Abbas accuses Israel of ’50 holocausts’, Israel worries about his successor

Palestinian President ‘disgusted’ German Chancellor at their meeting, faces precarious situation at home.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has expressed outrage at Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s claim on Tuesday that Israel perpetuated “50 holocausts.” 

Abbas made the claim when a reporter asked him to apologise for the murder of 11 Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists during the 1972 Munich Olympics, at a media conference following his meeting with Scholz in Berlin.

Abbas responded: “If you want to go over the past, go ahead. I have 50 slaughters that Israel committed … 50 massacres, 50 slaughters … 50 holocausts.”

Abbas subsequently said that his remarks were not meant to deny the Holocaust, telling the Palestinian Wafa News Agency that the Holocaust was the "most heinous crime in modern human history”.

Video from the press conference shows the German Chancellor grimacing, but he did not address the remarks at the time, tweeting his response the next day. 

“I am disgusted by the outrageous remarks made by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. For us Germans in particular, any relativisation of the singularity of the Holocaust is intolerable and unacceptable. I condemn any attempt to deny the crimes of the Holocaust,” he wrote.

Scholz rejected Abbas’s use of the word “apartheid” to describe relations between Israel and the Palestinians at the media conference.

"Naturally we have a different assessment with a view to Israeli politics, and I want to expressly say here that I do not espouse the use of the word apartheid and do not think it correctly describes the situation," Scholz said.

Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said Abbas’ remarks about “50 holocausts,” made on German soil, were “not only a moral disgrace, but a monstrous lie.”