German chancellor condemns Mahmoud Abbas’s ‘50 holocausts’ remark

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Thursday reiterated his rejection of Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas’ accusation that Israel has perpetrated “50 Holocausts” against the Palestinians, according to a statement from the Israeli Prime Minister’s office.

According to the statement, Scholz told Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid during a telephone conversation that it “was important for him to clarify this personally to the prime minister, as well as publicly.”

On Tuesday in Berlin, Abbas following a meeting with Scholz claimed that Israel had perpetrated “50 massacres, 50 slaughters, 50 holocausts” against the Palestinians.

Abbas made the remarks after having been asked whether he intended to apologize to Israel and Germany in advance of next month’s 50th anniversary of the massacre by Palestinian terrorists of 11 Israeli coaches and athletes during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich.

The mention of the word “Holocausts” drew a grimace from Scholz but no immediate denunciation, according to the Associated Press. Prior to that, Scholz disagreed with Abbas’s assertion that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians constituted “apartheid.”

On Wednesday, Scholz took to Twitter to outline his position, writing: “I am disgusted by the outrageous remarks made by Palestinian President Mahmoud #Abbas. For us Germans in particular, any relativization of the singularity of the Holocaust is intolerable and unacceptable. I condemn any attempt to deny the crimes of the Holocaust.”

For his part, Lapid slammed Abbas’s comments as a “monstrous lie” and said that “history will never forgive him.”

During their call on Thursday, Lapid and Scholz also discussed the Iranian nuclear issue, with the former reiterating Israel’s opposition to a return to the 2015 nuclear agreement, and the need for Europe to send a clear and unequivocal message that there will be no more concessions to Iran, according to the statement.

“Prime Minister Lapid added that Europe must oppose Iran buying time in negotiations. The two agreed to meet soon, as a reflection of the close relations between their two countries,” the statement concluded.

The Munich massacre was an attack during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, by eight members of the Palestinian terrorist group Black September, who took nine members of the Israeli Olympic team hostage, after killing two more. All nine were killed during a failed rescue attempt by the German police who were gravely unprepared for such an operation. An article in 2012 in a front-page story of the German news magazine Der Spiegel reported that much of the information pertaining to the mishandling of the massacre was covered up by the German authorities. For twenty years, Germany refused to release any information about the attack and did not accept responsibility for the results.

Funds for the terrorist operation were provided by Mahmoud Abbas, Chairman of the PLO since 11 November 2004, and the operation was endorsed by his predecessor and mentor, Yasser Arafat. Abbas’ dissertation at the  Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia was completed in 1982 and published as a book in Arabic titled “The Other Side: the Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism”. Considered to be an egregious example of Holocaust denial, the dissertation claimed that Zionist agitation had been the cause of the Holocaust. Abbas dismissed as a “myth” and “fantastic lie” that six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, writing that the real figure was at most “890,000” or “a few hundred thousand”. The number of such deaths, he claimed, had been exaggerated for political purpose by the “Zionist government.”

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