Abbas had been asked by a journalist whether he would apologize for the massacre at the 1972 Munich Olympics, when members of the Israeli team were taken hostage by Palestinian gunmen, at the time part of a splinter group of Abbas’s Fatah party, which led to the deaths . by 11 Israeli athletes and coaches, and a West German police officer, after an armed confrontation.
This September marks 50 years since the Munich attack.
Scholz did not immediately react to Abbas on stage, but later tweeted: “I am disgusted by the outrageous comments of Palestinian President Mahmoud #Abbas. For us Germans in particular, any relativization of the uniqueness of the Holocaust is unacceptable and unacceptable. We condemn any attempt denying the crimes of the Holocaust.” Germany’s ambassador to Israel, Steffen Seibert, tweeted that, “What President #Abbas said in Berlin about ’50 holocausts’ is wrong and unacceptable. Germany will never tolerate any attempt to deny the unique dimension of the crimes of the Holocaust.” Israeli leaders also widely condemned the remark, with Prime Minister Yair Lapid saying: “Mahmoud Abbas accuses Israel of committing ’50 Holocausts’ while stood on German soil is not only a moral disgrace, but a monstrous lie.”
“Six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, including one and a half million Jewish children. History will never forgive him,” Lapid wrote.
Israel’s defense minister, Benny Gantz, called Abbas’s words “abhorrent and false.” “His statement is an attempt to distort and rewrite history,” Gantz said.
Global figures also criticized the remarks. The US State Department’s Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism, Ambassador Deborah E. Lipstadt, called them “unacceptable,” adding that “distorting the Holocaust can have dangerous consequences and fuel anti-Semitism.”
Abbas’s staff sought to clarify his comments on Wednesday. “President Mahmoud Abbas reaffirms that the Holocaust is the most heinous crime to have occurred in modern human history,” his office said in a statement.
His response “was not intended to deny the particularity of the Holocaust, which was committed in the last century and is condemned in the strongest terms,” he added.
“What is meant by the crimes that … Abbas spoke of are the massacres committed against the Palestinian people since the Nakba by Israeli forces, crimes that have not stopped to this day,” the statement concluded. This refers to the establishment of Israel in 1948, called al-Nakba or “the catastrophe” by Palestinians, after more than 700,000 Palestinians were either expelled or fled their homes during the resulting Arab-Israeli war.
This is not the first time that Abbas has made comments that are considered anti-Semitic. As a doctoral student in the Soviet Union in the 1980s, Abbas wrote a thesis alleging a secret relationship between Nazis and early supporters of a Jewish state, according to Reuters. His claims resurfaced as an issue in 2018, when he said that Jews living in Europe had suffered since the 11th century “not because of their religion. [but] it was because of their social profession.’
“So the Jewish question that had spread against the Jews all over Europe was not because of their religion, it was because of usury and banking,” he said during the opening address to the Palestinian National Council (PNC), the de facto parliament for Palestine. Liberation Organization.
Following mass outrage, Abbas later apologized for his comments, saying he condemned anti-Semitism and calling the Holocaust the “most heinous crime in history.”
CNN’s Abeer Salman and Amir Tal contributed to this report.
Digestion
Syria denies abducting or “hiding” an American citizen
The Syrian government has denied that it “abducted” or “hided” American citizen Austin Tice, who went missing in the country a decade ago.
Background: Tice, a freelance journalist, was arrested at a checkpoint near the Syrian capital Damascus in August 2012 while reporting on the country’s civil war. US President Joe Biden said last week that the US government knows “with certainty that he was held by the Syrian regime”. The Syrian Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that accusations against the Syrian government that it “captured” Tice are false. The ministry added: “Syria confirms that any dialogue or official communication with the US government will be public and based on respect for the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic and non-interference in its internal affairs.” .
Why it matters: Relations between the United States and Syria have been strained since the start of the Syrian conflict, and Washington has imposed sanctions on several regime officials and militia leaders. He continues to call for a political solution to the war, which has raged for more than 10 years. Securing Tice’s release would also be a boost to Biden’s domestic popularity, as his administration has come under fire for not doing enough to repatriate Americans stranded abroad.
Israel and Turkey to restore full diplomatic ties Israel and Turkey will restore full diplomatic ties between the two countries, including the return of ambassadors and consuls general to their respective posts, Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid announced on Wednesday.
