PA President Mahmoud Abbas. Photo: Reuters/Osman Orsal.

JNS.org – Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas utilized a rare meeting of the Palestinian National Council to give a long speech arguing against Jewish history in the Land of Israel and blaming Jewish “social behavior” for the Holocaust.

Abbas quoted the controversial “The Thirteenth Tribe” by Arthur Koestler, which claims that Askenazi Jews are not real Jews, but descendants of the Khazars. He called Israel “a colonial project that has nothing to do with Judaism” and said “those who sought a Jewish state weren’t Jews.”

He stated that the Holocaust was not a result of antisemitism, but the fault of Jewish “social behavior,” and “[charging] interest, and financial matters,” and asserted that Adolf Hitler had actually facilitated the immigration of Jews to Israel.

The Holocaust has been a long time fascination for Abbas. His doctoral thesis, “The Connection between the Nazis and the Leaders of the Zionist Movement 1933–1945” was completed in 1982 for the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia, and published in 1984 as an Arabic book, “The Other Side: the Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism.” He asserted that Zionists had been complicit in the Holocaust, which Abbas said was far overblown in scope.

Abbas also accused Israeli corruption investigators for thwarting the peace process under prime minister Ehud Olmert, who had offered a proposal for a near-total Israeli withdrawal from Judea, Samaria, and Arab neighborhoods in eastern Jerusalem, and placing the Temple Mount under international custodianship. Yet, Abbas was in fact presented with the deal during Olmert’s term and rejected it.

Abbas has preemptively rejected the peace terms of the Trump administration, though those terms have not gone public.

He said he might “take tough steps in the near future in our relationship with our neighbors (Israel) and the Americans,” but did not elaborate.