Report: Abbas’ Holocaust-Denial Dissertation Widely-Taught in PA
Research by the Center for Near East Policy Research Center has found that the doctoral dissertation of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas “stars” throughout the Palestinian Authority educational curriculum, and “is the basis for Holocaust studies in the PA.”
The Center’s Director, David Bedein, has asked Education Minister Gideon Saar and the government of Israel to demand that the PA remove the work from its schools and from its curricula.
Bedein wrote that the Center is engaged in preparing a movie on the PA educational system, in the course of which it tracks that which is taught in PA classrooms. “Throughout the educational system of the PA,” he wrote to Saar, “we have found that the doctorate of Mahmoud Abbas stars, and forms the basis of PA Holocaust studies.”
Downgrades Number of Victims, Accuses Zionists of Collaboration
The doctorate was published as a book in 1984, entitled,"The Other Side: the Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism.” It was completed in 1982 at a university in Communist Russia, and was defended at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
It downgrades the number of Holocaust victims to “[possibly] below one million,” and accuses Zionist leaders of encouraging the persecution of Jews.
It also denies that the gas chambers were used to murder Jews, quoting a "scientific study" to that effect by French Holocaust-denier Robert Faurisson.
“…it is possible that the number of Jewish victims reached six million, but at the same time it is possible that the figure is much smaller--below one million.”
"The historian and author, Raoul Hilberg, thinks that the figure does not exceed 890,000." [Holocaust authority Dr. Rafael Medoff says, “This is, of course, utterly false. Professor Hilberg, a distinguished historian and author of the classic study 'The Destruction of the European Jews', has never said or written any such thing.”]]
"It seems that the interest of the Zionist movement, however, is to inflate this figure so that their gains will be greater… This led them to emphasize this figure [six million] in order to gain the solidarity of international public opinion with Zionism.”
- "A partnership was established between Hitler's Nazis and the leadership of the Zionist movement ... [the Zionists gave] permission to every racist in the world, led by Hitler and the Nazis, to treat Jews as they wish, so long as it guarantees immigration to Palestine."