4. Mr Minto falsely claims Arab terror is “resistance”
While not in the prepared remarks, Mr Minto ad-libbed in his speech a comparison between Arab Palestinian terror and the resistance of French under Nazi occupation. Mr Minto has also previously made this false comparison on social media.
There have been repeated efforts to negotiate a solution to the conflict, with Israeli leaders offering proposals that have all be flat-out rejected by the Arab Palestinian leaders. No such negotiations or offers were made by the Nazis.
And despite the unwillingness of Arab Palestinian leaders to negotiate, the violence from Gaza that necessitates the blockade, and the violence from Judea and Samaria that necessitated the security fence; Israel still facilitates thousands of truckloads of goods into Gaza and still allows tens of thousands of Arab Palestinians to enter Israel for work every week.
Israel’s attempts to protect its citizens and borders and the Nazi attempt to murder every Jewish person. While Gaza has a prevalence of obesity and 1,700 new millionaires, and the population of Arab Palestinians continues to rise, millions of Jews died of hunger and disease and there was a systematic genocide of Jews.
The comparison between Israel and Nazi German is so false and egregious, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) has identified it as an example of antisemitism.
If there is any comparison to be made with Nazis it might be with Hamas – a terror group with a charter that includes reference to the genocide of Jews that it enacts. But Mr Minto calls this “resistance” and so whitewashes terror while claiming to be against terror.
Furthermore, interviews with would-be suicide bombers and other research suggests their motivation is religious, born of incitement in mosques and a culture of glorifying “martyrs”. In areas ruled by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority Imams will often incite violence in their sermons. Outside of the mosques, street signs, football clubs, and even schools are named after suicide bombers or are dedicated to the memory of terrorists.
And within schools, the curriculum further normalizes and encourages terror, with stories with titles such as “I Shall Sacrifice My Blood to Saturate the Land” and religious textbooks replete with genocidal messages. State-sponsored children’s television bombard the youngest and most impressionable of minds with messages of violence against Jews. This is not “resistance”, but terror.