Background: Turkey expelled Israel’s ambassador to the country in 2018 in response to the killing of 60 Palestinians by the Israeli military during protests along the Gaza border, which were sparked by the opening of the US Embassy in Jerusalem. Israel in turn expelled Turkey’s ambassador to Israel. Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s visit to Turkey in March, followed by visits by the foreign ministers of both countries, helped defuse tensions after more than a decade of strained relations. Why it matters: Israel enjoys improved relations with regional countries without any progress toward a two-state solution with the Palestinians. The Biden administration has increasingly made clear that it views the Abraham Accords — a series of normalization agreements signed between Israel and Arab states — as a key element of its Middle East diplomacy and has encouraged other regional states such as Jordan and Egypt to work more closely within its framework.
State Department receives Iran’s response to EU nuclear deal proposal, spokesman says As efforts to revive Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal continue, a US State Department spokesman said on Tuesday that he had received Iran’s response to the latest draft of the Vienna deal presented by the European Union.
Background: Last week EU officials sent the US and Iran what they called the “final text” of a renewed deal to curb Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. On Monday night, Iran responded in writing to the proposal, meeting a deadline set by the bloc. While Iran’s written response has not been made public, the country’s chief negotiator tweeted that a deal was closer than ever, but not yet done. Tehran is seeking guarantees that it will be compensated if a future US president pulls out of the deal, a regional diplomat told CNN on Tuesday. The State Department spokesman did not specify US sentiment after receiving the Iranian response. Why it matters: Efforts to revive the deal, which former US President Donald Trump pulled out of in 2018, have been ongoing for months, with negotiations between the US and Iran brokered by the EU and Qatar. Iran said any final deal would have to protect the country’s rights and guarantee the lifting of sanctions, which could free up tens of billions of dollars in oil and gas revenue and boost Iran’s struggling economy. And with energy prices soaring after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a renewed nuclear deal would help lower prices and pump more barrels into Europe.
What to watch
Iran is seeking assurances that the U.S. will not withdraw from a renewed nuclear deal if political disagreements with Tehran arise in the future, Mohammad Maradi, an adviser to the Iranian negotiating team and a professor at the University of Tehran, tells CNN’s Becky Anderson.
See the report here:
Around the area
A painting believed to be by Pablo Picasso and estimated to be worth millions of dollars was found during a drug raid in Iraq, authorities said. The allegedly stolen artwork was discovered on Saturday in the possession of three people in Diyala province in central-eastern Iraq, the state-run Iraqi News Agency (INA) reported. The suspects were arrested on suspicion of involvement in drug trafficking and transportation, according to the General Directorate for Combating Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances of the country’s interior ministry. “A painting belonging to the international painter Picasso was seized from their possession, estimated at millions of dollars,” Colonel Bilal Sobhi, director of the anti-narcotics media office, said in a statement to INA. He added: “The drug trade is linked to many crimes, including murder, theft, kidnapping, rape, gang formation, corruption and family breakdown, until it reaches the antiquities trade.” The raid that led to the discovery of the painting was part of the ministry’s ongoing security operations that began in July. Details about the painting, its ownership history and how it was authenticated have yet to be released. By Amarachi Orie, CNN
Photo of the day
title: “Mahmoud Abbas Fury Over Palestinian Leader S 50 Holocaust Statement Klmat” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-18” author: “James Tso”
Abbas had been asked by a journalist whether he would apologize for the massacre at the 1972 Munich Olympics, when members of the Israeli team were taken hostage by Palestinian gunmen, at the time part of a splinter group of Abbas’s Fatah party, which led to the deaths . by 11 Israeli athletes and coaches, and a West German police officer, after an armed confrontation.
This September marks 50 years since the Munich attack.
Scholz did not immediately react to Abbas on stage, but later tweeted: “I am disgusted by the outrageous comments of Palestinian President Mahmoud #Abbas. For us Germans in particular, any relativization of the uniqueness of the Holocaust is unacceptable and unacceptable. We condemn any attempt denying the crimes of the Holocaust.” Germany’s ambassador to Israel, Steffen Seibert, tweeted that, “What President #Abbas said in Berlin about ’50 holocausts’ is wrong and unacceptable. Germany will never tolerate any attempt to deny the unique dimension of the crimes of the Holocaust.” Israeli leaders also widely condemned the remark, with Prime Minister Yair Lapid saying: “Mahmoud Abbas accuses Israel of committing ’50 Holocausts’ while stood on German soil is not only a moral disgrace, but a monstrous lie.”
