Dozens of leading Palestinian intellectuals, artists and other public figures have published an open letter condemning antisemitic comments made by the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas.
In a letter published on Sunday, 96 people, including Rashid Khalidi, the historian, Dana el-Kurd, the political scientist, and Sam Bahour, the prominent businessman, said they “unequivocally condemn the morally and politically reprehensible comments” made by Abbas, which were publicly circulated last week.
“We adamantly reject any attempt to diminish, misrepresent, or justify antisemitism, Nazi crimes against humanity, or historical revisionism vis-a-vis the Holocaust,” the letter said.
In a televised speech to fellow members of Abbas’s Fatah, the occupied West Bank’s ruling political party, the 87-year-old said that Adolf Hitler killed European Jews in the Holocaust not because of antisemitism, but because of their “social role” in society, such as money lending.
Abbas said: “They say that Hitler killed the Jews for being Jews and that Europe hated the Jews because they were Jews.
“No. It was clearly explained that they fought them because of their social role and not their religion.” Abbas later clarified that he was referring to “usury, money and so on”.
The comments, made last month, caused international uproar after they were translated into English and published last Wednesday by the Middle East Media Research Institute, a pro-Israel press monitoring organisation based in the US.
Abbas’s remarks were swiftly criticised by the US, Germany and the EU, which accused him of distorting history and promoting antisemitic stereotypes. Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, stripped the longtime Palestinian leader of the city’s highest honour as a result of the affair.
Kurd, a Palestinian political scientist who is one of the letter’s signatories, said: “If someone claims to speak in my name and says something abhorrent I will take every opportunity to say: ‘You don’t speak for me’. And Abbas’s comments were clearly antisemitic.
“Narratives around Abbas have been ahistorical, as if he is a legitimately elected leader … and inaccurate, as if he represents Palestinian public opinion,” she said.
Although he is viewed as a major architect of the Oslo peace process in the 1990s and was an early Fatah advocate for dialogue with the Israelis, Abbas has been accused of antisemitism on numerous occasions.
In the 1980s, while living in Moscow, Abbas wrote a much-debunked thesis claiming that Zionists collaborated with the Nazis during the Holocaust, which he has since distanced himself from. In public and private, however, the president has frequently made antisemitic remarks over the years.
In May, the Palestinian president suggested parallels between Israel and Nazi Germany. The year before, he caused international outrage after claiming Israel had carried out “50 Holocausts” against the Palestinians during a news conference in Berlin with the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz.
Abbas’s spokesperson, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, has denounced the “rabid campaign” against the Palestinian president, saying that the leader’s position is “clear and documented, which is the complete condemnation of the Holocaust and the rejection of antisemitism”.
Abbas, who was initially elected for a four-year term in 2005, is deeply unpopular at home. His Palestinian Authority is regularly accused of violently suppressing its critics, widespread corruption and collaborating with the Israeli security services against its own people. Since Fatah’s Islamist political rivals, Hamas, seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007 Abbas has repeatedly refused to hold elections.
“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 antisemitic narratives perpetuated by those who claim to speak in our name,” the open letter added.
“Abbas 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.”
