“Jesus was Palestinian, and you killed Him too!” “Death to the colonial state of Israel!” “Gas the Jews!” “The Holocaust never happened!” “Hitler was right!”

These are slogans from pro-Hamas protests that occurred after the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in the nation of Israel. The slogans were often accompanied with Palestinian flags and placards. At times, they showed open support for Adolf Hitler’s attempt to murder all Jews.

“After Hamas committed a pogrom against Jews in Israel, killing over 700 innocent civilians, their supporters held a rally in Times Square, NYC, displaying a Nazi swastika,” Sacha Roytman, ceo of the Combat Anti-Semitism Movement, wrote on X. “This makes it clear: Hamas is a neo-Nazi, anti-Semitic terrorist organization with the goal of erasing Jews from the Earth.”

In one of the October 7 terrorists’ lodgings, an annotated copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf was found. Israeli President Isaac Herzog revealed, “The terrorist wrote notes, marked the sections, and studied again and again Adolf Hitler’s ideology to hate the Jews, to kill the Jews, to burn and slaughter Jews wherever they are. This is the real war we are facing.

“After the massacre and atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists on October 7—the day on which the largest number of Jews was murdered since the Holocaust—this is another revelation that testifies to the sources of inspiration of the terrorist organization Hamas, and proves once again that all its actions have the same goal as the Nazis—the destruction of Jews.”

Accusing Jews of killing Jesus, a “pogrom,” a swastika, Mein Kampf, the goal to wipe out all Jewish life—all this has been historically associated with European anti-Semitism.

The connection between the two ideologies is no coincidence.

Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry said this in a Key of David program after the October 7 terrorist attack: “[I]n World War ii, the Arab nations allied themselves with Germany. Could that happen again? Well, Bible prophecy says it could and will, and we need to watch that very closely” (Nov. 17, 2023).

In his January 2024 article “As You Watch Gaza—Watch Germany,” Mr. Flurry added, “As recently as World War ii, the Nazi regime had varying degrees of relations with Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, as well as Turkey. And through military conquest, the Axis powers made inroads into Libya, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia.”

Through various efforts, Germany worked to forge an ideological alliance with Muslims based on preexisting hatred toward Jews. At that time, even Iran aligned with the Nazi cause! Bible prophecy shows that soon, Germany will clash mightily with Iran and its allies (article, page 1). But Germany will have allies of its own. Its effort to build a Muslim alliance for World War ii will pale in comparison to what it is achieving at this very moment for World War iii.

‘Islamization of Anti-Semitism’

For centuries, Jews in Europe have suffered persecution. In the ninth century, Charlemagne banned them from moneylending. Crusaders butchered Jews at home and in the Holy Land. Since the 12th century, missing children have been connected to anti-Jewish conspiracies. The Black Death of the 14th century was blamed on the Jews. Then came the Inquisition and the systematic torture and killing of Jews. It all culminated in the Holocaust, when Hitler blamed the Jews not only for Jesus Christ’s death but also for Germany’s defeat in World War i, the nation’s financial crisis and every other problem.

Certainly, the Arab world wasn’t a peaceful place for Jews either, but historically the level of hatred was greater in Europe. As the Jewish Virtual Library notes, “While Jewish communities in Arab and Islamic countries fared better overall than those in Christian lands in Europe, Jews were no strangers to persecution and humiliation among the Arabs and Muslims.”

Today, however, Arab hatred appears to resemble the old-fashioned European type and intensity of Jew hatred.

The late Bernard Lewis, historian of Islam and the Middle East, coined the term “Islamization of anti-Semitism.” He noted that it was when the Ottoman Empire expanded into Europe that it first became acquainted with stereotypes of Christian anti-Judaism. By incorporating Greek Orthodox Christians under Islamic rule, typical “Christian” conspiracies against Jews spread into Islamic and Arab countries. This set the stage for the growth of anti-Semitism in the late 19th and 20th centuries. That is when the conspiracies started to spread, aided by anti-Jewish European publications. And anti-Semitism increased drastically during the rule of the Nazis.

World War II

Under Hitler, Germany spread its propaganda to the Middle East through radio and printed materials translated into Arabic. As noted by the United States Holocaust Museum, some Nazi collaborators included Syrian guerrilla rebel Fawzi al-Qawuqji, former Iraqi Prime Minister Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, and former Mufti of Jerusalem Hajj Amin al-Husseini.

The work of Husseini is most noteworthy.

