The recent controversy regarding Rep. Rashida Tlaib focused on her use of the term “calming feeling” regarding the Holocaust. That was an error by those focusing on the term, and a deliberate distraction by those defending the term. The reality of Tlaib’s statement was much worse, because it used Holocaust inversion and revisionism to portray Palestinians as the victims of the Holocaust.
I wrote about Tlaib’s Holocaust inversion and revisionism:
Putting aside the “calming feeling” wording, the Tlaib statement contains two themes: First, the Palestinians are the true victims of the Holocaust because it forced the Jewish survivors on them causing loss of land, property and lives; and Two, Palestinians helped create a safe haven for the Jews at much personal and national sacrifice.The first point, portraying Palestinians as the true victims of the Holocaust, is a historically perverse and malicious claim. Six millions Jews died, Jewish communities throughout Europe were wiped out, yet it is the Palestinians — who backed the Nazi effort — who are portrayed as the victims. It is fair to consider this an offshoot of Holocaust Inversion, the attempt to portray the Jewish victims of the Nazis as the Nazis. It’s also a historical theft, an attempt to deprive Jews of their history and to repurpose that history to attack Jews.The second point, that Palestinians supposedly helped provide safe haven to Jews during and after the Holocaust, is a historical falsehood of immense magnitude. We explored this falsehood in our prior post, pointing out that the Arabs of the British Mandate (who did not refer to themselves at that time as Palestinians, a more recent term), boycotted, slaughtered, and discriminated against Jews throughout the time period, and did everything they could to prevent Jews from finding a safe haven. The Grand Mufti was a strong supporter of Hitler and the extermination of the Jews.
The theme of Palestinians as the real victims of the Holocaust is common, as witnessed by another controversy regarding a video by AJ+.
AJ+ (AJ Plus) is the viral video wing of Qatar-owned Al Jazeera. AJ+ is a social justice fraud, it pushes social justice themes to millenials to draw in viewers by the millions. This is all a ruse for the real purpose, which is to push anti-Israel and sometimes anti-Semitic propaganda to millenials.
Many times on Twitter we have tweeted something along the lines of “This is your periodic reminder that @AJPlus is the viral video wing of the anti-Israel movement.
Do not underestimate the impact of AJ+ — it’s videos help shape the anti-Israel narrative among millenials.
As deceptive and manipulative as AJ+ is in English, it’s Arabic language videos can be even worse. They present the social justice face to in English, but that’s not what they say in Arabic, as a recent Holocaust video in Arabic shows.
The video presents a view of the Holocaust remarkably similar to that of Tlaib — while acknowledging the horrors of the Holocaust for Jews, the Palestinians are portrayed as the true victims. The key line is “So how can a Palestinian denounce a crime [the Holocaust] that has become the flip side of his own tragedy?”
MEMRI reports (emphasis added):
AJ+ Arabic, an online media platform run by the Qatari Al-Jazeera Network, posted a video on May 18, 2019 about “the story of the Holocaust” on Twitter and Facebook. The video was titled: “The Gas Chambers Killed Millions of Jews – That’s How the Story Goes. What Is the Truth behind the Holocaust and How Did the Zionist Movement Benefit from It?” The video is narrated by Muna Hawwa, a Kuwaiti-born Palestinian who lives in Qatar and works as a producer for the Al-Jazeera Network. In the video, Hawwa claimed that the number of Jewish Holocaust victims remains “one of the most prominent historical debates to this day,” and she said that some people believe that Hitler supported Zionist ideology. She claimed that the “much-regurgitated narrative of the Holocaust sorrows” paved the way for Jewish immigration to Palestine, and although she stressed that “denouncing the Holocaust is a moral obligation,” Hawwa added that Israel is the biggest “winner” from the Holocaust and that it uses the “same justification” as a “launching pad for the racial cleansing and annihilation of the Palestinians.” Hawwa said that the ideology behind the State of Israel “suckled from the Nazi spirit,” and concluded: “So how can a Palestinian denounce a crime that has become the flip side of his own tragedy?” Shortly after its publication, the video could no longer be accessed on Facebook.
