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Titolo: per quelli che "il problema sono gli insediamenti"

http://www.meforum.org/3022/anti-semitism-prevents-peace
How Anti-Semitism Prevents Peace
by David Patterson
Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2011, pp. 73-83
http://www.meforum.org/3022/anti-semitism-prevents-peace
Despite the obsessive preoccupation with Israeli building activities
in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the greatest obstacle to peace
between the Israelis and the Palestinians is almost never mentioned in
media accounts: virulent, jihadist hatred of Jews. Contrary to what
many assume, however, jihadism in its current form is not a throwback
to some medieval mindset but a confluence of traditional Islamic
teachings and the anti-Semitism and extermination goals of Nazism.
Without understanding how the latter has influenced the former, it
would be difficult to identify how modern jihadists find a basis for
some of their pronouncements. For example, a faithful Muslim could
arguably support a Jewish presence in historic Palestine since the
Qur'an designates the Land of Israel as a dwelling place for the Jews,
to which they will be returned as the last days approach.[1] Clearly
this viewpoint runs counter to the jihadists' agenda as well as their
rhetoric. But it is through their rhetoric that the deadly adaptation
of Nazi views surrounding an Islamic core is seen most clearly.
Sources of Inspiration
Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna (1906-49) said he learned a
great deal from the Nazis about the effectiveness of propaganda in
spreading hatred of Jews.[2] Hitler himself makes two basic points in
this connection: (1) "something of the most insolent lie will always
remain and stick,"[3] and (2) the aim of propaganda is not to inform
but to incite "wrathful hatred."[4] Hence, like the Nazis, modern
jihadists, who derive much of their inspiration from the writings of
Banna and others of the Brotherhood, often invoke such discredited
works as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an anti-Semitic tract
fabricated by the Russian secret police at the turn of the twentieth
century, as evidence of a world Zionist conspiracy. They have
resurrected the medieval blood libel and have accused the Jews of
every evil, from spreading cancer to dispensing aphrodisiacs to Muslim
women.[5] When jihadists are not busy denying the Holocaust, they take
their cue from Hitler and blame the Jews for the outbreak of World War
II and its bloody consequences.[6] Thus, for example, Palestinian
Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas argued in his book, The Other
Side: The Secret Relationship between Nazism and the Zionist Movement,
that less than a million Jews had been killed in the Holocaust and
that the Zionist movement was a partner in the mass slaughter of the
Jews.[7]
Alfred Rosenberg, perhaps the Nazis' most influential ideologue after
Hitler, argued that Jews must be annihilated because the Aryan race
had been "poisoned by Judaism" and not merely by Jewish blood: The
essence of Jewish evil, he maintained, found its expression in
Judaism, and both the "ism" and the essence were in the blood.[8] All
Jews, thus, were essentially evil and must, therefore, be eliminated.
Such notions are echoed by Sayyid Qutb, the most influential of the
modern jihadist ideologues after Banna, who held that "Jews were by
nature determined to fight God's truth and sow corruption and
confusion,"[9] and that "the deeper cause of the Jewish hatred of
Islam was the malevolent Jewish nature."[10]
As with the Nazis, the jihadists' aim is to eliminate this source of
evil that threatens all of humanity. "Jihad and Jew-hatred belong
together," German academic Matthias Küntzel correctly observes.[11]
What drives this hatred is not the Jewish presence in the Middle East—
it is the Jewish presence in the world. A televised diatribe delivered
by the Egyptian cleric Muhammad Hussein Yaqub epitomized the
jihadists' ideological position:
    If the Jews left Palestine to us, would we start loving them? Of
course not. … They are enemies not because they occupied Palestine.
They would have been enemies even if they did not occupy a thing. …
Our fighting with the Jews is eternal, and it will not end until the
final battle … until not a single Jew remains on the face of the earth.
[12]
The jihadist invocation of God to justify the murder of Jews echoes
the inscription on the belt buckles of the Nazi SS: Gott Mit Uns—"God
[is] with us." Hatred of the Jew is a holy hatred, pleasing to God and
incumbent upon the pious Muslim or the loyal Nazi. Both groups portray
their struggle as adhering to God's will but in effect take on the
role of substituting for God. It is no coincidence that the charter of
Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, is called the
"Charter of Allah": Hamas is Allah.[13]
Like the Nazis, the Islamist jihadists have formulated an ideology of
absolutes rooted in a will to power that deems anything outside Dar al-
Islam, the "realm of Islam," to be either illegitimate or evil.
