The German chancellery summoned the head of the Palestinian diplomatic mission in Berlin on Wednesday to protest Mr Abbas’ comments, a German government spokesman said. “It is clear to us, the government and the chancellor, that the persecution and systematic murder of six million European Jews is an unparalleled crime against humanity,” the spokesman said. The Palestinian leader had been responding to a question about the 1972 Munich massacre, in which 11 Israelis and a German policeman were killed by the Palestinian terrorist group Black September. When asked if he wanted to apologize for that attack ahead of its 50th anniversary, Mr Abbas addressed the issue of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces and then made the “50 Holocausts” claim.
“Monstrous Lie”
He was accused by Yair Lapid, the Israeli prime minister, of telling a “monstrous lie”. Mr Lapid added: “Six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, including one and a half million Jewish children. History will never forgive him.” Dani Dayan, president of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, said Mr Abbas’s remarks were “despicable” and “disgusting”. In Germany, Israel’s ambassador, Israel Steffen Seibert, also called them “abhorrent” and “disgusting”. Mr Scholz was heavily criticized by Israeli commentators who were outraged that he failed to immediately confront Mr Abbas, especially in light of Germany’s Nazi past. He was also accused by German opponents and newspapers of failing to stand up to anti-Semitism and of lacking moral leadership. “What happened in the chancellery is unbelievable,” said Friedrich Merz, the leader of the opposition CDU party. “The chancellor should have clearly objected and asked him to leave the building.” The best-selling Bild newspaper described Mr Scholz’s decision to remain silent as “a terrible, unimaginable failure”. The paper also angrily protested that Mr Scholz said “not a word of dissent in the face of the worst relativisation of the Holocaust ever uttered by a head of government in the chancellor’s office”. Meanwhile, the German Jewish Council accused Mr Abbas of “trampling on the memory of six million murdered Jews and damaging the memory of all Holocaust victims”.
