Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas brought about shock in Germany Tuesday when, standing beside German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin, he accused Israel of committing “holocausts” towards Palestinians through the years.
Scholz didn’t react verbally to Abbas’s remark within the second, although he grimaced at the usage of the phrase, which Abbas uttered in English. Scholz later mentioned the usage of the time period in such a context was “unbearable.”
Reacting to the incident, Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid referred to as Abbas’s feedback “a moral travesty” and “a terrible distortion.”
Abbas made his remarks when the 2 spoke to the media after holding a gathering on Middle East points.
Abbas was responding to a reporter’s query concerning the upcoming anniversary of the Munich bloodbath half a century in the past. Eleven Israeli athletes and a German police officer died after members of the Palestinian militant group Black September took hostages on the Olympic Village on September 5, 1972. At the time of the assault, the group was linked to Abbas’s Fatah celebration.
Asked whether or not as Palestinian chief he deliberate to apologize to Israel and Germany for the assault forward of the fiftieth anniversary, Abbas responded as a substitute by citing allegations of atrocities committed by Israel since 1947.
“If we want to go over the past, go ahead,” Abbas, who was talking Arabic, informed the reporters.
“I have 50 slaughters that Israel committed….50 massacres, 50 slaughters, 50 holocausts,” he mentioned, taking care to pronounce the ultimate phrase in English.
Scholz scowled at the usage of the phrase but didn’t say something.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas gesticulates throughout a joint press convention with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on the Chancellery in Berlin, Germany, on August 16, 2022. (Jens Schlueter/AFP)
Germany’s fashionable BILD newspaper revealed an outraged website-leading story concerning the incident, underneath the title “Antisemitism scandal at the federal chancellery.”
It expressed shock that “not a word of dissent [was said] in the face of the worst Holocaust relativization that a head of government has ever uttered in the chancellor’s office.”
A headline on the web site of Germany’s BILD newspaper expresses shock at PA chief Mahmoud Abbas’s use of the time period ‘holocaust’ to explain previous Israeli actions. (Screenshot)
Der Spiegel, Welt, Junge Freiheit and different media oulets additionally ran headlines noting Scholz’s silence through the press convention.
Germany has lengthy argued the time period ought to solely be used to explain the Nazis’ singular crime of killing six million Jews earlier than and through World War II.
A spokesman for Scholz informed BILD that “earlier than the Chancellor may contradict this outrageous sentence, the federal government spokesman had already moderated the press convention — as standard after the final query/reply block — which visibly aggravated Scholz.
“The government spokesman then told the journalists who were still present, who could not help noticing the Chancellor’s annoyance, how outraged the chancellor was about the statement and also that he had not had the opportunity to openly contradict [Abbas] one more time.”
In a press release to the BILD, Scholz added: “Especially for us Germans, any relativization of the Holocaust is unbearable and unacceptable.”
Lapid tweeted on Monday evening that Abbas’s “statement about ’50 holocausts’ while on German soil is not only a moral travesty but also a terrible distortion… History will not forgive him.”
Earlier throughout the identical press convention, Scholz had pushed back towards Abbas utilizing the time period “apartheid” to explain Israeli coverage relating to the Palestinians.
Abbas, who often accuses Israel of training apartheid, mentioned in Berlin that “Israel’s undermining of the two-state solution based on the 1967 borders, and turning it into a one-state reality with an apartheid regime, will not serve security and stability in our region.”
Said Scholz: “Naturally we have a different assessment with a view to Israeli politics, and I want to expressly say here that I do not espouse the use of the word ‘apartheid’ and do not think it correctly describes the situation.”
In his remarks, the Palestinian Authority president additionally mentioned he was committed to constructing belief and attaining a peaceable answer to the battle with Israel.
“Please come to peace,” he mentioned. “Please come to security, let’s build trust between us and you. This is better than other kinds of talking.”
Weeks earlier than a deliberate somber commemoration marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Munich assault, Germany has additionally discovered itself embroiled in controversy in its dealings with the family of the Israelis who had been killed.
Victims’ households introduced final week that they deliberate to boycott the ceremony after failing to succeed in an settlement on larger compensation from the German authorities.
Relatives of the athletes have lengthy accused Germany of failing to safe the Olympic Village, refusing Israeli assist and botching a rescue operation wherein 5 of the attackers additionally died.
In this September 5, 1972, file photograph, a member of the Arab Commando group which seized members of the Israeli Olympic Team at their quarters on the Munich Olympic Village seems with a hood over his face on the balcony of the village constructing the place the commandos held members of the Israeli group hostage. (AP Photo/Kurt Strumpf, File)
Abbas has beforehand stirred up controversy for remarks on the Holocaust, together with a 2018 declare that Jewish “social behavior” — not antisemitism — was the reason for Nazi Germany’s genocide of European Jews, which he later apologized for.
The PA chief’s 1982 doctoral dissertation was titled “The Other Side: the Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism,” and he has prior to now been accused of denying the scope of the Holocaust. The dissertation reportedly claimed that the six million determine of Holocaust victims was vastly exaggerated and that Zionist leaders cooperated with the Nazis.
Also through the press convention, Scholz mentioned he didn’t consider the time had come to unilaterally acknowledge Palestinian statehood, which Abbas repeatedly referred to as for.
Related: At Abbas’s side, German leader rejects his use of ‘apartheid’ in reference to Israel
ToI archive, May 2018: After blaming Jews for Holocaust, Abbas apologizes and condemns anti-Semitism * Lipstadt: With ‘classic anti-Semitism,’ Abbas ending career the way he started