“Six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, including one and a half million Jewish children. History will never forgive him,” Lapid wrote.
Israel’s defense minister, Benny Gantz, called Abbas’s words “abhorrent and false.” “His statement is an attempt to distort and rewrite history,” Gantz said.
Global figures also criticized the remarks. The US State Department’s Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism, Ambassador Deborah E. Lipstadt, called them “unacceptable,” adding that “distorting the Holocaust can have dangerous consequences and fuel anti-Semitism.”
Abbas’s staff sought to clarify his comments on Wednesday. “President Mahmoud Abbas reaffirms that the Holocaust is the most heinous crime to have occurred in modern human history,” his office said in a statement.
His response “was not intended to deny the particularity of the Holocaust, which was committed in the last century and is condemned in the strongest terms,” he added.
“What is meant by the crimes that … Abbas spoke of are the massacres committed against the Palestinian people since the Nakba by Israeli forces, crimes that have not stopped to this day,” the statement concluded. This refers to the establishment of Israel in 1948, called al-Nakba or “the catastrophe” by Palestinians, after more than 700,000 Palestinians were either expelled or fled their homes during the resulting Arab-Israeli war.
This is not the first time that Abbas has made comments that are considered anti-Semitic. As a doctoral student in the Soviet Union in the 1980s, Abbas wrote a thesis alleging a secret relationship between Nazis and early supporters of a Jewish state, according to Reuters. His claims resurfaced as an issue in 2018, when he said that Jews living in Europe had suffered since the 11th century “not because of their religion. [but] it was because of their social profession.’
“So the Jewish question that had spread against the Jews all over Europe was not because of their religion, it was because of usury and banking,” he said during the opening address to the Palestinian National Council (PNC), the de facto parliament for Palestine. Liberation Organization.
Following mass outrage, Abbas later apologized for his comments, saying he condemned anti-Semitism and calling the Holocaust the “most heinous crime in history.”
CNN’s Abeer Salman and Amir Tal contributed to this report.
Digestion
Syria denies abducting or “hiding” an American citizen
The Syrian government has denied that it “abducted” or “hided” American citizen Austin Tice, who went missing in the country a decade ago.
Background: Tice, a freelance journalist, was arrested at a checkpoint near the Syrian capital Damascus in August 2012 while reporting on the country’s civil war. US President Joe Biden said last week that the US government knows “with certainty that he was held by the Syrian regime”. The Syrian Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that accusations against the Syrian government that it “captured” Tice are false. The ministry added: “Syria confirms that any dialogue or official communication with the US government will be public and based on respect for the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic and non-interference in its internal affairs.” .
Why it matters: Relations between the United States and Syria have been strained since the start of the Syrian conflict, and Washington has imposed sanctions on several regime officials and militia leaders. He continues to call for a political solution to the war, which has raged for more than 10 years. Securing Tice’s release would also be a boost to Biden’s domestic popularity, as his administration has come under fire for not doing enough to repatriate Americans stranded abroad.
Israel and Turkey to restore full diplomatic ties Israel and Turkey will restore full diplomatic ties between the two countries, including the return of ambassadors and consuls general to their respective posts, Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid announced on Wednesday.
Background: Turkey expelled Israel’s ambassador to the country in 2018 in response to the killing of 60 Palestinians by the Israeli military during protests along the Gaza border, which were sparked by the opening of the US Embassy in Jerusalem. Israel in turn expelled Turkey’s ambassador to Israel. Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s visit to Turkey in March, followed by visits by the foreign ministers of both countries, helped defuse tensions after more than a decade of strained relations. Why it matters: Israel enjoys improved relations with regional countries without any progress toward a two-state solution with the Palestinians. The Biden administration has increasingly made clear that it views the Abraham Accords — a series of normalization agreements signed between Israel and Arab states — as a key element of its Middle East diplomacy and has encouraged other regional states such as Jordan and Egypt to work more closely within its framework.
