World Jewish News

Netanyahu rejects Abbas's statements about the Holocaust, cites his move to unite with Hamas

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas’ statements about the Holocaust citing the PA’s recent moves to unite with terror group Hamas, which is committed to Israel’s destruction.
“Hamas denies the Holocaust even as it attempts to create an additional Holocaust by destroying the State of Israel. It is with this Hamas that Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) chose to form an alliance last week,” Netanyahu told ministers at the weekly cabinet meeting.
“Instead of issuing statements designed to placate global public opinion, Abu Mazen needs to choose between the alliance with Hamas, a terrorist organization that calls for the destruction of Israel and denies the Holocaust, and a true peace with Israel,” he added.
Last week, Fatah, the Palestinian faction led by Abbas, amd which controls the West Bank and dominates the Palestinian Authority, said it would attempt to form a unity government with Hamas, the Islamic group that controls Gaza. Hamas hasn't recognized Israel's right to exist, and Israel canceled scheduled peace talks after Wednesday's announcement.
Netanyahu's comments came shortly after Palestinian Arab news agencies reported that Abbas called the Holocaust “the most heinous crime to have occurred against humanity in the modern era” during a meeting with a U.S. rabbi.
The PA President also expressed his “sympathy with the families of the victims and many other innocent people who were killed by the Nazis'' and drew a parallel between Jewish suffering at the hands of the Nazis and the Palestinians'plight.
Netanyahu also tied the PA to Iran through its new alliance with Hamas. Iran , telling “tops the list” of Israel’s enemies and has “declared its intention to destroy” the Jewish state, Netanyahu stressed. He added that aside from its efforts to arm itself with nuclear weapons, the Islamic Republic also arms, finances and trains Hamas militants on Israel’s borders.
Abbas’ remarks coincided with Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, observed by Israel on Sunday, during the Jewish state honorsthe memory of the six million of Jews exterminated by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
Speaking about Jews then and now, Netanyahu said: “The main difference between the helplessness of the Jews during the Holocaust and the situation of the Jews today is that today we have a strong, sovereign state with a strong military that can defend us against those who seek our lives.”
Speaking on CNN's 'State of the Union', Netanyahu reiterated that Israel cannot negotiate with the government of Mahmoud Abbas while it is backed by Hamas.
"I call on President Abbas: Tear up your pact with Hamas," Netanyahu said.
"We're not going to negotiate with a government backed by Hamas unless Hamas changes its position and says it's willing to recognize Israel," he said.
Netanyahu's comments come four days after the Abbas-led Palestinian movement Fatah, which controls the West Bank and dominates the Palestinian Authority, said it would attempt to form a unity government with Hamas, the militant Islamic group that controls Gaza. Hamas hasn't recognized Israel's right to exist, and Israel canceled scheduled peace talks after Wednesday's announcement.
Hamas said Sunday that Hamas said Sunday that it would not recognize Israel.
Comments by President Abbas saying that a unity government led by him will recognize Israel, coupled with statements to the same effect attributed to Hamas government spokesman Taher Nunu by The Washington Post on Saturday night, prompted several Hamas officials to speak up on Sunday.
“What I was quoted as telling the American paper is wrong, and I unequivocally deny it,” Nunu told the Palestinian Qudsnet news agency. “The issue of Hamas recognizing Israel is a complete nonstarter… aimed primarily at weakening the movement’s positions on Israel.”
Hamas has an avowedly anti-Semitic policy and has made several Holocaust-denial comments. A press release issued by Hamas in the wake of the January 2000 Stockholm conference on Holocaust research said at the time:"This conference bears a clear Zionist goal, aimed at forging history by hiding the truth about the so-called Holocaust, which is an alleged and invented story with no basis. . . . The invention of these grand illusions of an alleged crime that never occurred, ignoring the millions of dead European victims of Nazism during the war, clearly reveals the racist Zionist face, which believes in the superiority of the Jewish race over the rest of the nations."
Senior Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahar on 6 January 2011 was quoted qs saying: "The lie according to which they were a victim of a holocaust and the (Jewish) people are a victim – this lie has crumbled with the holocaust of Beit Hanun…and the other countless holocausts committed by the Zionist enemy."Moreover, the Article 7 of the Hamas Covenant reads:“The time [Judgment Day] will not come until Muslims fight the Jews and kill them and until the Jew hides behind the rocks and trees, and [then] the rocks and trees will say: ‘Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew hiding [behind me], come and kill him.'"

FJC.ru