Was “Hitler 2” destroyed during the current war in Gaza? There are unverified reports that it is no more.
What is—or was—it, you ask? Oh, just a Gaza City store selling clothing to residents of the territory that sits atop a spider web of tunnels, where the spiders that built it hid (and, many, still hide).
The store, whose profane name —writ large in English on its storefront—I prefer to not repeat, opened in 2015, meeting with considerable local acclaim, for its name more than its wares. There was appreciation, too, for the keffiyeh-clad mannequins brandishing knives at the establishment’s entrance. In case the knives didn’t fully convey the owners’ sentiments, the shirts on the mannequins sported the word “Stab!” in Arabic.
At the time, a customer, then-20-year-old Hijaz Abu Shanab, said, “I like the clothes and the name; it is fantastic.” And, asked what it was that he liked about the store’s name, explained that “I like him because he was the most anti-Jewish person.”
Then-19-year-old Wissam Ashraf was also a fan, extolling the store for being “in support of our people in the West Bank, using the knife, mask, and keffiyeh; these are nice things to attract people.”
And attract people it did; it also inspired other execrable entrepreneurs to mimic the monstrous moniker.
Part of me happily entertains the image of the store, along with its sign and mannequins, having followed in the final claw prints of its namesake, lying in ruins after a well-aimed bombing. Another part of me, though, hopes the store still stands.
Because it could serve the world as a graphic reminder of the malevolent mindset so commonplace in Gaza and in so much of the Arab world.
Adoration of Germany’s erstwhile führer has been a feature of Arab culture for decades.
And, famously, the former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Hajj Muhammad Amin Al-Husseini, dubbed the “father of the Palestinian people,” openly collaborated with Nazi leaders during World War II and incited violence against Jews.
More recently, in 2008, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, whose PhD thesis denied established facts about the Holocaust, delivered a speech to the Fatah Revolutionary Council denying that anti-Semitism had motivated the Nazis to murder millions of Jews; it was, he said, because of Jewish “usury, money and so on.”
More recently still, an annotated copy of Mein Kampf in Arabic was found in a children’s room that had been used as a base by Hamas terrorists in the northern Gaza Strip.
I personally believe that having two states in the territory of the ancestral Jewish homeland, one with a majority of Jews and one with a majority (or, more likely, an entirety) of Arabs, should be the logical desideratum of all who seek peace. Even Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has endorsed the idea in the past. But the logic breaks down, in fact evaporates, if a substantial part of the Arab world seeks not to co-exist side by side with Israel but to obliterate her.
The Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, a think tank funded by Qatar, recently polled some 8,000 residents of 15 Arab-majority countries and Palestinian-controlled areas of Eretz Yisrael.
Approximately two-thirds said the October 7 terror attacks in southern Israel were a “legitimate resistance operation”; another 19% said that the massacre was a “somewhat flawed but legitimate resistance operation.”
Only 5% considered the organized butchery illegitimate.
Other polls of P.A. territory residents have yielded similar results.
And so, the “two-state solution”—the only conceivable path to a lasting peace—seems rather out of reach. Not because, as some critics mindlessly proclaim, of Mr. Netanyahu and Israel’s current government but, rather, because it requires each party’s acceptance, or at least tolerance, of the other. One party’s support for murdering men, women and children of the other is, understandably, something of a deal-breaker.
That’s why I hope the store referenced in the first paragraph above is still standing—as a reality check for the world. Tragically, peace will remain a pipe dream unless the Arab world manages to make room for Jews in its worldview.
Don’t hold your breath. Last week came word of a new shawarma restaurant in Jordan, near that country’s side of the Yam Hamelach. A busy scene was recorded in the place. Workers were wearing aprons emblazoned with the name of the eatery.
The establishment’s name? “October 7.”
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