Senior U.S. State Department officials blasted the latest antisemitic rant by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. Their condemnations come amid Washington’s pursuit of a complex diplomatic arrangement that could see new concessions granted to the Palestinian leadership.
Abbas had recently claimed that Hitler’s Nazi regime had carried out genocide against European Jews because of their “usury, money,” rather than their religion. “They say that Hitler killed the Jews for being Jews, and that Europe hated the Jews because they were Jews. Not true. It was clearly explained that [the Europeans] fought [the Jews] because of their social role, and not their religion,” Abbas said at a meeting of the Fatah Revolutionary Council on August 24, in remarks translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute.
The MEMRI translation circulated online yesterday, and it led to outraged responses from top State Department officials today.
U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield also weighed in on the matter, saying that “this hateful rhetoric, which, in addition to being antisemitic, undermines prospects for a secure and peaceful future for Israelis and Palestinians.”
