The Holocaust and the Occupation

Over the last couple of years, especially since the intifada of 2000, there has been a worrying trend amongst Israel’s enemies to compare the Israeli occupation with the holocaust. This trend is based on lies and total ignorance on the part of many Islamist extremists who have formed a strange alliance with the new left, neo-fascists, neo-Nazis, Iran, Hamas and even Al Qaeda. Of course there are also the eternal holocaust deniers who add grist to the mill of anti-Semitism.

Nothing can be compared to the Nazi crime against the Jewish People. Those who sympathize with the Palestinian cause and make these erroneous comparisons with the Israeli occupation have no conception of the attempted genocide of European Jewry which was part of Hitler’s plan to make Europe and the world Judenrein (free of Jews).

The comparing of Israel to Nazi Germany in its treatment of the Palestinians cannot be taken seriously by knowledgeable people. The only way to combat this ridiculous comparison is by education. This could be achieved by including holocaust studies in the school curriculum of schoolchildren all over the world, including the Arab world.

Palestinian children should be granted permits under parochial supervision to visit Yad Vashem (the Holocaust Museum) in Jerusalem, where they should be encouraged to ask questions about the holocaust. There will be Palestinians who are skeptical about the holocaust and may view this as a ploy to digress away from the evils of the Israeli occupation. Despite this problem, documented evidence of survivors of the holocaust as portrayed in Yad Vashem would go a long way in convincing even the hardest lined skeptics amongst the Palestinian community of the authenticity of the holocaust.

There is no doubt that the Palestinian people are suffering under Israeli occupation. The road blocks, security checks, logistic problems of movement within occupied Palestine have resulted in massive unemployment. The Israeli settlers living beyond the green line have done much damage to Palestinian property as well as abused the Palestinians. There is no justification for that under any circumstances. Much Palestinian land has been usurped by these settlers. Despite all these injustices towards the Palestinians committed by Israel, it is a long way from Nazi Germany’s treatment of the Jews.

Palestinians do not wear identification badges on their clothing as the Jews did. Palestinians are not beaten up in the streets by the Israeli Army because they are Palestinians as the Jews were in Nazi Germany. There have been incidents of abuse of the Palestinians by the Israeli Security Forces which was unjustifiable. The Nazis used to burn down shops just because they were owned by Jews. Jews were discriminated against in every sphere of life. Jewish professors and lecturers were fired from German universities, Jewish teachers from schools and Jewish judges and lawyers from law courts. The list of professions forbidden to Jews was unending. Jews were fired from their jobs just because they were Jews. They were strangled economically as all means that they had for earning a livelihood was taken away from them.

Eventually all these restrictions culminated in the “final solution” which was nothing more than genocide as the Jews were taken to concentration camps where many of them were gassed, shot in open pits, starved to death or died as a result of appalling conditions in the concentration camps where they were incarcerated. The crime – they were Jews! Six million Jews perished because of Nazi terror.

While there was tardiness on the part of Israel even before the first and second intifada in carrying out the Oslo Accords, one must bear in mind that Palestinian terrorism had begun just before PM Rabin’s assassination in November 1995. This had resulted in loss of trust between the Palestinians and Israel causing a severe setback in achieving an independent Palestinian state.

Much of Palestinian suffering (although not all) was a result of Israel’s security measures to protect its citizens from suicide bombings which had escalated into an almost daily occurrence during the years from 2000 to 2005. The security fence, with all its convolutions that divided Palestinian agricultural lands, causing much hardship, is serving its purpose. Many lives have been saved. Palestinian terror has dropped significantly but the motivation to carry out suicide attacks against Israelis still exists. The constant firing of Qassam rockets in the south of Israel into Sderot is still occurring regularly.

The Jews, who lived in Europe during Nazi rule, were never a security threat to Germany. The Nazis blamed the Jews for Germany’s economic collapse and hyperinflation. The Palestinian regimes, such as Hamas and their ally, Islamic Jihad, are dead set on “the final solution” – genocide of the Jewish people and the destruction of Israel. If one were to examine the Hamas Charter, there is no doubt as to their intention.

If anything, one can find many similarities in the Hamas Charter and the Nazi Manifesto as regards the Jews and Israel. Both Hamas and the Nazis have a common aim – the destruction of the Jewish People and their homeland.