Jibril Rajoub
Jibril RajoubFlash 90

The Palestinian Authority (PA) has reached a new low in its ceaseless buzz of anti-Israel rhetoric. Last week a senior official of the PA, and leader of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction, claimed Nazi leader Adolf Hitler could have learned from Israel about extermination camps.

The official, Jibril Rajoub, Chairman of the PA Olympic Committee and Deputy Secretary of the Fatah Central Committee, made the outrageous statements last Friday, on the official PA TV program Free Space in a telephone interview about the failing peace talks. Palestinian Media Watch translated the statements.

Rajoub responded to the host's question as to whether he expected "thing to get worse" amid the failing talks, which were brought to an effective dead end last Tuesday, when Abbas breached talk conditions by applying to join 15 international conventions.

"We have nothing to lose. What's worse? Do you think we are living in Sweden and have something to lose?" replied Rajoub.

"We are living under a racist and fascist occupation. I'm telling you, if Hitler had come (here), he would have learned from them how to oppress humans and learned from them about concentration camps, extermination camps," concluded the PA official.

Rajoub, Abbas's representative

The statements have added importance, given the close relationship between Abbas and Rajoub. In early February, Rajoub made an official trip to Iran as Abbas's representative. While there he said in an interview "if the talks fail, armed struggle against [Israel] could be a strategic solution."

Rajoub has suggested in the past that Israel "should be removed" in comments last October, and in February supported Hamas's threats to kidnap IDF soldiers on PA TV.

"If Hamas wants to kidnap Israeli soldiers, they should go ahead and kidnap Israeli soldiers," Rajoub stated. "They should kidnap them if [the Israelis] refuse to release more prisoners, if they want to keep them imprisoned forever - only releasing them as ghosts or skeletons."

It is worth noting that Rajoub's newest statements have an overtone of Holocaust denial, hinting that Hitler, who slaughtered six million Jews with his genocidal Nazi machine, "could have learned" from Israel about extermination camps.

The anti-historical Holocaust denial can be linked to Abbas, whose infamous PhD thesis entitled "The Other Side: the Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism" questioned the extent of the Holocaust, and suggested it was engineered by Jewish leaders to "justify" the establishment of the State of Israel.