US monitor Lipstadt accuses Abbas of spreading antisemitism

Deborah Lipstadt, the US special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, blasts Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, saying his comments distorting the Holocaust are “overtly antisemitic.”

“There’s no question about it: These kinds of statements must stop, because they do nothing to advance peace, and worse than that, they spread antisemitism,” Lipstadt told The Associated Press outside an event on antisemitism in Geneva attended by dozens of diplomats on the sidelines of a session of the Human Rights Council.

Footage surfaced last week showing Abbas asserting European Jews were persecuted by Hitler because of what he described as their “social functions” and predatory lending practices, rather than their religion or ethnicity.

Lipstadt praises an open letter by Palestinian academics blasting Abbas as “stronger almost than what I had to say.”