State Department receives Iran’s response to EU nuclear deal proposal, spokesman says As efforts to revive Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal continue, a US State Department spokesman said on Tuesday that he had received Iran’s response to the latest draft of the Vienna deal presented by the European Union.
Background: Last week EU officials sent the US and Iran what they called the “final text” of a renewed deal to curb Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. On Monday night, Iran responded in writing to the proposal, meeting a deadline set by the bloc. While Iran’s written response has not been made public, the country’s chief negotiator tweeted that a deal was closer than ever, but not yet done. Tehran is seeking guarantees that it will be compensated if a future US president pulls out of the deal, a regional diplomat told CNN on Tuesday. The State Department spokesman did not specify US sentiment after receiving the Iranian response. Why it matters: Efforts to revive the deal, which former US President Donald Trump pulled out of in 2018, have been ongoing for months, with negotiations between the US and Iran brokered by the EU and Qatar. Iran said any final deal would have to protect the country’s rights and guarantee the lifting of sanctions, which could free up tens of billions of dollars in oil and gas revenue and boost Iran’s struggling economy. And with energy prices soaring after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a renewed nuclear deal would help lower prices and pump more barrels into Europe.
What to watch
Iran is seeking assurances that the U.S. will not withdraw from a renewed nuclear deal if political disagreements with Tehran arise in the future, Mohammad Maradi, an adviser to the Iranian negotiating team and a professor at the University of Tehran, tells CNN’s Becky Anderson.
See the report here:
Around the area
A painting believed to be by Pablo Picasso and estimated to be worth millions of dollars was found during a drug raid in Iraq, authorities said. The allegedly stolen artwork was discovered on Saturday in the possession of three people in Diyala province in central-eastern Iraq, the state-run Iraqi News Agency (INA) reported. The suspects were arrested on suspicion of involvement in drug trafficking and transportation, according to the General Directorate for Combating Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances of the country’s interior ministry. “A painting belonging to the international painter Picasso was seized from their possession, estimated at millions of dollars,” Colonel Bilal Sobhi, director of the anti-narcotics media office, said in a statement to INA. He added: “The drug trade is linked to many crimes, including murder, theft, kidnapping, rape, gang formation, corruption and family breakdown, until it reaches the antiquities trade.” The raid that led to the discovery of the painting was part of the ministry’s ongoing security operations that began in July. Details about the painting, its ownership history and how it was authenticated have yet to be released. By Amarachi Orie, CNN
Photo of the day
title: “Mahmoud Abbas Fury Over Palestinian Leader S 50 Holocaust Statement Klmat” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-16” author: “Dana Decker”
Abbas had been asked by a journalist whether he would apologize for the massacre at the 1972 Munich Olympics, when members of the Israeli team were taken hostage by Palestinian gunmen, at the time part of a splinter group of Abbas’s Fatah party, which led to the deaths . by 11 Israeli athletes and coaches, and a West German police officer, after an armed confrontation.
This September marks 50 years since the Munich attack.
Scholz did not immediately react to Abbas on stage, but later tweeted: “I am disgusted by the outrageous comments of Palestinian President Mahmoud #Abbas. For us Germans in particular, any relativization of the uniqueness of the Holocaust is unacceptable and unacceptable. We condemn any attempt denying the crimes of the Holocaust.” Germany’s ambassador to Israel, Steffen Seibert, tweeted that, “What President #Abbas said in Berlin about ’50 holocausts’ is wrong and unacceptable. Germany will never tolerate any attempt to deny the unique dimension of the crimes of the Holocaust.” Israeli leaders also widely condemned the remark, with Prime Minister Yair Lapid saying: “Mahmoud Abbas accuses Israel of committing ’50 Holocausts’ while stood on German soil is not only a moral disgrace, but a monstrous lie.”
“Six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, including one and a half million Jewish children. History will never forgive him,” Lapid wrote.
Israel’s defense minister, Benny Gantz, called Abbas’s words “abhorrent and false.” “His statement is an attempt to distort and rewrite history,” Gantz said.
Global figures also criticized the remarks. The US State Department’s Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism, Ambassador Deborah E. Lipstadt, called them “unacceptable,” adding that “distorting the Holocaust can have dangerous consequences and fuel anti-Semitism.”
Abbas’s staff sought to clarify his comments on Wednesday. “President Mahmoud Abbas reaffirms that the Holocaust is the most heinous crime to have occurred in modern human history,” his office said in a statement.
