NEW YORK- According to media reports, Yasir Arafat has decided to name as his prime minister his number two man, Mahmoud Abbas (“Abu Mazen”), who has written a book questioning the authenticity of the Holocaust.

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; 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)

In response, the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has issued a new report documenting the widespread Holocaust-denial by Palestinian Authority officials and the PA media.

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, who is a child of Holocaust survivors, was born in a Displaced Persons camp in Gunzberg, Germany, and lost most of his family in the Holocaust, said: “The PA media’s constant denials or distortions of the Holocaust are part of Arafat’s culture of hatred and anti-Semitism, which promotes hatred and murder of Jews in the PA media, school textbooks, summer camps, officials’ speeches, and sermons by PA-appointed clergymen. If the Palestinian Arabs are given a state, it will be a state based on hatred and violence against Jews. It would be the first time in history that a state would be created not to benefit its own citizens, but for the purpose of destroying another country.”

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.