(PMW via JNS) “Auschwitz is here in every city in Palestine,” Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub told Kuwaiti TV earlier this month. Speaking to Kuwaiti TV channel Sawt Al-Arab on July 8, Rajoub equated the Nazi death camp to Israel’s “systematic policy, with barbaric and racist living conditions and conduct in order to cause physical and mental harm to these prisoners.” This was not the first time Rajoub has made the comparison. In February 2019, during a protest against a U.S.-led conference in Warsaw to discuss peace and security in the Middle East, he stated that “in every city in Palestine, from Rafah to Jenin, there is an Israeli Auschwitz to massacre Palestinians.” Israeli media watchdog NGO Palestinian Media Watch has also documented similar statements by Fatah spokesman Osama al-Qawasmi, who has stated that “no regime in history—not Hitler, not the Nazis, not fascism—has implemented what Israel is implementing against the Palestinians.”

Speaking on official Palestinian Authority TV on July 7, former Jordanian education minister Ibrahim Badran said Israel is a “racist state” that “rejects the other in a Nazi, Hitlerian manner.” The Jordanian ex-minister also warned all Arab states of “the Zionist danger,” saying that “colonialist” Israel/Zionism was plotting to take over the entire Arab world. Only by supporting the Palestinian cause may the Arab states cordon off “this evil that Zionism represents,” said Badran.