Mahmoud Abbas ‘tramples on the memory of six million murdered Jews,’ a major Jewish group says following the Palestinian president’s claim that Israel committed ’50 Holocausts’
A major Jewish organization in Germany accused Mahmoud Abbas of antisemitism on Wednesday, following widely-denounced remarks in which the Palestinian President declared that Israel committed “50 Holocausts” against Palestinians.
The president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Josef Schuster, released a statement saying, “I strongly condemn Mahmoud Abbas’ comparison with the Holocaust. In doing so, he not only relativizes the Shoah and the National Socialist policy of annihilation, he [also] tramples on the memory of six million murdered Jews and damages the memory of all victims of the Holocaust.”
Schuster also called the German chancellor’s lack of an immediate response during the press conference “scandalous.”
Speaking alongside German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin on Tuesday, Abbas was asked if he, as the Palestinian leader, planned to apologize to Israel and Germany for the Munich massacre committed by Palestinian militants against 11 Israeli Olympic athletes ahead of the 50th anniversary next month. Abbas responded instead by citing allegations of atrocities committed by Israel since 1947.
“Israel has committed 50 massacres in 50 Palestinian locations since 1947, he said, adding: “50 massacres, 50 Holocausts.”
Abbas’ remarks unleashed widespread outrage in the United States, Israel and Germany, with Prime Minister Yair Lapid calling them “not only a moral disgrace, but a monstrous lie” and American U.S. antisemitism envoy Deborah Lipstadt saying that “Holocaust distortion can have dangerous consequences and fuels antisemitism.”
Scholz did not respond immediately during the joint press conference —sparking significant domestic criticism— but shortly thereafter also condemned Abbas, declaring that he was “disgusted by the outrageous remarks” and that, for Germans particularly, “any relativization of the singularity of the Holocaust is intolerable and unacceptable.”
But while the Palestinian Foreign Affairs Ministry released a statement claiming that Lapid’s condemnation of Abbas —and, by implication, those of others as well— was “an attempt to protect the false narrative that Israel is trying to market in order to deceive the world,” that did little to staunch the torrent of criticism coming from both government and Jewish communal figures.
Abbas subsequently apologized, stating that he wanted “to reiterate our long held condemnation of the Holocaust” and that the Palestinians “condemn antisemitism in all its forms.”
“The fact that Abbas would so brazenly demean the murder of six million Jews in Berlin so publicly and think it is acceptable is sadly additional proof of why he has so consistently refused peace with Israel,” said European Jewish Congress President Ariel Muzicant, asserting that “a person who appropriates the suffering of others to score political points, cannot possibly see that suffering and thus has no understanding of the need for peace and reconciliation.”
“Unfortunately, in Berlin, the real Mahmoud Abbas, the person who wrote his doctoral dissertation denying central aspects of the Holocaust, was unmasked, and we call on world leaders to demand a full apology and treat him the same way as any other Holocaust denier. In other words, to demand a full and unequivocal apology in words and deeds,” Muzicant said.
