Sixty-nine years ago, Nazi officials instigated deadly outbursts of violence throughout Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. The Germans officially explained the violence as a spontaneous outburst of public rage in response to the assassination of Ernst von Rath, a low-ranking official at the German embassy in Paris. The Nazis blamed "World Jewry" for the assassination and, ostensibly as reprisal, unleashed a massive pogrom against Jews within the Third Reich. The event came to be known as Kristallnacht, the "Night of Broken Glass" and effectively transfered responsibility for "solving" the "Jewish Question" to the SS. 

On December 6, 1987, in Gaza, Israeli land occupied by the PLO, an Israeli was stabbed to death while shopping. One day later, four residents of the Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza were killed in a traffic accident. Rumors that the four had been killed by Israelis as a deliberate act of revenge began to spread among the Arab population. Mass rioting broke out in Jabalya on the morning of December 9. This sparked a wave of unrest that engulfed Judea, Samaria, Gaza, and Jerusalem. False charges of Israeli atrocities and instigation from the mosques played an important role in starting the first intifada. The event signaled the successful galvanization of all militant parties—official and “unofficial”—into the on-going war against Israel that has been assigned the label “peace process.”

Since that day in Gaza, Arafat’s Palestinian Authority has played a lead role in orchestrating the prolonged program of violence against the Jewish people. When compared, the general “blueprints” for both Nazi and PLO initiations of large-scale, long-term, antisemitic violence appear very similar: First, patiently cultivate hate among the general populace via the widespread distortion of truth (for instance, both employ(ed) children’s books to teach hate). Secondly, maintain ideological support for violent activity in such a way as to cause it to appear “official” to civilian instigators while avoiding any direct causal connection with the government proper. Finally, exploit the occasion of a well-suited or staged emotional incident for the purpose of triggering and fueling “spontaneous” eruption by the general populace.

Now, simply “connect one more dot” to complete the overall pattern of hate.

Haj Amin Al Husseini, the former grand mufti of Jerusalem, had a well-documented relationship with the Third Reich, to include personal relationships with Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Joachim Von Ribbentrop, and Adolph Eichmann. During World War II, the mufti journeyed to Nazi Germany where he personally asked Adolf Hitler to invade British-ruled Palestine and rid it of Jews. He then spent the rest of World War II as Hitler's special guest in Berlin, advocating the extermination of Jews in radio broadcasts back to the Middle East and recruiting Balkan Muslims for infamous SS "mountain divisions" known as the Handjar (Sword), that tried to wipe out Jewish communities throughout the region. Husseini's men attended SS training courses and visited Sachsenhausen. He visited Nazi concentration camps with Heinrich Himmler, Head of SS. When the war ended, Husseini was arrested in France, but in June 1946, he escaped and made his way to asylum in Egypt.

There he made his nephew, the young Mohammed Abdel-Raouf Arafat As Qudwa al-Husseini, then living in Cairo, his personal protégé.

The mufti eventually died in exile in 1974. His place as leader of the radical, nationalist Palestinian Arabs had already been secured by his nephew, Mohammed Abdel-Raouf Arafat As Qudwa al-Husseini, better known to us today as “Yasser Arafat.”

The nephew of the Nazi-collaborating mufti apparently learned his lessons well. In August 2002, Arafat gave an interview in which he referred to "our hero al-Husseini" as a symbol of Palestinian Arab resistance.

And so, the now-departed Arafat’s personal quest to destroy the Jewish presence in the Middle East began as an Egyptian terrorist long before the state of Israel (or “the Palestinian people”) came into existence. On his murderous path to winning the Nobel Prize for Peace, he successfully brought terrorism to world attention, pioneering the innovation of hijacking and blowing up airplanes in the 1970's. As a direct result of his lifelong anti-Zionist campaign, hundreds of innocent men, women, and children from all over the world were slaughtered for the achievement of his political objectives.

Now, Osama bin Laden, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the leaders of global Islamic terrorist groups, inspired and encouraged by the imams of the Arab world, build on the foundation built by Arafat.  And so, it can be argued, that Arafat, based upon the lesser known facts of the historical record, built on Hitler’s foundation. And Hitler, of course, built on earlier long-standing antisemitic precedent.

But that’s another true story, best saved for another day.