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Abbas presents Holocaust as something Jews "say"

Itamar Marcus  |
                                             
Abbas presents Holocaust
as something Jews "say":
a
"They say they made sacrifices in World War II -
we respect what they say"
 
Abbas adds libel:
Israel doing to Palestinians what Nazis did to Jews:
"We must not be a victim of the victim"
by Itamar Marcus 



PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in a speech before a delegation of Polish journalists in Ramallah, referred to Jewish suffering in World War II as a Jewish or Israeli claim that he is willing to respect: 

 
"They say they made sacrifices in World War II - we respect what they say."
 
He made this statement in the context of libeling Israel, as the second half of his statement accuses Israel of doing to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to the Jews:

"They should not treat us the way they were treated [by the Nazis]. We must not be a victim of the victim. I did not do anything bad to him."

It is striking that in his statement Abbas presents the Holocaust not as historical fact to be acknowledged but as something "Jews say" which he is willing to "respect." Additionally, his choice of terminology to describe the genocide of 6 million Jews completes his trivialization of the Holocaust:     

"... they made sacrifices in World War II."

Palestinian Media Watch has documented that Holocaust denial and trivialization are repeated regularly by the PA.

Abbas wrote a book in 1984, called "The Other Side: the Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism," which is currently still available for reading on Abbas' personal website, that accuses the Zionist leadership of collaboration with the Nazis. Quotes from Abbas' book appear below.

This was Abbas' full statement to the Polish journalists that related to World War II:

"If they [Jews] say that they made sacrifices in World War II, and we respect what they say, they should not treat us the way they were treated. We must not be a victim of the victim. I did not do anything bad to him. I just want him to follow the law. I want a state on the 1967 borders."
[Official PA TV, Aug. 23, 2015]

Click to view

The following is from Mahmoud Abbas' book The Other Side: The Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism, translated from the yet unpublished Hebrew translation by Dr. Edy Cohen"

"We find that Zionists believe in the purity of the Jewish race, as Hitler believed in the purity of the Aryan race. Zionism calls to find a fundamental final solution to the Jewish question in Europe by immigration to Palestine. Hitler also called for this and implemented it... Antisemitism is persecution and oppression, and this is definitely something desirable to the Zionist movement. The conclusion from these ideas is that a green light was given [by the Zionist leaders] to every racist in the world, first and foremost Hitler and Nazism, to do as they wish to the Jews, as long as it guarantees individual immigration to Palestine. And it was not enough for the Zionist movement to give a green light - rather it even asked for more victims, in order to be comparable to the victims of other peoples in the war. This was because it [the Zionist leaders] thought that raising the number of victims would increase its rights at the end of the war, when the bounty is divided."
[Abbas, Mahmoud. The Other Side: The Secret Relationship between Nazism and Zionism. Amman: Dar Ibn Rushd, 1984]

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