Anne Frank appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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How a klezmer parade became part of the annual carnival in Sao Paulo
דעם פֿאַרגאַנגענעם חודש איז אין סאַאָ־פּאָולאָ, בראַזיל פֿאָרגעקומען דער יערלעכער כּלי־זמר קאַרניוואַל און פּאַראַד — אַ טייל פֿונעם אַלגעמיינעם קאַרנאַװאַל וואָס איז די גרעסטע פֿאָלקס־שׂמחה אין לאַנד.
יעדן פֿעברואַר פֿאַרשטעלן זיך מיליאָנען מענטשן און גײען טאַנצן אױף די גאַסן פֿון טױזנטער שטעט און שטעטלעך צום טאַקט פֿון פֿרײלעכער מוזיק, דער עיקר — סאַמבאַ און אַשע מוזיק. אין באָם־רעטיראָ, אַ געגנט װאָס האָט זיך אױסגעפֿורעמט דורך כּסדרדיקע און פֿאַרשײדנאַרטיקע אימיגראַציע־כװאַליעס, איז די דאָזיקע שׂמחה געװאָרן אַ פּלאַטפֿאָרמע צו פֿײַערן אויך די ייִדישע קולטור.
אַ װידעאָ פֿונעם פּאַראַד קען מען זען דאָ.
די טעמע פֿונעם הײַיאָריקן פּאַראַד, וואָס איז פֿאָרגעקומען דעם 8טן פֿעברואַר, איז געווען „באָמרעלע“ — די הײמישע באַצײכענונג פֿון דער געגנט וווּ אימיגראַנטן האָבן געוווינט אױפֿן סאַאָ־פּאַולער ייִדיש. דער ציל איז געװען אָפּצוגעבן כּבֿוד די אומפֿאַרגעסלעכע ייִדישע פּאַרשױנען פֿונעם פֿאָלקלאָר פֿון דער אָרטיקער קהילה. אָט זענען עטלעכע פֿון זיי:
- מעכעלע דער קליענטלטשיק (פּעדלער, אױף בראַזיליאַנער ייִדיש) מיט זײַן גראָבן מאַנטל, פֿול געפּאַקט מיט סחורה
- בעני־יאַנגאַ, אַ ייִד פֿון ראַזשאַסטאַן װאָס האָט זיך אַזױ גוט אױסגעלערנט ייִדיש אַז ער איז געװאָרן אַ ייִדיש־לערער אין דער אָרטיקער שלום־עליכם שול
- דער בײגל־פֿאַרקױפֿער װאָס פֿלעג גײען איבער די גאַסן פֿון באָם־רעטיראָ שרײַענדיק „דער בײגלמאַן גײט שױן אַװעק!“
צװישן אַנדערע פֿיגורן האָט מען אויך אָפּגעגעבן כּבֿוד די אַזױ גערופֿענע „פּאָלאַקאַס“ — די ייִדישקעס, דער עיקר פֿון פּױלן, װאָס זײַנען געװאָרן קרבנות פֿון פֿרױען־האַנדל דורך דער „צבֿי־מגדל מאַפֿיע“ און אַנדערע קרימינעלע באַנדעס. דערבײַ האָט דאָס דערמאָנט אַלטע מחלוקתן און װײטיקדיקע קאַפּיטלען פֿון דער בראַזיליאַנער ייִדישער געשיכטע.
די מערהײט פֿון די דאָזיקע פֿרױען האָט מען אָפּגענאַרט נאָך איידער זיי זענען אַוועק פֿון פּוילן, צוזאָגנדיק זיי חתנים און פֿעסטע אַרבעט־שטעלעס. אָנקומענדיק קײן בראַזיל, האָט מען זײ אָבער געצװוּנגען צו אַרבעטן ווי פּראָסטיטוטקעס. די ייִדישע קהילה, אַנשטאָט זײ אױפֿצונעמען און העלפֿן פֿאַרבעסערן זײער לאַגע, האָט זײ באַרעדט און זיי אויסגעשלאָסן פֿון דער געזעלשאַפֿט. האָבן די דאָזיקע מוטיקע פֿרױען געמוזט גרינדן זײערע אײגענע ייִדישע אינסטיטוציעס, שולן און בית־עולמס.
