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Netanyahu: Abbas' Holocaust Remarks Misleading

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JERUSALEM, Israel -- Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas' statement on the Nazi Holocaust is meant to "placate" the world, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.

"Instead of issuing statements designed to placate global public opinion, Abu Mazen [Abbas' nickname] needs to choose between [peace with Israel and] the alliance with Hamas, a terrorist organization that calls for the destruction of Israel and denies the Holocaust," Netanyahu told ministers at the start of Sunday's cabinet meeting.

Over the weekend, Abbas issued a statement calling the Nazi genocide "the most heinous crime against humanity in modern history" and urged world powers "to bring justice and equity to the oppressed people wherever they are."

The Palestinian people live under a yoke of injustice and oppression, Abbas continued. He called on Israel "…to conclude a just and comprehensive peace in the region based on two-states vision, Israel and Palestine lives side by side in peace and security."

In Abbas' vision, there are no Jews living in Judea and Samaria or the Jordan Valley and Jerusalem neighborhoods outside the "green line" are the capital of a future Palestinian state.

That peace deal also requires the release of all Arab prisoners and the "right of return" for " Palestinian refugees" and their descendants.

Netanyahu instead suggested Abbas choose between "Hamas and true peace."

"Rather than releasing declarations aimed at soothing international public opinion, he must choose between Hamas and true peace," he said.

Abbas instead aligned himself with a movement that "denies the Holocaust and is attempting to create another Holocaust by destroying the State of Israel," he said.

Jerusalem's Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial said Holocaust denial is "sadly prevalent in the Arab world."

"Holocaust denial and revisionism are sadly prevalent in the Arab world, including among Palestinians," the Israeli daily Ha'aretz reported. "Thus the statement that the 'Holocaust is the most heinous crime to have occurred against humanity in the modern era' coming from Abbas might signal a change, and we expect it will be reflected in P.A. websites, curricula, and discourse."

Meanwhile, the Israeli Government Press Office posted a few telltale statements by Hamas officials.

At a conference in Stockholm in 2000 on Holocaust research, Hamas issued the following statement.

"This conference bears a clear Zionist goal, aimed at forging history by hiding the truth about the so-called Holocaust, which is an alleged and invented story with no basis... The invention of these grand illusions of an alleged crime that never occurred, ignoring the millions of dead European victims of Nazism during the war, clearly reveals the racist Zionist face, which believes in the superiority of the Jewish race over the rest of the nations."

Hamas would not allow UNRWA to teach about the Holocaust at its schools in the Gaza Strip, calling it a program "…intended to poison the minds of our children."

And senior Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahar said Jews lied about being victims of Germany's Third Reich.

"The lie according to which they were a victim of a holocaust and the [Jewish] people are a victim -- this lie has crumbled with the holocaust of Beit Hanun [Arab city in the Gaza Strip] …and the other countless holocausts committed by the Zionist enemy," YNet quoted al-Zahar on January 6, 2011.

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About The Author

Tzippe
Barrow

From her perch high atop the mountains surrounding Jerusalem, Tzippe Barrow tries to provide a bird’s eye view of events unfolding in her country. Tzippe’s parents were born to Russian Jewish immigrants, who fled the czar’s pogroms to make a new life in America. As a teenager, Tzippe wanted to spend a summer in Israel, but her parents, sensing the very real possibility that she might want to live there, sent her and her sister to Switzerland instead. Twenty years later, the Lord opened the door to visit the ancient homeland of her people.