His response “was not intended to deny the particularity of the Holocaust, which was committed in the last century and is condemned in the strongest terms,” he added.
“What is meant by the crimes that … Abbas spoke of are the massacres committed against the Palestinian people since the Nakba by Israeli forces, crimes that have not stopped to this day,” the statement concluded. This refers to the establishment of Israel in 1948, called al-Nakba or “the catastrophe” by Palestinians, after more than 700,000 Palestinians were either expelled or fled their homes during the resulting Arab-Israeli war.
This is not the first time that Abbas has made comments that are considered anti-Semitic. As a doctoral student in the Soviet Union in the 1980s, Abbas wrote a thesis alleging a secret relationship between Nazis and early supporters of a Jewish state, according to Reuters. His claims resurfaced as an issue in 2018, when he said that Jews living in Europe had suffered since the 11th century “not because of their religion. [but] it was because of their social profession.’
“So the Jewish question that had spread against the Jews all over Europe was not because of their religion, it was because of usury and banking,” he said during the opening address to the Palestinian National Council (PNC), the de facto parliament for Palestine. Liberation Organization.
Following mass outrage, Abbas later apologized for his comments, saying he condemned anti-Semitism and calling the Holocaust the “most heinous crime in history.”
CNN’s Abeer Salman and Amir Tal contributed to this report.
Digestion
Syria denies abducting or “hiding” an American citizen
The Syrian government has denied that it “abducted” or “hided” American citizen Austin Tice, who went missing in the country a decade ago.
Background: Tice, a freelance journalist, was arrested at a checkpoint near the Syrian capital Damascus in August 2012 while reporting on the country’s civil war. US President Joe Biden said last week that the US government knows “with certainty that he was held by the Syrian regime”. The Syrian Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that accusations against the Syrian government that it “captured” Tice are false. The ministry added: “Syria confirms that any dialogue or official communication with the US government will be public and based on respect for the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic and non-interference in its internal affairs.” .
Why it matters: Relations between the United States and Syria have been strained since the start of the Syrian conflict, and Washington has imposed sanctions on several regime officials and militia leaders. He continues to call for a political solution to the war, which has raged for more than 10 years. Securing Tice’s release would also be a boost to Biden’s domestic popularity, as his administration has come under fire for not doing enough to repatriate Americans stranded abroad.
Israel and Turkey to restore full diplomatic ties Israel and Turkey will restore full diplomatic ties between the two countries, including the return of ambassadors and consuls general to their respective posts, Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid announced on Wednesday.
Background: Turkey expelled Israel’s ambassador to the country in 2018 in response to the killing of 60 Palestinians by the Israeli military during protests along the Gaza border, which were sparked by the opening of the US Embassy in Jerusalem. Israel in turn expelled Turkey’s ambassador to Israel. Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s visit to Turkey in March, followed by visits by the foreign ministers of both countries, helped defuse tensions after more than a decade of strained relations. Why it matters: Israel enjoys improved relations with regional countries without any progress toward a two-state solution with the Palestinians. The Biden administration has increasingly made clear that it views the Abraham Accords — a series of normalization agreements signed between Israel and Arab states — as a key element of its Middle East diplomacy and has encouraged other regional states such as Jordan and Egypt to work more closely within its framework.
State Department receives Iran’s response to EU nuclear deal proposal, spokesman says As efforts to revive Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal continue, a US State Department spokesman said on Tuesday that he had received Iran’s response to the latest draft of the Vienna deal presented by the European Union.
Background: Last week EU officials sent the US and Iran what they called the “final text” of a renewed deal to curb Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. On Monday night, Iran responded in writing to the proposal, meeting a deadline set by the bloc. While Iran’s written response has not been made public, the country’s chief negotiator tweeted that a deal was closer than ever, but not yet done. Tehran is seeking guarantees that it will be compensated if a future US president pulls out of the deal, a regional diplomat told CNN on Tuesday. The State Department spokesman did not specify US sentiment after receiving the Iranian response. Why it matters: Efforts to revive the deal, which former US President Donald Trump pulled out of in 2018, have been ongoing for months, with negotiations between the US and Iran brokered by the EU and Qatar. Iran said any final deal would have to protect the country’s rights and guarantee the lifting of sanctions, which could free up tens of billions of dollars in oil and gas revenue and boost Iran’s struggling economy. And with energy prices soaring after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a renewed nuclear deal would help lower prices and pump more barrels into Europe.