די געגנט באָם־רעטיראָ איז דער טראַדיציאָנעלער ייִדישער קוואַרטאַל פֿון סאַאָ פּאַולאָ, װוּ טױזנטער ייִדישע אימיגראַנטן, דער עיקר פֿון מזרח־אײראָפּע, האָבן זיך באַזעצט במשך דעם 19טן און 20סטן יאָרהונדערט. אַחוץ ייִדן, האָט די געגנט מקבל־פּנים געװען איטאַליענישע, גריכישע און אַרמענישע אימיגראַנטן, װי אױך בראַזיליאַנער פֿון צפֿון־מזרח לאַנד. הײַנט װערט די געגנט איבערהױפּט באַצײכנט דורך די קאָרעאַנישע און לאַטײַן־אַמעריקאַנער באַפֿעלקערונגען. לעצטנס האַלטן די באָליװיאַנער אײַנוווינער אָפּ זייער אײגענעם קאַרנאַװאַל־פּאַראַד אין דעם קװאַרטאַל.
פּונקט אין דער דאָזיקער פֿאַרשײדנאַרטיקער טעריטאָריע דעפֿילירט די קאַפּעליע, „בלאָקאָ כּלי־זמר“. יעדעס יאָר קלײַבט זי צונױף איבער 30 כּלי־זמרים און ברענגט דערמיט די ייִדישע מוזיק צו די גאַסן לױטן בראַזיליאַנער סטיל׃ מיט שװוּנג און פֿרײד פֿון טאַנצנדיקע מאַסן.
דער בלאָקאָ באַגרענעצט זיך ניט נאָר מיט מוזיק, װאָרן עס באַטײליקן זיך אין פּאַראַד אױך אַקטיאָרן, פֿאָרשערס, פּאָעטן, פּראָדוצענטן, דעזײַנערס און אײַנװױנערס פֿון דער געגנט, װאָס גרײטן זיך צו במשך די פֿילצאָליקע רעפּעטיציעס ממש אַ יאָר לאַנג. דורך פֿילפֿאַרביקע קאָסטיומען און גרויסע טאַנצנדיקע ליאַלקעס ווערט די גאַס פֿאַרװאַנדלט אין אַ לעבעדיקן אַרכיװ פֿון ייִדישן געדעכעניש פֿון שטאָט.
דער „בלאָקאָ“ האָט דעפֿילירט צום ערשטן מאָל מיט צװײ יאָר צוריק און איז זינט דעמאָלט ממשותדיק געװאַקסן. אין 2025 איז דער לאָזונג פֿון פּאַראַד געװען „ס’איז פֿרײלעך אין שטעטל“ און מע האָט געפֿײַערט די „חתונה“ צװישן דער כּלי־זמר־מוזיק און דעם בראַזיליאַנער קאַרנאַװאַל, מיט אַ קאָלעקטיװן טאַנץ אונטער אַ גיגאַנטישער חופּה, װאָס איז געשטעלט געװאָרן אין מיטן גאַס.
אינספּירירט דורכן קאָנצעפּט פֿון דאָיִקײט, האָט דער בלאָקאָ װידער אױפֿגעלעבט די זכרונות פֿון אַ מאָל און באַװיזן אַז ייִדן געהערן אױך צו דער פֿילמיניקער קולטורעלער לאַנדשאַפֿט פֿון בראַזיל. דער בלאָקאָ כּלי־זמר האָט אױך דערװיזן אַז די רײַכע קולטור־ירושה פֿון מזרח־אײראָפּעיִשן ייִדנטום לעבט דאָ װײַטער, מחוץ אַרכיװן און אַקאַדעמישע אַנשטאַלטן. זי לעבט אױך אין דער היץ פֿונעם טראָפּישן זומער, צװישן קאָנפֿעטי, שװייס און די קלאַנגען פֿונעם קלאַרנעט.
[דער אַרטיקל איז רעדאַקטירט געוואָרן מיט דער הילף פֿון גוסטאַװאָ־גרשום עמאָס]
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Chabad on high alert after false Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens war claims
Jewish institutions are on high alert after Tucker Carlson falsely claimed on his podcast Wednesday that the Chabad-Lubavitch movement is behind the war in Iran.