Husseini had two goals at the time: to establish an independent Arab state or federation, and to “remove” or “eliminate” the proposed Jewish homeland in Palestine. The Axis powers agreed with one of those goals. In a telegram, Heinrich Himmler wrote: “To Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini: From the outset, the National Socialist [Nazi] movement of greater Germany has been a standard-bearer in the battle against world Jewry. For this reason, it is closely following the battle of freedom-seeking Arabs, particularly in Palestine, against the Jewish invaders. The shared recognition of the enemy and the joint fight against it are creating the strong base [uniting] Germany and freedom-seeking Arabs around the world. In this spirit, I am pleased to wish you, on the anniversary of the wretched Balfour Declaration, warm wishes on your continued fight until the great victory” (Nov. 2, 1943).

Today, many have adopted the language Himmler used, referring to Hamas terrorists as “freedom-seeking Arabs.” While Husseini never gained full support for an Arab state, Hitler sponsored his propaganda from Germany to the Arab world.

After World War ii ended and Jews were granted their own state in 1948, Arab Jew-hatred escalated into an attack against the new state. The Arab defeat caused anti-Jewish conspiracies to go mainstream—and once again, surviving Nazis shaped the narrative.

“The founding of the State of Israel and the defeat of 1948 was perceived by the Arabs as a catastrophe (nakba) and collective humiliation,” German professor Dr. Michael Kiefer from the Institute for Islamic Theology of the University of Osnabrück writes. “It weighed particularly heavily because it was inflicted on them by Jews, of all people, who had previously been classified as fearful, weak and despicable. All this called for a handy explanation, and this was provided by ‘modern anti-Semitism’ with its fantasies of conspiracy. The anti-
Semitic propaganda that flooded the Arab world from the second half of the 1950s onwards was largely carried by proven experts. Amīn al-Husseini reactivated his relations with former Nazi founders and brought Johann von Leers—one of the most radical anti-Semitic publicists of the Nazi regime—to Cairo, where he greeted him with the words: ‘We thank you for having undertaken to join the fight against the forces of darkness. We thank them for undertaking to join the fight against the forces of darkness that have taken shape in world Jewry.’ Von Leers, who adapted to his environment and converted to Islam, henceforth worked as a specialist for anti-Jewish propaganda in the Egyptian civil service. Other important roles in Arab propaganda were played by the former SS standard-bearer Leopold Gleim and Louis Heiden, who had worked in the Reich Security Main Office during the Nazi era. In the following years, these and other propagandists produced a flood of anti-Semitic writings. Without exception, the basic material came from European and American publications.”

Husseini died in 1974, and Palestinian leaders have followed in his footsteps. The late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah organization, the dominant force in the Palestine Liberation Organization, “was founded by members of al-Husseini’s Arab Higher Committee and has embraced the same goal of annihilating the Jews,” the Algemeiner noted Dec. 4, 2023.

Thus, Hitler’s cooperation with Husseini helped lay the foundation for current tensions and shapes the Middle East conflict to this day.

However, there is no indication that Hitler wanted Husseini to rule over Jerusalem. The alliance with Islam had a different purpose. Quoting a conversation with David Motadel, author of Islam and Nazi Germany’s War, the Jewish magazine Tablet wrote: “The Nazis spoke of the Muslims as a ‘bloc’ that could be ‘activated’ against the British, the French and the Soviets” (Nov. 23, 2014).

Modern Jew-Hatred

European Jew-hatred has since gone underground or rebranded itself as “anti-Israel criticism.” But the former European Jew-hatred survived in the mainstream of the Arab world. “The use of Nazi imagery, the newspaper caricatures of Jews with fangs and exaggerated hook noses, even the Arab textbooks with their descriptions of Jews as evil world conspirators—all of that, Arab leaders often insist, reflect a dislike for Israelis and Zionism but not for Jews and Judaism,” the New York Times noted in 2002. Yet open, rank Jew-hatred is popular in many Muslim countries. “Take for instance an official Jordanian government textbook for high school students. It describes Jews as innately deceitful and corrupt. ‘Up to the present,’ it states, ‘they are the masters of usury and leaders of sexual exhibitionism and prostitution.’”

Another common European lie that survived in the Arab world is that Jews consume the blood of Christian and Muslim children during the Jewish holiday of Purim. The so-called blood libel conspiracy accuses Jews of killing the innocent in their scheme to take over the world. The British Telegraph compared this conspiracy theory, still widespread in the Arab world, with how Israel is being blamed in the West for “killing the innocent”: “Anti-Semitic tropes never go away, and since October 7 we’ve seen pretty much all of them in full swing—especially the blood libel. And it’s not just the baying mobs accusing Israel and Jews more generally of invading Gaza to indulge their bloodthirsty craving for the murder of innocents (Britain’s streets no longer expect the pretense of a distinction between Jews and Israel).

