Arafat Again Tramples on
Memory of the Holocaust
NEW YORK – In the latest example of the Palestinian Authority distorting and trampling upon the Holocaust, Yasir Arafat’s official PA news agency has declared that Israel’s dismantling of uninhabited, illegally-built Arab homes
“the current holocaust.”
Israel recently dismantled several dozen uninhabited Arab structures in Gaza that were being used by terrorists as cover for shooting attacks. The Jerusalem Municipality also recently dismantled a handful of uninhabited, illegally-built Arab homes.
The PA news agency WAFA asserted in an editorial on Jan. 15, 2002, that these Israeli actions are “barbaric,” “a terrifying war crime,” and “the current holocaust conducted by the Israeli government.” (The PA media regularly spell “Holocaust” with a small ‘h’, evidently in order to disparage its significance.)
Morton A. Klein, National President of the Zionist Organization of America(ZOA), who is a child of Holocaust survivors, was horn in a Displaced Persons camp in Gunzberg, Germany, and lost most of his family in the Holocaust, said: “The PA media’s constant denials or distortions of the Holocaust are part of Arafat’s culture of hatred and anti-Semitism, which promotes hatred and murder of Jews in the PA media, school textbooks, summer camps, officials’ speeches, and sermons by PA-appointed clergymen.”
Other recent examples of Holocaust-denial or Holocaust-distortion by Arafat and other PA officials:
* “The Jews’ Own Leaders Planned the Holocaust”: On September 21, 2001, PA Television broadcast the Friday sermon at the Sheikh Ijlin mosque in Gaza, by the preacher Sheikh Ibrahim Madhi. Sheikh Madhi said: “One of the Jews’ evil deeds is what has come to be called ‘the Holocaust,’ that is, the slaughter of the Jews by Nazism. However, revisionist historians have proven that this crime, carried out against some of the Jews, was planned by the Jews’ leaders, and was part of their policy. These are the Jews against whom we fight, oh beloved of Allah.” (In the remainder of the speech Sheikh Madhi referred to Jews as “cursed,” “corrupt,” and “donkeys.”)
(Translation courtesy of the Middle East Media Research Institute.)
* “The Jews are the ones who build gas chambers”: Arafat’s official news agency, WAFA, declared in an editorial on Sept. 4, 2001
“The over talented defenders of the Israeli practices, who [at the conference on racism, in Durban, South Africa] arrogantly accused the 3000 NGOs of being deceivers, and at the same time mentioned the gas chambers in a moment of unconsciousness, unaware to the similarity between the gas chambers of the Jews and the gas chambers taking place daily, on the Palestinian occupied lands, and unaware to the slight difference between then and now, that is today’s gas chambers are more sophisticated and modernized. Those who filled the entire world with their moaning about the historical gas chambers should not build such to others.”
(Translation courtesy of IRA)
* “The Holocaust is a fable”: Hari Manzour, columnist for the official PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadidah, wrote in its April 13, 2001 edition that the Holocaust is “a fable” and “the figure of six million Jews cremated in the Nazi Auschwitz camps is a lie for propaganda, as the most spacious vaults in the camp could not have held even 1% of that number.” Menswear also wrote, “When Zionism cannot find an enemy to separate and repel the Jews, it invents such an enemy; and so was the case with the Holocaust.”
* PA Television calls Death Camps “Disinfection Sites.” On November 29, 2000, the PA television program “Pages From Our History” included among its speakers Dr. Issam Sissalem, a lecturer in history lecturer at the Islamic University of Gaza, who said: “Lies surfaced about Jews being murdered here and there, and the Holocaust. And, of course, they are all lies and unfounded claims. No Chelmno, no Dachau, no Auschwitz! [They] were disinfection sites… They began to publicize in their propaganda that they were persecuted, murdered and exterminated… Committees acted here and there to establish this entity [Israel], this foreign entity, implanted as a cancer in our country, where our fathers lived, where we live, and where our children after us will live. They always portrayed themselves as victims, and they made a Center for Heroism and Holocaust [translation of the full name of Yad VaShem]. Whose heroism? Whose Holocaust? Heroism is our nation’s, the holocaust was against our people… We were the victims, but we shall not remain victims forever…”
(For a more detailed list of statements by Arafat, other PA officials, and the PA media distorting or denying the Holocaust, please call the ZOA at 212-481-1500.)