Strong rejection by Israel and Germany to the Palestinian president’s statements on the Holocaust

Israel and Germany strongly condemned the statements of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who respecttraveling to Berlin, Israeli policy towards the Palestinians with the Jewish genocide from Nazi Germany.

The 87-year-old Palestinian leader, in Germany for medical consultations, met Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin on Tuesday to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and bilateral cooperation.

At a joint press conference with Scholz on Tuesday, Abbas was asked if he would apologize for the Palestinians they took hostage during the 1972 Munich Olympics which killed 11 Israeli athletes and coaches.

“Since 1947 Israel has committed 50 massacres in 50 Palestinian cities (…) 50 massacres, 50 holocausts, and even today there are deaths every day caused by the Israeli army,” replied Abbas in Arabic, who then searched to clarify his words.

“We want peace, we want security, we want stability, we must develop trust between us”, added the Palestinian leader, while denouncing Israel’s “apartheid” policy.

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“I am disgusted by the outrageous statements made by Palestinian President Mahmoud #Abbas,” the German prime minister tweeted Wednesday.

“For us Germans, in particular, any relativization of the uniqueness of the Holocaust is intolerable and unacceptable. I condemn any attempt to deny the crimes of the Holocaust,” added Scholz.

Own Scholz was also criticized for not immediately condemning Abbas’s remarks. during the press conference, which ended after the comments of the Palestinian leader.

“We would have liked the clarification (from Scholz) to have been more immediate,” said the magazine. explainel.

“Abbas relativizes the holocaust … and Scholz is silent” was the headline of the popular daily bild on your website.

Abbas regularly uses the words “genocide” or “apartheid”, as do NGOs like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, to describe the occupation and colonization of the Palestinian Territories. But he rarely uses the word “holocaust”.

“Monstrous lie”

This Wednesday, these words caused outrage in Israel, especially from Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid.

“Mahmud Abbas accusing Israel of committing ’50 holocausts’ while on German soil is not just a moral disgrace, but a monstrous lie,” Lapid tweeted.

“Six million Jews were killed in the holocaust, including 1.5 million Jewish children. History will never forgive him,” he added.

Dani Dayan, president of Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial and museum, condemned these “unworthy statements” and “unforgivable behavior” to which “the German government must respond appropriately”.

Faced with these reactions, President Abbas – who had thanked Germany, urging this country to recognize the Palestinian state – said he wanted to “clarify” your position.

His remarks “were not intended to deny the uniqueness of the Holocaust,” which remains the “worst hate crime of the modern era,” his office said.

“The president did not deny the massacres suffered by Jews under Nazi Germany, but rather told the world not to lose sight of the massacres inflicted on the Palestinian people,” added Palestinian Prime Minister Mohamed Shtayyeh.

In Germany, Charlotte Knobloch, representative of the Munich Jewish community and head of the World Jewish Congress, has called for more than just a verbal condemnation of Olaf Scholz.

Germany needs to make the Palestinian Authority pay the “consequences”, he asked.

Source: AFP, with Yann Schreiber in Frankfurt

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