Palestinian leader gets antisemitic in defense of Hitler

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas unabashedly states that Hitler fought Jews for their “usury and money.”

By Israel Today Staff | | Topics: Antisemitism, palestinians
Mahmoud Abbas. An unabashed and unrepentant antisemite. Photo by Wissam Hashlamon/Flash90
Mahmoud Abbas. An unabashed and unrepentant antisemite. Photo by Wissam Hashlamon/Flash90

Racism was not the driving force behind the Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jewish people, argued Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas last month. Rather, Hitler and his cohorts targeted the Jews due to their behavior.

Abbas, despite being regularly portrayed as a “moderate” Arab leader, has been peddling this brand of antisemitism since his days at Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow.

And he remains an unrepentant antisemite.

In a speech on August 24, Abbas informed his audience that Hitler “fought the Jews” due to their “dealing with usury and money,” according to a translation from the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

“They say that Hitler killed the Jews for being Jews and that Europe hated the Jews because they were Jews. Not true,” Abbas said. He stated that Europeans fought Jews “because of their social role and not their religion.”

The Palestinian leader also repeated the so-called “Khazar Myth” that he has peddled often over the years, stating that Ashkenazi Jews descend from Turkish Khazars who converted, rather than biblical Israelites.

“The truth that we should clarify to the world is that European Jews are not Semites. They have nothing to do with Semitism,” he said.

“This is the true face of Palestinian ‘leadership,’” wrote Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, of the recent Abbas speech. “It is no wonder that mere hours ago, a Palestinian teenage terrorist hacked innocent Israelis with a meat cleaver in Jerusalem.”

“Just as Abbas blames the Jews for the Holocaust, he also blames the Jews for all the Middle East’s issues,” Erdan added.

“This type of ‘leadership’ only breeds violence, not progress,” stated the American Jewish Committee. “World leaders committed to peace in that region must stop giving Abbas a free pass and condemn his hateful rhetoric.”

“Thirty years after the Oslo Accords, it’s true what you hear: Mahmoud Abbas is still the best Palestinian partner for peace. But he, too, believes that Jews aren’t really Jews and that Hitler had a point, which helps explain why peace is so elusive,” wrote Robert Nicholson, president of the Philos Project.

Abbas, whose doctoral dissertation denied the Holocaust, has also infamously accused Israel of “50 Holocausts.”

With reporting by JNS.

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