From the Liveblog of
Monday, May 15, 2023
Likening Israel to Nazis, Palestinian leader Abbas says country lies ‘like Goebbels’
Luke Tress is a JTA reporter and a former editor and reporter in New York for The Times of Israel.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas likens Israel to Nazi Germany by saying the country lies like the Third Reich’s chief propagandist Joseph Goebbels.
“Israeli and Zionist claims continue by saying that Israel made the desert bloom. As if Palestine was a desert and they made the desert bloom,” Abbas tells a UN event commemorating the Palestinian Nakba, or catastrophe, which accompanies Israel’s founding in 1948.
“These are lies,” he continues. “They continue to lie, like Goebbels, and they continue to lie until people believe their lies and they continue therefore their false claims by saying that Israel made the desert bloom. Palestine was never a desert.”
At the same event, Abbas also demands that Israel be suspended from the UN if it does not grant Palestinians a state and a right of return for millions of refugees’ descendants, saying Israel agreed to these steps in 1947 to join the UN.
He also accuses the US and Britain for the Nakba, alleging that they “wanted to get rid of their Jews and benefit from their presence in Palestine.”
