“We want to burn you alive. That is all we are working for,” the Beita activists responsible for the effigy said.
By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
The Palestinians responsible for burning a large wooden Star of David containing a swastika in Samaria Saturday night are doubling down on their comparison of Israeli behavior to Nazism after seeing Israelis’ outrage over the incident, a Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) report said Monday.
The research institute that monitors Arab-language media for its promotion of terrorism and anti-Semitism wrote that the Facebook page “Beita Victory,” which had uploaded the original pictures of the figure being constructed and then set alight, posted another picture the next day.
In this one, a child was holding a Palestinian flag while walking on an Israeli flag and saying, “you [Israelis] are worse than Hitler and the Nazis. You have risen in crime beyond any murderer in history. You act sad about Hitler and do things worse than him.”
PMW noted that the false association of Israeli actions to Nazi atrocities has been made by Palestinian officials in their media over many years, and cited 16 separate instances in 2021 alone. Many of these references are quotes from the official Palestinian mouthpiece Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, whose writers have accused Israel of being “fascists,” committing “war crimes” comparable to Germany’s, and having “detention camps” for Palestinians that are “most similar to the Nazi crematoriums [sic].”
In addition, former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been compared to Hitler, while current Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has been charged with acting like Adolf Eichmann, chief architect of Nazi Germany’s Final Solution program.
Beita activists have been clashing with security forces at the site of the neighboring young settlement of Evyatar since it was set up in May, claiming that the land is their private Palestinian property. The 50 families that moved there after a Palestinian terrorist killed Jewish student Yehuda Guetta at the nearby Tapuah Junction had agreed to leave until the land’s status was clarified as part of a deal with the government. The rioting, however, has not stopped.
The Beita Victory page also promotes violence against Israel, said PMW.
After Israeli activist Ayelet Lash posted a picture of the star burning on Facebook and commented, “They [Arabs] want to burn us alive,” the Beita Victory page posted a screenshot of her words with the comment, “Yes, we want to burn you alive. That is all we are working for.” The PMW translators noted that the response was not a personal one, as the word in Arabic for “you” was in the plural.