Well, if you thought Palestinian Authority leader and President Mahoud Abbas was a “moderate”, think again. He’s made a serious misstep that shows what he really thinks about Israel and the Jews, and, despite the deference heretofore given him by the world and the United Nations, he’s just lost all his credibility as a Palestinian leader.
In other words, he’s toast.
Cliick on the screenshot to see some remarks he recently made on Palestinian Authority television, speaking to the Palestinian National Council in Ramallah.
The speech was reproduced and captioned by MEMRI, and it and the transcript are accurate, at least as judged by the world’s media (see below). You can see the transcript here.
Here’s one excerpt:
Mahmoud Abbas: The Jews who moved to Eastern and Western Europe had been subjected to a massacre by one country or another every ten to fifteen years, since the eleventh century and until the Holocaust in Germany. Okay? But why was this happening? They say that it was happening because they are Jews. But three Jews, in three different books… One of them is Joseph Stalin. I think we all know him, right? Stalin was a Jew. There was another one, whose name was Abraham Leon, and a third called Isaac Deutscher. All three say that the hatred toward the Jews was due not to their religion, but… Excuse me?
Voice from the Audience: It was Karl Marx. It was Karl Marx.
Mahmoud Abbas: Right, it was Karl Marx. I’m sorry. It was Karl Marx.
[He said that] the reason for the hatred of the Jews is not their religion but their function in society. That is a different issue. So the Jewish question, which was prevalent in all European countries… the anti-Jewish [sentiment] was not because of their religion, but because of their function in society, which had to do with usury, banks, and so on. The best evidence for this is that there were Jews in the Arab countries, so how come there was not a single incident against Jews, just for being Jews? You think I am exaggerating? I challenge you to find a single incident against Jews, just because they were Jews, in 1,400 years, in any Arab country.
Ah, the classic tropes of Jews being hated because they are powerful, are userers, control the banks, and so on. This is not criticism of Israeli poicy, but naked Jew hatred.
According to the New York Times editorial board (and this is a surprise to me), Abbas’s vile anti-Semitism makes him unfit to lead the Palestinians. Here’s their editorial:
Two excerpts from the Times editorial, which represents the entire board’s stand:
Feeding reprehensible anti-Semitic myths and conspiracy theories in a speech on Monday, the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, shed all credibility as a trustworthy partner if the Palestinians and Israelis ever again have the nerve to try negotiations.
Speaking to the Palestinian legislative body, Mr. Abbas, 82, said the mass murder of European Jews in the Holocaust was the result of the victims’ financial activities, not their religious identity and anti-Semitism.
“So the Jewish question that was widespread throughout Europe was not against their religion, but against their social function, which relates to usury (unscrupulous money lending) and banking and such,” he said, according to the BBC.
Mr. Abbas’s anti-Semitic tendencies are not new. In the 1980s, he wrote a dissertation that seemed to question the widely accepted Holocaust death toll of six million Jews.
. . . Mr. Abbas, who oversees a governing system plagued by corruption and dysfunction, has lost support among the Palestinian people.
He has weakened government institutions that are essential for a future state and refused to call new elections, thus overstaying his term by many years and preventing younger leaders from emerging.
He has also failed to unify the Palestinians in the West Bank, where his Fatah faction dominates, with those in the even more desperate circumstances of the Gaza Strip, where Hamas holds sway.
Even in this gloomy climate, however, Mr. Abbas’s vile speech was a new low. No doubt he feels embittered and besieged on all sides. But by succumbing to such dark, corrosive instincts he showed that it is time for him to leave office.
Palestinians need a leader with energy, integrity and vision, one who might have a better chance of achieving Palestinian independence and enabling both peoples to live in peace.
Can such a leader be found? I doubt it, and the Times doesn’t vet any candidates. But although I think Israel could do more to facilitate peace, like dismantling settlements, let nobody be deluded enough to think that Palestine will accept that—or a two-state solution. Did pulling out of Gaza accomplish anything?
