The follow media release concerns antisemitic remarks by Mahmoud Abbas, Palestini­an Authority President.

We are appalled by the latest incen­di­ary speech by Palestini­an Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, in which he blamed the Jewish people for their own genocide.
Abbas told the Palestini­an National Council that it was the “social behaviour” of the Jews such as money-lending that caused the Holocaust. He has rightly been condemned for deploying a notorious racist ste­reo­type for the purpose of blaming Jews them­selves for their slaughter at the hands of the Nazis and their allies.
It is a supreme irony that Abbas’s pre­de­cessor as leader of the Palestini­ans, Haj Amin al-Husseini, was a close friend and ally of Hitler and other high Nazi officials during World War II. He recruited a Muslim SS division for the Nazis in Bosnia, and prevented Jewish children in Europe from trav­el­ling to Palestine, ensuring instead that they perished in the death camps.
When he wasn’t engaging in his Holocaust revi­sion­ism, Abbas reverted to antisemitic con­spir­acy theories, including the claim that Ashkenazi Jews have no his­tor­ic­al lineage to the original habitants of Israel and that Israel is “a colonial project that has nothing to do with Judaism.”
The frequency and brazen­ness of Abbas’s antisemitic state­ments is alarming, both in terms of inciting further antisemitism in Palestini­an society and in further damaging any prospect of peace between the con­flict­ing parties.
Perhaps most telling of all, Abbas again rejected in advance any pos­sib­il­ity that he will consider any peace proposals that may be put forward by the US Admin­is­tra­tion. The result of this approach is that while Israel cel­eb­rates the 70^th anniversary of its rebirth, the inept and extreme lead­er­ship of the Palestini­ans consigns its people to prolonged state­less­ness.
We hope that both gov­ern­ment and non-gov­ern­ment­al actors will join us in con­demning these remarks without equi­voc­a­tion.
Contact:
Peter Wertheim AM | Co-CEO
ph: 02 8353 8500 | m: 0408 160 904
e: [email protected] | www.ecaj.org.au
Alex Ryvchin | Co-CEO
ph: 02 8353 8505 | m: 0478 297 245 
e: [email protected] | www.ecaj.org.au