Germany, Israel condemn Palestinian president’s Holocaust remarks

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas attend a press conference in Berlin, Germany, Aug. 16, 2022. REUTERS/Lisi Niesner

BERLIN/JERUSALEM, Aug. 17 (Reuters) – German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Wednesday expressed disgust at Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s comments that the German leader said the importance of the Holocaust was diminishing, while Israel accused Abbas of telling a ” monstrous lie”.

During a visit to Berlin on Tuesday, Abbas accused Israel of committing “50 Holocausts” in response to a question about the impending 50th anniversary of the attack on the Israeli team at the Munich Olympics by Palestinian militants.

“For us Germans in particular, any relativization of the individuality of the Holocaust is unacceptable and unacceptable,” Scholz tweeted on Wednesday. “I am disgusted by the scandalous comments of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.”

Scholz’s office has summoned the head of the Palestinian diplomatic mission to Berlin to protest Abbas’s comments, a German government spokesman said. read more

Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid called the comments a “disgrace”.

“Mahmoud Abbas accusing Israel of committing ’50 Holocausts’ while standing on German soil is not only a moral disgrace, but also a monstrous lie,” Lapid said on Twitter.

“History will never forgive him.”

In response to the outcry, Abbas issued a statement calling the Holocaust of Nazi Germany, in which 6 million Jews were murdered, “the most heinous crime in modern human history.”

He said Tuesday’s comment was not intended to deny the specificity of the Holocaust, but to highlight “the crimes and massacres committed against the Palestinian people since the Nakba by Israeli forces.”

Nakba, or catastrophe, is the term Palestinians use to describe the mass exodus of Palestinians who fled or were driven from their homes in the 1948 war that accompanied the establishment of the State of Israel.

The Central Council of Jews in Germany expressed “disgust” at Abbas’s comments, which he said trampled on the memory of the 6 million Jews who died and defiled those of all Holocaust victims.

In addition to Scholz, Abbas had referred to a series of historic incidents in which Palestinians were killed by Israelis in the 1948 war and in subsequent years.

“From 1947 to the present, Israel has committed 50 murders in Palestinian towns and cities, in Deir Yassin, Tantura, Kafr Qasim and many others, 50 massacres, 50 Holocausts,” said Abbas.

The official Palestinian news agency Wafa omitted its Holocaust commentary in its account of the meeting with Scholz, and the Palestinian Foreign Ministry said Lapid’s comments were intended to divert attention from Israel’s “crimes.”

Abbas’s comments followed months of tension and a brief conflict this month, in which 49 people were killed in Gaza after Israel launched a series of airstrikes in response to what it said was an imminent threat from the militant Islamic Jihad group. which fired over 1,000 missiles in response.

Dozens of Palestinians have also been killed in clashes with Israeli security forces in the occupied West Bank, while there have been a number of attacks on Israelis. read more

Palestinians are pushing for statehood in areas captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war. Negotiations have been frozen since 2014.

Additional reporting by Ali Sawafta in Ramallah and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; Editing by Mark Heinrich

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