“Rather, it is how the whole counteroffensive in Gaza is being reported, portrayed and responded to by everyone from the most esteemed media outlets (of which the Telegraph has been a noble exception) to the great and the good of international statesmanship” (Nov. 18, 2023).

As sophisticated as modern leaders may sound, Europe and the Islamic world are continuing their alliance against Jews.

Role of the Catholic Church

“Islamic doctrine concerning Christians has also been reinterpreted in recent decades in an effort to forge a bond between Muslims and Christians against the Jews,” that 2002 New York Times article states. It notes that, while Islam recognizes Jesus as a prophet but does not believe He was crucified, when Pope John Paul ii visited Damascus in 2001, Syrian President Bashar Assad greeted him with a speech accusing Jews of killing Jesus.

This bond between Islam and Catholic Europe is no coincidence.

Asked about a Jewish state in 1904, Pope Pius x said: “The Jews have not recognized our Lord, therefore we cannot recognize the Jewish people.” (As a side note, such hatred against Jews is not found among Christians in the New Testament, who recognized that everyone’s sins caused the death of Jesus Christ.)

In 1922, Pope Pius xi insisted that religious places of worship in Palestine be “kept entirely under Christian control.” This is the pope that Hitler signed a concordat with. Hitler also had a secret channel of communication with his successor, Pope Pius xii. A document discovered in 2020 and dated July 23, 1947, further reveals that after Hitler’s death, Husseini turned to Pius xii “to reinforce the friendly bonds” between the Vatican and the “Arab and Islamic worlds.”

The pope replied vaguely about “a just and real peace through comprehension, mutual agreement, respect of the rights of everyone.” Study the church’s relations with the warring states in the Middle East, and it is clear which side it favors.

This is the context for the bond between Palestinian and Catholic leaders. It also explains the similar ideologies.

Alliance Prophesied

In his article “As You Watch Gaza—Watch Germany,” Mr. Flurry highlighted Pope Francis’s anti-Jewish rhetoric and Germany’s blossoming alliance with Islamic states. As he pointed out, what we see today is exactly what was prophesied in Psalm 83.

“Keep not thou silence, O God: hold not thy peace, and be not still, O God. For, lo, thine enemies make a tumult: and they that hate thee have lifted up the head. They have taken crafty counsel against thy people [Israel], and consulted against thy hidden ones” (verses 1-3).

Mr. Flurry comments on these verses in his booklet The King of the South: “This prophecy lists several moderate Islamic nations that will ally themselves with Assur (Assyria), or modern-day Germany. … The ‘enemies’ refer to an Islamic alliance with the king of the north [a German-led European empire], which is about to attack the modern descendants of Israel. The victims are primarily America, Britain and Judah (the little nation called Israel today).”

It is not hard to imagine that Arab countries will try to conquer Israel once again, but few believe that Germany will be leading them. Yet this is exactly what history and Bible prophecy warn us of.

Hope in Repentance

Throughout history, the Jewish people have been the most persecuted people on Earth. This is evident in their history recorded in the Old Testament and in Europe’s annals.

There is a spiritual reason for this longtime trend. The Bible reveals it. It shows that the “god of this world,” who stirs up hatred and deceives mankind, is Satan the devil (2 Corinthians 4:4; Ephesians 2:2; Revelation 12:9). He directs special hatred toward the Jews because of their special place in God’s plan for the redemption of humanity. This is explained in our book The Key of David.

Thank God that the same Bible reveals that this evil being’s rule is about to end! (Revelation 20).

God is about to intervene in human affairs and banish Satan. Then He will teach mankind His law. This is the only way to break the cycle of satanic hatred and evil. Not only do those immersed in this specific crime need to repent of their ways—our whole world needs to repent!

The ancient Israelites went through such repentance, and God protected them. The coming suffering will teach the whole world to come to a lasting repentance. This repentance will start with God’s chosen people once again turning to Him: “Come, and let us return unto the Lord: for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up” (Hosea 6:1).

There is hope in repentance—it is the only true hope we have. Request Jerusalem in Prophecy, by Gerald Flurry, for an explanation about the current conflict and to learn more about this wonderful hope.