Iran Press/ Europe: Mahmoud Abbas is currently in Berlin, where he held a joint press conference on Tuesday after talks with the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD).
Abbas had been asked by a journalist whether, as President, he wanted to apologize to Israel and Germany on behalf of the Palestinians for the attack by Palestinian assassins on the Israeli team at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich and whether he would help with the complete investigation. Eleven Israelis, a German policeman, and five of the attackers died in the attack.
50 massacres – 50 holocausts
Abbas replied that they wanted to find peace and look “forward”. But: “If we want to dig further into the past, yes please, I have 50 massacres committed by Israel. Which have also been recorded in documentaries (…). 50 massacres – 50 holocausts, and to this day every day we have dead people killed by the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces; ed.) by the Israeli army.”
Scholz followed the statements with a petrified expression, visibly annoyed, and also made preparations to reply. His spokesman Steffen Hebestreit declared the press conference over immediately after Abbas’ reply. Hebestreit later reported that Scholz was outraged by Abbas’ statement.
The German chancellor said to the “Bild” newspaper in the evening: “Especially for us Germans, any relativization of the Holocaust is unbearable and unacceptable.”
CDU leader Friedrich Merz criticized Scholz’s handling of the incident on Twitter as “incomprehensible”. The chancellor “should have contradicted the Palestinian president in no uncertain terms and asked him to leave the house!” he wrote. The CDU politician Armin Laschet called Abbas’ performance “the worst gaffe that was ever heard in the Chancellery”.
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