Exclusive: ZOA Slams ‘Deeply Troubling’ Tweets of House Committee, Ilhan Omar on Holocaust Remembrance Day

Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) President Morton Klein blasted the House Foreign Affairs Committee as well as Rep. Ilhan Omar, fortweeting out messages on Holocaust Remembrance Day viewed as “reprehensible,” “hateful” and “antisemitic.”

Klein expressed his “deep concern” over an official HFA tweet that neglected to “mention Jews and antisemitism,” and instead merely recalled “six million (unidentified) lives” and “general forces” of prejudice and injustice, in addition to a “hateful, antisemitic” tweet by Omar which used Holocaust Remembrance Day to attack the Jewish state.

On #YomHaShoah we commit ourselves to remembering the 6 million lives extinguished during the holocaust & millions more who survived its cruelty. To honor their memories, we must remain vigilant against the forces of prejudice & injustice or risk reliving the horrors of the past.

Klein, who was born in a displaced persons camp in Germany and is a child of Holocaust survivors, described the omission as both “incomprehensible and reprehensible.”

“The Nazis and their collaborators murdered six million Jews,” he stressed, “including almost two million Jewish children.”

“Universalizing the Holocaust forgets its victims and ignores the uniquely hateful scourge of antisemitism,” he added, noting several Congresspersons also “issued similar tweets, omitting all mention of Jews and antisemitism.”

Klein also slammed Omar for her personal tweet describing Israel as “a wealthy country that’s getting $3.8 billion a year from America. Yet their Ambassador has the audacity to complain about $150 million going to Palestinian refugees,” before adding, “Shameful.”

Omar ignored the fact that UNRWA, which will receive hundreds of millions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer funds, teaches Arab children to hate and commit violence against Jews and Israel, in their textbooks and schools. UNRWA also has operations with the murderous terrorist group Hamas.

Samuel Rolbant, “The Arabs: Politics and People”, Amal Publications, 1948. pp.24-25

There were a number of strong pre-war Arab - Nazi organizations — the Iron Shirts (led by Fakhri al-Barudi of the National Bloc, member of the Syrian Parliament to this day); the League for National Action (headed by Abu al-Huda al-Yafi, Dr. Zaki al-Jabi and others); the An-Nadi al-Arabi Club of Damascus (headed by Dr. Said Abd al-Fattah al-Imam); the “Councils for the Defence of Arab Palestine” (headed by well - known pro - Nazi leaders, such as Nabih al-Azma, Adil Arslan and others); the “Syrian National Party” (led by the Fascist Anton Saada, who escaped during the war to the Germans and was sent by them to the Argentine). The National Bloc, the principal party in Syria, and more particularly the Istiqlal group (headed by Shukri al - Kuwatli, now President of the Syrian Republic) had for many years been openly pro-Nazi.

Before the war, Baldur von Schirach , leader of the Hitlerjugend, visited Syria on a special mission and established close contact with these circles and with the Arab youth organisation.

In Iraq , xenophobia has long been characteristic of the political mentality of the country’s leaders , and even the so - called pro-British group was not entirely free of it. The Army played an important part both in domestic and foreign policy, and it was entirely pro-Nazi before the war. In Iraq, as in Syria, there were a number of pro-Nazi clubs and associations which were in contact with the German Ambassador, Dr. Grobba. Among them may be mentioned the Al-Muthanna Club, founded by Dr. Amin Ruweiha, Said Thabit and others, and the Al-Futuwa Club , which sent delegates to the Nuremberg rallies.

In the early part of the war, Iraqi politicians had relations with the German ambassadors in Baghdad and Ankara. Von Papen’s top contact man with Middle Eastern Arab circles was the well-known Iraqi politician, Naji Shawkat.

At the beginning of the war there were a considerable number of political emigrés in Iraq; most of them had come from Palestine, were violently anti-British and had close connections with the Germans. These included Haj Amin al-Husseini, Jamal al-Husseini, Munif al-Husseini, Daud al-Husseini, Is’haq as-Salah al-Husseini, Amin Tamimi, Hasan Abu Saud, Fawzi Qauqji, Izz - ad - Din ash-Shawa, Is’haq Darwish, Dr. Amin Ruweiha, Salim Abd ur - Rahman, Darwish Maqdadi and many others.

With the help of the Iraqi Government , some of them had become civil servants and teachers in Iraq, and were thus in a position to propagate their doctrines among the masses of the people.

Haj Amin al-Husseini, ex-Mufti of Jerusalem, was the central figure in the group. When he had come to Iraq from Syria in mid-October, 1939, he was received by Nuri Said, then Prime Minister of Iraq, with the state pomp and ceremony usually accorded a visiting hero.

On October 22nd, Nuri Said gave an official banquet in his honour, attended by members of the Cabinet, the Presidents of the House of Representatives and the Senate, Rashid Ali el Kailani, and many other notables. This was the first of a series of similar receptions and celebrations, attended among others, by Taha el Hashimi, Minister of Defence, and Ali Jawdat el Ayyubi, at present Iraqi Minister to Washington.

The hospitality of the Iraqi Government did not end with these banquets. The ex-Mufti was voted voted £18,000 by the Iraqi Parliament and was further paid the sum of £1,000 a month out of the Iraqi Secret Service Funds in addition to the...
https://books.google.com/books?id=LVsBAAAAMAAJ&dq=%22lebanon+did+not+declare+war+on+Germany+until+February%22

al-Hussani was Yassar Arafat’s father.

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David M. Rosen: 'Armies of the Young: Child Soldiers in War and Terrorism.' (2005) p.109
Yasir Arafat: Child Soldier [...]
Born in Cairo on August 26, 1929, Arafat was a distant cousin of the Grand Mufti. His full name was Rahman Abdul Rauf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini.
Arafat's father was active in the Egyptian-based Muslim Brotherhood, which stressed the purity of Islam and was the organizational and ideological precursor to Hamas and Islamic Jihad...

Because most of the members of the Muslim Brotherhood were too old to fight, Arafat's father needed a much younger fighting force, and he started with his own family.. https://books.google.com/books?id=8wJXQQf_BdIC&pg=PA109&dq=distant+cousin

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