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Palestinians, Arabs, and the Holocaust

(Jewish Political Studies Review) Joseph Spoerl - Palestinians insist that the Holocaust is a purely Western and Christian crime that has nothing to do with them or other Arabs. In fact, Arab and Palestinian leaders played a significant role in aiding and abetting the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews in Europe and they hoped to implement the genocide in the Middle East. The Arab-Israel War of 1947-9 was a war of self-defense against a ruthless, pro-Nazi, and openly genocidal Palestinian leadership that enjoyed enormous popularity among the Arab and Palestinian masses. In October 1947, Arab League Secretary General Abd al-Rahman Azzam was quoted in an Egyptian newspaper as predicting that the impending war over Palestine "will be a war of extermination and momentous massacre." Azzam elsewhere predicted, "We will sweep them into the sea," a phrase also used by Arab Higher Committee representative Izzedine Shawa. The Jews of Palestine were outnumbered by Arabs two-to-one within Palestine and by a much larger factor if Arabs outside of Palestine are counted. About 1% of the Jewish population was killed and 2% seriously wounded. For the U.S. today, comparable casualties in a war would mean about 9 1/2 million Americans killed or maimed. Palestinian Arab hostility to the Zionist project was not based simply on a principled defense of the right of national self-determination but on a visceral hatred for Jews. The persistence of such hatred in Palestinian society has done much to undermine efforts at reconciliation and the "peace process" and has persuaded many Israeli Jews that they have no real partner for peace on the Palestinian side. The writer teaches in the Department of Philosophy, Saint Anselm College, Manchester, New Hampshire.
2015-04-03 00:00:00
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