German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Wednesday expressed disgust at Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s comments that the German leader said the importance of the Holocaust was declining, while Israel accused Abbas of telling a “monstrous lie.”
“For us Germans in particular, any relativization of the individuality of the Holocaust is unacceptable and unacceptable,” Scholz tweeted on Wednesday. “I am disgusted by the outrageous comments made by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.”
During a visit to Berlin on Tuesday, Abbas refused to condemn a deadly attack by Palestinian militants on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Instead, he accused Israel of committing “50 Holocausts.”
The comments came a few weeks before the planned commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the attack in Munich, in which Palestinian militants killed 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team. Relatives of the killed Israeli athletes said they planned to boycott the ceremony after failing to reach an agreement on greater compensation from the German government.
Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid also condemned the comments as a “disgrace”.
“Mahmoud Abbas accusing Israel of committing ’50 Holocausts’ while standing on German soil is not only a moral disgrace, but also a monstrous lie,” Lapid said on Twitter.
“History will never forgive him.”
Six million Jews were killed in Nazi Germany’s Holocaust.
In addition to Scholz, Abbas referred to a series of historic incidents in which Palestinians were killed by Israelis in the 1948 war that accompanied the establishment of the State of Israel and in the years to come.
“From 1947 to the present, Israel has committed 50 massacres in Palestinian towns and cities, in Deir Yassin, Tantura, Kafr Qasim and many others, 50 massacres, 50 Holocausts,” said Abbas.
The official Palestinian news agency Wafa did not include comments about the Holocaust in its report of the meeting with Scholz, and the Palestinian Foreign Ministry said Lapid’s comments were intended to divert attention from Israel’s “crimes.”
In a statement, the ministry said that “the occupying power is not satisfied with committing these crimes on a daily and continuous basis, nor does it tolerate or reject gossip or statements that remind Israelis and the international community of the many crimes that have been committed.” committed by Israel.”
Abbas’s comment followed months of tension and a brief conflict this month, in which 49 people were killed in Gaza after Israel launched a series of airstrikes in response to what it said was an imminent threat from the militant Islamic Jihad group. which fired over 1,000 missiles in response.
Dozens of Palestinians have also been killed in clashes with Israeli security forces in the occupied West Bank, while there have been a number of attacks on Israelis, including an incident on Sunday that injured eight people on a bus carrying Jewish believers in Jerusalem.
Palestinians are pushing for statehood in areas captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war. Negotiations have been frozen since 2014.
Associated Press contributed.