What Palestinians and their Western supporters want, many stewing in their anti-Semitism, is the complete elimination of the State of Israel. That, too, is the goal of the BDS movement and of campus organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine. (They tend to keep that part silent, but just a little digging reveals it.)
Perhaps there is a Palestinian leader who will accept an Israeli state, but it is clearly not Abbas. Nor does there seem to be anyone else to step up. And if a “moderate” did, would he be accepted by Hamas? Think again. Sadly, the strife and division are poised to go on forever.
And as the Jerusalem Post noted, it’s not just the New York Times calling out Abbas. His speech has been condemned by UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov (mirabile dictu!), as well as by the European Union, Sweden, Germany and US officials from both the Trump and Obama administrations (a rare occasion of Trump/Obama agreement). Some of the pushback:
The Palestinians tried unsuccessfully to walk back the speech.
PLO chief negotiator Saeb Erekat told the official Palestinian news agency WAFA: “President Abbas has stressed frequently his respect for the religion of Judaism, and that our problem is with who occupies our land.”
Former US ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro wrote, “It’s over for Mahmoud Abbas. What a disgusting note to go out on.”
The Israeli left-wing organization Peace Now, which typically accuses Israel of thwarting the peace process, said Abbas’s speech was “vile,” “completely unacceptable, thoroughly offensive, and damaging to efforts to achieve Israeli-Palestinian peace.”
Germany Foreign Minister Heiko Maas took to Twitter to declare that it was Germany, not the Jews, who were responsible for the Holocaust.
“We reject any relativization of the Holocaust,” Maas tweeted. “Germany bears responsibility for the most atrocious crime of human history.”
The European Union, which has long lauded Abbas as a man of peace, said his speech “contained unacceptable remarks concerning the origins of the Holocaust and Israel’s legitimacy. Such rhetoric will only play into the hands of those who do not want a two-state solution, which President Abbas has repeatedly advocated.
Antisemitism is not only a threat for Jews but a fundamental menace to our open and liberal societies. The European Union remains committed to combat any form of antisemitism and any attempt to condone, justify or grossly trivialize the Holocaust.”
Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom, known for her strong support of the Palestinians, tweeted a statement against Abbas that was similar to that of the EU.
Sweden is the only Western European country that recognizes the “state of Palestine.”
It’s not just Abbas who holds these sentiments, of course; I’ve often posted about the anti-Semitism that permeates the Middle Eastern and Palestinian media. With such a hatred of the Jews (there is no similar hatred displayed by Israeli media), how can one hope for two states living in peace?
As the campus groups like SJP like to chant, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” You have to be a bloody fool not to know what that means.
sub
Sub
I suspected he was anti-semitic. I didn’t know he was so stupid.
No, Abbas, Stalin was not a Jew! He was raised in the Georgian Orthodox faith. The rambling idiocies uttered by this man is indicative of why peace in the Middle East is as far from realization as it was in 1948.
I was about to say that…
I think that is what the interjection correcting him to Karl Marx was about.
I have the impression that his views, and worse, are pretty common among the Palestinian people. So although this looks to be undermining his legitimacy in the West, wouldn’t it increase his popularity among Palestinians?
sub
Shorter EU: “He’s blown. Next!”
+1
Abbas conveniently forgets that Mohammed persecuted the jews and drove them out of Arabia.
He hasn’t forgotten that, his whole point is that the various persecutions of Jews have always been justified. Obviously he is a disgusting bigot, but he isn’t forgetting anything.
There seems to be this sudden plague of old leaders and their hired assistance, bigots all, who are in various stages of dementia and all talking wildly to the media. We see Netanyahu with his delusion, Trump with many of his, Giuliani, who seems to be in full blown dementia of some order and now Abbas. Who will be next to self-destruct in full view of the public?
At least there should be the opportunity, paraphrasing Max Planck, for world peace to move forward, one funeral at a time.
