Palestinian Arab Leaders’ Many Forms of Holocaust Denial

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There are many forms of Holocaust denial. One is to claim that it never happened; it was made up by Jews to garner sympathy from the world, and especially, in the version promoted by Arabs, to win sympathy for the Jews who were stealing Arab land in Palestine. A second form of Holocaust denial is to concede that, perhaps there was some killing of Jews by the Nazis, but nowhere near the figure that is claimed of six million. Mahmoud Abbas, in his book The Other Side: The Secret Contacts Between Nazism and Zionism, for example, finally conceded that some Jews might have been killed by the Nazis, but estimates the number of victims at several hundred thousand. A third form of denial is to reject the notion that six million innocent Jews were murdered. These Jews were far from innocent, we are told; they were plotting against the Germans, and the latter, in self-defense, were led to kill them. And the same explanation is given for Hamas’ attack on October 7: it was an act of “resistance” against Jews whose limitless evil toward the Palestinians had brought that attack upon themselves. More on this malign nonsense can be found here: “Jews provoked the Holocaust, Palestinian leaders say (again),” by Rafael Medoff, Jewish Journal, March 7, 2024:

Palestinian Arab leaders can’t seem to make up their minds about the Holocaust. Sometimes they say it never happened. Sometimes they say it did happen, but Israel’s behavior is even worse. And sometimes—such as last week—they say the Jews themselves provoked the Holocaust.

Yasser Abu Sido, a senior official of the Palestinian Authority’s ruling party, Fatah, said on an Egyptian television program on Feb. 23 that “Hitler had obvious reasons” for perpetrating the Holocaust.

The Jews’ own provocative behavior was the reason, according to Abu Sido. “They planned to take control of Germany. They started to bring down Germany in terms of the economy and moral values.” That was why “Hitler reacted by making the Jews go on the streets and lick the sidewalks. They know this very well.”

In 1933, before Hitler came to power, Jews made up 0.8% of the population of Germany. Less than one percent. Yet Yasser Abu Sido can with a straight face tell us that German Jews “planned to take control of Germany.” And then he says that they “started to bring down Germany in terms of the economy.” Why would German Jews want to bring down the very economy from which they benefited? It makes no sense. But nonsense is the Palestinian stock in trade.

Abu Sido’s blame-the-Jews approach to the Holocaust echoes words spoken repeatedly by P.A. chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

In an April 30, 2018 speech to the Palestinian National Council, Abbas explained the “reasons” why Jews were massacred throughout history, from the pogroms of the Middle Ages to the Holocaust. He began by dismissing the idea that antisemitism had anything to do with it. “Why did this happen? They say ‘it is because we are Jews,’ but that must be false,” he said, because “there were Jews in Arab countries. Why wasn’t there ever one incident against Jews [there] because they’re Jews? Not even once.” (An obvious falsehood.)

More nonsense from Abbas, who claims that Jews were never attacked in Arab lands (“Why wasn’t there ever one incident against Jews [there] because they’re Jews? Not even once”). There were major pogroms by Arabs against Jews in Islamic Spain — in Cordoba in 1066, when 4,000 Jews were massacred, in Damascus in 1845, in Morocco, at Fez in 1912, at Constantine, in Algeria, in 1934. In 1945, on the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, large numbers of Arabs took out their frustration over Nazi Germany’s defeat by perpetrating pogroms in several Arab countries. In Egypt, 10 Jews were killed and about 350 wounded during Muslim Brotherhood riots against the declaration. Synagogues, the Jewish hospital, and old-age homes were burned and more than 100 Jewish shops ransacked. In Libya, some 140 Jews were murdered, synagogues were burned, and homes looted. Jews had their throats slit and some had their eyes pierced with knives. In 1947, there was a pogrom in Aleppo, and another at the Menarsha Synagogue in Damascus in 1949. After the 1948 war, Jews in many Arab countries were subject to even more pogroms.

Yet Mahmoud Abbas says that Jews were “never attacked” in Arab lands.