During a lecture to launch the book, Cohen emphasized that no publishing house was willing to take on his book, not even the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem.
“No one wanted to touch this hot potato,” he said, speaking with Knesset (Israeli parliament) members.
“Those from the Right said it is a sensitive political issue. Those from the Left didn’t want to tarnish the image of Abbas as a tolerant Palestinian leader.”
Heads of university departments told Cohen they feared a financial backlash from Europe if they helped him expose Abbas as a Holocaust denier. This stiff resistance exists even though Israel and many other countries have outlawed denial of the Holocaust. Israeli law can sentence a person to five years in prison for “diminishing the proportions of acts committed in the period of the Nazi regime.”
Cohen and co-author Pierre Lavi first felt compelled to...
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