by WorldTribune Staff, May 13, 2019
Rep. Rashida Tlaib on May 11 claimed that Palestinians had tried to “create a safe haven for Jews” after the Holocaust, an assertion which historians and analysts say is false.
The Michigan Democrat, speaking on the “Skullduggery” podcast in an episode titled “From Rashida with Love”, said:
“There’s always kind of a calming feeling I tell folks when I think of the Holocaust, and the tragedy of the Holocaust, and the fact that it was my ancestors, Palestinians, who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity, their existence in many ways, have been wiped out, and some people’s passports.
“And just all of it was in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews, post-the Holocaust, post-the tragedy and the horrific persecution of Jews across the world at that time,” Tlaib continued. “I love the fact that it was my ancestors that provided that, right, in many ways. But they did it in a way that took their human dignity away and it was forced on them.”
Arab nations did not provide a “safe haven” for the Jewish people during or after the Holocaust, historians say.
According to the Holocaust Memorial Museum, some Palestinians allied with the Nazis during World War II. Muhammad Amin al-Husayni, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem during the time, was opposed to “further immigration of Jews to Palestine and Jewish national aspirations in Palestine.”
Al-Husayni notably met with Adolf Hitler and “collaborated with the German and Italian governments by broadcasting pro-Axis, anti-British and anti-Jewish propaganda,” the museum said.
The Iranian-born Australian Shia Muslim Imam Mohamad Tawhidi, known as the “Imam of Peace,” called out Tlaib for what he said is her inaccuracy.
“You mean my ancestors came and converted yours into Islam by the sword (from Judaism/Christianity) and now you think that by changing your beliefs you can also change Jerusalem’s Jewish identity,” Tawhidi tweeted. “Nice try. You’re the guest here, not the Jewish people.”
After the Jewish state of Israel was declared, Arab leaders urged their people to leave the newly formed nation-state, Washington Examiner executive editor Philip Klein noted in a May 12 op-ed.
After World War II, when the Jewish people declared the state of Israel, their official proclamation said, “We appeal – in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months – to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.”
Instead of choosing to live peacefully, however, Arab leaders encouraged Arabs to flee Israel, and the next day, the young nation was invaded by Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq, Klein noted.
The Jewish presence in the area currently known as Israel dates back thousands of years, and the modern migration of Jews pre-dated the Holocaust by many decades, starting with the migration of Jews from Yemen in 1881.
With the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the British government supported the establishment of a Jewish state in the area, an idea rejected by Arabs.
“So, to sum up, Tlaib’s claims that her Arab ancestors provided a ‘safe haven’ to Jews after the Holocaust ignores the Jewish presence in the region and efforts to establish a Jewish state that predated the Holocaust, ignores that her ancestors allied with Hitler at the time of the Holocaust, and ignores decades of violence and terrorism directed at Israel both before, during, and after the Holocaust,” Klein wrote.
“It should be noted that she was making this claim in the context of arguing for a one-state solution, the goal of which has always been for Arabs to overwhelm the Jewish population, and then force them as a minority to be governed by the people who are currently launching rockets at them,” Klein added.
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