“Incredible event”
Scholz’s silence on the Holocaust accusation triggers fierce criticism
08/17/2022, 06:58 am
At a press conference in Berlin, Palestinian President Abbas accused Israel of multiple “Holocausts.” Chancellor Scholz is initially silent – and thus causes outrage. The Auschwitz Committee speaks of a “strange” reaction, the CDU of an “incomprehensible event”.
Chancellor Scholz has been heavily criticized for his handling of a Holocaust allegation by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas against Israel. The International Auschwitz Committee expressed its outrage at Abbas’ accusation of the Holocaust and at the hesitant reaction on the part of Germany. Regarding Abbas’ statements at a joint press conference with Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Executive Vice President Christoph Heubner said the President “purposefully used the political stage in Berlin to defame the German culture of remembrance and the relationship with the State of Israel. With its shameful and inappropriate Holocaust comparison, Abbas tried again to serve anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic aggression in Germany and Europe.”
Heubner also criticized the federal government. “It is astonishing and disconcerting that the German side was not prepared for Abbas’ provocations and that his statements on the Holocaust went unchallenged at the press conference,” said Heubner.
The Union also criticized Scholz for his handling of the Holocaust allegation. “An incredible process in the Chancellery,” wrote CDU leader Friedrich Merz on Twitter on Tuesday evening. The chancellor should have “clearly contradicted the Palestinian president and asked him to leave the house!” he argued. CDU MP Matthias Hauer said: “Of course, Chancellor Olaf Scholz could and should have contradicted the Palestinian President after the Holocaust had been put into perspective. To remain silent after such a derailment is unforgivable.”
Israel: Moral Shame and Outrageous Lie
Israeli Prime Minister Jair Lapid also 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 an outrageous lie,” he wrote on Twitter and referred to the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust. History will never forgive Abbas. Lapid is himself the son of a Holocaust survivor.
The federal government’s anti-Semitism commissioner, Felix Klein, told the editorial network Germany 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. “That also applies to the question asked about the attack on the Olympics, which was carried out by PLO terrorists.”
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. That’s more important than criticism of the @Bundeskanzler, whose outrage was clearly visible”.
Abbas: “50 massacres, 50 holocausts”
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 told the “Bild” newspaper in the evening: “Especially for us Germans, any relativization of the Holocaust is unbearable and unacceptable.”
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 don’t adopt the word apartheid and that I don’t think that’s the right way to describe the situation,” said Scholz. Apartheid is understood as the doctrine of separating individual ethnic population groups, primarily in South Africa until 1994. Abbas had repeatedly accused Israel of this.
Abbas has previously expressed anti-Semitism
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”.