Germany’s Scholz ‘disgusted’ at Abbas’s ’50 holocausts’ comments

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz expressed outrage at Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s claim that Israel perpetuated “50 holocausts,” on Wednesday morning, a day after he stood silently as Abbas spoke.

“I am disgusted by the outrageous remarks made by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas,” Scholz tweeted. “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.”

When a reporter asked Abbas to apologize for the murder of 11 Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists during the 1972 Munich Olympics, Abbas responded: “If you want to go over the past, go ahead. I have 50 slaughters that Israel committed…50 massacres, 50 slaughters…50 holocausts.”

Video from the press conference shows Scholz grimacing, but he did not address the remarks.

Scholz, did, however, reject Abbas’s use of the word “apartheid” to describe relations between Israel and the Palestinians.

“Naturally we have a different assessment with a view to Israeli politics, and I want to expressly say here that I do not espouse the use of the word apartheid and do not think it correctly describes the situation,” Scholz said.

Later Tuesday, Scholz made comments similar to his tweet to the German newspaper Bild.
“Naturally we have a different assessment with a view to Israeli politics, and I want to expressly say here that I do not espouse the use of the word apartheid and do not think it correctly describes the situation.”

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz

Israeli officials’ reactions

Prime Minister Yair Lapid condemned Abbas’s accusation made on German soil as “not only a moral disgrace but a monstrous lie.

“Six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, including one and a half million Jewish children. History will never forgive him,” Lapid said.

Defense Minister Benny Gantz called Abbas’s remarks “despicable and false, and are an attempt to distort and rewrite history.

“The unfortunate and unfounded comparison between the Holocaust, which was carried out by the Germans and their helpers in an attempt to exterminate the Jewish people, and the IDF, which protects the rise of Israel in its land and the citizens of Israel and its sovereignty from brutal terrorism, is Holocaust denial,” Gantz tweeted.

Lapid and Gantz are sons of Holocaust survivors.

Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman said that the government must change its policy of increased engagement with Abbas.

“I call on the prime minister and defense minister to stop legitimizing him, meeting him and talking with him,” he said. “There is no reason to fuss about his threats to stop security coordination…If the man is alive today and not assassinated by competing terrorist organizations, it’s only because of the security coordination between the Palestinians and Israel.”

Liberman also out that Abbas wrote his doctorate at the Soviet Union’s Patrice Lumumba University distorting the Holocaust by claiming pre-state Zionists collaborated with the Nazis.

Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked tweeted a dig at Gantz for meeting with Abbas, who “fights IDF soldiers at the Hague and denies the Holocaust in Germany.

“We must not give him legitimization and certainly not invite him to Rosh Ha’ayin,” she wrote, referring to the city of Gantz’s residence, where the defense minister held a meeting with Abbas.

Alternate Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said he did not agree to meet with Abbas or negotiate with him, even under pressure to do so, because he is not a partner, he is “a Holocaust denier who persecutes Israeli soldiers at the ICC and pays salaries to terrorists.”

Yad Vashem chairman Dani Dayan said that “Abbas’s contemptuous comments about ’50 holocausts’ are shamefully low.”

US Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt called Abbas’s claim “unacceptable.”

“Holocaust distortion can have dangerous consequences and fuels antisemitism,” she tweeted.