Absolutes allow no room for negotiation with "evil." For a jihadist to
acknowledge the political legitimacy of the Jewish state would be to
acknowledge the existential legitimacy of evil. Both the Nazi and
jihadist forms of hatred of Jews are driven by a will to
extermination. Thus Bernard Lewis writes that the era of murderous
anti-Semitism that "began with the rise of Hitler did not end with his
fall."[14] More than any other, the jihadist who embraced the Nazis'
loathing of Jews and their extermination goals was Hajj Amin al-
Husseini, leader of the Palestinian Arabs from the 1920s to the late
1940s.
Jerusalem's Mufti Prepares the Soil for the PLO
Husseini's entry into the politics of jihadism came in the wake of the
signing of the Weizmann-Faisal agreement in January 1919, articles III
and IV of which assured the Jews a homeland in Palestine.[15] After
inciting riots in Jerusalem in 1920 with cries of "Kill the Jews.
There is no punishment for killing Jews,"[16] Husseini fled the
country and was sentenced in absentia to ten years in prison. When
elections to select a new mufti were held in April 1921, the British
High Commissioner for Palestine, Sir Herbert Samuel, bypassed the
official process and appointed Husseini to the position in an effort
to secure the domestic peace. This had the opposite effect: One of
Husseini's first acts as mufti was to declare a jihad against the
British and the Jews.[17] In August 1929, in a response to the mufti's
cry that "he who kills a Jew is assured a place in the next world,"
Arabs went on a rampage throughout Palestine, leaving 133 Jews dead
and 339 wounded.[18] On April 19, 1936, again at Husseini's
incitement, rioting against the Jews erupted in Jaffa in what
subsequently evolved into a three-year Arab revolt but not before the
mufti had begun building his alliances with the Nazis.
In March 1933, Husseini had his first meeting with Nazi general consul
Heinrich Wolff in Jerusalem, having earlier established connections
with the Muslim Brotherhood. Husseini arranged for the Brotherhood to
receive support from the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s and later
indicated that the Germans made it possible for him to engineer the
Arab revolt of 1936-39.[19] On October 2, 1937, he met with Adolf
Eichmann and Herbert Hagen, one of Eichmann's colleagues in the
Gestapo's Department of Jewish Affairs:
    Eichmann wrote glowingly of "the national and racial conscience"
that he observed while amongst the Arabs. He reported that "Nazi flags
fly in Palestine, and they adorn their houses with swastikas and
portraits of Hitler."[20]
The meeting took place during the Arab "revolt," just months after the
Peel Commission's report of July 7, 1937, which recommended a two-
state solution to the tensions between Palestinian Jews and Arabs.
That was not the solution that Husseini wanted, and Eichmann knew it.
Days later, on October 13, the mufti again fled Palestine for Lebanon
to avoid arrest and possible deportation for inciting violence against
the British Mandate government. Two years later, he set up his base of
operations in Baghdad and joined with Rashid Ali al-Gaylani to lead a
Nazi-backed takeover of the Iraqi government on April 1, 1941. By May
31, the British had successfully suppressed the coup but not before
Husseini had issued a fatwa (religious edict) announcing a jihad
against Britain and the Jews. Months later, on November 28, 1941, the
mufti, whom the Nazis now deemed the "champion of Arab liberation,"
sat opposite Adolf Hitler, who assured him that the Nazis and the
Arabs were engaged in the same struggle, namely, the extermination of
the Jews.[21]
By the end of the year, Husseini had met again with Eichmann, by now
tasked with executing the "Final Solution"; his deputy Dieter
Wisliceny later testified that Eichmann had informed the mufti "of the
plan concerning the 'Final Solution of the Jewish Question in
Europe.'"[22] Eichmann's deputy also claimed that "the mufti was one
of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry
and had been a collaborator and advisor of Eichmann and Himmler in the
execution of this plan."[23] Authors David Dalin and John Rothman have
argued along these lines that "of the major Nazi leaders, Heinrich
Himmler was the one with whom al-Husseini collaborated most actively
and consistently … One of the common goals shared by al-Husseini and
Himmler, who was the architect of the Nazis' 'Final Solution,' was the
extermination of the Jews."[24] Indeed, in his memoirs, the mufti had
no qualms about boasting of his intimate friendship with Himmler.[25]
Husseini had at his disposal six radio stations from which he issued
regular Arabic language broadcasts urging Muslims in service to God to
kill Jews everywhere. On December 11, 1942, he called Muslims to
"martyrdom" as Germany's allies against the English and the Jews. "The
spilled blood of martyrs," he cried, "is the water of life."[26] A
week later, at a meeting of the Islamische Zentral-Institut, he
recited verses from the Qur'an teaching that the Jews were the "most
implacable enemies of the Muslims."[27] On November 2, 1943, he
declared at a rally in the Luftwaffe Hall in Berlin, "The Germans know
how to get rid of the Jews … They have definitely solved the Jewish
problem. [This makes] our friendship with Germany not a provisional
one, dependent on conditions, but a permanent and lasting
friendship."[28]
The mufti's actions were as murderous as his words. As early as
January 1942, Husseini had begun recruiting Muslims to serve in German
SS killing units, the most infamous of which was the Mountain
Handschar Division of 21,065 men.[29] Other Muslim SS killing units
included the Skanderberg Division in Albania and the Arabisches
Freiheitskorps in Macedonia. These murderous Muslim units played a
major role in rendering the Balkans Judenrein (free of Jews) during
the winter of 1943-44. As these units were doing their work, the mufti
was taking other measures to hasten the slaughter of the Jews.
