MK Sarsur (right)
MK Sarsur (right)Flash 90

A recent report shows that the most widely read Arabic-language newspaper in Israel contained anti-Israel incitement and compared Israel to Nazi Germany during the recent Cast Lead operation against Hamas in Gaza. An Israel-Arab MK is suspected of making similar remarks.

In a series of quotes from the Al-Arab paper, the most popular in Israel's Arab community, Israel is described as “worse than the Nazis” by one interviewee, and in another article is accused of committing crimes in Gaza “unlike any history has seen.” The quotes, published by the Hebrew-language website Omedia, were attributed to Palestinian Media Watch (PMW).

Other selections from the paper include segments terming Israel a “terrorist” and “fascist” state, calling IDF soldiers “the enemy” and referring to armed Hamas terrorists as “the men of the Gaza Resistance.”

Al-Arab supported Hamas throughout the operation, which was accompanied by hundreds of rocket attacks on southern Israel, the report found.

“What is happening [in Gaza] is slaughter and not a war, it is planned aggression and not a response,” one article stated. A second piece referred to “the criminal war in Gaza, which continues with no moral, human or diplomatic consideration.”

An editorial run by the paper accused Israel of fighting Islam. “This war is not only to destroy the Palestinian body, but to strip it of its spiritual strength, so that it will reexamine its faith and be pushed to return to the moderate, simple Allah who preferred the people of Israel to other peoples,” the article declared.

Hamas terrorists killed during the war were referred to as “martyrs” (shahid).

Sarsur: Israel Like Tatars, Nazis

Similar anti-Israel statements were made following the operation by Israel-Arab MK Ibrahim Sarsur of the Ra'am Ta'al party. Sarsur is accused of putting virulently anti-Israel statements on the Arab-language website representing his party.

"The elections are being held in the shadow of the war of aggression and destruction that Israel conducted against the Gaza Strip with the support of all Zionist parties on the right, center and left. It carried out acts of slaughter and left ruins, which had no historic precedent other than in the times of the Tatars and the Nazis,” the site said.

The site contained a warning to Arab voters that if they did not vote in Ra'am Ta'al and other Arab parties, the Knesset would find it easy “to carry out its racist plans against the Arab masses 'inside' [within Israel – ed.] and against our Palestinian people on its stolen land.”