Arab MK Equates ‘Palestinian Trauma’ with Holocaust
Palestinian Arab society is suffering from trauma and stress, just like the Jews are following the Holocaust, said Arab Member of Knesset (MK) Ibtisam Mara’ana, calling for a “mutual recognition of each other’s pain.”
The swearing-in ceremony of the 24th Knesset in Jerusalem, April 6, 2021. Photo by Alex Kolomoisky/POOL
Speaking during her inaugural speech in the Knesset Plenum on Tuesday, Mara’ana, of the Israeli Labor party, said that “this is our time to take action, to create a genuine partnership that is based on mutual recognition of each other’s pain. This is our time to stop being silent and silencing; this is our time to make a revolution.”
She claimed that “Palestinian Arab society in Israel is suffering from ongoing post-traumatic stress, the kind that has never been treated and has never been overtly acknowledged.”
Apparently providing an excuse for violence with the Arab society, she said that “as with any post-traumatic stress, we act from triggers, anxiety attacks, anger, fear, mistrust, loneliness and despair. [We feel that] soon there will be an expulsion, soon we’ll be taken away from here.”
The “expulsion” she is relating to appears to a mass transfer of Arabs by the Israeli government, a policy never offered or executed. She may also by relating to the 1948 War of Independence during which Israel emerged victoriously and defeated several Arab armies that sought to eradicate the newly born Jewish state.
This post-traumatic stress-generating fear of expulsion “is not only mine and my people’s, it is also yours, my Jewish brothers and sisters. You too have wounds and no less pain. Six million Jews were cruelly annihilated in the Holocaust, soldiers were sent to battlefields and did not return home, people were murdered in terrorist attacks, citizens were victimized by hate,” she said.
“Perhaps the time has come for us to recognize each other’s trauma; perhaps the time has come for healing that will give us the strength to dare, to make real peace. To live together, Arabs and Jews, to learn to forgive and raise a healthier generation,” she concluded.
MK Amichai Shikli assailed her for her “audacity to draw a comparison between the massacre of six million innocent people and the defeat of the Palestinians in the war of annihilation initiated by the Nazi Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini (and his army Jihad al-Maqdis), and from the Israeli Knesset plenum no less,” nerve he said was “absolutely amazing.”
Mara’ana has previously made a series of controversial statements, including ones disparaging the Holocaust and state memorial days.
In 2008, Mara’ana said in a press interview that she would “destroy Zichron Yaakov, and that you [Jews] should return to the United States or Poland.”
She also posted a Facebook post in which she expressed support for an Islamic Jihad terrorist who was on a hunger strike, called on the Tel Aviv Municipality to illuminate the municipal building with the colours of the PLO flag, and wrote in praise of Nakba Day, Israel’s Independence Day that the Arabs mourn as a catastrophe.
