Jews playing dead amidst piles of corpses, mothers covering their babies’ mouths to avoid being discovered, captives being forced to hand over their neighbors to murderers, people raped, tortured and burned alive: The horrors of October 7 are unquestionably reminiscent of Nazism. And there are indeed strands of continuity that link the anti-Jewish terror of the SS Einsatzgruppen with that of Hamas.
One of these strands has to do with attitudes to the Holocaust. While the majority of humanity views the murder of 6 million Jews as a gigantic crime, among the Islamists we find people who openly describe the murders as a brilliant achievement by the Nazis that should be repeated or completed. A prominent example is the preacher Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who died in 2022. In his lifetime he became the most important and most popular leader of the Muslim Brotherhood organization, whose Palestinian offshoot is Hamas. These are the words he shouted out to the millions of viewers of the TV channel Al-Jazeera in early 2009:
Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the [Jews] people who would punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out by Hitler. […] He managed to put them in their place. This was divine punishment for them. Allah willing, the next time will be at the hand of the believers.[1]
Here, Qaradawi claims that the Jews were responsible for the Holocaust, which was a “divine punishment” for their “corruption” carried out by Hitler, acting as the instrument of Allah. But it had not been enough. Qaradawi considers a further round of punishment to be necessary, inflicted this time by the Muslims. Qaradawi thus proclaims a new Holocaust and Israel’s end to be a religious mission commanded by Allah. The Hamas terrorists think in the same terms.
Another strand of continuity has to do with the specific ideological history of Hamas. Its umbrella organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, started receiving Nazi funds from Berlin as early as the 1930s. Nazi agents provided assistance to its leaders and organized joint training evenings on “the Jewish question”. Decades later, this seed bore fruit. In the Hamas Charter of 1988, which is still in force, “the Jews” are declared to be the enemy of the world and the cause of both World Wars, while the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” are cited as evidence of Jewish behavior. Article 7 declares: “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews).“
Remembering the Farhud and the Jewish Nakba 