A pro-Hamas rally at Al-Quds University on March 23. Photo: Tom Gross/Mideast Dispatch.

JNS.org – Ahead of Yom HaShoah (Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day), the Hamas terrorist organization—which last week signed a unity pact with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party—issued a statement Saturday that called the Holocaust “a made-up story without foundation.”

On Sunday, Abbas was quoted by the Palestinian news agency WAFA as calling the Holocaust “the most heinous crime to have occurred against humanity in the modern era.” But at his weekly cabinet meeting, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Abbas’s alignment with Holocaust-denying Hamas is more notable than his remarks.

“Instead of issuing statements designed to placate global public opinion, Abu Mazen (Abbas) needs to choose between the alliance with Hamas, a terrorist organization that calls for the destruction of Israel and denies the Holocaust, and a true peace with Israel,” Netanyahu said.