Although there have been national leaders who have orchestrated mass murder since the defeat of Nazi Germany, no government has openly preached genocide as a systematic ideology of public policy. This taboo has been broken now by the Palestinian Authority.

Prior to World War II, the Nazis prepared the German people to commit the horrors of the Holocaust through a systematic indoctrination, demonizing Jews and Judaism, which incorporated three fundamental principles:

1. That Jews are inferior, even sub-human;
2. That Jews are planning and executing heinous crimes which constitute a mortal danger, if unchecked;
3. Defensive action is necessary for protection against the Jewish threat.

The systematic murder of Jews was transformed in Nazi ideology from a depraved atrocity to an act of idealism, which would save their people and the world.

Although, no evil in history is comparable to the Holocaust, it is now clear that the Palestinian Authority [PA] leadership is communicating a political-religious ideology that promotes genocide of the Jewish People, with haunting echoes of these three principles of Nazi ideology. The Jew's inferiority is reflected in the repeated dehumanization of Jews in words and cartoons:

• As animals - monkeys, pigs, donkeys, rats, worms, scorpions, spiders and octopuses.
  A religious leader on official PA television defined the Jews: "…Allah's enemies, the nation accursed in the Koran, whom the Creator refers to as monkeys and pigs, calf-worshippers and idolaters… The Koran is plain... the worst enemies of the Islamic Nation are the Jews …(1)"
• Jews are portrayed as corrupt, deceitful, unfaithful and especially, the cursed enemies of Allah. The political cartoon in the official Palestinian daily [name], days before the end of the last Millenium, defined the Jew as"the disease of the century." (2)

The second component of Palestinian indoctrination accuses the Jews of heinous crimes and posing a mortal threat, if not stopped.

• These libelous accusations drew considerable world attention when Suha Arafat stood beside Hillary Clinton in Ramallah, November 1999 and accused Israel of using poisonous gas.
• Other examples of PA fabricated accusations include: dropping poisoned candy from helicopters into Palestinian schoolyards (3); distributing carcinogenic food (4); injecting the AIDS virus into Arab prisoners; marketing radioactive belts to Arabs (5); engaging in physical and mental torture of Palestinians; and sexually exploiting Arab children.

Once a population is convinced of the inferiority, lethal danger, and enmity of G-d towards Jews, it is only a small step to seek out self-defense through the extermination of that evil threat. This is the most dangerous component.

• A member of the Palestinian Council of Religious Edicts, spelled it out on PA TV:"Jews are Jews. Whether Labor [Party] or Likud [Party], Jews are Jews… [One] must slaughter them and kill them, as per the word of Allah… Do not have mercy in your hearts for Jews anywhere, in any country. Fight them wherever you are. Anywhere you meet them - kill them. Kill the Jews… Do not have mercy on the Jews. Kill them everywhere."(6)
• Just last month a PA religious leader explained the inherently evil nature of the Jew, since the days of Muhammad:
  "The Prophet Muhammad, whom the Jews tried to assassinate more than once, with poison and by witchcraft ...warned us of the Jews, of the Jews' evil and the Jews' deceit. He [Muhammad] battled them and expelled them from Arabia, saying: 'There shall not be two religions in Arabia.' And he clarified the character of the Jew in the Koran and in the sayings of the Prophet so we would beware of them at every moment and at all times and so that we would know how to deal with the Jews. Say to the Jews:… 'Expect your graveyard. Expect the final battle.'(7)

The obligation to kill Jews is presented not only as a religious precept, but has been cited repeatedly as a historical necessity - a precondition set by Allah anticipating the Islamic Day of Resurrection. As a senior religious leader, responsible for religious education in the Wakf, writing in Arafat's official daily, explained:
"The battle with the Jews will continue, because the Prophet has decreed it, and none of his words go unfulfilled….. [as the Hadith (Muslim oral tradition) states:] 'The Day of Resurrection will not come until the Muslims make war against the Jews and kill them, and until the Jew hides behind a rock and tree, and the rock and tree says: 'Oh Muslim, servant of Allah, a Jew is behind me, come and kill him!'…" (8)
Indeed, Allah's war against the Jews is predetermined and can not be avoided even through a future peace agreement: "... the nation of Palestine, our destiny from Allah is to be the vanguard in the war against the Jews… all the agreements are temporary…"(9)

Portraying the Jews as worthy of death from Allah is promulgated in new schoolbooks written in 2001 by the PA Education Ministry, which include passages from the Koran, teaching that Jews should long for death, from Allah himself. (10)

History keeps reminding us, as it tragically did on September 11, that evil ideology, if unchecked, will lead to heinous crimes against humanity. It was common error prior to World War II for people to minimize Nazi hatred, dismissing it as rhetoric or propaganda. Tens of millions of people paid with their lives because the world couldn't bring itself to believe that there existed a nation that would put state murder into practice.

In explaining the civilized world's inability to recognize the danger of Nazism, Justice Robert H. Jackson, Chief US Counsel to the Nuremberg Trials, wrote:

"We must not forget that when the Nazi plans were boldly proclaimed, they were so extravagant, that the world refused to take them seriously." (11)

Now it is the Palestinians who boldly and extravagantly proclaim their plans. Let us not make the same mistake again.

1. Sheikh Dr. Ibrahim Muhammad Maadi, Friday Sermon, PATV, August 3, 2000
2. Al Hayat Al Jadida, Dec. 28, 1999
3. Al Hayat Al Jadida, Mar. 22 2001
4. Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Sept. 12, 1998
5. Al Hayat Al Jadida, May 8, 2001
6. Dr. Ahmad Yussouf Abu-Halabiyeh, PATV Oct. 13, 2000
7. Mustafa Nadjem PA TV Feb 8, 2002
8. Sheikh Muhammed Abd Al Hadi La'afi, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, May 18, 2001, also on PA TV Mar. 30, 2001, Apr. 13, 2001, Apr. 27, 2001, and Aug. 3, 2001and others.
9. Dr. Ahmad Yussouf Abu-Halabiyeh, Palestinian Council of Religious Edicts, PA TV, July 28, 2000.
10."... Jews, if you think that you are favored of Allah, to the exclusion of (other) men. Then long for death if you are truthful... death from which you flee, will surely overtake you Reading the Koran, 6th grade PA school book, p.23
11."TRIAL OF WAR CRIMINAL (WASHINGTON 1945) INDICTMENT OF NAZI INDIVIDUALS AND ORGANIZATIONS BY THE INTERNATIONAL MILITARY TRIBUNAL", pg. 1138, U.S. State Department publication

This article was first published by the Jewish Agency for Israel. and is reprinted with permission.