Abbas calls Holocaust `most heinous crime'
Source: AP-Excite
By KARIN LAUB
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday called the Holocaust "the most heinous crime" of modern history and expressed his sympathy for the victims, a rare acknowledgment by an Arab leader of Jewish suffering during the Nazi genocide.
Abbas' comments appeared, in part, aimed at reaching out to Israeli public opinion at a time of deep crisis in Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts. The remarks were published by the Palestinian official news agency WAFA just hours before the start of Israel's annual Holocaust commemoration.
The decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been accompanied by mutual mistrust.
Many Israelis fear that the Palestinians aren't truly ready to accept a Jewish presence in the Holy Land, and that ignorance or even denial of the Holocaust among Palestinians is an expression of that attitude. Denials or attempts to minimize the Holocaust, which saw the systematic killing of 6 million Jews by Nazi Germany in World War II, are widespread in the Arab world.
FULL story at link.
Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20140427/DADEDQC01.html
File -- In this Friday, Oct. 26, 2007 file photo, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, attends Muslim prayers at a mosque adjacent to his office in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Abbas called the Holocaust "the ugliest crime humanity has known in modern history." His comments, published Sunday by the Palestinian official news agency WAFA, marked a rare acknowledgment by an Arab leader of Jewish suffering during the Nazi genocide. Some 6 million Jews perished in the Holocaust. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen, File)
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I am a bitter and cynical person, but I'm willing to sit back and watch for a couple of weeks, and see what happens when both sides blink and say, "wait a minute, maybe we actually care about each other, just a little bit?"
From the more practical point of view of someone who has watched the intractable Arab-Israeli dispute my whole life, one of the major things that has soured me on the Palestinians was their unusual ability to cozy up to the evil, losing side of any major conflict (the Turks, the Nazis, the Commies, the terrorists), and their use of genocidal euphemism ("drive them into the sea"
. Denying the Holocaust, or worse, applauding it or suggesting it be repeated, is simply beyond the pale and most diplomats cannot take such groups seriously. I am sure that is one major reason why Palestinians have been on the outside looking in.
And, since everyone who plays this stupid pissing contest demands some sort of false equivalency to prove the other side is a piece a shit as well, let's not forget that the Nazis also specialized in compressing unwanted populations in jail-states, disenfranchising parts of their own population, and bullying neighboring nations.
So if you don't like what I said above, think of two Nazi Germanys fighting over the same deforested wasteland, and the advantage one side potentially gains by simply showing half a second of empathy.
