JERUSALEM (Press Release) — Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, on Wednesday condemned a speech by Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestine Authority, about the Holocaust. Following is the statement from Yad Vashem:
In his address on Monday, 30 April 2018, to the Palestinian National Council, the Chairman of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, sought to teach the Palestinians, and the rest of us, a purported “lesson in history”, replete with antisemitic tropes and distortions of historical facts. Sadly, Abbas has chosen to assault Holocaust remembrance by attempting to convert the Shoah into a propaganda tool, blatantly falsifying history to the point of accusing the Jewish victims as being responsible for their own murder, and transforming Hitler into a Zionist.
In his remarks, Abbas claimed that the Holocaust did not result from antisemitism, but rather from the “social behavior” of Jews who dealt in loans and banking, activities which allegedly aroused opposition towards them by the peoples of Europe. In order to substantiate that claim, Abbas relied upon quotes from Karl Marx, Stalin, and others. However, his own argument is itself fundamentally antisemitic, insofar as it incorporates a centuries-old antisemitic narrative that equates Jews with monetary greed. Even basic acquaintance with Jewish history would teach Abbas not only that the Jews pursued, then and now, a wide variety of professions and occupations, but that the majority of them at that time were impoverished. Even basic acquaintance with European history would inform Abbas about the escalation of antisemitism throughout Europe during the second half of the 19th century and the start of the 20th, and that this was in effect the prime context for the murder of Jews during the Holocaust.
Abbas claims that a transfer agreement signed by representatives of the Zionist movement with the German government ostensibly one month after Hitler’s rise to power supposedly proves that Hitler was lenient towards the immigration of Jews to Mandatory Palestine, and in effect supported Zionism. Actually, Hitler concisely articulated his attitude towards the Zionist endeavor in his book Mein Kampf, where he wrote that the purpose of Zionism is “the establishment of a central organization for their [the Jews’] worldwide swindle, endowed with its own sovereign rights and removed from the intervention of other states: a haven for convicted scoundrels and a university for budding crooks.” In other words, Hitler’s actual position towards Zionism was totally opposite that which Abbas baselessly ascribes to him.
As for the transfer agreement between the Jewish Agency and the German Treasury, signed more than six months after Hitler’s rise to power, it of course did not constitute intentional Nazi support for Zionism. Rather, it was the result of the initial stage of the Nazis’ anti-Jewish policy, which at that time sought to bring about the emigration of all Jews from Germany, as rapidly as possible. The German “escape tax” had been in existence prior to the Nazis’ takeover, and was aimed at preventing the loss of monetary capital. The Jewish Agency’s negotiations secured a complex financial agreement that enabled some Jews emigrating from Germany to Mandatory Palestine to eventually receive a portion of the funds they left behind. Relatively few Jews emigrated within this framework, and Hitler was not involved whatsoever in its formulation.
The Holocaust resulted from the Nazi belief that Jewish existence must be totally eliminated. In May 1941, as the Holocaust was taking place, Hitler made clear to the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, that once German forces had broken through from the southern Caucasus region into the Middle East, “Germany’s goal will be the extermination of the Jews who reside in Arab territories under British rule” (as noted in the meeting’s minutes).
The historical facts of the Holocaust are available to Chairman Abbas, and other speakers of Arabic around the world, on Yad Vashem’s website.
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Precedin provided by Yad Vashem.
Thu, 03 May 2018
NEW YORK – World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder has sharply denounced Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ so-called “history lesson” to the Palestinian National Council this week, declaring: “No leader – Arab, Western, or other – should ever question the origins of the Holocaust. The Nazi genocide, history’s most shocking crime against humanity, was pure evil. And anyone who suggests otherwise should be ashamed and must apologize.”
Earlier, the World Jewish Congress released a statement unequivocally condemning Abbas’ “despicable and outrageous exploitation of the oldest anti-Semitic tropes in the book, going so low as to accuse Jews of bringing genocide upon themselves in some twisted attempt to disprove the Jewish historical connection to the Land of Israel.
“Abbas’ address was nothing short of a repugnant litany of propaganda and conspiracies dripping of sheer anti-Semitic incitement and vile. We urge the international community to hear these remarks for what they are, and to denounce them in the strongest possible terms, rather than allowing itself to be lured into the Palestinian leader’s façade of intentions. This kind of anti-Semitism will encourage only further violence and hatred, not peace,” the WJC said in its statement.
Stephen M. Greenberg, Chairman and Malcolm Hoenlein, Executive Vice Chairman/CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations today issued the following statement:
“We are outraged by the comments of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) in which he placed responsibility for the Holocaust on its Jewish victims. This goes beyond Holocaust denial – which was the subject of Abbas’s dissertation. This is Holocaust glorification, exonerating the perpetrators and condemning the innocent Jewish martyrs.
His obscene comments deserve the strongest condemnation from leaders around the world as he exposes once again his true bigoted beliefs and hatred. There can be no more excuses or obfuscations for such blasphemous lies. Once again he proves he cannot be a partner for peace or coexistence.”