Last Monday, the world was exposed to an unhealthy dose of Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas. In a lengthy, rambling rant before the Palestinian National Council, in Arabic of course, the toxic, octogenarian dictator let loose with a torrent of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories so vile that it drew instant condemnation from the European Union and the United States. Even the traditionally hostile New York Times (which frequently shills for the Palestinian Authority) issued a stern rebuke and called for Abbas to step down.
Abbas’s screed can be broken down to four major points;
First, the Holocaust was not the result of inherent German anti-Semitism but was rather brought upon by the Jews themselves due to their “social behavior” and usurious conduct. This position is actually a step up for Abbas, whose 1982 dissertation (which can be readily purchased in any PA bookstore alongside the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion) asserts that gas chambers were never used to asphyxiate Jews and dismissed as a “fantastic lie” that six million Jews perished in the Holocaust.
Second, Hitler was a Zionist sympathizer. Sadly, there are high level members of today’s British Labor Party, a diseased political party rife with antisemitism, who believe this arrant rubbish.
Third, Ashkenazi Jews are fake and descendants Khazars, a central Asian people, who allegedly converted to Judaism in the 9th or 10th centuries. This is pretty standard stuff for conspiracy-prone anti-Semites, who relish in the opportunity to deny the existence of a 3,500 year-old people.
Fourth, Jews are not indigenous to the Land of Israel but were rather a colonialist project hatched by Britain, Germany and other colonialist nations in an effort to extend their influence. In other words, in Abbas’s world view, the recently invented Jews are a foreign, malignant implant in the heart of Arab, Muslim land, whose raison d’être in this world is to advance the interests of the colonialist powers.
Even more shocking than the comments themselves was the fact that of the hundreds PNC members present, not a single one walked out in protest or otherwise bothered to challenge Abbas’s hateful, conspiracy laden narrative. There was one near-comical moment when a member of the audience corrected Abbas after Abbas alleged that Joseph Stalin was Jewish. The audience member noted that it wasn’t Stalin but rather Karl Marx who was Jewish. Aside from that one “correction,” the hundreds of PNC members who were in attendance were in lockstep with Abbas.
