Palestinian president says Jewish behavior caused the Holocaust, sparking condemnation [View all]
In a speech broadcast live on Palestinian TV on Monday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas delivered what he called a “history lesson” in which he suggested that the Holocaust was the fault of Jews themselves.
During his 90-minute remarks to the Palestinian lawmakers in Ramallah, he said European Jews’ “social function” — specifically “usury and banking and such” — was the basis for animosity toward them that led to their mass murder. Abbas claimed his views are backed by Jewish authors, whose books conclude “that animosity toward Jews was not because of their religion but because of their social activities.”
The comments quickly prompted backlash in and outside of Israel. “With utmost ignorance and brazen gall, he claimed that European Jews were persecuted and murdered not because they were Jews but because they gave loans with interest,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted. “Again, he has recited the most contemptible anti-Semitic canards.”
Abbas has long been accused of denying or undermining the Holocaust. His doctoral dissertation questioned whether the death toll of 6 million Jews might have been inflated, and he argued that Zionists and Nazis worked together to send Jews to present-day Israel. But he has at times seemed to take a different stance: In 2003, Abbas said that the Holocaust was “a terrible, unforgivable crime against the Jewish nation, a crime against humanity that cannot be accepted by humankind”; in 2014, he issued a statement in which he called the Holocaust “the most heinous crime to have occurred against humanity in the modern era.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/05/02/palestinian-president-says-jewish-behavior-caused-the-holocaust-sparking-condemnation/
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