Immediately after the burnings, rapes, mutilations and murders of Jews on Oct. 7, I was not alone in noting the one moral difference between Hamas and the Nazis: The Nazis tried to hide their crimes against the Jews from the German people (and the world) while Hamas proudly publicized their crimes against the Jews to the Palestinian people (and didn’t mind that the world would inevitably see them bragging about killing Jews). In addition to videoing their atrocities, Hamas paraded captured Jews — dead and alive, clothed and naked — in front of cheering Palestinian crowds in Gaza.
This leads to a sobering realization.
Hamas boasting to their fellow Palestinians about what they did to Jews while the Nazis tried to hide what they did from fellow Germans means there is not only a moral difference between Hamas and the Nazis but a moral difference between the German people during the Nazi era and the Palestinian people today — and for nearly the last hundred years.
Morally speaking, it would be difficult to name a less impressive people than the Palestinians over the past century. For those who do not understand that a generalization means, by definition, that there are exceptions, I should note that there are and have always been noble Palestinian individuals. But the cumulative Palestinian record of evil over the last century has few peers.
Let’s begin in the 1940s.
The leading Palestinian religious leader in the early 1940s, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, was a major supporter of the Nazis and their extermination campaign against the Jews. There is a famous photo of al-Husseini meeting with Hitler in Berlin on Nov. 28, 1941. As reported in the Holocaust Encyclopedia, “Al-Husseini pointed out that Germany alone recognized the global threat of the ‘Jewish problem’ and took steps to ‘solve’ it globally …”
The Encyclopedia further notes that “on December 18, 1942, Arab emigres opened an ‘Islamic Central Institute’ (Islamische Zentral-Institut) in Berlin, with al-Husseini as a senior sponsor and keynote speaker. In his speech, al-Husseini lashed out at the Jews, stating that the Koran judged the Jews ‘to be the most irreconcilable enemies of the Muslims.'”
The Haaretz newspaper — which is left-wing and rabidly anti-Benjamin Netanyahu — described al-Husseini as “the father of Palestinian nationalism.”
In 1945, Yugoslavia sought to indict the father of Palestinian nationalism as a war criminal for recruiting 20,000 Muslim volunteers to join the Waffen-SS and participate in its extermination of the Jews of Croatia and Hungary.
All of that Nazi-like Palestinian antisemitism predates the establishment of the State of Israel.
Before describing decades of Palestinian butchery of Jews in Israel, it is also important to note the moral record of the Palestinian people with regard to fellow Arabs. The Palestinians came to be widely loathed in the Arab world for good reason: Wherever they went in large numbers, they created havoc.
On Sept. 6, 1970, Palestinian terrorists hijacked Trans World Airlines, Swissair and Pan Am airplanes. A few days later, they hijacked a British Overseas Airways Corporation (now “British Air”) airliner. The Palestinian terrorists segregated the flight crews and Jewish passengers, keeping the 56 Jewish hostages in custody, while releasing the non-Jews. In total, five planes were hijacked, and three of them were landed at a desert airstrip in Jordan. These hijackings plus Palestinian violence in Jordanian cities led to a Jordanian-Palestinian civil war in Sept. 1970, during which, according to the Palestinians, Jordan killed 25,000 Palestinians.
Seven months later, in April 1971, Yassir Arafat, the Palestinians’ leader, called for the overthrow of Jordan’s King Hussein. In November that same year, four members of the Black September terrorist group (which took its name from the Palestinians’ Sept. 1970 defeat in Jordan), assassinated Jordanian Prime Minister Wasfi Tal in Cairo. As reported in The New York Times, an “assassin kneeled beside his victim to lick his blood.” A photo of a Palestinian assassin drinking (not merely licking) Tal’s blood was widely published.
After destabilizing Jordan and losing the civil war they caused, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians went to Lebanon, where they quickly proceeded to ruin that country. Their love of violence and terror led to the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975, which lasted until 1990. That war led to an estimated 150,000 Lebanese killed, tens of thousands wounded, hundreds of thousands displaced and left destitute, and a decrease in the Christian population of Lebanon from 55% in 1970 to 35% in 2022.
Meanwhile, throughout Israel’s history, Palestinians murdered Jews in Israel whenever possible, blowing up school and municipal buses filled with passengers, blowing up Passover Seders and weddings and pizza parlors full of families, and wherever else Jews were assembled. On a regular basis, they stabbed and shot to death Jews who were simply going about their daily business.
To cite a few of thousands of examples, on May 8, 1970, Palestinian terrorists crossed into Israel and carried out the Avivim school bus massacre, a bombing which killed 13 civilians, 9 of whom were children, and injured 25 other children.
On May 22, 1970, Palestinians fired rocket-propelled grenades into an Israeli school bus, killing nine children and three adults and wounding 25.
On May 30, 1972, Japanese terrorists working on behalf of a Palestinian terror group murdered 26 and injured 80 passengers at Israel’s international airport (then called Lod).
On May 15, 1974, Palestinians went to a school in Ma’alot, Israel, where they took hostage 105 high school students and more than 10 others. They eventually killed 25 of the hostages, including 22 students, and injured another 68.
On March 11, 1978, Palestinians hijacked a bus and murdered 38 Israeli civilians, including 13 children, and injured 76 more.
On Oct. 19, 1994, a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up in a bus during the morning rush hour in Tel Aviv, killing 22 people and injuring 50 more. Hamas claimed responsibility.
On March 2, 2002, a Palestinian suicide bomber killed 11 people and injured over 50 at a Saturday evening bar mitzvah celebration. The terrorist detonated the bomb next to a group of women waiting with their baby carriages for their husbands to leave the nearby synagogue.
On March 27, 2002, 30 people were killed and 140 injured in a Palestinian suicide bombing in a hotel in the coastal city of Netanya in the midst of the Passover seder with 250 guests.
On July 31, 2002, nine people were killed and 85 wounded when a bomb exploded in the student center cafeteria on the Hebrew University campus. Hamas claimed responsibility.
On Aug. 19, 2003, 23 people were killed and over 130 wounded when a Palestinian suicide bomber detonated himself on a bus in Jerusalem. Hamas claimed responsibility.
This brief list is nowhere near exhaustive.
According to the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, as of 2022, a majority of Palestinians support terror attacks against Israeli Jews. Moreover, the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank has been paying more than $300 million annually — about 8% of the Palestinian budget — to the families of imprisoned terrorists and of terrorists killed while engaging in an act of terror against Jews. Another Palestinian poll states that the vast majority of Palestinians in the West Bank — over 75% — support Hamas at this time.
The Palestinian people love killing Jews and have loved doing so for nearly a century. Palestinian women routinely pass out candy in the streets in celebration of terror attacks against Jews. Compare this to Israel, which has many human rights organizations holding Israel to account regarding its treatment of Palestinians. Compare this to Israelis, who for years had volunteered to drive Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza to receive medical treatment in Israeli hospitals.
To be “pro-Palestinian” today means being pro-Hamas just as to be “pro-German” during World War II was the same as being pro-Nazi. The only difference is that the Germans as a whole were a better people than the Palestinians. If you support the Palestinians, you should know whom you support.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His commentary on Numbers, the fourth volume of “The Rational Bible,” his five-volume commentary on the first five books of the Bible, will be released in November 2024 and is available now for presale on Amazon. He is the co-founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.
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