Palestinian leader Abbas calls Holocaust most heinous crime of modern era

APRIL 28 was Holocaust Remembrance Day. And Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has denounced the Holocaust as the “most heinous” modern crime.

He called the Holocaust an embodiment of racism, in response to a question by Rabbi Marc Schneier on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, the statement from the Palestine Liberation Organization said. He said Palestinians reject racism and ethnic discrimination, and he called on the world to fight it.

“The Palestinian people, who suffer from injustice, oppression and denied freedom and peace, are the first to demand to lift the injustice and racism that befell other peoples subjected to such crimes,” the statement read.

The PLO called on Israel to “conclude a just and comprehensive peace in the region, based on the two states vision.”

It seems Abbas has had a change of mind. In his 1983 doctoral dissertation, Abbas wrote of “the Zionist fantasy, the fantastic lie that six million Jews were killed” and said only 890,000 Jews were killed by Nazis — and that these were chiefly the victims of a Zionist-Nazi plot, the Jerusalem Post reported Sunday. But in 2011, he said he did “not deny the Holocaust” and that he had “heard from the Israelis that there were six million” victims, adding, “I can accept that,” The New York Times reported.