Berlin 17 August : A visit by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas caused outrage when he claimed Israel of being the crime of committing a “Holocaust” against Palestinians in an open press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.In the press conference jointly held held on Tuesday, Abbas said that “Israel has committed 50 massacres in 50 Palestinian places in the years since 1947” and added “50 massacres and 50 Holocausts” according to DPA news agency.
Abbas made the remarks in an answer to a journalist who inquired if he would apologize to Israel on the anniversary of the 50th anniversary of the attack of Palestinian terrorists against the Israeli team during the 1972 Olympics in Munich in Munich, which resulted in the deaths of 10 Israeli athletes and their coaches, and one German police officer.
Scholz took in the remarks with a expression of dismay and anger and did not provide an immediate response.
The spokesperson for Abbas Steffen Hebestreit declared the news conference to be over immediately following Abbas’s response that had been declared as the final question.
Hebestreit later said that Scholz was furious at Abbas his remarks.
“For us Germans in particular any re-evaluation of the Holocaust is unacceptable and inhumane,” Scholz later told the German tabloid Bild.
Israeli Premier Minister Yair Lapid also reacted.
“Mahmoud Abbas’s claim that Israel of being the perpetrator of 50 Holocausts while on German soil is not just morally disgraceful, but a blatant fabrication,” Lapid tweeted.
“Six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust including one and half million Jewish children,” Lapid wrote.
“History will never forget him.”
Germany’s conservatives of the opposition said that the manner in which Scholz dealt with the situation was “incomprehensible”.
Christian Democrats leader Friedrich Merz claimed that the Chancellor should’ve “clearly and unambiguously contradicted the Palestinian President and demanded that he leave!” he tweeted as Bundestag member Armin Laschet claimed that Abbas claimed that his remarks were “the most disgusting and sexist speech that has ever been seen in the German Chancellery”.
This wasn’t the first time Abbas caused controversy with an Holocaust statement.
In the year 2018, he said the murder of approximately six million Jews by Nazi Germany was not caused by anti-Semitism.
Instead, he said it was due to the social status of Jews as lenders of interest of credit, using the anti-Semitic image of Jews as shrewd lovers of money.
Abbas later apologized.
