On May 16, 2022, the website of the Jordanian state daily Al-Rai posted an article by journalist Raja Talab titled "Naftali Bennett – A Nazi with a Kippah." The article claimed that Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett ordered to assassinate Al-Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu 'Akleh, who was killed on May 11, 2022 in a firefight between Palestinian gunmen and the Israeli armed forces in Jenin. Talab called Bennett and other Israeli officials Nazis, and stated that Bennett, who has certain characteristics in common with Hitler, is motivated by "a murderous instinct," by "constant feelings of inferiority" and by a desire to defend "a fake sense of nationalism." The article was reposted on the website, and also posted on Al-Rai's social media accounts, on May 21.
It should be noted that, in the recent weeks, amid the events at Al-Aqsa and the resultant tension between Israel and Jordan, the Jordanian state daily Al-Rai has published several virulent articles against Israel, some of which also included antisemitic claims and Holocaust denial.[1] Two of these articles were likewise by Raja Talab. In one he supported the statement of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who said that Hitler was Jewish, and in the second he claimed that Israel inflates the scope of the Holocaust and falsifies its details, and pronounced it unlikely that six million Jews died in the Holocaust.
Raja Taleb (Source: Facebook.com/raja.talab.9)
The article on the Al-Rai Twitter page (Twitter.com/alrai, May 22, 2022)
The following are translated excerpts from his article:[2]
"Naftali Bennett and his family, which came from California to Palestine in 1967, have no more connection [to the land] than an olive or fig sapling [recently] planted on Palestinian soil. Like the vast majority of those who call themselves 'Israelis,' they have no connection to this land or this region. They are descended from the Khazars of eastern Europe, and have nothing to do with the Semitic race [in terms of] their genes or even their appearance. [The Israelis] came to Palestine fleeing poverty and hunger after World War II or seeking 'freedom' from the Soviet and socialist totalitarian regimes of the cold war era. In either case, their immigration to Palestine was handed to them like a free gift by the Jewish Agency for Israel… which oversaw the immigration project under the enticing slogan of 'A Better Life in the Promised Land.'
"This is a land they know nothing about and had never heard of [before immigrating to it]. But what is conspicuous and embarrassing about these people is that they became unrestrained extremists [in their attitude to] the Palestinians and Arabs… Among these [extremists] are Naftali Bennett, [Israeli Finance Minister] Avigdor Lieberman, and [former Israeli prime minister] Binyamin Netanyahu. Bennett, who was the head of the Settlement Council,[3] is the most extremist of them…
"The three mentioned above are Nazi [in their attitude] to the Palestinian people. They feel no shame, no pangs of conscience and no sense of responsibility when they torment a Palestinian, whether it is a child, a woman, a young man or an elderly person. Their murderous instinct, [stemming from the need] to prove themselves, is accompanied by a constant sense of inferiority and a need to protect their fake nationalism. This prompted and still prompts them to commit crimes and brag about them, so as to gain popular support within the entity [i.e., Israel], which is still looking for its cultural and historical identity.
"Naftali Bennett – who comes from a wealthy environment, for he is a millionaire from a supposedly liberal [part of the] world, namely America – is trying to construct a new identity, whose essence is 'extremist Judaism,' and to display merely formal religious [characteristics], which clearly have no connection to the history of Judaism or the Jews. He insists on wearing a kippah on his head, to indicate that he is an observant Jew. Naftali Bennett belongs to the new generation of Zionists, who stupidly embrace the theory that there is no such thing as the Palestinian people…
"It is Bennett who took the decision to assassinate Shireen Abu 'Akleh. We must not allow ourselves to bury our heads in the sand and ask who fired the bullet at that heroic martyr, when everyone knows that Bennett must be the decision-maker when it comes to such a grave matter. He is [also] the one who instructed the police to behave brutally in order stop the pallbearers carrying the coffin of the martyr Shireen, and who fought hysterically against the presence of the Palestinian flag, which demonstrates his ideological and spiritual weakness in the face of this flag and its symbolic significance.
"Bennett and Hitler have two main characteristics in common. The first is depriving people of life and liberty on a purely racial basis and believing that only people of one kind are entitled to life and liberty. The second is believing that murder and extermination of the other are heroic acts, rather than crimes or atrocities. Hitler decided to commit suicide, and wrote his decision on a note he gave to the person who was closest to him, his wife Eva Brown, to avoid being executed in the city square like Mussolini. Naftali Bennett is still young, and he should know that the disgrace will continue to hound him on behalf of Shireen Abu 'Akleh, until it eventually kills him."
[1] See MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 9961 – Antisemitic Messaging In Jordanian State Daily: Lavrov's Claim That Hitler Was Jewish Is Correct; Israel Exploits, Exaggerates The Holocaust, May 12, 2022.
[2] Alrai.com, May 16, 21, 2022.
[3] In 2010-2011 Bennett served as director of the Yesha Council, the umbrella organization of municipal councils of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