According to Wisliceny and Hungarian Jewish leader Rudolf Kastner,
Husseini wrote letters to the governments of Bulgaria (May 6, 1943),
Italy (June 10, 1943), Romania and Hungary (June 28, 1943) demanding
that their Jews be exterminated without delay.[30]
In a broadcast aired on January 21, 1944, Husseini continued to blend
Nazism with jihadism, asserting that "the Koran says, 'You will find
that the Jews are the worst enemies of the Moslems.' There are also
considerable similarities between Islamic principles and those of
National Socialism."[31] In fact, he enumerated seven points that
Nazis and Muslims had in common: "(1) monotheism—unity of leadership,
the leadership principle; (2) a sense of obedience and discipline; (3)
the battle and the honor of dying in battle; (4) community, following
the principle: the collective above the individual; (5) high esteem
for motherhood and prohibition of abortion; (6) glorification of work
and creativity: 'Islam protects and values productive work, of
whatever kind it may be'; (7) attitude toward the Jews—'in the
struggle against Jewry, Islam and National Socialism are very
close.'"[32]
Two months later, Husseini enjoined his followers to "kill the Jews
wherever you find them. This pleases God, history, and religion."[33]
If "Islamic jihad blends religion and nationalism in its endeavor to
annihilate Israel," as Ziad Abu-Amr says,[34] this statement not only
echoes his incitement of the Arabs' anti-Jewish riots of 1920 and 1929
but also exemplifies Husseini's jihadist stance.
As the fighting that year dragged on, Husseini grew afraid that the
war might end before the prime directive of the extermination of the
Jews could be achieved. Twice he wrote to Himmler, urging him to use
every means possible to complete the extermination of the Jews.[35]
When the war ended, Husseini became a Nazi war criminal. Nonetheless,
he received a hero's welcome when he turned up in Egypt on June 20,
1946, thanks to the assistance of the French authorities. Ten days
later, the Muslim Brotherhood newspaper al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin
announced, "The Arab hero and symbol of al-jihad and patience and
struggle is here in Egypt."[36] This paragon of jihadism soon met with
Banna and Qutb to continue "the same struggle that Hitler and Germany—
and Husseini himself—had been waging during the war," according to
American academic Jeffrey Herf.[37] With the Nazis' extermination
goals in mind, he also took under his wing a promising young man:
Yasser Arafat.
Yasser Arafat and the PLO's Jihadist Agenda
In his Nazi mufti mentor, the future Nobel Peace Prize laureate
discovered a true soul mate. Arafat expressed his admiration for the
mufti until the end of his days, describing him in an interview
published in the Palestinian newspaper al-Quds as his "model and
hero."[38] This mentor enlisted him in the Muslim Brotherhood where he
received his first military training at the hands of former Nazis.[39]
In October 1959, Arafat and some of his colleagues founded Fatah, a
word that means "conquest" and is a reverse acronym for Harakat at-
Tahrir al-Filastini (The movement for the liberation of Palestine).
Fatah's ultimate aim, as stated in its platform, is "the annihilation
of the Zionist entity in all of its economic, political, military, and
cultural manifestations."[40] In late May 1964, a gathering of 422
Palestinian activists in East Jerusalem established the Palestine
Liberation Organization (PLO) and approved its two foundation documents
—the organization's Basic Constitution and the Palestinian National
Covenant.[41] By the end of the decade, the PLO had been overtaken by
Fatah with Arafat appointed as chairman.
