Ramallah – The chairman of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, was recorded expressing antisemitism towards the Jews on the subject of the Holocaust, and claiming that Jews were murdered in the Holocaust not because of their Jewishness but so that the Nazis could seize their money.
“This is explained in many Jewish books,” Abbas said. “They say that Hitler killed them because of their Jewishness. Not so. They (the Nazis) fought them because of their social role and not because of their religion.” He also said: “Hitler fought the Jews because they dealt in usury and money.”
Regarding the immigration of Jews from Arab countries, he claimed that the Jews were not expelled from the countries, but that Ben-Gurion organized riots among the Jews: “He sent people on his behalf to Iraq to kill, destroy and hide explosives in synagogues and all kinds of places in order to force the Iraqi Jews to emigrate and that is what really happened.”
“In Egypt there was the Lavon Affair, and then the same thing happened in Morocco,” Abbas added.