Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas visiting the West Bank city of Jenin. Photo: Reuters/Mohamad Torokman

The top legislative body of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) has furiously denounced a group of Palestinian intellectuals who last week issued an open letter lambasting Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ recent speech in which he falsely claimed that the Nazi Holocaust was triggered by the Jews’ “social role, not their religion.”

In a statement on Wednesday, the Palestine National Council (PNC) — a 747-member body that meets every two years and is responsible for electing the PLO’s executive committee — decried the letter as a “statement of shame.”

The PNC went on to accuse the signatories of aligning themselves with “an ongoing rabid campaign launched by extremists in Israel, America, and Europe,” and of engaging in “political and intellectual terrorism” at a time when Palestinian unity was sorely needed.

Addressing senior members of the PLO’s Fatah faction in August, Abbas drew worldwide condemnation when he asserted: “They say that Hitler killed the Jews for being Jews, and that Europe hated the Jews because they were Jews. Not true. It was clearly explained that [the Europeans] fought [the Jews] because of their social role, and not their religion. Several authors wrote about this. Even Karl Marx said this was not true. He said that the enmity was not directed at Judaism as a religion, but to Judaism for its social role.”

Following the revelations earlier this month of the speech’s content, a group of leading Palestinian intellectuals published an open letter in which they said they “unequivocally condemn the morally and politically reprehensible comments made by President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas about the Holocaust.”

The letter continued: “Rooted in a racial theory widespread in European culture and science at the time, the Nazi genocide of the Jewish people was born of antisemitism, fascism, and racism. We adamantly reject any attempt to diminish, misrepresent, or justify antisemitism, Nazi crimes against humanity, or historical revisionism vis-a-vis the Holocaust.”

Signatories to the letter include Columbia University Professor Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian solidarity activist Huwaida Arraf, Palestinian Authority negotiator Diana Buttu, and dozens of other prominent Palestinian intellectuals.

The letter did not, however, refer to Abbas’ long record of promoting Holocaust revisionism, dating back to a 1982 thesis submitted to a university in Moscow that shifted blame for the Holocaust from the Nazis onto the Zionist movement. Moreover, as recently as Aug. 2022, Abbas claimed — during a joint press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz — that Israel had committed “50 Holocausts” against the Palestinians.

The intellectuals’ letter was also careful to condemn Abbas for allegedly compromising the Palestinian struggle against Israel with antisemitic rhetoric, going on to accuse the Jewish state of practicing “apartheid.”

“The Palestinian people are sufficiently burdened by Israeli settler colonialism, dispossession, occupation, and oppression without having to bear the negative effect of such ignorant and profoundly antisemitic narratives perpetuated by those who claim to speak in our name,” it stated. “Having held onto power nearly a decade and a half after his presidential mandate expired in 2009, supported by Western and pro-Israel forces seeking to perpetuate Israeli apartheid, Abbas and his political entourage have forfeited any claim to represent the Palestinian people and our struggle for justice, freedom, and equality, a struggle that stands against all forms of systemic racism and oppression.”

In addition to the PNC, Abbas’ own Fatah faction added its voice to condemnation of the letter, charging that the intellectuals’ argument was “consistent with the Zionist narrative and its signatories give credence to the enemies of the Palestinian people.”