Anyone who wants to know what stands in the way of peace between the
Israelis and the Palestinians need only read the Palestinian National
Charter, which assumed its final form in July 1968.[42] Reminiscent of
the Nazis' focus on blood purity, article 4 sets a similar tone,
stating that "Palestinian identity is a genuine, essential, and
inherent characteristic; it is transmitted from parents to children."
The covenant allows no room either for negotiations or for a peaceful
means of attaining their ends (articles 9, 10, and 21). Just as the
Jews threatened the existence and the essence of the Aryan nation, so
they threaten the existence and the essence of the Arab nation because
"the destiny of the Arab nation and, indeed, Arab existence itself
depends upon the destiny of the Palestine cause" (article 14); the
elimination of the Jews is not merely a political issue but, most
fundamentally, an existential, ontological issue.
Anything that might legitimize Jewish existence, then, must be
debunked, which is the point of article 20: "Claims of historical or
religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts
of history." The Jews simply have no place in Palestine, which must be
made Judenrein. Furthermore, the implication of article 22 is that
there is no place for the Jew anywhere: "Israel is the instrument of
the Zionist movement and geographical base for world imperialism …
Israel is a constant source of threat vis-à-vis peace in the Middle
East and the whole world." Just as the Nazis would deliver humanity
from the Jewish evil, so the PLO would save humankind; and just as the
Nazis were willing to give the appearance of negotiations in the run
up to World War II, winning Czechoslovakia without a single shot
through the notorious Munich agreement,[43] so the PLO adopted in July
1974 the "phased strategy," stipulating that the Palestinians should
seize whatever territory Israel is prepared or compelled to cede to
them and use it as a springboard for further territorial gains until
achieving the "complete liberation of Palestine."[44] Even as Arafat
shook Yitzhak Rabin's hand on the White House lawn on September 13,
1993, he informed the Palestinians in a prerecorded, Arabic-language
message broadcast by Jordanian television, that the Israeli-
Palestinian declaration of principles, also known as the Oslo accords,
was merely the implementation of the PLO's "phased strategy."[45]
Despite Arafat's declaration after the September 1972 massacre of
eleven Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic games that every Jew was
a target and his subsequent proclamation that the "end of Israel is
the goal of our struggle, and it allows neither compromise nor
mediation … Peace for us means the destruction of Israel and nothing
else,"[46] the United Nations welcomed the PLO as the representative
of the Palestinians[47] and granted it observer status.[48] Small
wonder that following that recognition, PLO chief Salah Khalaf had no
qualms about asserting that an "independent state on the West Bank and
Gaza is the beginning of the final solution,"[49] intentionally
echoing the Nazi code word for the extermination of European Jewry
that informed the PLO's own outlook.
In February 1979, just days after the Iranian Islamic revolution,
Arafat was welcomed in Tehran[50] where he declared to the founding
father of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, "The path
we have chosen is identical."[51] This embrace of the Iranian
revolution, as well as Arafat's roots in the Muslim Brotherhood to
which others of Fatah's founding fathers belonged, indicates that the
PLO was not as secular as many claimed. In 1987, Arafat affirmed that
"the religious trend is an integral part of the PLO," and Khalaf
averred, "The beginning of the Islamic awakening lay in sanctified
jihad, which was started by Fatah."[52]
Just a year prior to signing the Oslo accords, Arafat vilified the Jews
—not the Israelis—using strongly religious imagery: "Damn their [the
Jews'] fathers. The dogs. Filth and dirt … Treachery flows in their
blood, as the Qur'an testifies."[53] In order to inculcate such a view
in Palestinian children, Arafat saw to it that the agreement would
allow the Palestinians to retain control over the curricula in their
schools. Historian Efraim Karsh argues that "Arafat's indoctrination
of hatred among Palestinian children was unparalleled since Nazi
Germany."[54] In the years attending the Oslo accords, Arafat
repeatedly compared his strategy to the one used by the Prophet
Muhammad, who signed the Treaty of Hudaibiya with the people of Mecca
in 628, only to break it when the situation shifted to his advantage.
The confluence between Nazi aims and jihadist thought continued
unabated. Shortly after gaining control of the Gaza Strip and Jericho
in accordance with the declaration of principles, Fatah leader Sakhr
Habash stated that once the Palestinians had control of Gaza and the
West Bank, they would proceed to the "final solution."[55] In October
1994, Arafat appointed Ikrima Sabri as mufti of Jerusalem; Sabri
preached a rabid hatred of the Jews, using Qur'anic phrasing to
denounce them as "descendants of pigs and apes," accusing them of
involvement in a "world Zionist conspiracy," and blaming them in
another confluence with Nazi imagery for every ill that had befallen
humanity. On January 30, 1996, Arafat showed his hand and his
indebtedness to Nazi thought when he told a group of Arab diplomats in
Stockholm, "We plan to eliminate the State of Israel and establish a
purely Palestinian state." Another Fatah-appointed religious leader,
Ahmad Abu Halabiya declared in an October 2000 Friday sermon, "Have no
mercy on the Jews, no matter where they are, in any country,"[56]
making abundantly clear that for Fatah, like the Nazis and Husseini
before them, the evil to be overcome was not a Jewish state but the
presence of Jews in the world.
