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Spokesman Says Palestinians Are Victims of Nazi Germany

April 13, 1982
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In a speech to the Puerto Rican Society of Women Journalists Dr. Hatern Hussaini, director of the Palestinian Information Office in Washington, D.C., declared here that today’s Zionists are the same as yesterday’s Nazis. “We, the Palestinians, are today’s victims of Hitler’s Nazi Germany, ” Hussaini stated. “We, the Palestinians, are the modem Jews.”

Blaming Zionists and supporters of Israel, as well as the Western press, for stereotyping the Palestinian people as blood thirsty terrorists Hussaini insisted the opposite is true. “(We) are human beings who have suffered a devastating tragedy, a people who yeam for peace and tranquility but who have been robbed of their lands, their homes, their property, their inherent rights.”

The Palestinian spokesman, holder of a Doctorate in political science from the University of Massachusetts, rejected terrorism as a means to achieve the creation of a Palestinian state, but claimed, “we must have justice before there can be peace.”

Referring to a United Nations General Assembly resolution adopted in November 1974, Hussaini emphasized “the right of the Palestinian people to regain its rights by all means.” When queried whether this is not in fact a code phrase for terrorism, he replied that “the people have a right to resist oppression and mass relocations. Why are Israeli acts of violence against Palestinians not seen as acts of terrorism against us?”

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