PA’s Fatah blasts academics for ‘dangerous’ letter decrying Abbas’s antisemitism
Ramallah figures accuse signatories of parroting Israeli narrative and inciting against PA president ahead of his UN speech
Palestinian political factions on Wednesday raged against an open letter published by over a hundred Palestinian academics, in which they criticized President Mahmoud Abbas’s recent remarks on the Holocaust that have drawn widespread accusations of antisemitism.
Describing the document as a “statement of shame,” the PA-ruling Fatah party, in a statement published by the Palestinian official news agency Wafa, said the academics’ message “is consistent with the Zionist narrative and its signatories give credence to the enemies of the Palestinian people.”
In separate comments, Fatah officials called the signatories “mouthpieces for the occupation” and “extremely dangerous.”
“Those who signed the ‘statement of shame’ identify themselves with an ongoing rabid campaign launched by extremists in Israel, America, and Europe, and decided to participate in a conspiracy against the Palestinian cause,” said the Palestinian National Council. They called the letter an expression of “political and intellectual terrorism” at a time when Palestinians need to unify their ranks and stand behind President Abbas, ahead of his speech at the UN General Assembly next week.
Several other politicians repeated the claim, noting that the publication of the letter comes at a “suspicious time,” and may compromise the PA’s demand for full membership at the UN.
The academics released the letter after footage surfaced showing Abbas asserting last month that European Jews had been persecuted by Hitler because of what he described as their “social role” and predatory lending practices, rather than their religion and race. A spokesman for Abbas later claimed that the comments were in fact “academic and historical quotations” based on the work of unspecified Jewish and American historians.
Abbas outlined the discredited theory that Ashkenazi Jews are not descended from ancient Israelites but from an ancient Turkish people known as the Khazars, who converted to Judaism en masse.
“The truth that we should clarify to the world is that European Jews are not Semites,” Abbas said, according to a translation of his remarks by the Middle East Media Research Institute. “They have nothing to do with Semitism.”
“So when we hear them talk about Semitism and antisemitism, the Ashkenazi Jews, at least, are not Semites,” he added.
Abbas has previously claimed publicly that Ashkenazi Jews are the descendants of Khazars, including a 2018 speech in which he charged that Jews’ “social behavior” caused the Holocaust, another assertion he reiterated in his recent speech.
In the open letter, the Palestinian academics, mostly living in the United States and Europe, condemned Abbas’s comments as “morally and politically reprehensible.” “We adamantly reject any attempt to diminish, misrepresent, or justify antisemitism, Nazi crimes against humanity, or historical revisionism vis-à-vis the Holocaust,” the letter added.
The signatories also criticized the publicity fallout of Abbas’s statements for the Palestinian cause, and lambasted the “increasingly authoritarian and draconian rule” of the Palestinian Authority, for which Abbas has held the presidency since 2005.
Responding to an inquiry by the Times of Israel on condition of anonymity, one of the signatories, a prominent academic working in the US, highlighted his frustration at what he perceives to be the selective outrage at Abbas.
“When Palestinians criticize or protest the Abbas regime, as many of the signatories of this letter have been doing for years, that gets little or no attention, but a Palestinian critique of this antisemitic speech garners an immediate media response,” he said. “It is not a coincidence that the US and Israeli and governments’ critiques of the speech do not call for removing Abbas. This is because they keep him and his regime in place to serve their interests.”
Stressing the link between the fight against antisemitism and the fight for Palestinians’ rights, the academic continued: “The signatories understand that this regime harms the Palestinian national interest, and that the Palestine cause is part of a global and regional struggle that must be politically and morally anchored in opposition to racism, apartheid and antisemitism, even as it fights the Zionist weaponization of charges of antisemitism meant to silence supporters of Palestinian rights.”
Abbas’s popularity has been in steady decline for years, in the face of growing discontent among Palestinians at his autocratic style of ruling; his refusal to hold elections after his defeat by Hamas in 2006; the PA’s corruption and security cooperation with Israel, which many Palestinians consider a form of collaboration, his perceived inaction in the face of settlement expansion; and his weak governance especially in the northern section of the West Bank, which has paved the way for Hamas and the Islamic Jihad to encroach into the area.