Arafat's death in November 2004 by no means changed Fatah's views on
the extermination of the Jews. On August 4, 2009, after a lapse of
twenty years, Fatah's Sixth General Assembly convened in Bethlehem
where it reaffirmed the hatred of Jews that had fuelled its drive for
the destruction of the Jewish state. The assembly called for a
continued "armed struggle" against the Jews—as "a strategy, not
tactic"—adding that the "struggle will not stop until the Zionist
entity is eliminated and Palestine is liberated."[57] By this time,
however, Fatah was in the midst of a power struggle with the Islamist
group Hamas—not over the ultimate goal but over who would control its
attainment. That power struggle continues to unfold.
Hamas's Jihadist Anti-Semitism
It is in the words of Hamas activists and leaders, and especially the
organization's 1988 charter, that the link between Nazi ideology and
triumphalist jihadism in the Palestinian "resistance" movements can be
seen most clearly. As indicated in article 2 of its charter, Hamas is
an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood;[58] its chief founder, Ahmad
Yassin, grew up in awe of Nazi ally Hajj Amin Husseini.[59] Yassin's
views on eliminating the Jews can be seen clearly in a 2000
Palestinian television broadcast where he proclaimed that Jews "must
be butchered and killed, as Allah the Almighty said: 'Fight them:
Allah will torture them at your hands, and will humiliate them and
will help you to overcome them.'"[60]
Hamas makes "no distinctions between Jews, Zionists, and
Israelis,"[61] which means their war is not about ending the Jewish
"occupation" of Palestine but rather ridding the planet of Jews. As
British academic Beverley Milton-Edwards noted, "The Hamas view of the
Jewish people is not drawn solely from the pages of the Qur'an and
Hadith [sayings and actions by Muhammad]. Its myopia is also the
product of Western anti-Semitic [primarily Nazi] influences."[62] As a
modern Islamist, jihadist movement, Hamas is defined by a
distinctively modern mutation of Islamic hatred of Jews as exemplified
in the writings of the Muslim Brotherhood's most influential jihadist
ideologue, Sayyid Qutb. Qutb was known for quoting Islamic sources in
his diatribes against the Jews to show that they are rejected by God
and that on judgment day they shall "taste suffering through
fire."[63] In his infamous essay "Our Struggle with the Jews," he
quotes passages from the Qur'an, including, "You will surely find the
worst enemies of the Muslim to be the Jews and the
polytheists" (5:82), to show that "the Jews have confronted Islam with
enmity from the moment that the Islamic state was established in
Medina."[64] He continues with: "Everywhere the Jews have been they
have committed unprecedented abominations."[65] Qutb's invocation of
scripture and his use of a revisionist history are in keeping with a
modern current in anti-Semitism, particularly when combined with his
claim that the aim of world Jewry is to "penetrate into the body
politic of the whole world and then … be free to perpetuate their evil
designs."[66] This fear of a world Jewish conspiracy is distinctively
modern, and the Muslim Brotherhood has bought into it.
The preamble of Hamas's charter quotes Muslim Brotherhood founder
Hassan al-Banna's statement that "Israel will exist and will continue
to exist until Islam will obliterate it."[67] When Banna made his
assertion, the Jewish state did not yet exist, so the reference to
Israel is a reference to the Jewish people.
Hamas understands itself to be functioning not merely as a political
or religious movement but as the incarnation of God's governance of
the universe. Article 1 in its charter states that Hamas is "based on
the common coordinated and interdependent conceptions of the laws of
the universe." Accordingly, Hamas's deeds and aspirations are a
reflection of God's laws of the universe. The organization extends its
reach into a realm beyond that of the Nazis: Whereas the Nazis
insisted on the purity of blood, the jihadists insist on the purity of
their very being since what is at stake is the ultimate annihilation
of the Jewish presence in the world.[68] As Banna put it, in its pure
form, Islam regulates all of being—"the affairs of men in this world
and the next"[69]—so that "the mission of the Muslim Brotherhood is
pure and unsullied, unblemished by any stain."[70] Relying upon a
famous hadith, article 7 of the charter states, "The Prophet, Allah
bless him and grant him salvation, has said: 'The Day of Judgment will
not come about until Muslims fight the Jews [killing the Jews], when
the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will
say, 'O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill
him.'" Nature itself rebels against the existence of the Jews: Natural
law, therefore, requires the eradication of the Jews. Thus there can
be no compromise, no peace with the Jewish state which, by definition,
is an evil and unnatural entity.
