Israeli Arab Yoseph Haddad condemns Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El‑Sayed for equating the Holocaust with the 1948 Arab displacement, calling the comparison “despicable.”
Haddad said his grandfather was ordered by Arab leaders to flee so the Arabs could defeat the Jews, and he refused. The residents who stayed received citizenship, while those who left were barred from return, a circumstance he calls a self‑inflicted catastrophe.
El‑Sayed argued that both Jewish and Palestinian peoples endure deep trauma, citing the Holocaust’s six‑million death toll and the Nakba’s displacement of Palestinians told they could return within days. He said the comparison highlights shared suffering.
Haddad responded that the Holocaust was a systematic genocide of six million Jews, whereas the Nakba resulted from Arab leaders’ orders, not Jewish actions, and called El‑Sayed’s attempt to co‑opt the Holocaust “despicable.” He warned that such comparisons trivialise historic atrocities.
He added that there is no distinct Palestinian people, claiming Yasser Arafat invented the term in the 1960s to unify recent Muslim migrants, a view echoed by historical records. He argues the concept was fabricated to support political objectives.
El‑Sayed’s claim that Arabs were promised a quick return rests on assurances from Muslim neighbors that they would soon wipe out Israel, framing the Nakba as an Arab‑initiated disaster. He says this narrative was used to mobilise Arab support for the 1948 war.
Historian Dr. Constantin Zureiq coined the term Nakba in 1948 and acknowledged that seven Muslim nations declared war on the newly formed Israel, a fact documented by the Jewish Virtual Library. He stresses the war’s outbreak, not the displacement, as the primary cause.
PA President Mahmoud Abbas has declared the Palestinian Authority will accept nothing less than the return of all land lost in 1948, asserting that Jews have no right to a nation in the region. He maintains that Israel’s existence contradicts Arab claims to the entire territory.
