The statements by Palestinian President Abbas provoke international outrage: in him - but also in Chancellor Scholz, who listens in silence. Now there are first demands for financial consequences for the Palestinian territories. Abbas tries to limit the damage.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has backed down after his heavily criticized statements on the Holocaust in Berlin. "President Abbas reiterates that the Holocaust is the most heinous crime in modern human history," wrote the Palestinian news agency Wafa.
At a press conference with Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin on Tuesday, Abbas accused Israel of carrying out multiple holocausts on the Palestinians. "Israel has committed 50 massacres in 50 Palestinian locations from 1947 to the present day," he said, adding, "50 massacres, 50 holocausts."
According to Wafa, Abbas now said that in Berlin he did not want to question the uniqueness of the Holocaust. Rather, Abbas meant "the crimes and massacres against the Palestinian people that Israel's armed forces have committed since the Nakba," Abbas said. "These crimes have not stopped to this day."
Scholz did not reply to Abbas' statement in the press conference on Tuesday afternoon. Only in the evening did he tell the "Bild" newspaper: "Especially for us Germans, any relativization of the Holocaust is unbearable and unacceptable." Scholz wrote on Twitter this Wednesday: "I am deeply outraged by the unspeakable statements by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. For us Germans in particular, any relativization of the Holocaust is intolerable and unacceptable. I condemn every attempt to deny the crimes of the Holocaust."
Israeli Prime Minister Jair Lapid tweeted: "That Mahmoud Abbas accuses Israel of committing '50 holocausts' while standing on German soil is not only a moral disgrace but a blatant lie." He referred to the six million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust. History will never forgive Abbas. Lapid is himself the son of a Holocaust survivor.
The President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Josef Schuster, declared that by relativizing the National Socialist policy of extermination, Abbas trampled on the memory of six million murdered Jews. At the same time, Schuster sharply criticized Scholz: "I think it's scandalous that a relativization of the Holocaust, especially in Germany, goes unchallenged at a press conference in the Federal Chancellery."
The President of the German-Israeli Society, Volker Beck, demanded financial consequences from Abbas's "outrageous performance": Germany must make its donations to the Palestinian Authority dependent on bonuses for anti-Israel terrorists no longer being paid there. Germany is one of the biggest donors to the Palestinians.
Abbas also caused outrage in the EU Commission with his Holocaust comparison. The statements are unacceptable, wrote the EU Commission Vice President Margaritis Schinas, who is responsible for the fight against anti-Semitism, on Twitter. The Holocaust is an "indelible stain" on European history. Former Chancellor Angela Merkel was also outraged. She condemned Abbas' statements "in the strongest possible terms," said a spokeswoman for Merkel's office. The statement was an unacceptable "attempt to relativize the singularity of the crimes committed by Germany during National Socialism - the breach of civilization - the Shoah, or to place the State of Israel directly or indirectly on a par with Germany during the National Socialist era".
Scholz had followed Abbas' statements with a petrified expression and made preparations to reply. His spokesman Steffen Hebestreit declared the press conference over immediately after Abbas' reply. The Union sharply criticized Scholz for this. "An incredible process in the Chancellery," wrote CDU leader Friedrich Merz on Twitter on Tuesday evening. The Chancellor should have "clearly contradicted the Palestinian President and asked him to leave the house!"
The foreign policy spokesman for the SPD parliamentary group, Nils Schmid, spoke of a sham debate. "The problem is not the chancellor's reaction, the problem is the attitude of Palestinian President Abbas," he told the newspapers of the Funke media group. The fact that Scholz did not react immediately to Abbas' "bad derailment" was "owed to the choreography of such a press conference during a state visit".
