253 Pages

In 1984 Dar Ibn Rushd publishing company in Amman, Jordan published the 1982 doctoral thesis of Mahmoud Abbas… “The Other Side: The Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism” under the Arabic title “Al-Wajh-al Akher: al-‘Alaqat as-Sirriya Bayna an-Naziya wa’s Sihyunia” in 253 pages.

The original thesis was defended in 1982 at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Soviet Academy of Sciences at Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow.  Abbas’ dissertation adviser was Vladimir Ivanovich Kisilev,  a Soviet specialist on Palestine. The defense was presented in both Arabic and English.

Abbas made several changes from his original 1982 thesis to his 1984 published book.  In it, he does not deny the Holocaust but he disputes the number of Jewish victims.

In his thesis he wrote  “the myth of six million Jews was a fantastic lie. It seems that the intent of the Zionist movement, however, is to inflate this figure (six million Holocaust deaths) so that their gains will be greater. This led them to emphasize this figure (six million) in order to gain the solidarity of international public opinion with Zionism. Many scholars have debated the figure of six million and reached stunning conclusions: fixing the number of Jewish victims as only a few hundred thousands.”

But in 1984, two years later in his book, he wrote: “Following the war, word was spread that six million Jews were amongst the victims and that a war of extermination was aimed primarily at the Jews…. The truth is that no one can either confirm or deny this figure. In other words, it is possible that the number of Jewish victims reached six million, but at the same time it is possible that the figure is much smaller, below one million.”

In his 1982 thesis, Abbas blamed the Holocaust on the Jews themselves. He denied the existence of gas chambers and quoted from sources hostile to Jews and to Zionism.  He acknowledged that there was a Holocaust but denied the numbers of murdered Jews and the ways in which they were murdered.

He wrote, “the Zionist movement led a broad campaign of incitement against the Jews living under Nazi rule in order to arouse the government’s hatred of them, to fuel vengeance against them and to expand the mass extermination”.

In 1995 the Simon Wiesenthal Center called on Abbas to clarify his position on the Holocaust. He did not clarify it at that time but he stated “When I wrote my thesis we were at war with Israel. Today I would not have made such remarks…today there is peace and what I write from now on must help advance the peace  process”.

He vaccilates from interview to interview, changing or altering his previous remarks.

In a May 2003 interview with Akiva Eldar in the Hebrew language daily newspaper, HaAretz, he told the following:

“I wrote in detail about the Holocaust and said I did not want to discuss numbers. I quoted an argument between historians in which various numbers of casualties were mentioned. One wrote that there were twelve million victims and another wrote that there were only eight hundred thousand. I have no desire to argue with the figures”.

Abbas, the vaccilator, then continues with the following astounding words:

“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. The Holocaust was the most heinous crime in modern history”.

It is vital to note two parts of his statement. First, he does not deny the tragedy of the Holocaust. And second, he refers to the “terrible, unforgivable crime against the Jewish nation”.

He did not say “the Jewish people” but more important, he said the “Jewish nation” which recognizes the right of the Jews to have a nation of their own.

But in a 2013 interview with the Jordanian Ma’an News Agency, Abbas again defended his original 1982 doctoral thesis regarding his belief in the relationship between the Zionists and the Nazis.

All of this is explained in the 253 pages of his book. “Happy” reading !!!

And depending upon which way the wind is blowing, so too are the true comments of an anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist, anti-Israel president of the Palestinian Authority… a man whose words are never to be trusted.