Palestine’s president has drawn angry condemnation from US, German and Israeli officials for comments in which he suggested that Nazi Germany had murdered 6 million Jews during the Holocaust for their “social role” as money lenders, not because they were Jewish.
Mahmoud Abbas, 87, made the remarks at a meeting of the Fatah Revolutionary Council last month, which were later aired on Palestinian television and only translated and made public by the Middle East Media Research Institute.
Abbas said: “They say that Hitler killed the Jews for being Jews and that Europe hated the Jews because they were Jews.
“No. It was clearly explained that they fought them because of their social role and not their religion.” Abbas later clarified that he was referring to “usury, money and so on”.
“We just want to make this point clear – this was not about Semitism and antisemitism.”
Abbas, who has a long history of making antisemitic remarks, also repeated a discredited theory that European or Ashkenazi Jews were the descendants of a nomadic Turkic tribe that converted to Judaism during the medieval period.
“When we hear them talk about Semitism and antisemitism – the Ashkenazi Jews, at least, are not Semites,” Abbas added.
Abbas’s remarks were almost immediately condemned as “pure antisemitism” by Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, and Joe Biden administration’s ambassador for antisemitism, Deborah Lipstadt.
This is the true face of Palestinian “leadership”.
— Ambassador Gilad Erdan גלעד ארדן (@giladerdan1) September 6, 2023
It is no wonder that mere hours ago a Palestinian teenage terrorist hacked innocent Israelis with a meat cleaver in Jerusalem.
Just as Abbas blames the Jews for the Holocaust, he also blames the Jews for all the Middle East’s… https://t.co/l4hLRDkMet
“I am appalled by President Abbas’ hateful, antisemitic remarks at a recent Fatah meeting,” said Lipstadt, one of the most prominent researchers into the Holocaust.
“The speech maligned the Jewish people, distorted the Holocaust, and misrepresented the tragic exodus of Jews from Arab countries. I condemn these statements and urge an immediate apology.”
I am appalled by President Abbas’ hateful, antisemitic remarks at a recent Fatah meeting. The speech maligned the Jewish people, distorted the Holocaust, and misrepresented the tragic exodus of Jews from Arab countries. I condemn these statements and urge an immediate apology.
— Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt (@StateSEAS) September 7, 2023
In a statement, the EU also described Abbas’s comments as “historical distortions [that] are inflammatory, deeply offensive, can only serve to exacerbate tensions in the region and serve no-one’s interests”.
“They play into the hands of those who do not want a two-state solution, which President Abbas has repeatedly advocated for,” it added
Abbas was also condemned by German diplomats in Israel. “History is clear,” Germany’s mission in the West Bank city of Ramallah said. “Millions of lives were erased – this cannot be relativized.”
“We strive to promote a dignified and accurate memory of the victims.”
The German ambassador to Israel, Steffen Seibert, added: “The Palestinians deserve to hear the historical truth from their leader, not such distortions.”
Dani Dayan, the chairman of Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, described Abbas’s comments as “deeply entrenched … in antisemitic stereotypes”.
“The PA Chairman’s statement is not only an example of Holocaust denial and distortion, they use deeply entrenched antisemitic stereotypes. These reprehensible remarks must be unequivocally condemned by global leaders. We can’t stay silent.
Condemnation also came from J Street, the prominent liberal and pro-peace US Jewish lobby group was also scathing.
If this report and transcript are accurate, Abbas should be universally condemned and he should make an immediate apology.
— J Street (@jstreetdotorg) September 6, 2023
There is no possible excuse for making antisemitic statements like these and it is by no means Abbas's first offense.https://t.co/KcfpZzV6Rs
“If this report and transcript are accurate, Abbas should be universally condemned and he should make an immediate apology. There is no possible excuse for making antisemitic statements like these and it is by no means Abbas’s first offence.”
Abbas drew similar charges after delivering what he described as “a history lesson” to the rarely convened Palestinian National Council in 2018 and in response to his doctoral thesis on nazism and Zionism.
