Palestinian-American Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., is standing by her latest hate-filled statement, which is based on a monstrous falsehood. She said that she has a “kind of calming feeling” when she thinks about the Holocaust because her Palestinian “ancestors” tried “to create a safe haven for Jews, post-the Holocaust, post-the tragedy and the horrific persecution of Jews across the world at that time.” In the same interview by hosts Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman, Rep. Tlaib complained, according to her one-sided Palestinian victimhood narrative, “that it was my ancestors, Palestinians, who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity, their existence in many ways…”
Rep. Tlaib’s Palestinian “ancestors” were in fact amongst the enthusiastic boosters of the Nazi genocide machine during World War II. Palestinian leaders sought to carry on the plan to exterminate as many of the Jews as possible who had managed to escape the Holocaust and reach the Holy Land following the war. Instead of accepting the original two-state solution proposed by the United Nations more than seven decades ago under which the Palestinians could have been living in their own independent state all this time, their leadership rejected the idea of a Jewish state existing side by side in peace with a Palestinian state.
President Trump correctly admonished Rep. Tlaib, tweeting “Democrat Rep. Tlaib is being slammed for her horrible and highly insensitive statement on the Holocaust. She obviously has tremendous hatred of Israel and the Jewish people.” Bernie Sanders rushed to her defense. Senator Sanders tweeted that President Trump should apologize for “taking Rep. @RashidaTlaib’s comments out of context.” This is the same man who said the Boston Marathon terrorist bomber should have the “right” to vote from jail.
Meanwhile, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her Democratic leadership in the House are running for cover. They are allowing the recurrent trashing of the Jewish state by the newly elected Muslim members of their caucus to go unpunished. Falsifying history to serve the Palestinian propaganda narrative is yet another display of anti-Semitism. Here are some facts that Pelosi and her colleagues are choosing to ignore by their failure to act decisively against the anti-Semites in their midst.
Haj Amin al-Husseini, the former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who was considered the father of Palestinian nationalism, sought an alliance with Adolf Hitler from the time of Hitler’s early days in power, and continued his collaboration after the British exiled him to Iraq in 1938. Haj Amin al-Husseini visited Hitler and his henchmen, including Heinrich Himmler, the architect of the Final Solution, in Berlin in 1941. Hitler himself assured his guest that Germany wanted “the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere.” Al-Husseini spread Nazi propaganda and recruited Islamic youth to serve in the Germany military. He also sought to block the transport of Jewish children to the Holy Land. Himmler sent al-Husseini a letter in 1943 declaring that the “National-Socialist movement of greater Germany has made its fight against world Jewry a guiding principle since its very beginning.” Himmler added, “For that reason it has been closely following the battle of freedom-seeking Arabs—and especially in Palestine—against the Jewish invaders” and sent the Palestinian leader his “warm wishes for the continuation of your battle until the big victory.”
In his memoir, Haj Amin al-Husseini noted how the Nazis during the latter stages of the war “had put at our disposal four light, four-engine airplanes for the transportation of war materiel to Palestine, to be stored in secret shelters, for the training of Palestinian fighters and for their preparation for the battles to follow.” The “war materiel” included “tens of thousands of rifles, machine guns and light weapons and great quantities of equipment and ammunition.”
After the end of World War II, there was no Palestinian offer of “safe haven for Jews” in the Holy Land as Rep. Tlaib falsely claimed. The British authorities, while they were still in charge of the “Mandate for Palestine,” sided with Arab demands and placed significant restrictions on Jewish emigration from post-War Europe to the Holy Land. Refugee ships were turned back. Some Jews trying to enter the historic Jewish homeland were placed in internment camps. Haj Amin al-Husseini was anointed by the Arab League as the leader of the Palestinian Arabs, although he remained outside of the territory to avoid capture. Al-Husseini brooked no dissent from his extreme anti-Jewish position. On November 23, 1946, Fauzi Darwish el-Husseini, a relative of Haj Amin al-Husseini but an opponent of his who had sought reconciliation with Jews in the Holy Land, was assassinated.
Meanwhile, following years spent in exile in neighboring countries after participating in armed rebellions during the 1930’s against the British in the Palestinian territory then under British control, a leading militant by the name of Abd al-Qadir al-Husseini began working to smuggle arms into the Palestinian territory. He snuck back into the territory himself in December 1947. Abd al-Qadir al-Husseini soon took command of the Army of Holy War, which launched several military operations against Jewish forces in Jerusalem. These attacks included blowing up the Jewish Agency headquarters in Jerusalem, killing 12 and injuring 86 Jewish civilians. They occurred after the United Nations General Assembly had recommended in November 1947 a partition of the land inhabited by Jews and Palestinian Arabs. Jews accepted the UN proposal. The Palestinians and their supporters in neighboring Arab nations rejected it. In April 1948, Abd al-Qadir al-Husseini was killed during a battle and was lionized as a hero by many in the Arab world. When Israel declared its independence in May 1948, Palestinians, joined by armies of their neighboring Arab countries, launched a war against the Jews. This apparently is Rep. Tlaib’s perverted notion of her ancestors’ efforts “to create a safe haven for Jews, post-the Holocaust.”
Rep. Tlaib whined that her latest words regarding the Holocaust and its aftermath were being twisted in order “to ignite vile attacks” on her and “silence” her. No, Rep. Tlaib, your words were quoted in context. Your own words show how you have inherited from your Palestinian “ancestors” the hatred for Jews living in their historic homeland that animated your ancestors’ alliance with the Nazis. With very few exceptions, your ancestors, like the Palestinian terrorists today, sought to create a graveyard for Jews before, during and after World War II, not a “safe haven.”
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