I watched the whole speech and though he sounded rather ignorant, what he said didnt sound particularly hateful- though it wouldnt surprise me to find out he is anti-Semitic.
I went to a NYC public high school where I learned in the SIS (School of International Studies) program that because of Jesus’s condemnation of the money-lenders at the temple, Christians were forbidden to lend money at interest up until the Rennaisance. This left the whole field open to Jews and this eventually became a focus of anti-Semitic propaganda. The 3 teachers who taught us this were ethnically Jewish and one was an orthodox Jew so I really have trouble believing that this claim is itself anti-Semitic.
Nobody denies that some Jews were money-lenders (among other things because many other occupations were forbidden for them). But claim that they were massacred since 11th century untill (and inclusive) Holocaust because of their detrimental for societies financial practices is pure antisemitism. The claim that Ashkenasi Jews are Khazars and have nothing with Jews in common is a favourite trope of anti-Semites. The claim that Jews have no roots in Israel is antisemitic.The claim that Jews co-operated with Hitler in the HOlocaust is a vile antisemitism. The claim that Arabs never massacred the Jews may not be antisemitic but is a pure lie. I wonder what more one needs…
Well said, Malgorzata.
I only heard the part about Arabs not murdering Jews. I have heard before in discussions defending present day Islam that Muslim society had been more tolerant of outsiders in the past. That doesnt seem to me to be anti-Semitic..more like pro-Arabic but I guess it could be part of a larger anti-Semitic narrative.
I didnt hear him talk about Jews cooperating with Hitler in the Holocaust. What could he possibly be referring to?? The Capos? It would be ironic for an anti-Semite to bring this up as if it means anything while 5 minutes later they’ll deny the Holocaust even happened.
Abbas talked about co-operation of Zionists with Hitler to get German Jews to Palestine. This is a well known claim by antisemites of diverse hues and he said it explicitly. You can see it on the MEMRI’s video and it is in every summary (not to mention transcript) of his speech. It’s worth reading before defending him. Abbas doctor thesis, written in Moscow, were about complicity of Zionist with Hitler to let some Jews to Palestine, and to do what he likes with those that were not willing to go. In the same disertation Abbas even stated that much smaller number Jews perished in the Holocaust than 6 million.
Life of Jews in Arab countries never was as horrible as in the worst times in Europe but never as good as in the best times in Europe. It differed from country to country, from ruler to ruler, from time to time. However pogroms and massacres was a constantly recurring phenomenon both in Islam and in Christian world. And I didn’t say that his claim that Arabs never massacred Jews was antisemitic. I only said that it was a blatant lie and that he surely knows the truth as one of the worst pogroms happened in his birth towen, Safed.
It seems to me that this could be what propagandists do best- they pick and choose facts to give an entirely false impression of events.
I know Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’ came relatively late during his reign. I would think it completely unsurprising to find out Hitler first encouraged Jews to emigrate when he took power. If Jews helped in this it would not be “Jews cooperating with Hitler” It would be a humanitarian effort for Jews by Jews who foresaw that things could get much worse for Jews in Germany.
I grew up with stories about Poland in the 1920s and 1930s (to be precise, Western Ukraine, then a part of Poland), told by my mother who was – though the history is unclear – born into a family which, on her father’s side at least, had been Jewish a couple of generations back. It is hard to know the reasons for pre-war Polish anti-Semitism – in that era, Jews were not allowed to own land, so better-off Jews were often moneylenders or shopkeepers, which made them objects of jealousy in a preindustrial society where cash (spending money) was in very short supply. At the other extreme, according to my mother’s account, many Jewish communities were so far at the bottom of the economic ladder, living in abject poverty, as to be objects of contempt. In either case, I suppose one might say that they were visible for their Jewishness, despised equally for their “undeserved” wealth, or for their “bestial” conditions of life.
