Palestinian PM confronts accusations of holocaust denial

national | miscellaneous | news report Thursday May 29, 2003 16:22 by Ali H.

Israeli critics of the Palestinian PM Mahmoud Abbas/Abu Mazen have deluged newswire and media outlets with accusations that he denied the holocaust. Today the PM confronted them head-on in a newspaper interview with Ha'aretz.

Mahmoud Abbas rejected accusations that he had claimed that there were only 1M victims of the holocaust.

These accusations have been based on a supposed translation of his PhD. thesis written in Arabic into Hebrew. Neither the original thesis, nor the translated version upon which the accusations are based have ever been published by his accusers.

Mr. Abbas said that in his thesis on the links between Nazism and Zionism, written in 1982 in Moscow, he did not address the question of the number of victims but cited historians who said the victims ranged in number from one million to 12 million.

"I have no desire to argue with the figures," he told the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz.

"The Holocaust was a terrible, unforgivable crime against the Jewish nation, a crime against humanity that cannot be accepted by humankind. The Holocaust was a terrible thing, and nobody can claim I denied it."