For Hamas then, the issue of Palestine is not about land or the "right
of return" or what shall be the capital of the future state, it is
about universal, revealed truth and is beyond negotiation. This
explains why
    initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international
conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic
Resistance Movement. Abusing any part of Palestine is abuse directed
against part of religion. Nationalism of the Islamic Resistance
Movement is part of its religion…. There is no solution for the
Palestinian question except through jihad.[71]
Article 15 states that "it is necessary that scientists, educators and
teachers, information and media people, as well as the educated
masses, especially the youth and sheikhs of the Islamic movements,
should take part in the operation of awakening [the masses]." Thus it
ends with the refrain from the famous collection of hadith by the
renowned, ninth-century Muslim scholar al-Bukhari: "I will assault and
kill, assault and kill, assault and kill [the Jews]."[72] Hamas also
echoes Hitler's assertion that "only the greatness of the sacrifices
will win new fighters for the cause"[73] when it proclaims that a good
Muslim mother must indoctrinate her children for "religious duties in
preparation for the role of fighting awaiting them."[74] Such a call
to arms has, in recent years, transformed murder into martyrdom: The
jihadist's ticket to paradise must be purchased not with his own blood
but with Jewish blood.
Hamas's view of the Jew as a pervasive, all-powerful presence that
threatens humanity echoes Hitler's insistence that the Jew is an
"invisible wire puller" who by stealth conspires to rule the world.
[75] It also underlies their view of the Jew as a threat not only to
the Arabs of Palestine but to all of humanity, as stated in article
22: Jews "were behind the French Revolution, the communist revolution,
and most of the revolutions … They formed secret societies … They were
able to control imperialistic countries and instigate them to colonize
many countries … There is no war going on anywhere without having
their finger in it." The Jew is behind every war—a belief shared by
Hamas and Hitler. Therefore, the Jews are the source of every evil, a
point reiterated in article 28: "The Zionist invasion [of the world]
is a vicious invasion. It does not refrain from resorting to all
methods, using all evil… They aim at undermining societies, destroying
values, corrupting consciences, deteriorating character, and
annihilating Islam … Israel, Judaism, and Jews challenge Islam and the
Muslim people."
Article 32 takes the theme a step further: "When they will have
digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further
expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the Protocols of the
Elders of Zion … Leaving the circle of struggle with Zionism is high
treason, and cursed be he who does that." The invocation of the
Protocols as a proof text is, of course, a method also employed by the
Nazis bringing to mind Banna's assertion that he had learned much from
the Nazis about the use of propaganda.
In Hamas's worldview, evil is rooted not only in the Jews but in
Judaism itself. Unlike the rest of humanity, the Jew can be neither
redeemed nor rehabilitated, any more than one could make Satan into a
saint. The only way to liberate humanity is to cast the satanic Jew
into hell, and, as the embodiment of God on earth, Hamas takes the
lead in that endeavor: Hamas is humanity's savior. To abandon its
mission would be to renounce its followers' place in paradise.
Conclusion
Politicians who are entrusted with securing the peace in the Middle
East fail to see reality. Inasmuch as negotiators will not name the
evil they confront, they remain blind to it. Enjoying the complicity
of the media, leaders in the Obama administration and elsewhere refuse
to refer to Islamist fascists as either Islamists or as fascists.
Such a position reflects an inexcusable, willful ignorance of the
history, religion, culture, and languages that go into the making of
modern jihadism. What must be understood above all is this: Hamas and
Fatah have developed a theological and ideological justification that
precludes any negotiations that would lead to a lasting peace with a
Jewish state. At best, one can expect an application of the PLO's
phased strategy, which gives the illusion of peace without renouncing
its goal of Jewish extermination. Neither Hamas nor Fatah can agree in
good faith to any peace with the Jews since in their eyes to do so
would amount to treason or apostasy or both. What then is to be done
beyond naming the evil? Simply stated, Islamist jihadism must be
eliminated, and given their ideological stances, neither Hamas nor
Fatah can be a viable partner in peace; therefore, their removal from
power is a prerequisite to any future for Israelis and Palestinians
alike. Whether the present revolutionary turmoil sweeping the Arab
world will produce such a result remains to be seen.
