Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial on Wednesday after the Palestinian leader suggested in a speech that Jewish behavior was to blame for historic persecution of European Jews.
Jewish groups and diplomats also condemned Abbas' comments, made in a speech on Monday to the Palestinian National Council, that Jews had suffered historically not because of their religion but because they had served as bankers and money lenders.
Abbas said in his speech that Jews living in Europe had suffered massacres "every 10 to 15 years in some country since the 11th century and until the Holocaust."
Citing books written by various authors, Abbas said that "The Jewish question that was widespread throughout Europe was not against their religion, but against their social function, which relates to usury and banking and such."
Abbas also characterized Zionism and the founding of the State of Israel as a European colonial project, saying, "History tells us there is no basis for the Jewish homeland."
Outraged by Abbas' sentiments, Netanyahu remarked Wednesday that "With utmost ignorance and brazen gall, he claimed that European Jews were persecuted and murdered not because they were Jews but because they gave loans with interest. ... Apparently the Holocaust denier is still a Holocaust denier.
"I call on the international community to condemn Abbas' severe anti-Semitism; the time has come for it to pass from this world," the prime minister continued.
President Reuven Rivlin, currently on an official visit to Ethiopia, called Abbas' speech "horrible remarks."
"How can a leader who voices primitive anti-Semitic ideas like these present himself as a 'partner for peace'?" Rivlin wondered. "You can't engage in dialogue with anti-Semites. There is no negotiation with anti-Semites."
National Infrastructure, Energy, and Water Minister Yuval Steinitz labeled Abbas "the most anti-Semitic leader in the world" and urged the Palestinians to "get rid of this anti-Semite."
"This evil person, who believes that Jews are terrible, that there is no such thing as the Jewish people and that they have no right to self-determination or a state of their own, is the biggest obstacle to peace," Steinitz said.
Responding to the Israeli criticism, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Abbas' words had been "twisted" and that he had merely been citing the views of some historians.
"The president did not deny the massacres the Jews were subjected to, including the Holocaust," Erekat said in a statement published on the official Palestinian news agency WAFA.
"President Abbas has stressed frequently his respect for the religion of Judaism, and that our problem is only with those who occupy our land."
But Jewish leaders and others echoed Netanyahu's criticism.
The Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial said in a statement that Abbas' speech was "replete with anti-Semitic tropes and distortions of historical facts" and accused the Palestinian president of "blatantly falsifying history to the point of accusing the Jewish victims as being responsible for their own murder."
"Abbas' speech in Ramallah [contained] the words of a classic anti-Semite," said Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper of the U.S.-based Jewish human rights organization the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
"Instead of blaming the Jews, he should look in his own backyard to the role played by the Grand Mufti in supporting Adolf Hitler's final solution," he added, referring to Muslim Grand Mufti Hajj Amin Husseini, a World War II ally of Adolf Hitler.
In Jerusalem, U.N. Middle East envoy Nickolay Mladenov called Abbas' comments "deeply disturbing."
"Leaders have an obligation to confront anti-Semitism everywhere and always, not perpetuate the conspiracy theories that fuel it," he said. "Denying the historic and religious connection of the Jewish people to the land and their holy sites in Jerusalem stands in contrast to reality," Mladenov added.
U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman tweeted that Abbas had "reached a new low in attributing the cause of massacres of Jewish people over the years to their 'social behavior.'"
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas and the foreign service of the European Union, the biggest aid donor to the Palestinians, also condemned the comments.
Abbas, 82, made his remarks at a rare meeting of the Palestinian National Council, the de facto parliament of the Palestine Liberation Organization, in Ramallah.
In 1982, Abbas obtained a doctorate in history at the Moscow Institute of Orientalism in the then-Soviet Union. His dissertation, entitled "The Secret Relationship between Nazism and the Zionist Movement," drew widespread criticism from Jewish groups.
