Carney touts Palestinian leader accused of Holocaust denial as his man

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Today, let’s examine the record of the man Prime Minister Mark Carney is pinning his hopes on to deliver an independent Palestinian state living in peace beside a secure Israel.

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His choice is Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, as he explained in a prime ministerial “Readout” of their conversation on July 30.

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Carney described Abbas as key to “Canada’s intention to recognize the State of Palestine at the … United Nations General Assembly in September 2025.”

The PM said this “is predicated on the Palestinian Authority’s commitment to much-needed reforms, including the commitments by Palestinian Authority President Abbas to fundamentally reform its governance, to hold general elections in 2026 in which Hamas can play no part, and to demilitarize the Palestinian state,” adding he “welcomed President Abbas’ commitment to these reforms.”

Abbas is an 89-year-old Palestinian leader accused of antisemitism and Holocaust denial, who has been in power for 20 years.

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He was elected president in 2005, cancelled future elections and has little popular support with polls showing the overwhelming majority of Palestinians believe the Palestinian Authority, which has received billions of dollars in foreign aid, is corrupt and that Abbas is ineffective and should resign.

Hamas won legislative elections in 2006 – the last time they were held – and today Hamas rules Gaza while Abbas’ rival Fatah party rules the West Bank.

Although Abbas described the Holocaust in 2014 as “the most heinous crime to have occurred against humanity in the modern era” while he was currying favour during a previous failed international effort to achieve the forever elusive “two-state solution,” he’s been accused of antisemitism and Holocaust denial for decades.

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Two years ago he was widely condemned for a speech to the Fatah Revolutionary Council in which he claimed Hitler didn’t kill six million Jews because of antisemitism, but because they were money lenders. He expressed similar views in 2018.

In 1984 he published a book – The Other Side: the Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism – based on his 1982 PhD dissertation at a Russian university.

In it, he falsely claimed Zionists were “fundamental partners” of the Nazis, that it was a “myth” and “fantastic lie” that Hitler murdered six million Jews, and he cited figures of “890,000” or “a few hundred thousand.”

A decade later, Abbas said he wrote the book while Israelis and Palestinians were at war, that he was quoting estimates of the number of dead by others and that he would not make such arguments today.

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In 2006 he told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz,”The Holocaust was a terrible thing and nobody can claim I denied it.”

Writing in the Jerusalem Post last year, Maurice Hirsch, director of the Initiative for Palestinian Authority Accountability and Reform in the Jerusalem Center for Foreign Affairs, described Abbas’ longtime support of the Palestinian Authorities’ so-called “Pay for Slay” policy, “which guarantees substantial monthly salaries to terrorist prisoners,” including murderers, mass murderers and the families of suicide bombers.

“In parallel” Hirsch wrote, “Abbas funneled billions of shekels to the Palestine Liberation Organization to pay both monthly allowances to injured terrorists and the families of dead terrorists, and fund the PLO member organizations that include internationally designated terror organizations such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.”

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Last year, Abbas announced the ending of “Pay for Slay,” but critics say the change is largely cosmetic and payments continue in other forms.

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Earlier this year, the Israeli NGO IMPACT-se (Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education) reported on a new curriculum for Palestinian children created by the Palestinian Authority’s education ministry, funded by 380 million euros from the European Union, based on its promise to reform its existing content.

IMPACT-se said the new curriculum “replicates antisemitic material and content that incites to hatreds and violence” and is rife with “antisemitism, glorification and justification of … terrorism, encouragement of martyrdom and jihad, dehumanization and demonization of Israel, and the erasure of Israel from maps.”

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Palestinian Media Watch, an Israeli research institute, reported last year that Palestinian Authority officials “consistently use the antisemitic themes of the Middle Ages to generate hatred against the Jewish state and to incite violence,” including the blood libel that “Israeli leaders drink the blood of Palestinian children and always want more blood.”

Despite this, the U.S. and Israeli governments view Abbas as a relative moderate compared to Hamas – he has made pro forma criticisms of terrorist attacks on Israeli and Palestinian civilians and called for Hamas to release the hostages.

For Carney and other world leaders to tout Abbas as the best hope for ending Palestinian suffering and creating an independent Palestinian state – which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition government unalterably opposes – is wishful thinking on steroids.

lgoldstein@postmedia.com

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