Carlson claimed that Chabad is orchestrating a religious war aimed at destroying the Al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem’s Old City so that the Third Temple could be rebuilt in its place.
“This has been going on a long time in public through, in part, the efforts of a group called Chabad. C-H-A-B-A-D,” Carlson said.
Chabad, a sect of Hasidic Judaism known for its global religious outreach and houses on hundreds of college campuses, does not function as a political advocacy organization. Its teachings describe the rebuilding of the Third Temple as part of a future messianic redemption achieved through acts of mitzvot — not a project to be advanced through modern warfare or the destruction of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
“To blame it on a Hasidic movement based in Brooklyn that just goes around the world, spreading Judaism, spreading love, spreading kindness, it’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” Yossi Farro, a member of the Chabad movement known for wrapping tefillin with celebrities, told the Forward in a phone interview. “He’s appealing to people that have never heard of Chabad and now, their first opinion is, this is horrible, these people are warmongers — which is the exact opposite of what we represent.”
The right-wing podcaster Candace Owens amplified the claim, posting to X, “Tucker is telling the truth about the Chabad Lubavitch.”
The comments come as Congress is set to vote today on a war powers resolution that would halt President Donald Trump’s military action in Iran. Several polls show that Republicans overwhelmingly support the decision to attack Iran, while a majority of Democrats oppose the military action.
The rhetoric also follows a series of attacks targeting Chabad celebrations. In December, a gunman opened fire at a Chabad Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia. The incident left 15 people dead, including a Chabad rabbi, a Holocaust survivor and a 10-year-old girl.
In January, a driver repeatedly rammed his car into an entrance to the Chabad-Lubavitch world headquarters in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, damaging the building on a night thousands had gathered there to celebrate.
Both Owens and Carlson have ramped up their use of conspiratorial anti-Israel rhetoric over the past year. In October 2025, Carlson drew widespread condemnation after hosting avowed antisemite and white nationalist Nick Fuentes for a friendly conversation.
During yesterday’s podcast, Carlson showed photos of IDF soldiers wearing patches embroidered with an outline of the Temple Mount as evidence of his claim that Chabad was behind the war in Iran, saying that “it seems like, from the reading we did recently, that those patches actually came from Chabad.”
The photos Carlson shared match those posted by the Temple Institute in January 2024 — long before the U.S. military campaign in Iran. The Temple Institute is a Jerusalem-based nonprofit that aims to “bring about the building of the Holy Temple in our time” and is unaffiliated with Chabad.
“He is also wrong about the Temple patches. They did not come from Chabad. Had he done even basic research, that would be clear,” Rabbi Yaacov Berman, a Chabad spokesperson, posted to X. “It would also show that many who wear the Temple patches see them as symbols of faith and hope for peace, and a yearning for the day when there will be no more war.”
The post Chabad on high alert after false Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens war claims appeared first on The Forward.
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Top PLO, Fatah Officials: Hamas Should Join Us, No Need to Disarm
Hamas police officers stand guard, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Gaza City, Oct. 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Stringer
The Palestinian Authority (PA) appears eager to hijack the Board of Peace’s UN Security Council-approved administration of Gaza and unite with Hamas to control the Strip themselves, according to comments made by a top PLO official in a new interview documented by Palestinian Media Watch.
According to Egyptian reports, PLO Executive Committee Secretary Azzam Al-Ahmad has been in Cairo meeting with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad:
Two informed Palestinian sources said Azzam Al-Ahmad, the secretary-general of the PLO Executive Committee, held talks in Cairo with faction leaders including Hamas and Islamic Jihad about the two movements joining the PLO.
[Manassa.news (Egypt), Feb. 22, 2026]
Officials from the governing PA and its parent political body the Palestine Liberation Organization have been making repeated overtures to Hamas to join the PLO.
In November 2025, Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub called on Egyptian help to “bridge the gaps” between Fatah and Hamas so they can unite against Israel.
The previous month, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ Advisor Mahmoud Al-Habbash declared “our hands are extended, and our hearts are open to rapprochement with Hamas.”
