Six days after the publication without comment of Mahmud Abbas’ Holocaust comparison in its entirety on the official website “bundesregierung.de”, the government has added a distancing to the statements made by the Palestinian President. Since Monday, the “note” at the end of the transcript has included a quote from Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD), according to which he was outraged by the “unspeakable statements” made by Abbas. “Especially for us Germans, any relativization of the Holocaust is unbearable and unacceptable,” it continues.
It is not clear from the “note” that the distancing took place with a delay of a few days. On the contrary, a date gives the impression that the “note” was already published on August 16th.
As reported, Abbas compared Israeli attacks on Palestinian settlements to the Holocaust at a press conference in the Chancellery last Tuesday. He spoke literally of “50 massacres, 50 holocausts.” Scholz and government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit were accused of not having contradicted Abbas directly. Hebestreit, who is also head of the federal press office responsible for the “bundesregierung.de” website, took the blame and spoke of not having been quick and attentive enough.
In fact, despite this insight, the verbatim transcript routinely reached the official website on the evening of the press conference and remained there without comment, while Scholz and Hebestreit countered Abbas’ words on Twitter and to journalists in a variety of ways. In doing so, the government spread the relativization of the Holocaust, which it also considered unspeakable. The “note” was only added after a report in the Tagesspiegel.
According to a spokeswoman, the federal government does not see this as another omission: the government’s critical statements about Abbas were published on many official channels and “widely by many media”.
