During a visit to Germany, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel of committing “50 Holocausts” in response to whether he would apologize for the massacre of the Israeli team at the 1972 Munich Olympics by Palestinian terrorists.
The incident occurred ahead of next month’s commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the attack.
“If we want to go over the past, go ahead,” said Abbas, adding, “I have 50 slaughters that Israel committed.”
Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid condemned the comments, writing on Twitter, “Mahmoud Abbas accusing Israel of having committed ’50 Holocausts’ while standing on German soil is not only a moral disgrace, but a monstrous lie.”
“History will never forgive him,” said the Israeli leader.
Six million Jews were killed in Nazi Germany’s Holocaust.
In a display of audacity while standing alongside German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Abbas referred to a series of historical incidents in which Palestinians were killed by Israelis in the 1948 war that accompanied the creation of the State of Israel and in the years following.
“From 1947 to the present day, Israel has committed 50 massacres in Palestinian villages and cities, in Deir Yassin, Tantura, Kafr Qasim and many others, 50 massacres, 50 Holocausts,” claimed Abbas on Tuesday.
Scholz immediately denounced the Palestinian leader’s comments.
“For us Germans in particular, any relativization of the singularity of the Holocaust is intolerable and unacceptable,” Scholz tweeted yesterday, “adding, “I am disgusted by the outrageous remarks made by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.”
The German Chancellor also rejected Abbas’ allegation that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is “apartheid.”
Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz also issued a press release calling Abbas’ comments “despicable and false.”
“His statement is an attempt to distort and rewrite history,” said the Israeli defense chief, who is the son of Holocaust survivors from Romania.
“The reprehensible and unfounded comparison between the Holocaust, which was carried out by the German Nazis and their enablers in an attempt to exterminate the Jewish people – and the IDF, which ensured the rise of the Jewish people in their homeland and defends the citizens of Israel and the country’s sovereignty against brutal terrorism – is Holocaust denial.”
Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Gantz emphasized that, “Those who seek peace are expected to acknowledge the past and not to distort reality and rewrite history. We will continue to learn from history, including its dark and terrible parts, strive for peace and defend the security and resilience of the Jewish people.”
Israeli Justice Minister Gideon Sa’ar said Abbas’ statement is “part of an institutional Palestinian propaganda based on false blood libels, with 50 shades of antisemitism aimed at de-legitimize Israel. Abbas’ choice to say his abject remarks on German soil only indicates how low he can go.”
It must be noted that Mahmoud Abbas also entitled his doctoral dissertation: “The Other Side: The Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism” while completing the equivalent of a PhD at a Russian university in 1982. The work has been widely condemned for doubting the existence of gas chambers, arguing that the Jewish victims of the Third Reich were responsible for their own deaths and that the number of those killed has been exaggerated.
Moreover, Mohammad Daoud Oudeh, who was the mastermind of the Munich Massacre in which 11 Israeli athletes were murdered, later wrote in his 1999 memoir, “Palestine: From Jerusalem to Munich,” that funds raised by Abbas were used to perpetrate the attack – although he claimed his fellow Fatah comrade was supposedly unaware of this.
The official Palestinian Wafa news agency did not include the Holocaust comments in its coverage of Abbas’ meeting with Scholz.
In response to Israel’s condemnation of the PA leader, however, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry claimed in a statement that “the occupying power is not satisfied with committing these crimes on a daily and continuous basis, but also does not tolerate and rejects any talk or statements that remind the Israelis and the international community of the many crimes committed by Israel.”
The inflammatory statements come in the wake of Israel’s Operation Breaking Dawn conflict 5-7 August with the Gaza-based Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terror group, which fired about 1,100 rockets at southern communities in the Jewish State.
