Thursday, 01 May 2008 19:00 Julie Stahl Editorial Dept - Middle East
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Although Holocaust denial has long been a common theme among Palestinians, Hamas has added a 'sinister twist,' claiming that the Jews themselves devised the Holocaust to exterminate the disabled and handicapped among them so they wouldn't be a burden to the future State of Israel.

The documentary, which aired on Hamas Al-Aksa television on April 18 - two weeks before Israel marks Holocaust Remembrance Day on Thursday -- was translated by the Palestinian Media Watch and can be found on YouTube.


Over archival footage of the first Israeli leaders, a Holocaust death camp and Nazi Germany, a narrator "quotes" Israel's first Prime Minister David Ben Gurion as saying that the "disabled and handicapped" represent a "heavy burden" to the state.

"The Satanic Jews thought up an evil plot [the Holocaust] to be rid of the burden of the disabled and handicapped, in twisted criminal ways," the narrator says.

 "While they accuse the Nazis or others so that Jews would seem persecuted and try to benefit from international sympathy, they were the first to invent the methods of evil and oppression," the narrator says.

As part of the documentary, Amin Dabur, head of the Palestinian Center for Strategic Research, called the Holocaust "a joke" and said it was "part of the perfect show that Ben Gurion put on."

"[He] focused on strong and energetic youth [for Israel], while the rest - the disabled, the handicapped, and the people with special needs were sent [to die]," Dabur charged. "They were sent [to die] so there would be a holocaust, so Israel could 'play' it for the world sympathy," he said.

The narrator says the "alleged numbers" of Jews killed in the Holocaust was exaggerated for propaganda purposes.

"Holocaust denial has been a common theme in the Palestinian Authority for many years, among politicians [and] academics both from the Fatah and the Hamas," PMW director, Itamar Marcus told Cybercast News Service.

"What's unusual about this it's a new sinister twist where they're acknowledging that Jews were killed, but they're saying they were killed by Jews themselves for the purpose of genetic enrichment, which is of course a horrific libel," Marcus said.

At the opening of the annual commemoration for Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day on Wednesday evening, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the voices of Holocaust deniers are still being heard.

"Their animosity drives them insane, and they foolishly deny the greatest horror ever known to humanity. To them -- the haters, the deniers and the devisers of malice, wherever they may be -- and to all those who allow them to act, we say on this day: never again!" Olmert told those gathered at Jerusalem's Yad Vashem, the country's main holocaust memorial.

"Historical accuracy does not interest you. You wish to deny the justifiability of the existence of a Jewish state -- and (you) are wrong to think that the Jewish state was established as a result of the Holocaust," Olmert said. He added that Holocaust deniers believe that if they invalidate the Holocaust, they can also invalidate the reason for the existence of the State of Israel.

Olmert wondered who would have believed that 63 years after the end of World War II, "hatred of Jews and Israelis would rear its ugly head in so many different places around the globe, provocatively and venomously, inciting hatred."

Hamas, which has the support of Iran, is sworn to the destruction of Israel. The organization, which is on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations, wants to establish an Islamic Palestinian state in all of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Israel.

Julie Stahl
CNSNews.com Jerusalem Bureau Chief

Image Courtesy of Wikipedia - "Selection" on the Judenrampe, Auschwitz, May/June 1944. To be sent to the right meant slave labor; to the left, the gas chambers. This image shows the arrival of Hungarian Jews from Carpatho-Ruthenia, many of them from the Berehov ghetto. It was taken by Ernst Hofmann or Bernhard Walter of the SS. Courtesy of Yad Vashem.
 



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