During a press conference in Berlin on Tuesday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas refused to apologize for the Palestinian terrorists who took hostage and then killed 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Instead, on German soil, where the Holocaust was orchestrated, Abbas abhorrently observed: “If we want to go over the past, go ahead. I have 50 slaughters that Israel committed … 50 massacres, 50 slaughters, 50 holocausts.”
The first point to note here is that Israel’s very existence is the antithesis of the Holocaust. Israel was founded so that the rallying cry of “Never again” would become a reality. Israel has been a refuge for Jews who feel they don’t belong or are persecuted in their home country. The Jewish state even helps non-Jews, such as Syrians persecuted by Bashar Assad’s genocide against his own people.
Second, Israel is the only true democracy in the Middle East. It welcomes people of all backgrounds. Arabs even serve in the Israeli government — a fact that proves Israel is not an apartheid state, despite Abbas repeating that antisemitic accusation. Israel, like any other country, is not perfect and is not exempt from criticism. However, there is a difference between criticism and simple demonizing of the Jewish state. The latter, which Abbas exhibited, is antisemitic.
Again, the point bears reminding: Nothing compares to the Holocaust. Nothing compares to the Jews who were forced to wear the yellow Star of David. Nothing compares to the businesses and synagogues that were looted and burned during Kristallnacht. Nothing compares to the Jews who were sent to ghettos and then to concentration and death camps. Nothing compares to the 6 million Jews who perished in those camps, including nearly 1 million Jews taken at Auschwitz alone. Holocaust denial is something that Abbas likes to parrot. He even wrote a dissertation that denied the Holocaust.
That’s not all. “We find that Zionists believe in the purity of the Jewish race, as Hitler believed in the purity of the Aryan race. Zionism calls to find a fundamental final solution to the Jewish question in Europe by immigration to Palestine,” wrote Abbas in his book, The Other Side: The Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism.
It is high time we treat Abbas like the antisemitic pariah he is.
Jackson Richman is a journalist in Washington, D.C. Follow him @jacksonrichman.
