Outrage Over ‘Antisemitic’ Speech By Palestinian Leader Abbas
By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
JERUSALEM (Worthy News) – Israel, Germany, the European Union, and the United States have condemned Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for remarks he made about Jews and the Nazi Holocaust.
Speaking to senior members of his Fatah party in the Palestinian city of Ramallah, Abbas claimed that it was “not true” that “[Adolf] Hitler killed the Jews because they were Jews.”
In a speech, Abbas falsely claimed that Hitler ordered the mass murder of Jews to their “social role” as moneylenders rather than out of hatred for Judaism.
His comments quickly prompted outrage among Israeli and Western leaders as at least 6 million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, also known as the Shoah in Hebrew.
Hitler considered Jews “an inferior race” and viciously promoted antisemitism as Nazi Germany and its allies committed genocide against the Jews of Europe.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry shared footage of the speech on social media on Wednesday, accusing Abbas of “Holocaust denial.”
DOCTORAL DISSERTATION
“This is the same Mahmoud Abbas whose doctoral dissertation is known for its Holocaust denial,” the ministry added on online platform X, previously known as Twitter, monitored by Worthy News.
The German ambassador to Israel, Steffen Seibert, said that the Palestinian people “deserve to hear the historical truth from their leader, not such distortions.”
Germany’s mission in Ramallah, where Abbas’ Palestinian Authority is based, also “strongly” condemned his remarks.
“History is clear: millions of lives were erased — this cannot be relativized,” Germany’s mission in Ramallah said.
The EU, which has had tense relations with Israel, called the Palestinian leader’s speech “false and grossly misleading remarks about Jews and antisemitism,” which are “an insult to the millions of victims of the Holocaust and their families.”
An EU spokesperson added that “Such historical distortions are inflammatory, deeply offensive” and “trivialize [the] Holocaust and thereby fuel antisemitism.”
U.S. CONCERNED
The U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, Deborah Lipstadt, also slammed Abbas’ “hateful, antisemitic remarks.”
She called for an immediate apology.
Abbas’s address to the Fatah Revolutionary Council was made last month and later aired on Palestine TV. His remarks were then translated and publicized by the respected Middle East Media Research Institute on Wednesday, which Western media verified.
“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 said at one point.
He also resurrected an abandoned historical theory that European Ashkenazi Jews were not descended from the ancient Israelites but from 8th-century converts to Judaism among the Khazars, a nomadic Turkic people.
“The truth that we should spread to the world is that European Jews are not Semites. They have nothing to do with Semitism,” he stressed. “As for the Eastern Jews, they are Semites,” Abbas added, referring to Sephardic Jews from the broader Middle East.
INTERNATIONAL OUTRAGE
The president also caused international outrage by making similar suggestions in 2018, at what he called “a history lesson” at a rare gathering of the Palestinian National Council.
The French consulate in Jerusalem also called the remarks “totally unacceptable” on Thursday and said it rejects “antisemitism and [Holocaust] denial in all forms.”
As global outage increased Thursday, Abbas’s office clarified that “the Holocaust is the most heinous crime in modern human history.”
Yet his spokesperson, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, condemned the “rabid campaign” against the Palestinian president.
He said Abbas’ position is “clear and documented, which is the complete condemnation of the Holocaust and the rejection of antisemitism.”
However, Germany’s international broadcaster Deutsche Welle commented there “have been several past instances where Abbas has been condemned for relativizing, downplaying or misrepresenting the facts of the Holocaust, including during a visit to Berlin last year.”
It was not immediately clear what the impact of the comments would be on Palestinian relations with the West and Israel, but they added to tensions in one of the world’s most volatile regions.
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