During Holocaust Remembrance Week, Palestinians Say Israel Is Same — or Worse — Than Nazis

While Israel recently commemorated the six million victims of the Nazi Holocaust, it is often confronted by Palestinian Authority (PA) leaders and officials who claim that Israel is “acting like the Nazis” and worse. These lies have been intensified since Hamas launched the current war against Israel with its attack and massacre in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

The official PA daily stated that Israel’s defense war against Hamas “has exceeded all the German Nazi and Italian Fascist crimes of annihilation”:

The Zionist-American war  is targeting the annihilation of the Palestinian people or exiling it from the land of Ribat [i.e., religious conflict over land claimed to be Islamic] … and eliminating its national cause in order to spread darkness, wars, terror, and religious conflicts … Will the [Arab] brothers, the free world, and the supporters of peace stop the barbaric and insane war of annihilation that has exceeded all the German Nazi and Italian Fascist crimes of annihilation known to history? [emphasis added]

[Column by regular columnist Omar Hilmi Al-Ghoul, Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, March 12, 2024]

Two months into the war, top PA official Jibril Rajoub stated that Jews are not “victims” but “criminal[s], terrorist[s], and a distorted form of the fascism and Nazism of the last century,” and that the West has been “deceived” about this. He added that the war in Gaza is part of “the defense that the Palestinian people has waged and is waging for 75 years” — in other words, since Israel’s establishment:

Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub: “The Americans, Europeans, and others were deceived to think that the Jew is a victim. The truth is that he is a criminal, a terrorist, and a distorted form of the fascism and Nazism of the last century.”

[Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub, Facebook page, Dec. 4, 2023]

Talking about the PA’s proposed terrorists-for-hostages exchange, which the Palestinians envision as part of the negotiations with Israel to free the Israeli hostages still held by Hamas, Jibril Rajoub has also claimed that living conditions in Israeli prisons “are unprecedented anywhere but [in] the Nazi camps of the 1940s”:

Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub: “This [prisoner exchange] will be an opportunity, and the international community must adopt this position — closing the issue of imprisonment; closing the issue of abductions [i.e., arrest of terrorists], closing the issue of the massacre being committed in Israeli prisons through living conditions that are unprecedented anywhere but the Nazi camps of the 1940s and its barbaric and fascist treatment, etc.” [emphasis added]

[Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub, Facebook page, April 26, 2024]

Another example of Israel being called “Nazi” is this statement by an Egyptian academic accusing Israel of “wildly doing today to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to them” during its current defense war against Hamas. Obviously, the PA has no objections to the view expressed, as official PA TV chose to broadcast this interview twice:

International relations expert at Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Egypt Bashir Abd Al-Fattah: “The Israelis are killing the Palestinians and annihilating the Palestinians. They are committing Nazi acts. They are wildly doing today to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to them previously — the same crimes and the same method.” [emphasis added]

[Official PA TV, From Cairo, March 4 and 9, 2024]

Fatah Revolutionary Council member Tayseer Nasrallah echoed this, claiming Israel’s defense efforts in Gaza are “consistent with the mentality of crime, fascism, and Nazism”:

In World War I and World War II, no European city or state absorbed the scope [of damage] that the Gaza Strip has absorbed in six months. Therefore, this occupation [i.e., Israel] has actually used all its criminal tools and everything that is consistent with the mentality of crime, fascism, and Nazism against our Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. [emphasis added]

[Fatah Commission of Information and Culture, Facebook page, April 9, 2024]

Earlier this year, a PA official compared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister:

Palestinian National Council member and Fatah Austria Branch Secretary Mundhir Mar’i: “I compare Netanyahu to Goebbels, who was the Nazi propaganda minister who told Hitler: ‘Lie, lie, and lie, and the lie will become truth and people will say that it’s true.’ 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] Smotrich, and [Israeli Minister of National Security] Ben Gvir.” [emphasis added]

[Falestinona (Fatah’s Information and Culture Commission in Lebanon), YouTube channel, Feb. 10, 2024]

Jibril Rajoub has likewise accused the Israeli government of being “fascist” and led by “neo-Nazis”:

Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub: “The Israeli war is against the Palestinian people, not against Hamas. For us, ‘Hamas’ is a political rival, and our struggle with it is a democratic, moral, and value-based struggle … Currently the Israelis or this fascist [Israeli] government led by these neo-Nazis, as I said, want to eliminate the idea of the [Palestinian] state.” [emphasis added]

[Al-Majalla, Saudi state-affiliated London-based news website, March 23, 2024

The Nazi libel against Israel was not born out of the current war in the Gaza Strip, which was launched by terror organization Hamas with its attack and massacre of Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, 2023. For decades, Palestinian Media Watch has documented similar accusations by the PA.

In July 2023, a Fatah official labeled an Israeli counter-terror operation “Nazi,” saying Israel “insists on teaching Hitler what Nazism is”:

Other examples include:

• PA: Israel is “reenacting the Nazi Holocaust,” Zionism is “Nazism,” Israelis are the “new Nazis” (2022)
• PA regularly equates Israel and Israeli leaders to Nazism and Nazi leaders (2021)
• Israeli PM Netanyahu is a Nazi with a swastika tattoo — in Fatah cartoon (2016)
• Netanyahu has Nazi genes and imitates Hitler’s racism (2014)

The author is a senior analyst at Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article was originally published.