PA’s Prime Minister
Denies the Holocaust
NEW YORK- The Palestinian Authority marked Holocaust Remembrance Day by publicly comparing Israel to the Nazis — the latest in a series of declarations by PA officials denying, distorting, or minimizing the Holocaust.
The PA’s official web site today published a document titled “As Israel Remembers Holocaust, IDF Resort to Nazi Practice against Palestinians.” [see http://www.palestine-pmc.com/details.asp?cat=1&id=758]
The PA regularly uses Holocaust Remembrance Day as an occasion to circulate slurs about the Holocaust. For example, on Holocaust Remembrance Day in 1996 (April 22), the PA Ministry of Information issued a statement asserting: “While the Israeli government is speaking about the atrocities committed against the Jews in Auschwitz, Birkenau and Dachau concentration camps…our homeland was transformed into a big concentration camp.” And on May 10, 1997, shortly after Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yasir Arafat told the Palestinian Legislative Council that the anniversary of Israel’s creation is “Palestine Holocaust Day” and “the Palestinian people were subjected to the worst holocaust in history.” (Ha’aretz, May 11, 1997)
The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) points out that the PA’s latest appalling comparison of Israel to the Nazis comes as no surprise, since the PA’s new prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) is himself a Holocaust-denier.
Abbas is the author of a book called The Other Side: The Secret Relationship Between Nazism and the Zionist Movement, in which he stated that the Nazis may actually have killed “only a few hundred thousand” Jews, not six million; that Zionist leaders secretly collaborated with the Nazis and wanted the Nazis to murder Jews so as to increase sympathy for Zionism; and that “the interest of the Zionist movement is to inflate this figure so that their gains will be greater.” (Jerusalem Post, Jan. 26, 1995)
A February 2003 poll by McLaughlin & Associates found that 64% of Americans believe that “world leaders should refuse to meet with Abbas and treat him the same as others who deny or minimize the Holocaust.” Only 20% of Americans believe that world leaders should meet with Abbas.
On numerous other occasions, PA spokesmen and official PA publications have called the Holocaust a hoax or belittled the Holocaust by comparing Israel to the Nazis. For a free copy of the ZOA’s report, Holocaust Denial and Distortion by Palestinian Arab Leaders, please call the ZOA at 212-481-1500.
ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said: “At the very moment that some are claiming Abu Mazen’s PA regime is moderate and interested in negotiations, Mazen’s PA is promoting the most vicious slander about Israel and the Holocaust. If Mazen wants peace, why is he promoting hatred?”