Here is the partial transcript via MEMRI:
Muna Hawwa: The narrative that six million Jews were killed by the Nazi movement was adopted by the Zionist movement, and it is being reiterated every year on the so-called “Holocaust Memorial Day.” Let us tell you about the story of the Holocaust.[…]More than nine million Jews lived in Europe before World War II, most of them in the countries that would later be taken over by the Nazis. After the Holocaust, the Zionist movement claimed that 2 out of every 3 Jews were killed.[…]The Nazis targeted anyone they considered to be “human surplus” – either because they were “racially inferior,” or because they were not accepted politically. This means that the Jews were not the only victims of that era. The Nazis targeted the Romani, the Slavic nations, and some Arabs, as well as other groups like communists, socialists, trade unions, homosexuals, and the handicapped.[…]Along with others, the Jews faced a policy of systematic persecution, which culminated in the “Final Solution,” or annihilation. Their books were burned, they were fired from their jobs, their property was confiscated, and they were torn from their homes, in order to live in the secluded ghetto neighborhoods. They were forced to wear a special badge on their clothes. They were sent to detention centers, and they were worked to death in forced labor. The victims of the Nazis – who were following Hitler’s orders – exceeded 20 million people. The Jews were part of them. So why is there a focus only on them? The Jewish groups had financial resources, media institutions, research centers, and academic voices that managed to put a special spotlight on the Jewish victims of the Nazis. Nevertheless, the number of victims of the Holocaust remains one of the most prominent historical debates to this day. People are divided between those who deny the annihilation, others who think that the outcome was exaggerated, and others yet who accuse the Zionist movement of blowing it out of proportion in the service of the plan to establish what would later be known as the “State of Israel.” Let us take a pause here. How did Israel benefit from the Holocaust? In the first months following the Nazis’ rise to power, an agreement was signed between Nazi Germany and the Jewish Agency, the purpose of which was to make it easy for the Jews to immigrate to Palestine, in exchange for surrendering their property to Germany.[…]This agreement, along with other documents, made some people believe that Hitler supported Zionism. Former Mayor of London [Ken Livingstone] publicly declared this belief, and he was suspended from the Labour Party because of this. The persecution and the suffering – the much-regurgitated narrative of the Holocaust sorrows – paved the way for the Jewish immigration to Palestine.[…][Germany] is still paying huge reparations for what happened in World War II to a state that did not even exist at the time of the annihilation. Greece, the Serbs, Yugoslavia, and the Romani people have all suffered, but the Germany reparations to those victims cannot be compared to the payments to Israel, which, in turn, devoured the reparations of all the Jewish victims of Nazism. The Holocaust never stops to be a tragic event. Several countries denounce it as a crime. Dozens of institutions sponsor large museums in various capitals in the world commemorating the tragedy of the Jews. This provoked great interest in this incident, even though similar crimes, no less heinous, are still being perpetrated against other peoples. The annihilation of any people because of their race, sex, or religion, is an unacceptable thing that deserves to be strongly denounced. Denouncing the Holocaust is a moral obligation, but Israel is the biggest winner from the Holocaust, and it uses the same Nazi justifications as a launching pad for the racial cleansing and annihilation of the Palestinians. The main ideology behind the “State of Israel” is based on religious, national, and geographic concepts that suckled from the Nazi spirit and its main notions. So how can a Palestinian denounce a crime that has become the flip side of his own tragedy?
MEMRI has the video at its website, but unfortunately it’s embed codes don’t size properly, so here is what the posted on Twitter:
The AJ+ video was taken down by Al Jazeera, which said it didn’t meet its editorial standards.
But of course, the only reason it was taken down was that AJ+ got caught.
There are two lessons here.
First, AJ+ is a social justice fraud and propaganda outlet:
Second, Democrat defended similar comments by Rep. Rashida Tlaib, pushing Holocaust inversion and revisionism, making them worse even than the superficially-apologetic Al Jazeera.
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