(Wall Street Journal) Editorial - On Aug. 24, Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority, told the Fatah Revolutionary Council: "The truth that we should clarify to the world is that European Jews are not Semites. They have nothing to do with Semitism." He cited the Khazar hypothesis, which speculates that Ashkenazi Jews aren't descended from the Holy Land, hailing instead from the medieval Tatar kingdom. This has been discredited by a century of scholarship. But its usefulness in denying the Jewish connection to the Land of Israel has made it a mainstream claim among Palestinians. Abbas kept going. "They say that Hitler killed the Jews for being Jews, and that Europe hated the Jews because they were Jews. Not true." Europeans "fought against these people because of their role in society, which had to do with usury, money and so on. Even Hitler said he fought the Jews because they were dealing with usury and money. This was not about Semitism and anti-Semitism." If you wonder why the Oslo peace process hit a dead end and stayed there, consider that Abbas and Fatah have been described for decades as "moderates." Abbas' predecessor, Yasser Arafat, once stunned President Clinton's negotiators by denying even that Jerusalem had been the site of the Jewish Temple. There's a reason Arab-Israeli negotiations have moved past the Palestinian veto.
2023-09-07 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive