Look who is talking about Nazism

One of Israel enemies’ favorite practices is accusing it in “Nazi behavior”. We are accustomed to seeing the national flag of Israel flying next to the Nazi swastika in anti-Israeli demonstrations. We have become indifferent to abominable comparisons of Israel Defense Force soldiers to Third Reich troopers and we no longer pay attention to the customary condemnation of our military anti-terror actions for being “genocidal”. This revolting analogy has even gained significant strength during the last military operation in Gaza with the portrayal of Hamas terrorists as a new embodiment of Warsaw Ghetto rebels. Terroris murderers that fired rockets at civilian settlements were lauded in western and Arab press as freedom fighters who courageously fight for their freedom against a crueler than the Nazi enemy. How come the Jewish State who was established after Hitler had butchered nearly all of Europe’s Jewry accused of “Nazi behaviour? Aren’t there enough villains in human history beside the Nazis for these purpose. Is it an accidental choice or a premeditated and well calculated policy?
Yehuda Leib Pinsker, the renowned Zionist leader once defined anti-Semitism as psychological pathology. He called if Yudophobia – the fear of jews. It is tempting to underestimate anti-Semitism and treat it as a mental illness. It sounds rational and scientific and there may even be some truth in it. However, I argue that even if this new form of anti-Semitism is fundamentally an irrational evil, its objectives are rationally defined and carefully planned. It seems that the campaign to illustrate Israel as the modern substitute of Nazi Germany, is part of a sophisticated policy of global Islamic Jihadism, and its local representative-the Palestinian national movement. The ultimate aim of both is the destruction of the jewish state. Ironically, it is both Islamic Jihadism and Palestinian national movement who embraced Nazi ideology and some 70 years ago. Their sympathy was not merely declarative; it included active collaboration and voluntary participation in the Nazi war machine.

Nazi Berlin-home of the Mufti

Even a brief review of global Islamist Jihadist movement history, with Hamas as its current Palestinian representative, reveals disturbing resemblance to Nazi ideology. Matthias Kontzel, in his historic research Jews and Jihad (2007) indicates that at the core of the Muslim Brotherhood ideology that Hassan El-Bana had established in Egypt in 1928 lay the identification of the Jew as the source of hated Western culture. El Bana regarded Western culture as evil and dangerous to the soul of every muslim. According to the ideology he had formulated, the only way to save the muslims from this corruption and ultimate spiritual decay is the physical annihilation of the Jew. This is precisely the essence of Hitler’s racist ideology as reflected in his book Mein Kampf (My War). Basically, there is one minor difference between the anti-Semitism of these ideologies. Whereas the conceptual framework of the Muslim brotherhood consisted of religion, the Nazis’ focused on race. The Muslim brotherhood preached murdering Jews as a key to universal Islamic hegemony while the Nazis regarded the Jews' extermination as a pre-condition to accomplishing the Aryan racial superiority in the world.
It is easy to understand why the Nazi ideologists realized, quite early, that encouraging the the Muslim Brotherhood would help them to increase their power in the Near East, shoving aside the British on their way to establish their 1000 year old Reich. From the early 30’s on and particularly after the ascension of the Nazi party to power in Germany, the ideologic resemblance between the Muslim Brotherhood (and its Palestinian branch), and the Nazi regime bore more practical meaning. Zvi Al-Peleg, in his book The Great Mufti (1991), indicates how Amin Al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem and indisputable leader of the national Palestinian movement, was receiveing in those years significant logistic and financial support form Nazi Germany. This support included large sums of money, and weapons that were smuggled into mandatory Palestine in order to prepare the Arab revolt against the British and to destroy the Jewish community. Jenny Lebel in her book Haj Amin and Berlin (1996) focused in the years 1941-1945 when the collaboration between the Mufti (and the Palestinian national movement) and the Nazi regime had reached its peak.
During those years , the Mufti resided in Berlin, not too far from his benefactor, Adolf Hitler. He worked effortlessly to recruit as many muslims as he could to the ranks of Nazi army. Overall, he managed to provide enough volunteers to form 3 Vaffen SS divisions. The 13th Al-Hanjar, the 23rd Kama, and the 21st Skanderberg (Mitcham, 2007). Besides these organic divisions, which bore distinctive insignias, like special shoulder badge and military Fez, there were many other individual Muslim volunteers that were embedded in other combat Nazi units. The Muslim Divisions operated in Yugoslavia, mainly against Tito’s partisans, and in Hungary. After the Nazi defeat, the Muslim SS soldiers were accused of war crimes and put on a wanted list. However, many had managed to escaped to the Near East and served in Kaukji's “Rescue Army” that invaded the newly established Israel. Others joined various gangs that were subordinated to the Mufti. A gruesome reminder of the Mufti's plan to the Jews in Palestine was a special death squad he managed to station in Greece. The squad’s mission was to orchestrate the extermination of the Jews in Palestine after General Erwin Romel had taken over it.
History shows, beyond doubt, that while Israel is accused of Nazism, it is the Palestinian national movement that openly identified with the Nazis and willingly collaborated with it. This is a historical fact. Nevertheless, there is always the troubling question: why are the Arabs trying so hard so hard to rewrite history and present the Jews in Israel as Nazis? Why are the Palestinians hiding their historical support of the Nazi ideology and war machine instead of boasting with it?
The truth is that for internal use, the Arabs, and the Palestinians in particular, never hid their sympathy to the Nazis. After the fall of the Third Reich in 1945, Arab countries opened their gates to fleeing Nazi war criminals, and some even contributed to the military efforts against Israel. The most famous example is perhaps Nazer’s Nazi missile scientist who planned to build missiles that would bomb Israel and destroy it. Pervert as it might sound, naming Arab children after Hitler is a legitimate practice in the Arab world. Not many Arabs raised a brow when Palestinian newspapers openly published greetings to newborn children bearing the name: Hitler Saleh, Hitler Abu-Alrab, Hitler Mahmud. Nazi literature like Hitler’s Mein Kampf (My War) is a best seller in the Muslim world as well as in the Palestinian authority which allegedly negotiates with Israel for peace.
Moreover, connections between Neo-Nazi movements to Islamist movements like Al Kaida and Hamas or even the so called secular movement like the PLO are well documented. Palestinian training camps in Lebanon hosted before 1982 some Neo Nazi activists who trained shoulder to shoulder with Palestinian terrorists. Neo Nazis from Western countries flew to Baghdad and stood by Saddam Hussein (himself a sympathizer of Nazi ideology) before the last Iraqi war. For years, Neo Nazi and racists militants form America and Europe had maintained close ties to Palestinian and Islamist terror organizations. However, to the external world, the National Palestinian movement and its supporters in the West present quite the opposite image.

Who will ever give up the “right of return”?

The objective of accusing Israel in Nazism by the Jihadist and the Palestinian terrorist movements (and their supporters in the West) is twofold. First, creating an associative link between Israel and Nazism in order to delegitimize it. Second, legitimizing the Jihadist-Palestinian terror in the eyes of international community. The Jihadist and their advocates in the West are well aware of the deep negative feelings that exist in the West to anything that has to do with Nazis. The unprecedented destruction that Hitler brought upon Europe more than 60 years ago, arouses general abhorrence to Nazi ideology to these very today. Creating associative identification of Israel with Nazism should, therefore, channel to it at least some of these negative feelings while re-legitimizing the Jihadist-Palestinian terror. Portraying it as if it were an anti-fascist movement that struggles in the cause of freedom against the “new (Israeli) Nazis”. Much like the allies and partisans that had fought against the “old Nazis” and their supporters during World War 2.
Judging from the relatively equanimity with which many Europeans have been accepting the murder of Jewish Israeli civilians in exploding busses and restaurants by suicide terrorists, the efforts to accomplish these goals are quite successful. Hard as it may sound, the massacre of Jewish Israeli civilians, is viewed more and more in recent years as acts of legitimate resistance against the inhuman entity.
This vicious but well calculated policy that the Palestinian and Jihadist conduct is aimed at cutting the emotional links and moral commitment that connect the West and Israel while creating sympathy to terrorist attacks against civilians. Through drawing an analogy between themselves and the free peoples who fought Nazi Germany during World War 2, the Palestinians and the Jihadists wish to facilitate the way to their “final solution” of the conflict, namely, destroying the “criminal” Jewish state by violent means.
It is my claim that the Arabs’ systematic policy of accusing Israel in Nazism supports the assumption that the conflict between the Zionist and the Palestinian movements is not over lands or territories. A conflict of this sort could have been settled long ago in some kind of compromise. The tactics they have been using is a reminder that the national Palestinian movement, from its early days, was absorbed with Fascist-Islamist ideology. An ideology which denies the very existence of Jews in Israel and regards the annihilation of the Jews, allegedly the rulers of America and source of all evil on earth, the ultimate remedy to the problems of the world.
I think that anyone who takes the above said into consideration, should understand why the most “compromising” plan that the “moderate” Arab world suggests as a solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians includes suicidal elements for Israel. Applying these elements should eventually lead to the destruction of Israel. No Arab leader, for instance, is ready to give up the right of return to millions of Palestinian refugees into pre-1967 Israel. Accepting this principle means only one thing: a radical change of the demographic balance towards the Arabs resulting in massive uprooting of millions of Israeli citizens whose homes are located in the allegedly Palestinian settlements and lands. Obviously, the “right of return” means the end of Israel as a state and turning most its citizens into refugees. A vivid example of the relevance of that dream was recently given during the Fatah convention in Ramallah where all Palestinian leaders rejected P.M Nenyahu's proposal to establish a Palestinian demilitarized state by Israel. Nor does any such leader agree to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. According to the Palestinian logic, Israel has no right to declare itself as a national state for the Jews, but the Palestinians have full right to have a national state for the Palestinian Arabs.
Given these stances, it is imperative to indicate again and again the Nazi origins of the national Palestinian movement as well as of other Islamist movements. It is important to bring to the people in Israel and to the international community the scope of the Palestinian and Islamist collaboration with Nazism in the past and to these days. We should not fail to indicate repeatedly that after the defeat of Nazi Germany the Arab world has become the center of active Nazi ideology in the world and that this venomous approach is considered normative and acceptable in the Arab world.
Finally, I think there a large disillusioned public in the West that is suspicious of the Arabs' campaign to legitimize terror and sacrifice Israel. It is vital to explain to this public that the Palestinian -Islamist plan to destroy the Jewish state is a part of a larger plan in which the West will be the next frontline. Al Kaida and Shiite Islamist of Iran openly declare their wish to enforce Islam by the sword on the whole world. Their declarations should not be underestimated, as if they were for “internal use”. We should remind those who forgot that the Ayatollahs in Iran have always regarded their religious revolution as something that should be exported worldwide. The Iranian Nuclear missiles are planned to cover parts of Europe as well as Israel. If life we seek, we should not leave the international arena to the anti-Semitic propaganda of the Palestinians and their Jihadist patrons.