Who do you think you are kidding, Mr Abbas?

 With thanks: Lily, Yoram

Mahmoud Abbas has denied that pogroms occurred  during the 14 centuries that Jewish communities existed in Arab countries.  If he read Point of No Return he would be fully au fait with the true history.

Non exhaustive map of anti-Jewish massacres before 1948.  Click on the picture to enlarge (T. Karfunkel)

Abbas's  outrageous statement is of a piece with Abbas's Holocaut denial. His thesis as a PhD student in Moscow vastly minimised the numbers of Jews murdered by the Nazis. The Zionists' Ha'avara  agreeement to rescue Jews from Hitler's Germany in the 1930s is maliciously construed as 'collaboration' with Nazism.

 Haaretz reports: 

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Monday that Jews in Europe were exposed to pogroms not because of their religion, but because of their social role and financial matters. 

Speaking during the National Palestinian Council in Ramallah, Abbas attributed the claim to Jewish scholars and said that factually, "such pogroms did not take place in Arab nations, which had Jewish communities."

Abbas stirred controversy in his doctoral thesis in Moscow University when he examined connections between the Zionist leadership in Israel and the Nazi regime in the 1930s. In it he dealt with the claims of Holocaust deniers such as Roger Garaudy regarding the correct number of Jewish deaths in the Holocaust. Israeli officials have dubbed Abbas a Holocaust denier, but he has refuted the accusation.

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