    David Patterson is Hillel Feinberg Chair in Holocaust studies at
the University of Texas at Dallas. This article is based on research
done for his book A Genealogy of Evil: Anti-Semitism from Nazism to
Islamic Jihad (Cambridge University Press, 2011).
[1] Qur. 17:105.
[2] Hassan al-Banna, Five Tracts of Hassan al-Banna: A Selection from
the Majmuat Rasail al-Imam al-Shahid Hassan al-Banna, trans. Charles
Wendell (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), pp. 45-6.
[3] Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. Ralph Manheim (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1971), p. 232.
[4] Ibid.
[5] See Bernard Lewis, Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry into
Conflict and Prejudice (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), pp. 265-6.
[6] Adolf Hitler, speech before the Reichstag, Jan. 30, 1939, Speeches
and Proclamations, vol. 3, trans. Chris Wilcox (Würzburg: Domarus
Verlag, 1996), pp. 1443-54.
[7] Mahmoud Abbas, Al-Wajh al-Akhar: al-Alaqat as-Sirriya bayna an-
Naziya wa-l-Sihyuniya (Amman: Dar Ibn Rushd, 1984), quoted in
Holocaust Denial in the Middle East: The Latest Anti-Israel Propaganda
Theme (New York: Anti-Defamation League, 2001), pp. 5-6.
[8] Alfred Rosenberg, Race and Race History and Other Essays, ed.
Robert Pais (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), pp. 131-2.
[9] Quoted in Ronald L. Nettler, Past Trials and Present Tribulations:
A Muslim Fundamentalist's View of the Jews (Oxford, Eng.: Pergamon,
1987), p. 35.
[10] Ibid., p. 44.
[11] Matthias Küntzel, Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism, and the
Roots of 9/11, trans. Colin Meade (New York: Telos Press, 2007), p.
149.
[12] Muhammad Hussein Yaqoub, "We Will Fight, Defeat, and Annihilate
Them," al-Rahma TV, Jan. 17, 2009, Middle East Media Research
Institute, Washington, D.C., Special Dispatch No. 2278, Mar. 12, 2009.
[13] "Hamas Covenant 1988," Yale Law School Avalon Project, accessed
Mar. 14, 2011; "The Charter of Allah: The Platform of the Islamic
Resistance Movement (Hamas), 1988," Palestine Center, accessed Mar.
14, 2011.
[14] Lewis, Semites and Anti-Semites, p. 13.
[15] Weizmann-Faisal agreement, Jan. 1919, Jewish Virtual Library,
accessed Mar. 14, 2011.
[16] David G. Dalin and John F. Rothman, Icon of Evil: Hitler's Mufti
and the Rise of Radical Islam (New York: Random House, 2008), p. 13.
[17] Ibid., p. 131.
[18] Ibid., p. 30.
[19] Küntzel, Jihad and Jew-Hatred, p. 31.
[20] Chuck Morse, The Nazi Connection to Islamic Terrorism (New York:
iUniverse, 2003), p. 46. It should be noted that, according to Klaus
Gensicke, Eichmann and Hagen were unable to set up a meeting with
Husseini. See Klaus Gensicke, Der Mufti von Jerusalem: Amin el-
Husseini und die Nationalsozialialisten (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag
Peter Lang, 1988), p. 52.
[21] Joseph B. Schechtman, The Mufti and the Fuehrer: The Rise and
Fall of Haj Amin el-Husseini (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1965), pp.
110, 121, 306.
[22] Gensicke, Der Mufti von Jerusalem, p. 165.
[23] Schechtman, The Mufti and the Fuehrer, p. 160.
[24] Dalin and Rothman, Icon of Evil, p. 50.
[25] Efraim Karsh, Palestine Betrayed (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2010), pp. 66-7.
[26] Jeffrey Herf, The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War
II and the Holocaust (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), p.
173.
[27] Gensicke, Der Mufti von Jerusalem, pp. 135-8.
[28] Quoted in Morse, The Nazi Connection to Islamic Terrorism, p. 60.
[29] Dalin and Rothman, Icon of Evil, p. 55.
[30] Lukasz Hirszowicz, The Third Reich and the Arab East (London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), p. 312.
[31] Schechtman, The Mufti and the Fuehrer, p. 139.
[32] Küntzel, Jihad and Jew Hatred, pp. 34-5.
[33] Quoted in Morse, The Nazi Connection to Islamic Terrorism, p. 62.