What to watch
Iran is seeking assurances that the U.S. will not withdraw from a renewed nuclear deal if political disagreements with Tehran arise in the future, Mohammad Maradi, an adviser to the Iranian negotiating team and a professor at the University of Tehran, tells CNN’s Becky Anderson.
See the report here:
Around the area
A painting believed to be by Pablo Picasso and estimated to be worth millions of dollars was found during a drug raid in Iraq, authorities said. The allegedly stolen artwork was discovered on Saturday in the possession of three people in Diyala province in central-eastern Iraq, the state-run Iraqi News Agency (INA) reported. The suspects were arrested on suspicion of involvement in drug trafficking and transportation, according to the General Directorate for Combating Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances of the country’s interior ministry. “A painting belonging to the international painter Picasso was seized from their possession, estimated at millions of dollars,” Colonel Bilal Sobhi, director of the anti-narcotics media office, said in a statement to INA. He added: “The drug trade is linked to many crimes, including murder, theft, kidnapping, rape, gang formation, corruption and family breakdown, until it reaches the antiquities trade.” The raid that led to the discovery of the painting was part of the ministry’s ongoing security operations that began in July. Details about the painting, its ownership history and how it was authenticated have yet to be released. By Amarachi Orie, CNN
Photo of the day
title: “Mahmoud Abbas Fury Over Palestinian Leader S 50 Holocaust Statement Klmat” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-08” author: “Daniel Mathis”
Abbas had been asked by a journalist whether he would apologize for the massacre at the 1972 Munich Olympics, when members of the Israeli team were taken hostage by Palestinian gunmen, at the time part of a splinter group of Abbas’s Fatah party, which led to the deaths . by 11 Israeli athletes and coaches, and a West German police officer, after an armed confrontation.
This September marks 50 years since the Munich attack.
Scholz did not immediately react to Abbas on stage, but later tweeted: “I am disgusted by the outrageous comments of Palestinian President Mahmoud #Abbas. For us Germans in particular, any relativization of the uniqueness of the Holocaust is unacceptable and unacceptable. We condemn any attempt denying the crimes of the Holocaust.” Germany’s ambassador to Israel, Steffen Seibert, tweeted that, “What President #Abbas said in Berlin about ’50 holocausts’ is wrong and unacceptable. Germany will never tolerate any attempt to deny the unique dimension of the crimes of the Holocaust.” Israeli leaders also widely condemned the remark, with Prime Minister Yair Lapid saying: “Mahmoud Abbas accuses Israel of committing ’50 Holocausts’ while stood on German soil is not only a moral disgrace, but a monstrous lie.”
“Six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, including one and a half million Jewish children. History will never forgive him,” Lapid wrote.
Israel’s defense minister, Benny Gantz, called Abbas’s words “abhorrent and false.” “His statement is an attempt to distort and rewrite history,” Gantz said.
Global figures also criticized the remarks. The US State Department’s Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism, Ambassador Deborah E. Lipstadt, called them “unacceptable,” adding that “distorting the Holocaust can have dangerous consequences and fuel anti-Semitism.”
Abbas’s staff sought to clarify his comments on Wednesday. “President Mahmoud Abbas reaffirms that the Holocaust is the most heinous crime to have occurred in modern human history,” his office said in a statement.
His response “was not intended to deny the particularity of the Holocaust, which was committed in the last century and is condemned in the strongest terms,” he added.
“What is meant by the crimes that … Abbas spoke of are the massacres committed against the Palestinian people since the Nakba by Israeli forces, crimes that have not stopped to this day,” the statement concluded. This refers to the establishment of Israel in 1948, called al-Nakba or “the catastrophe” by Palestinians, after more than 700,000 Palestinians were either expelled or fled their homes during the resulting Arab-Israeli war.
This is not the first time that Abbas has made comments that are considered anti-Semitic. As a doctoral student in the Soviet Union in the 1980s, Abbas wrote a thesis alleging a secret relationship between Nazis and early supporters of a Jewish state, according to Reuters. His claims resurfaced as an issue in 2018, when he said that Jews living in Europe had suffered since the 11th century “not because of their religion. [but] it was because of their social profession.’
