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JERUSALEM – Video has emerged of Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, not too long ago asserting that European Jews had been persecuted by Adolf Hitler due to what he mentioned had been their predatory lending practices, quite than their faith.
Abbas’ false declare drew swift condemnation from Israeli and European officers. It additionally fueled accusations that Abbas – an architect of interim peace agreements between Israelis and Palestinians within the Nineties – will not be genuinely dedicated to resolving the continued battle.
In a speech late final month, Abbas mentioned: “They are saying that Hitler killed the Jews as a result of they had been Jews, and that Europe hated the Jews as a result of they had been Jews.”
“No,” Abbas added. Jews had been persecuted, he continued, due to “their social function, which needed to do with usury, cash and so forth.”
Abbas additionally repeated a broadly discredited principle that European, or Ashkenazi, Jews haven’t any historical roots within the Center East. As an alternative, Abbas claimed that European Jews had been the descendants of a nomadic Turkic tribe that transformed to Judaism throughout the medieval interval, and due to this fact weren’t victims of antisemitism.
“Once we hear them speak about Semitism and antisemitism – the Ashkenazi Jews, no less than, usually are not Semites,” Abbas mentioned.
Abbas’ feedback had been broadcast stay on Palestinian tv two weeks in the past, in a speech to members of his secular political social gathering, Fatah.
The remarks had been delivered to a wider viewers Wednesday, when the Center East Media Analysis Institute, a Washington-based monitoring group that primarily interprets extremist feedback by Arab and Iranian leaders, distributed a subtitled model of Abbas’ speech.
Abbas is the president of the Palestinian Authority, the semi-autonomous physique that has administered components of the Israeli-occupied West Financial institution because the Nineties, when the Israeli and Palestinian leaderships signed interim peace accords.
His feedback illustrated why he has developed a checkered popularity amongst Israeli and Western companions. Abbas was one of many chief negotiators within the peace course of, and infrequently is credited with serving to to scale back tensions following a wave of violence within the 2000s. At occasions, he has additionally described the Holocaust as a criminal offense towards humanity.
However Abbas additionally has a protracted historical past of antisemitic remarks. He made comparable feedback in 2018 about usury and Ashkenazi Jews, and final 12 months he accused Israel of committing “50 Holocausts” towards Palestinians.
In 1984 he revealed a guide through which he condemned the Holocaust but additionally cited historians who disputed the broadly accepted dying toll of as many as 6 million Jews.
“That is the true face of Palestinian ‘management,'” Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, wrote on social media in response to Abbas’ newest speech.
“It’s no marvel that mere hours in the past a Palestinian teenage terrorist hacked harmless Israelis with a meat cleaver,” Erdan added, referring to an assault Wednesday within the Previous Metropolis of Jerusalem that wounded no less than two individuals.
The European Union mentioned in a press release that Abbas’ “historic distortions are inflammatory, deeply offensive, can solely serve to exacerbate tensions within the area and serve nobody’s pursuits.”
The assertion added: “They play into the palms of those that don’t want a two-state resolution, which president Abbas has repeatedly advocated for.”
Abbas’ false declare drew swift condemnation from Israeli and European officers. It additionally fueled accusations that Abbas – an architect of interim peace agreements between Israelis and Palestinians within the Nineties – will not be genuinely dedicated to resolving the continued battle.
In a speech late final month, Abbas mentioned: “They are saying that Hitler killed the Jews as a result of they had been Jews, and that Europe hated the Jews as a result of they had been Jews.”
“No,” Abbas added. Jews had been persecuted, he continued, due to “their social function, which needed to do with usury, cash and so forth.”
Abbas additionally repeated a broadly discredited principle that European, or Ashkenazi, Jews haven’t any historical roots within the Center East. As an alternative, Abbas claimed that European Jews had been the descendants of a nomadic Turkic tribe that transformed to Judaism throughout the medieval interval, and due to this fact weren’t victims of antisemitism.
“Once we hear them speak about Semitism and antisemitism – the Ashkenazi Jews, no less than, usually are not Semites,” Abbas mentioned.
Abbas’ feedback had been broadcast stay on Palestinian tv two weeks in the past, in a speech to members of his secular political social gathering, Fatah.
The remarks had been delivered to a wider viewers Wednesday, when the Center East Media Analysis Institute, a Washington-based monitoring group that primarily interprets extremist feedback by Arab and Iranian leaders, distributed a subtitled model of Abbas’ speech.
Abbas is the president of the Palestinian Authority, the semi-autonomous physique that has administered components of the Israeli-occupied West Financial institution because the Nineties, when the Israeli and Palestinian leaderships signed interim peace accords.
His feedback illustrated why he has developed a checkered popularity amongst Israeli and Western companions. Abbas was one of many chief negotiators within the peace course of, and infrequently is credited with serving to to scale back tensions following a wave of violence within the 2000s. At occasions, he has additionally described the Holocaust as a criminal offense towards humanity.
However Abbas additionally has a protracted historical past of antisemitic remarks. He made comparable feedback in 2018 about usury and Ashkenazi Jews, and final 12 months he accused Israel of committing “50 Holocausts” towards Palestinians.
In 1984 he revealed a guide through which he condemned the Holocaust but additionally cited historians who disputed the broadly accepted dying toll of as many as 6 million Jews.
“That is the true face of Palestinian ‘management,'” Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, wrote on social media in response to Abbas’ newest speech.
“It’s no marvel that mere hours in the past a Palestinian teenage terrorist hacked harmless Israelis with a meat cleaver,” Erdan added, referring to an assault Wednesday within the Previous Metropolis of Jerusalem that wounded no less than two individuals.
The European Union mentioned in a press release that Abbas’ “historic distortions are inflammatory, deeply offensive, can solely serve to exacerbate tensions within the area and serve nobody’s pursuits.”
The assertion added: “They play into the palms of those that don’t want a two-state resolution, which president Abbas has repeatedly advocated for.”
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