Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas during his visit to Berlin on August 16 made several anti-Israeli statements. During the press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, he refused to condemn refused to condemn a deadly attack by Palestinian militants on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, in which Palestinian militants killed 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team. Instead, Abbas said that Israel “committed 50 holocausts against Palestinians over the years” and called the Jewish state an “apartheid state.”

This statement caused a storm of indignation among the Israeli Government and Jewish community leaders around the world. Thus, Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid noted that the statement of Abbas “is not only a moral disgrace, but also a monstrous distortion of history.” Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz called Abbas’ words “deceitful and disgusting.” “An attempt to equate the actions of the Nazis and their assistants, who sought to destroy the Jewish people, with the actions of the IDF, which protects the country’s citizens from cruel terror, is Holocaust denial,” he said.

Euro-Asian Jewish Congress strongly condemns the Palestinian leader’s statement and considers it absolutely unacceptable. Such views can have dangerous consequences and fuel antisemitism.

“Attempts to distort the memory of the terrible Holocaust tragedy are an absolutely unacceptable practice that has no place in the modern world. As we can see, people who make such statements act despite of objective facts and evidence, they are not interested in historical truth. They substitute reality based on their momentary political interests. Such manipulations are unacceptable, since their destructive side effect is the incitement of antisemitic sentiments in society,” said EAJC President Dr. Michael Mirilashvili.