Abbas causes a scandal during a visit – Union criticizes Scholz

Berlin The Union has criticized Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) for his handling of a Holocaust accusation by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas against Israel. “An incredible process in the Chancellery,” wrote CDU leader Friedrich Merz on Twitter on Tuesday evening. The chancellor “should have contradicted the Palestinian president in no uncertain terms and asked him to leave the house!” he argued.

CDU MP Matthias Hauer said: “Of course, after the relativization of the Holocaust, Chancellor Olaf Scholz could and should have contradicted the Palestinian President. To remain silent after such a blunder is unforgivable.”

During his visit to Berlin, Abbas accused Israel of multiple “Holocausts” against the Palestinians, triggering outrage. “Israel has committed 50 massacres in 50 Palestinian locations since 1947 to this day,” he said at a joint press conference with Scholz in the Chancellery on Tuesday, adding: “50 massacres, 50 holocausts.”

The SPD politician followed the statements with a petrified expression, visibly annoyed and also made preparations to reply. His spokesman Steffen Hebestreit declared the press conference over immediately after Abbas’ reply. The question to the Palestinian President had previously been announced as the last.

Hebestreit later reported that Scholz was outraged by Abbas’ statement. The Chancellor said in the evening to the “Bild” newspaper: “Especially for us Germans, any relativization of the Holocaust is unbearable and unacceptable.” Scholz commented on Abbas’ statements on Twitter on Wednesday. “I am deeply outraged by the unspeakable statements made by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas,” wrote the Chancellor. “I condemn any attempt to deny the crimes of the Holocaust.”

Israeli Prime Minister Lapid: “Outrageous Lie”

The deputy CDU federal chairman Karin Prien later wrote on Twitter with a view to Scholz: “Too little, too late”. The FDP parliamentary group deputy Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, on the other hand, said that a broader public was finally finding out “how the Palestinians and Abbas – Israel’s alleged “partners” – are feeling. This is more important than criticism of the @Bundeskanzler, whose outrage was clearly visible.”

Before making the statement, Abbas was asked by a journalist whether he would apologize to Israel on the 50th anniversary of the attack on the Israeli Olympic team by Palestinian terrorists in Munich. Abbas said that there are people being killed by the Israeli army every day. “If we want to continue digging into the past, yes please.” The Palestinian President did not respond to the Olympic attack in which eleven Israelis were killed.

Israeli Prime Minister Jair Lapid responded in no uncertain terms: “That Mahmoud Abbas accuses Israel of committing ’50 holocausts’ while standing on German soil is not only a moral disgrace but a blatant lie,” he wrote on Twitter and referred to the six million Jews who were murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust. History will never forgive Abbas. Lapid is himself the son of a Holocaust survivor.

The International Auschwitz Committee also sharply criticized Abbas’ accusation of the Holocaust against Israel and a hesitant reaction on the part of Germany. The Palestinian President “purposefully used the political stage in Berlin to defame the German culture of remembrance and the relationship with the State of Israel,” said Executive Vice President Christoph Heubner late Tuesday evening. According to him, the reaction to Abbas’ statement was also insufficient. “It is astonishing and strange that the German side was not prepared for Abbas’ provocations and that his statements on the Holocaust in the press conference went unchallenged,” said Heubner in Berlin.

The CDU politician Armin Laschet called Abbas’ performance “the worst gaffe that was ever heard in the Chancellery”. The federal government’s anti-Semitism commissioner, Felix Klein, told the editorial network Germany (RND) that Abbas was not doing “legitimate Palestinian concerns” any service. “By putting the Holocaust into perspective, President Abbas lacked any sensitivity towards us German hosts,” criticized Klein. “This is especially true with regard to the question asked about the Olympic attack, which was carried out by PLO terrorists.”

Scholz rejects Abbas’ accusation of apartheid

The Palestinian President had already caused a stir in 2018 with Holocaust statements in a different context. At the time he said the Holocaust was not triggered by anti-Semitism. Instead, the trigger was the social position of the Jews as lenders of loans with interest. Afterwards he apologized for the anti-Semitic statements. It was not his intention to offend anyone.

His doctoral thesis, which he submitted in the early 1980s, is also considered controversial. In it, Abbas relativized the Holocaust and accused the Zionist movement of having collaborated with the Hitler regime. In 2014, for the first time, he described the extermination of the Jews during the Holocaust as the “worst crime of modern times”.

Scholz had previously criticized Abbas on the open stage for describing Israeli politics as an “apartheid system”. “I want to say explicitly at this point that I do not adopt the word apartheid and that I do not think it is right to describe the situation,” said Scholz.

Abbas had previously said the “transformation into the new reality of a single state in an apartheid system” does not serve security and stability in the region. Apartheid is understood as the doctrine of separating individual ethnic population groups, primarily in South Africa until 1994. It is internationally recognized as a crime against humanity. Abbas had repeatedly accused Israel of this.

In 1967, Israel conquered the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights in the Six-Day War. The UN classifies the areas as occupied. The Palestinians want them for a separate state of Palestine – with East Jerusalem as the capital. The peace process between Israel and the Palestinians has been idle since 2014.

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