Palestinian leader says not intended to deny Holocaust

RAMALLAH, Palestine

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Wednesday he did not mean to deny the singularity of the Holocaust during his visit to Germany.

Abbas accused Israel of committing “50 holocausts” against Palestinians during a joint press conference in Berlin with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Tuesday.

"From 1947 until today, Israel committed 50 massacres in 50 villages... 50 slaughters and 50 Holocausts," he said, in response to a question about the upcoming 50th anniversary of the 1972 Munich attack, in which several Israeli athletes were killed.

The Palestinian leader’s statements drew fire from Israeli and German officials, including Scholz who said he was "disgusted by the outrageous remarks" by Abbas.

But Abbas said in a statement on Wednesday that his answer “was not intended to deny the singularity of the Holocaust that occurred in the last century, and condemning it in the strongest terms.”

“What is meant are the crimes and massacres committed against the Palestinian people since the Nakba at the hands of the Israeli forces. These crimes have not stopped to this day,” he added.

The Nakba, or Catastrophe, is a term used by Palestinians to refer to the 1948 forced expulsion of nearly 800,000 Palestinians from their homes in historical Palestine to make room for the creation of Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, for his part, described Abbas’ statements as "a monstrous lie."

In Germany during the Third Reich regime, Nazis systematically murdered millions of people, especially Jews, the disabled, prisoners of war, Poles and other Slavs during the 1939-1945 period.

The number of Jews who were victims of the Holocaust during World War II is estimated at approximately 6 million.

Writing by Ahmed Asmar