[34] Ziad Abu-Amr, Islamic Fundamentalism in the West Bank and Gaza:
Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Jihad (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1994), p. 103.
[35] Serge Trifkovic, The Sword of the Prophet, Islam: History,
Theology, Impact on the World (Boston: Regina Orthodox Press, 2002),
p. 187.
[36] Jeffrey Herf, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2009), p. 242.
[37] Ibid., p. 244.
[38] Al-Quds (Jerusalem), Aug. 2, 2002; Shlomo Ben-Ami, Scars of War,
Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2007), p. 214.
[39] Küntzel, Jihad and Jew-Hatred, p. 114.
[40] Leila S. Kadi, ed., Basic Political Documents of the Armed
Palestinian Resistance Movement (Beirut: Palestine Research Centre,
Dec. 1969), pp. 137-141, accessed Mar. 14, 2011, on Israel Ministry of
Foreign Affairs website, Jerusalem.
[41] Efraim Karsh, Arafat's War: The Man and His Battle for Israeli
Conquest (New York: Grove Press, 2003), pp. 23, 36; Palestinian
National Charter of 1964, Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine to
the United Nations, accessed Mar. 14, 2011.
[42] Kadi, Basic Political Documents of the Armed Palestinian
Resistance Movement.
[43] Munich Pact, Sept. 29, 1938, Yale Law School Avalon Project,
accessed Mar. 14, 2011.
[44] "Political Program for the Present Stage Drawn up by the 12th
PNC, Cairo, June 9, 1974," Journal of Palestine Studies, Summer 1974,
pp. 224-5.
[45] Efraim Karsh, "Arafat's Grand Strategy," Middle East Quarterly,
Spring 2004, p. 3.
[46] Laurent Murawiec, The Mind of Jihad (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2008), pp. 34, 41.
[47] "Question of Palestine," U.N. General Assembly res. 3236, Nov.
22, 1974.
[48] "Observer status for the Palestine Liberation Organization," U.N.
General Assembly res. 3237, Nov. 22, 1974.
[49] Quoted in Barry Rubin, Revolution until Victory? The Politics and
History of the PLO (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), p. 47.
[50] Said K. Aburish, Arafat: From Defender to Dictator (London:
Bloomsbury, 1999), p. 164.
[51] Murawiec, The Mind of Jihad, p. 318.
[52] Rubin, Revolution until Victory? p. 66.
[53] Ibid., p. 180.
[54] Karsh, Arafat's War, p. 247.
[55] Ibid., p. 62.
[56] Ibid., pp. 57, 103-5.
[57] "Fatah's Sixth General Conference Resolutions: Pursuing Peace
Options without Relinquishing Resistance or Right to Armed Struggle,"
The Middle East Research Institute (MEMRI), Aug. 13, 2009.
[58] "Hamas Covenant 1988"; Yonah Alexander, Palestinian Religious
Terrorism: Hamas and Islamic Jihad (Ardsley, N.Y.: Transnational
Publishers, 2002), pp. 47-69.
[59] Dalin and Rothman, Icon of Evil, p. 139.
[60] "PA TV Broadcasts Call for Killing Jews and Americans," MEMRI,
Special Dispatch, no. 138, Oct. 13, 2000.
[61] Abu-Amr, Islamic Fundamentalism in the West Bank and Gaza, p. 26.
[62] Beverley Milton-Edwards, Islamic Politics in Palestine (London:
I.B. Tauris, 1999), p. 188.
[63] Sayyid Qutb, Basic Principles of the Islamic Worldview, trans.
Rami David (North Haledon, N.J.: Islamic Publications International,
2006), p. 25.
[64] Sayyid Qutb, "Our Struggle with the Jews," in Ronald L. Nettler,
Past Trials and Present Tribulations: A Muslim Fundamentalist's View
of the Jews (Oxford: Pergamon, 1987), p. 81.
[65] Ibid., p. 78.
[66] Sayyid Qutb, Maalim fi al-Tariq (Damascus: Dar Al-Ilm, 2006), p.
111.
[67] "Hamas Covenant 1988."
[68] Quoted in David Aaron, In Their Own Words: Voices of Jihad (Santa
Monica: Rand Corporation, 2008), p. 117.
[69] Banna, Five Tracts of Hassan al-Banna, pp. 46-7.
[70] Ibid., p. 57.
[71] "Hamas Covenant 1988," art. 13.
[72] Alexander, Palestinian Religious Terrorism, p. 57.
[73] Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 103.
[74] "Hamas Covenant 1988," art. 18.
[75] Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 493.

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