In Germany or France (bearing in mind that France had the Dreyfus Affair and Germany had Wagner), I imagine that the condition of Jews was similar in some respects, but there were also highly visible (and potentially objectionable) success stories: the Rothschilds are an obvious example, but there were many other instances, as exemplified by a wonderful book entitled “The Hare with Amber Eyes”, which among other things retraces the history of a Jewish family from Vladivostok, who became the celebs and soap stars of London and Paris society, to the point of conspicuous consumption, until brought low by the Nazis and World War II. One has to assume that the Catholic traditions of these countries had something to do with their anti-Semitism, but Protestant Britain was/is hardly exempt, while historical Islam was, at least some of the time, probably more tolerant of otherness than was typical…
Why the persistence of anti-Semitism, as compared with other prejudices? Perhaps it is partly to do with the persistence (and obstinacy) of Jewish identity amidst alien cultures. Another of my mother’s stories (sadly she is long dead, so I cannot check my recollection) is of being recruited to conduct a census in 1937, when she was 16: if I remember correctly, the question on what we would now call national identity offered the choice between answering something like “Jewish of Polish nationality” or “Polish of Jewish persuasion” (I was told this some 30 years ago, so I cannot vouch for the wording). My recollection is that she was encouraged to prompt the second response, but that the first was more common. Does this adherence to ethnic/religious/cultural identity explain the prejudice: sedentary cultures have a long history of fearing and rejecting nomadic cultures. Is it an accident that Jews and gypsies are historically persecuted, because of their supposed allegiance to the tribe rather than the nation?
The tribe of Israel has become the nation of Israel, and the nation is sadly no less hated than the tribe, though some of its enemies are different. And of course, in relation to one of its founding myths, David and Goliath have changed places.
All this raises questions about cultural persistence in general. Why is Poland reverting to the Catholic quasi fascism that my mother recalled in the 1920s (when primary school children sang hymns to General Pilsudski), or Hungary returning to authoritarian nationalism? Why are Russia and America becoming authoritarian gangster states? Why is the United Kingdom, where I grew up, suddenly becoming terrified of foreigners?
Regarding your first paragraph: indeed, Jews so often ended up in businesses like lending money because they were shut out of most others. If they wanted to move up in the world, getting into businesses that weren’t seen as respectable was often the only way, as they couldn’t get jobs in other sectors. And even then, people made up conspiracy theories because Jews took the few jobs they were allowed to do.
I don’t know just how many Jews people think were in the money lending business, but I would think not very many. Certainly not in my family. They barely scraped by. What money would they have to lend?
“…in businesses like lending money…”
Which wouldn’t exist if there wasn’t a consumer demand for them. Obviously they were fulfilling a societal need.
John, I just want to make a quick comment but have not the time to fact-check or go into details. That bit of southern Poland you talk about, Galicia, up until the end of WWI belonged to Austria-Hungary, and after 1939 was incorporated into the Soviet Union, specifically Ukraine. The people worship as Eastern Rite Catholics (Greek-Ukrainian) and not Orthodox Christians. When Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, locals mostly followed the Pope in backing Hitler. Further East in Ukraine’s grain-growing regions, the Christian locals existed as serfs, and had to make payments to land owners (these at times were Polish and Lithuanian aristocracy) as well as the Czar. The Jews (I believe) were restricted in land ownership and worked notably in small business enterprises or for the State as accountants and tax collectors. When the Soviets took power, people with accounting skills continued to find employment with the government, and at least up until the 1950s, the Communists, whatever else you may think of them, seemed to have racism and anti-Semitism under control.
Besides, the society needed moneylenders.
In England in the 12th and 13th centuries, Jews were persecuted because of their money lending, but as always with, superficially black and white issues, it’s more complicated than that.
The Church forbade Christians from money lending, but there was still a demand for borrowing money. Jews were banned from many professions, but not money lending (this fact alone debunks the idea that Jewish persecution was entirely because they were money lenders). Jewish money lenders became rich and the English ruling classes became indebted to them.
