Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbasaccused Israel of committing “50 holocausts,” at a joint press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin, prompting condemnation from Germany and Israel.
At the end of his state visit to the German Chancellery on Tuesday evening, a German journalist asked Abbas if he planned to apologize for the deadly attack carried out by Palestinian militants against Israeli citizens during the Olympics in Munich in 1972, whose 50th anniversary is September 5.
The Black September militant group, which killed 11 Israeli athletes and a German policeman in the hostage crisis, was at the time linked to Abbas’ Fatah party.
“If we want to dig deeper into the past, yes, please, I have 50 massacres that were committed by Israel,” the Palestinian leader said at the end of the press conference. “Fifty massacres, 50 holocausts, and to this day, every day, we have dead people killed by the [Israeli Defence Forces]by the Israeli army.
Scholz, who criticized Abbas for describing Israel as perpetuating an “apartheid system” earlier in the press conferencedid not immediately verbally respond to the Holocaust comparison but shook hands with the Palestinian president after his spokesman announced the end of the question-and-answer session.
Scholz condemned Wednesday morning’s remarks. “I am disgusted by the outrageous remarks made by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas”, Scholz tweeted from his official account. “For us, Germans in particular, any relativization of the singularity of the Holocaust is intolerable and unacceptable. I condemn any attempt to deny the crimes of the Holocaust.
The head of the Palestinian diplomatic mission was summoned to the German chancellery in protest on Wednesday afternoon, Reuters reported.
The remarks also drew fire from various German politicians. “The PLO leader would have won sympathy if he had apologized for the terrorist attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics,” said Armin Laschet, the conservative candidate who lost to Scholz in the federal elections last September. “To accuse Israel of 50 holocausts is rather the most disgusting speech ever heard in the German Chancellery.
Tabloid Bild criticized Scholz for not directly challenging Abbas over his choice of words, which he described as “the worst Holocaust relativization a head of government has ever uttered in the chancellor’s office.”
Marie-Agnès Strack-Zimmermann, of the Liberal Democratic Party, a partner in the coalition government, criticized the Chancellor’s spokesperson for not giving Scholz time to respond to the outcome of the press conference. “The question has to be asked whether he’s the right fit for his role,” she told Der Spiegel.
Yair Lapid, the Israeli prime minister, said Abbas’ comments were “not only a moral disgrace but a monstrous lie”, especially since they were made “on German soil”.
About 6 million Jews were murdered by the German Nazi Party regime and its accomplices during the last four years of World War II.
Israel’s Ambassador-designate to Germany, Ron Prosor, said: “There must be zero tolerance for Holocaust denial by Mahmoud Abbas on German soil.
The Palestinian leader’s visit to Berlin followed a trip to Paris in July, seen as part of a broad diplomatic effort to drum up European interest in the cause of Palestine in the face of seemingly waning interest from the United States. United for the revival of the peace process in the Middle East.