The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has pointed to the open Palestinian embrace of Nazi symbols like the swastika flag as but further evidence that Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah/Palestinian Authority (PA) remains wedded to eliminating the Jewish state of Israel. Recently, in the Palestinian Arab city of Beit Omar, close to the Jewish communities of Gush Etzion and Kiryat Arba, Palestinians flew a Nazi flag next to the local mosque. The flag was seen by numerous Jewish motorists on the nearby highway and photographed several times. They were all astounded to see flying in a neighboring Arab town the symbol under which millions of Jews were massacred during World War II. (A picture of the flag flying can be seen here). Beit Omar, also known as Beit Ummar, is located in territory designated Area B under the Oslo Accords, in which the PA runs the day-to-day civilian affairs.
Uri Arnon, who saw the flag, later said, “I felt we were going back 75 years, losing our hold on the land. The Arabs no longer feel the need to hide their murderous tendencies, announcing out loud that they wish to destroy us” (Sharona Schwartz, ‘Israeli Motorists Shocked When Nazi Flag Seen Flying Near Palestinian Mosque,’ Yahoo News, May 20, 2013).
ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “There has been a history of Nazi sympathies among Palestinians, not just now, not just since 1967, but even before there was a Jewish state.
“In fact, the leader of the Palestinians for a generation, Haj Amin el-Husseini, was an admirer of Hitler and a Nazi collaborator. Husseini met with Hitler in 1941, lived out most of the war years as an honored guest of the Nazis in Berlin and also participated in a failed pro-Nazi coup in Iraq in which hundreds of Baghdadi Jews were murdered and maimed in a pogrom called the farhod. Husseini helped raised Muslim troops for the Nazi SS, who participated in the genocide of Jews in the Balkans. After World War II, he was charged with war crimes but evaded trial. Palestinian Arabs never repudiated him or his plans to wipe out the Jews in the Middle East; to the contrary, he is still an honored figure. So the raising of a Nazi flag, though a vicious and repulsive act, is not a surprise coming from a Palestinian city.
“This incident simply reconfirms that the PA and Palestinian society more generally do not accept Israel as a Jewish state, seek to eliminate Israel and engage in incitement to hatred and murder against Israel and also then glorify the terrorism this produces while inculcating this vicious Muslim supremacism and hatred into the next generation of Palestinians.”