Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has sparked anger after accusing Israel of committing “50 Holocausts” – with Germany’s chief saying he is “disgusted” by the comment.
Mr Abbas made the feedback in Berlin on Tuesday when requested in regards to the upcoming fiftieth anniversary of the assault on the Israeli workforce by Palestinian militants on the 1972 Munich Olympics.
Standing alongside German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, he stated: “From 1947 to the present day, Israel has committed 50 massacres in Palestinian villages and cities, in Deir Yassin, Tantura, Kafr Qasim and many others, 50 massacres, 50 Holocausts.”
Mr Scholz expressed his anger on Twitter on Wednesday: “For us Germans in particular, any relativisation of the singularity of the Holocaust is intolerable and unacceptable.
“I’m disgusted by the outrageous remarks made by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.”
Six million Jews have been murdered by the Nazis within the Holocaust, and Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid stated Mr Mahmoud’s remarks have been a “moral disgrace” and a “monstrous lie”.
“History will never forgive him,” he tweeted.
The head of Germany’s Central Council of Jews, Dr Josef Schuster, condemned the feedback within the “strongest possible terms”.
“That a relativization of the Holocaust, especially in Germany, at a press conference in the Federal Chancellery, goes unchallenged, I consider scandalous,” he stated in an announcement.
Mr Abbas’s remark referenced incidents by which Palestinians have been killed within the 1948 conflict that adopted Israel’s basis, and incidents within the years after.
In an announcement responding to the outcry, he known as the Holocaust “the most heinous crime in modern human history” and stated his remark was purely meant to spotlight “the crimes and massacres committed against the Palestinian people”.
The Palestinian overseas ministry additionally defended the feedback and accused Israel of not tolerating something that reminds individuals of the nation’s “many crimes”.
Mr Abbas’s feedback observe a flare-up within the long-running battle this month by which authorities say 49 individuals, together with girls, kids and militants, have been killed following Israeli airstrikes in Gaza. Another 300 have been injured.
Israel stated it carried out the offensive in response to what it stated was an imminent menace from the Islamic Jihad group, which fired over 1,000 rockets in response and compelled hundreds of Israelis to hunt cowl in shelters.
A day after a ceasefire, Israeli troops killed three Palestinian militants and wounded dozens throughout an arrest raid within the West Bank metropolis of Nablus.
Then, final Sunday, a gunman wounded eight individuals at a bus cease in Jerusalem’s Old City.
Source: information.sky.com”