Ramallah, Sept. 12, (dpa/GNA) – Some 190 Palestinian academics, artists and activists have strongly opposed an anti-Semitic speech by President Mahmoud Abbas in an open letter to the Palestinian leader released on Tuesday.
The group said they “unequivocally condemn the morally and politically reprehensible comments” made by Abbas about the Holocaust.
“Rooted in a racial theory widespread in European culture and science at the time, the Nazi genocide of the Jewish people was born of anti-Semitism, fascism, and racism.
“We adamantly reject any attempt to diminish, misrepresent, or justify anti-Semitism, Nazi crimes against humanity, or historical revisionism vis-a-vis the Holocaust,” the letter said.
Abbas sparked international criticism when in late August, in front of leading members of his Fatah party, he said:
“You say that Hitler killed the Jews because they were Jews, and that Europe hated the Jews because they were Jews.”
This, he said, was false. “The (Europeans) fought against these people because of their role in society, which had to do with usury, money and so on.”
The authors of the “Palestinian Open Letter” wrote that “the Palestinian people are sufficiently burdened by Israeli settler colonialism, dispossession, occupation, and oppression without having to bear the negative effect of such ignorant and profoundly anti-Semitic narratives perpetuated by those who claim to speak in our name.”
They said they are “burdened” by the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) “increasingly authoritarian and draconian rule, which disproportionately impacts those living under occupation.”
The letter’s authors said because Abbas has held onto power for “nearly a decade and a half” after his mandate expired in 2009 and is supported by “Western and pro-Israel forces seeking to perpetuate Israeli apartheid,” the PA leader “and his political entourage have forfeited any claim to represent the Palestinian people and our struggle for justice, freedom, and equality, a struggle that stands against all forms of systemic racism and oppression.”
While Abbas has long been considered controversial among his own people, this form of openly harsh criticism from Palestinian ranks is unusual.
The last presidential election took place in 2005; the last parliamentary election in 2006.
GNA