Jewish money lenders became targets of punitive taxation because they had lots of money to tax and nobody else cared. Finally, Edward I had all the Jews expelled from England because he needed to raise a lot of taxes (from everybody) to cover the costs of a recent war in France. In order to persuade the knights of the realm to agree to his new tax, he offered to expel all the Jews. The reason why this would have been attractive to the knights is that a lot of them owed money to Jews.
It’s important to realise, however, that the Jews wouldn’t have had the reputation of being usurers if they weren’t being persecuted already and that many of the punitive measures taken against them including their eventual expulsion would have been impossible if Jews weren’t regarded as second class citizens. Henry III, for example made it compulsory for Jews to wear a badge to mark them out.
Arabs are Semites are they not? Anti-Semitic must surely include them?
At least regarding language…
No, it does not include Arabs. The term was coined at the end of 19th century in Germnany, because the word which was used, “Judenhasse”, was not “scientific” and “intellectual” enough. The best and brightest of the German society hated Jews but didn’t want to be described in such a plebeian language. A journalist, Wilhelm Marr, invented this word which was accepted with enthusiasm. Before II WW, when Hitler tried to attrack Arabs, Germans explained (in writing) to Arab leadership that “anti-Semitism” had nothing to do with Arabs and related only to Jews. And so is this word understood until today.
Everyone knows anti-Semitism means Jew-hatred and any wide-eyed suggestion otherwise is a battered ornament in the lexicon of anti-Semitism
We assume everyone knows this but as the last century recedes from memory and younger generations are concerned with present-day problems I doubt if that’s nearly as well-known as you think. Frequently, when Jerry posts about antisemitism, someone will raise the same question Dominic did.
Some Arabs are Semitic. The language is Semitic.
(As is, for example, Syriac, Aramaic, and Maltese.)
“Semitic” in “anti-Semitic” is to be understood as a euphemism, not a literal description. As Malgorzata explained above, it was a cleaned-up version of “Jew-hate” in German. Of course Arabs and their language are Semitic, but that as the reddest of red herrings when the subject is hatred of Jews.
I respectfully disagree.
With what? The derivation of the German word antisemitismus, borrowed into English? It is fairly easy to verify.
Please read Sarah’s response. Exactly what do you disagree with? History?
Jewish Voice for Peace, an auxiliary of the BDS operation on the pop-Left, will be thrilled to learn that Stalin was a Jew. We may expect a statement from them thanking Mamoud Abbas for this revelation. The next question for Mr. Abbas to take up is whether Chairman Mao and Dear Leader Kim (and his descendants) were also lantsleit.
Abbas is a POS and I hate defending him, but ISTM he simply misspoke and meant to say Marx. Note the audience correction and Abbas’ agreement that he misspoke.
I hate to nitpick on such a case, but I’m not so sure he actually said that. First, it seems like a variant of use-mention error. It must have some technical name.
Consider this: “Jerry likes cats, because they throw vases from the window sill”. This sentence leaves it unclear whether I believe cats throw vases from window sills (akin to use the statement), or whether I merely mention it as part of Jerry’s reasons why he likes cats. In the latter case I may not believe cats actually do this, only that Jerry believes they do.
Secondly, the NYT claims he denies anti-semitism. But that is not what the transcript says. It does not mention the exact term “anti-semitism” or “antisemitism”, but mentions “hatred of the Jews” and “anti-Jewish [sentiment]” which can be understood to mean antisemitism, which is defined as hostility, prejudices, and discrimmination against Jews. Abbas explicitly speaks of the “reasons” for the antisemitism, and not that they didn’t exist.
I understand this to mean that antisemitism was based on those prejudices rather than religion. This is only partially wrong. The fascist propaganda did also feature the religious aspects, but it is uncontroversial that conspiracy theories and prejudices other than religion did play a major role, e.g. one of vilest examples.
