Middle East Conflict
Abbas rows back after Holocaust scandal
Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) and Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority, answer questions from journalists at a press conference after their conversation. photo
© Wolfgang Kumm/dpa
At a press conference with the Chancellor, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accuses Israel of multiple “Holocausts” and triggers an uproar. SPD and FDP protect Olaf Scholz.
After sharp criticism from Germany, Israel and Europe, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas tried to dampen the outrage over his controversial statements on the Holocaust. “President Abbas reiterates that the Holocaust is the most heinous crime in modern human history,” the Palestinian news agency Wafa wrote on Wednesday. Abbas said he did not want to question the uniqueness of the Holocaust in Berlin.
In a press conference with Abbas on Tuesday, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) initially did not comment on his comparison with the Holocaust. He had been heavily criticized for this by opposition politicians. After the Pk, Scholz told the “Bild” newspaper in the evening: “Especially for us Germans, any relativization of the Holocaust is unbearable and unacceptable.” On Wednesday morning, the chancellor wrote on Twitter that he was “deeply outraged by Abbas’ unspeakable statements”. “I condemn any attempt to deny the crimes of the Holocaust.”
At the press conference, Abbas accused Israel of carrying out multiple holocausts on the Palestinians. “Israel has committed 50 massacres in 50 Palestinian locations from 1947 to the present day,” he said, adding, “50 massacres, 50 holocausts.” He had been asked by a journalist whether he would apologize to Israel on the 50th anniversary of the attack on the Israeli Olympic team by Palestinian terrorists in Munich.
Abbas said on Wednesday, according to Wafa, that what he was referring to was “the crimes and massacres against the Palestinian people committed by Israel’s armed forces since the Nakba”. “These crimes have not stopped to this day.” The historical background: In 1948, part of the British Mandate of Palestine became Israel. The Arab neighbors attacked the new state. In the course of the ensuing fighting, around 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled. The Palestinians commemorate this annually as the Nakba (catastrophe).
Israeli Prime Minister: “Outrageous Lie”
Israeli Prime Minister Jair Lapid tweeted: “That Mahmoud Abbas accuses Israel of committing “50 holocausts” while standing on German soil is not only a moral disgrace but a blatant lie.” He referred to the six million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust. History will never forgive Abbas. Lapid is himself the son of a Holocaust survivor.
The President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Josef Schuster, declared that by relativizing the National Socialist policy of extermination, Abbas trampled on the memory of six million murdered Jews. At the same time, Schuster sharply criticized Scholz: “I think it’s scandalous that a relativization of the Holocaust, especially in Germany, goes unchallenged at a press conference in the Federal Chancellery.”
The President of the German-Israeli Society, Volker Beck, demanded financial consequences from Abbas’s “outrageous performance”: Germany must make its donations to the Palestinian Authority dependent on bonuses for anti-Israel terrorists no longer being paid there. Germany is one of the biggest donors to the Palestinians.
EU Commission rejects statements as unacceptable
Abbas also caused outrage in the EU Commission with his Holocaust comparison. The statements are unacceptable, wrote the EU Commission Vice President Margaritis Schinas, who is responsible for the fight against anti-Semitism, on Twitter. The Holocaust is an “indelible stain” on European history.
Former Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) was also outraged. She condemned Abbas’ statements “in the strongest possible terms,” said a spokeswoman for Merkel’s office when asked by “Bild”. The statement was an unacceptable “attempt to relativize the singularity of the crimes committed by Germany during National Socialism – the breach of civilization – the Shoah, or to place the State of Israel directly or indirectly on a par with Germany during the National Socialist era”.
Scholz had followed Abbas’ statements with a petrified expression and made preparations to reply. His spokesman Steffen Hebestreit declared the press conference over immediately after Abbas’ reply.
The Union sharply criticized Scholz. “An incredible process in the Chancellery,” wrote CDU leader Friedrich Merz on Twitter on Tuesday evening. The Chancellor should have “clearly contradicted the Palestinian President and asked him to leave the house!”
The foreign policy spokesman for the SPD parliamentary group, Nils Schmid, spoke of a sham debate. “The problem is not the chancellor’s reaction, the problem is the attitude of Palestinian President Abbas,” he told the newspapers of the Funke media group. The fact that Scholz did not react immediately to Abbas’ “bad derailment” was “owed to the choreography of such a press conference during a state visit”. FDP parliamentary group deputy Alexander Graf Lambsdorff said that a broader public was finally finding out “how the Palestinians and Abbas – Israel’s alleged “partners” – are feeling. That’s more important than criticism of the @Bundeskanzler, whose outrage was clearly visible”.