Taking the blame
Adolf Hitler’s hatred for Jews was rooted in a fanatical, race-based ideology that blamed them for all of Germany’s historical, social and economic failures. That really has roots in social injustice and inequality.
Hitler’s anti-Semitism came from centuries of existing European prejudices against Jewish people.
Hitler, an Austrian, weaponized this historical bias to climb the political ladder in Germany and took power as chancellor and began to demonize Jews, leading to his “final solution”: the extermination of all Jewish people in what is now known as the Holocaust.
He ordered the murder of more than six million Jewish people — men, women and children — in gas chambers. That horrific genocide accelerated the migration of European Jews to Palestine that had begun in 1882 in Eastern Europe, especially Russia, due to its persecution of them.
The mass migration of Jewish people to Palestine after World War II created a conflict with Palestinians, and a civil war broke out with the Arab Palestinians on Nov. 29, 1947.
The British that occupied Palestine after the war gave up and left Palestine. The UN General Assembly devised a partition plan with Resolution 181 that allocated about 55 percent of the territory to the proposed Jewish state and 42 percent to the Palestine Arab state. This is the first “two-state solution.”
At that time, the Jews in Palestine, mostly migrants, made up about 33 percent of the population and owned roughly seven percent of the land.
A few hours before the UN resolution was passed, David Ben-Gurion, the head of the Jewish agency in Palestine, read a declaration establishing the State of Israel as the civil war raged on. The partition deal gave Israel a green light to occupy more of Palestine.
World powers recognized the new Jewish state.
Thousands of Palestinians lost their lands and homes and were displaced and forced to flee to Lebanon. Some years later, the Arab states, mostly Egypt and Syria, attacked Israel, but the latter won the Six-Day War, and Israel has occupied the West Bank and Gaza since June 1967.
Palestinian militants, led by Hamas, attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, leading to the near-total destruction of Gaza. The ongoing bombings there are killing Palestinian civilians almost daily despite the ceasefire. Israel is now a major power in the region, armed with US financial and military aid, to maintain its position supported by a powerful Jewish lobby in Washington.
Now, we see how history has tragically reversed itself. On Sept. 16, 2025, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry issued its declaration that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir recently advocated for killing 30 to 40 people in Gaza every night, saying: “There are people there who are not worthy of life. They shouldn’t live. They’re not even people.” This statement is something a Nazi in power would say about Jews decades ago.
Additionally, Israel has jailed 9,200 Palestinians in detention centers, called “torture camps” by an Israeli nongovernmental organization. The group is documenting the routine severe physical and psychological violence, starvation, sexual assault, and medical neglect against the Palestinians. At least 94 Palestinians have died in Israeli custody in such conditions, it says.
The number of Palestinian deaths from Israel’s retaliatory offensive over the Oct. 7 attacks has exceeded 74,000 across Palestinian territories. Over 1,090 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed by Israeli security forces or settlers. These include small children, including a six-year-old murdered while sheltering in a burnt-out car; aid workers saving people; and day care workers helping children. No mercy shown, no accountability by the Israeli military.
The UN reports that about 200,000 buildings have been severely damaged or demolished. History has reversed itself. In the past, the Jewish people were the victims of genocide, displacement, torture and extermination. Now, Israel is doing the same to the Palestinians./PN
