Chicago Tribune, Reuters cite PMW research on Fatah Holocaust denial

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu today reiterated that his government would not take part in Middle East peace talks with a Palestinian government backed by Islamist group Hamas.

In an interview with CNN, Netanyahu also said Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s comments earlier today denouncing the Holocaust could not be reconciled with his alliance with Hamas...

“President Abbas can’t have it both ways. He can’t say the Holocaust is terrible but at the same time embrace those who deny the Holocaust and seek to perpetrate another destruction of the Jewish people,” Mr Netanyahu said on CNN. “I think what President Abbas is trying to do is to placate Western public opinion that understands that he delivered a terrible blow to the peace process.”...

Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), an Israeli monitoring group, says both Hamas and Mr Abbas’s Fatah movement have engaged in Holocaust denial. On its website, PMW cites a Hamas TV documentary which it said alleged Jewish leaders planned the Holocaust to eliminate the “disabled and handicapped.”

But the website also mentions a statement issued by Mr Abbas’s Palestinian Authority in January condemning the Holocaust and the targeting of Jews.

Mr Abbas has long been accused by some Israeli politicians of being a Holocaust denier over his book, The Other Side: the Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism, which was based on his doctoral dissertation where he questioned the number of Jewish Holocaust victims.