Palestinian leader Abbas draws sharp rebuke for “reprehensible” Holocaust remarks, but colleagues back him

Ramallah, West Financial institution — Palestinian political factions on Wednesday raged in opposition to dozens of Palestinian lecturers who had criticized President Mahmoud Abbas’ current remarks on the Holocaust, which have drawn widespread accusations of antisemitism.

Politicians lambasted an open letter signed earlier this week by greater than 100 Palestinian lecturers, activists and artists based mostly world wide as a “assertion of disgrace.”

“Their assertion is in line with the Zionist narrative and its signatories [and] provides credence to the enemies of the Palestinian individuals,” stated the secular nationalist Fatah occasion that runs the Palestinian Authority. Fatah officers referred to as the signatories “mouthpieces for the occupation” and “extraordinarily harmful.”

The well-respected writers and thinkers launched the letter after video surfaced exhibiting Abbas asserting that European Jews had been persecuted by Adolf Hitler due to what he described as their “social capabilities” and predatory lending practices, somewhat than their faith.

Within the open letter, the Palestinian lecturers, largely dwelling in the USA and Europe, condemned Abbas’ feedback as “morally and politically reprehensible.”

“We adamantly reject any try and diminish, misrepresent, or justify antisemitism, Nazi crimes in opposition to humanity or historic revisionism vis-à-vis the Holocaust,” the letter added. Just a few of the signatories are based mostly in east Jerusalem and the occupied West Financial institution.

The refrain of indignation amongst Palestinian leaders over the letter highlights an issue that has plagued the Palestinian relationship with the Holocaust for many years. The Nazi genocide, which killed almost six million Jews and tens of millions of others, despatched European Jews pouring into the Holy Land.

holJewish struggling throughout the Holocaust grew to become central to Israel’s creation narrative after 1948, when the struggle over Israel’s institution — which Palestinians describe because the “nakba,” or “disaster” — displaced tons of of hundreds of Palestinians from their houses. Because of this, many Palestinians are detest to a deal with the atrocities of the Holocaust for concern of undercutting their very own nationwide trigger.

“It does not serve our political curiosity to maintain mentioning the Holocaust,” stated Mkhaimer Abusaada, a political scientist at Al-Azhar College in Gaza Metropolis. “We’re affected by occupation and settlement enlargement and fascist Israeli polices. That’s what we ought to be stressing.”

However frequent Holocaust distortion and denial by Palestinians authority figures has solely heaped additional scrutiny on their relationship with the Holocaust. That unease started, maybe, with Amin Al-Husseini, the World Struggle II-era Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. The Palestinian Arab nationalist’s antisemitism was well-documented, and he even helped recruit Bosnian Muslims to again the Nazis.

Whereas he has previously acknowledged the Holocaust as “probably the most heinous crime” of contemporary historical past, extra lately, Abbas has incited numerous worldwide uproars with speeches denounced as antisemitic Holocaust denial. In 2018, he repeated a declare about usury and Ashkenazi Jews much like the one he made in his speech to Fatah members final month. Final yr he accused Israel of committing “50 Holocausts” in opposition to the Palestinian individuals.

Abbas’ report has fueled accusations from Israel that he is not to be trusted as a associate in peace negotiations to finish the decades-long battle. By way of many years of failed peace talks, Abbas has led the Palestinian Authority, the semiautonomous physique that started administering components of the occupied West Financial institution after the Oslo peace strategy of the Nineteen Nineties.

Abbas has saved a good grip on energy for the final 17 years and his safety forces have been accused of harshly cracking down on dissent. Below him, the Palestinian Authority has turn into deeply unpopular over its reviled safety alliance with Israel and its failure to carry democratic elections.

The open letter signed by Palestinian lecturers this week additionally touched on what it described because the authority’s “more and more authoritarian and draconian rule,” and stated Abbas had “forfeited any declare to symbolize the Palestinian individuals.”