I am not a native speaker, I am most likely wrong somehow, but then I would really like to understand where. I regard the first issue as arguable. Abbas is certainly not careful with his words, and it can well be understood that he himself believes the “reasons” he cites. There is also some odd waffling on Marx etc which I did not understand at all. But it’s the second issue that casts doubt on the interpretation of the NYT. I don’t understand how a statement like “reason for hatred was not Y but X” can somehow become “he believes no hatred existed” and “he himself believes X”. That together casts doubt on their interpretation.
Unfortunately, there is a “devil you know vs. devil you don’t” thing possible here.
By all means anyone should call for Abbas’ outster if that’s what they think should happen. But unless this is done by the Palestinian people, it will *not* be taken well amongst them, amongst Arabs generally, and likely amongst other Muslim areas.
Abbas offers an interesting misrepresentation of Haaravah as well… See, William Helmreich, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question (Routledge, 2017).
https://books.google.com/books?id=RywrDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA29#v=onepage&q&f=false
Why is the fact of Jews being tailors, money-lenders, etc. not obvious from the laws passed forbidding them other occupations and owning land and … ? I do not consider myself to be a Jewish apologist but so many of the “arguments” against the Jews are quiet bogus. They smack of the same kind of argumentation as used by Christian apologists.
I am baffled by Christians who claim the “Jews killed Christ” and then blithely state that God sent Jesus to earth to be sacrificed and that if Jesus had not died (and supposedly been resurrected) there would be no Christianity!! No resurrection, no Christianity. It is that simple.
These people are an embarrassment to those of us who possess brains and use them.
That’s related to the point that Judas should be the greatest of saints.
Reblogged this on The Logical Place.
Abbas is a weak and lousy leader of a disinherited people.
Israel has a much stronger leader backed by its underwriter the USA, currently lead by Trump. What can Trump offer the Palestinians? Hope or hate? How will he offer hope?
If not Abbas then whom? If not Netanyahu then whom? If not Trump then whom? The State of Israel exists. Where is the State of Palestine? Who has the power to bring that State into existence. The USA? If so why hasn’t it happened? If not how will it happen? If it never happens there will never be an end to the hate and suffering.
Never is a very long time.
Abbas said a stupid thing. A vile thing. Everybody condemns what he said. And nothing changes.
There could have been an independent Palestinian state in 1948 at the same time that Israel gained its independence, but the Arabs (backed by 5 Arab armies) preferred to try to destroy Israel rather than have their own state, and they have had to live with that mind-set ever since. That still seems to be the main focus.
Is that the end of history?
So far.
Let us hope so.
Israel has come to the table many times. At multiple negotiations, they have offered a two-state solution and to give back land that they won in wars started by their neighbors. They have repeatedly sat down with an opposite party that pretended to be interested in the negotiations and willing to take what Israel offered, only for that party to make more demands and then pull out every time.
Palestine doesn’t want a two-state solution. There will never be one because one party is unwilling. As Jerry noted, the saying is “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” There’s no place for Israel in that equation.
Once Abbas goes, he will be replaced by yet another leader who wants the destruction of Israel, because that’s what’s wanted by the people who that person will lead. Trump and Netanyahu certainly will never bring a peaceful solution, but there have been multiple leaders of both the US and Israel in the past who have tried their best to achieve that peace and had no success. I don’t think there are leaders who can bring about that peace — at least, not until the culture of antisemitism and desire for Israel’s destruction changes.
“Ah, the classic tropes of Jews being hated because they are powerful, are userers, control the banks, and so on. This is not criticism of Israeli poicy, but naked Jew hatred.”
I don’t see that reporting or making guesses about why Jews have been hated amounts to “Jew hatred.” The first question to ask, seems to me, is not whether Abbas’s comments on the source of Jew hatred are anti-semitic but whether they are true or false. From what I’ve read of Hitler’s propaganda re the Jews, they seem at least partially true. My apologies if someone has already made this point.