The implicit hope behind the unity push is that move might satisfy international demands for Hamas to relinquish control of Gaza. Back in October, Al-Habbash said that Hamas needed to disarm, but clearly the PA position has since softened. As a sweetener for Hamas to agree to join the PLO, the PLO says it is now ready to appease the terror group by allowing it to keep its weapons and remain an armed force on the ground.
The PA and PLO are aware that to legitimize absorbing Hamas into the PLO, Hamas – the perpetrators of the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust – must also be laundered of the stigma of being defined as a terror organization.
During al-Ahmad’s visit, he was interviewed by an Egyptian newspaper, tacitly confirming his mission:
They [US President Donald Trump and the Board of Peace] do not want Hamas to play any role in the Gaza Strip, and we reject this completely, because Hamas is part of the Palestinian national activity. It is true that it has not yet joined the PLO, but we are in a constant national dialogue with them to complete what is required for their entry into the PLO. Therefore, all talk about disarming Hamas and it being a terror organization is unacceptable to us, because Hamas is not a terror organization. [emphasis added]
[Shorouk News (Egyptian paper), Feb. 23, 2026]
The immediate follow-up question in the interview was seen as so important by Al-Ahmad that he made it into a post for his Facebook page:
Shorouk News’ Mohammed Khayal: “You mean clearly that you in the PLO do not view Hamas as a terror organization?”
Azzam Al-Ahmad: “We have never viewed it as a terror organization, and we always oppose when a decision is made by any international institution or any government classifying them as a terror organization, because they are part of the Palestinian national fabric.”
[Azzam Al-Ahmed’s Facebook page, Feb. 23, 2026]
Lest anyone thought that Al-Ahmad had misspoken, his strong statement was soon backed by Rajoub:
“Fatah Central Committee [Secretary and] member Jibril Rajoub emphasized that [PLO Executive Committee member] Azzam Al-Ahmad did not err in defending the weapons of the Hamas Movement and stating that it is part of the Palestinian national fabric.”
[Shahed, independent Palestinian news website, Feb. 24, 2026]
Meanwhile, without referencing Al-Ahmad directly, Fatah Movement Central Committee member Abbas Zaki doubled down on the renewed push for unity with the Islamist terror groups.
“Fatah Movement Central Committee member Abbas Zaki emphasized that national dialogue among Palestinian factions, foremost among them Hamas and Islamic Jihad, constitutes a ‘necessary path and an urgent national need… The real enemy of this unity is the Israeli occupation, and those who stand behind it politically and militarily, foremost among them the US, which is working to rearrange the region in a way that will serve Israel’s sovereignty at the expense of the Arab and Islamic rights.’”
[Sanad News, independent Palestinian news agency, Feb. 26, 2026]
Statements like these are nothing new for PA or PLO officials, who have been making overtures to Hamas for years. Yet the timing and stridency of this particular effort is everything, as it seeks to directly undermine the Trump-brokered ceasefire agreement and Gaza reconstruction plan based on the establishment of a technocratic government.
A technocratic government, to be known as the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), was chosen as the most effective way to begin to restore services to Gazans, and that makes sense. It provides the administrative structure to deliver essential services while at the same time depriving oxygen to any resumption of warfare against Israel from the territory – at least the parts of Gaza that Hamas no longer controls.
While the PA has decided to go along with the plan, a recent letter from PA Vice Chairman Hussein Al-Sheikh welcoming a PA liaison office with the NCAG stressed the PA’s expectation that this was all just a “transitional” prelude to PA control.
“These constitute practical transitional steps that contribute to alleviating the suffering of our people and providing administrative and security services, without creating administrative, legal, or security duality among our people in Gaza and the West Bank, and while reinforcing the principle of one system, one law, and one legitimate authority over arms.”
[WAFA, official PA news agency, English edition, Feb. 21, 2026]
In the PA’s mindset, whatever moves can hasten the end of this transition, the better, as the notion of suspending conflict with Israel in any Palestinian-populated area even temporarily is anathema to the PLO and Hamas alike.
As evidenced by Al-Ahmad’s latest remarks and others, the PA and PLO have no problem whatsoever with Hamas’ zeal for terrorism – but only appear to differ with the Islamist terror group on who gets to decide when and how it is used.
The author is a contributor to Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article first appeared.