By MICHA DANZIG
(White Rose Magazine via JNS) 

This past August, three events occurred that exposed the root of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs and demonstrated why, absent a titanic shift in Palestinian Arab society and culture, there can be no comprehensive peace.

These three things were:

  • Israel’s three-day war with Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).
  • The Fatah Party’s praise for an attack at a bus stop near the Western Wall in Jerusalem, in which the attacker opened fire on unarmed civilians and injured eight people, including a pregnant woman.
  • Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas’s refusal, during a visit to Germany, to apologize for his role in the murder of 11 Israeli Olympians during the 1972 Munich Olympics, followed by his claim that Israel is committing “50 Holocausts” against the Palestinian Arabs.

Grasping for the dove of peace.

In addition to being a designated terrorist group by the U.S. and the E.U., PIJ—based on its own words—is an Islamist supremacist offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood committed to the complete destruction of Israel and the establishment of a totalitarian Islamist theocracy on the ashes of the Jewish state.

Given PIJ’s ideology—which is a near mirror image of the Christian white supremacy that animates groups like the KKK—and its dependence on Iranian support, one might think that the media, both mainstream and social, would have immediately condemned the group and expressed support for Israel. This did not happen.

Nothing Says Heroic Like…
Indeed, even after it became clear that the Palestinian Arabs’ leadership was trying to blame Israel for the deaths of Palestinian civilians killed by misfired PIJ rockets, much of the mainstream media refused to condemn PIJ, and even repeated the lie that Israel was to blame for deaths caused by the misfired rockets.

Then, a few days after a ceasefire was reached between Israel and PIJ, the Jerusalem bus stop attack occurred. In response to this heinous act, in which a terrorist looked into the eyes of a pregnant woman and aimed for her belly, Fatah—headed by the supposedly “moderate” Abbas—praised the attack and the attacker. The terror group Hamas, of course, did so as well, praising the terrorist as “brave” and “heroic.” After all, nothing says “heroic” more than shooting at an unarmed pregnant woman.

Libel
Following up on these demonstrations of a complete absence of any moral compass was Abbas’s “50 Holocausts” remark. In the same country that, within living memory, committed the actual Holocaust, the P.A. chief was being feted by the German government and accorded the honor of sharing a podium with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. It was only natural, given that it was the 50th anniversary of the Munich Massacre, that the German press would ask Abbas whether he was ready to apologize for the heinous attack on the Israeli Olympians, which he helped plan and fund. Abbas refused and shot back with his “50 Holocausts” libel.

Over the century-long Arab-Israeli conflict, around 17,000 Palestinian Arabs and 26,000 Israelis have been killed. The claim that Israel has committed even one “Holocaust,” then, would be an extraordinarily immoral lie. But “50 Holocausts” is hate speech that is beyond malignant. It expresses a completely unhinged worldview driven by outright racism and anti-Semitism.

Anti-Semitism And Denial
Sadly, the blood libel expectorated by the Palestinian Arabs’ “moderate” leader and Israel’s supposed “partner for peace” should have surprised no one. At the same time that Abbas has been an honored guest of leaders the world over, he has repeatedly trafficked in anti-Semitism, revisionist history and Holocaust denial and inversion. In 2018, for example, Abbas blamed Jews for the Holocaust, claiming that “Jewish behavior and not anti-Semitism” caused the genocide. In 2015, he asserted in viscerally racist terms that Jews were “defiling” the Temple Mount with their “filthy feet.”

Abbas is not alone. His dictatorship relentlessly traffics in anti-Semitism. From promoting claims about Jews controlling banks and foreign governments, to blood libels accusing Jews of “harvesting organs” and poisoning wells, there seems to be no anti-Semitic line the P.A. is not willing to cross.

So long as Palestinian Arab terror groups like PIJ engage in genocidal and Islamist supremacist violence to little or no condemnation, terrorists are praised as “brave” heroes and the most moderate of Palestinian Arab leaders engage in Holocaust denial and inversion, peace is, sadly, not possible.

Micha Danzig served in the Israeli Army and is a former police officer with the NYPD. He is currently an attorney and is very active with numerous Jewish and pro-Israel organizations, including StandWithUs and the FIDF, and is a national board member of Herut North America.

This is an edited version of an article originally published by White Rose Magazine.