“So the Jewish question that had spread against the Jews all over Europe was not because of their religion, it was because of usury and banking,” he said during the opening address to the Palestinian National Council (PNC), the de facto parliament for Palestine. Liberation Organization.
Following mass outrage, Abbas later apologized for his comments, saying he condemned anti-Semitism and calling the Holocaust the “most heinous crime in history.”
CNN’s Abeer Salman and Amir Tal contributed to this report.
Digestion
Syria denies abducting or “hiding” an American citizen
The Syrian government has denied that it “abducted” or “hided” American citizen Austin Tice, who went missing in the country a decade ago.
Background: Tice, a freelance journalist, was arrested at a checkpoint near the Syrian capital Damascus in August 2012 while reporting on the country’s civil war. US President Joe Biden said last week that the US government knows “with certainty that he was held by the Syrian regime”. The Syrian Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that accusations against the Syrian government that it “captured” Tice are false. The ministry added: “Syria confirms that any dialogue or official communication with the US government will be public and based on respect for the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic and non-interference in its internal affairs.” .
Why it matters: Relations between the United States and Syria have been strained since the start of the Syrian conflict, and Washington has imposed sanctions on several regime officials and militia leaders. He continues to call for a political solution to the war, which has raged for more than 10 years. Securing Tice’s release would also be a boost to Biden’s domestic popularity, as his administration has come under fire for not doing enough to repatriate Americans stranded abroad.
Israel and Turkey to restore full diplomatic ties Israel and Turkey will restore full diplomatic ties between the two countries, including the return of ambassadors and consuls general to their respective posts, Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid announced on Wednesday.
Background: Turkey expelled Israel’s ambassador to the country in 2018 in response to the killing of 60 Palestinians by the Israeli military during protests along the Gaza border, which were sparked by the opening of the US Embassy in Jerusalem. Israel in turn expelled Turkey’s ambassador to Israel. Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s visit to Turkey in March, followed by visits by the foreign ministers of both countries, helped defuse tensions after more than a decade of strained relations. Why it matters: Israel enjoys improved relations with regional countries without any progress toward a two-state solution with the Palestinians. The Biden administration has increasingly made clear that it views the Abraham Accords — a series of normalization agreements signed between Israel and Arab states — as a key element of its Middle East diplomacy and has encouraged other regional states such as Jordan and Egypt to work more closely within its framework.
State Department receives Iran’s response to EU nuclear deal proposal, spokesman says As efforts to revive Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal continue, a US State Department spokesman said on Tuesday that he had received Iran’s response to the latest draft of the Vienna deal presented by the European Union.
Background: Last week EU officials sent the US and Iran what they called the “final text” of a renewed deal to curb Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. On Monday night, Iran responded in writing to the proposal, meeting a deadline set by the bloc. While Iran’s written response has not been made public, the country’s chief negotiator tweeted that a deal was closer than ever, but not yet done. Tehran is seeking guarantees that it will be compensated if a future US president pulls out of the deal, a regional diplomat told CNN on Tuesday. The State Department spokesman did not specify US sentiment after receiving the Iranian response. Why it matters: Efforts to revive the deal, which former US President Donald Trump pulled out of in 2018, have been ongoing for months, with negotiations between the US and Iran brokered by the EU and Qatar. Iran said any final deal would have to protect the country’s rights and guarantee the lifting of sanctions, which could free up tens of billions of dollars in oil and gas revenue and boost Iran’s struggling economy. And with energy prices soaring after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a renewed nuclear deal would help lower prices and pump more barrels into Europe.
What to watch
Iran is seeking assurances that the U.S. will not withdraw from a renewed nuclear deal if political disagreements with Tehran arise in the future, Mohammad Maradi, an adviser to the Iranian negotiating team and a professor at the University of Tehran, tells CNN’s Becky Anderson.
See the report here:
Around the area
A painting believed to be by Pablo Picasso and estimated to be worth millions of dollars was found during a drug raid in Iraq, authorities said. The allegedly stolen artwork was discovered on Saturday in the possession of three people in Diyala province in central-eastern Iraq, the state-run Iraqi News Agency (INA) reported. The suspects were arrested on suspicion of involvement in drug trafficking and transportation, according to the General Directorate for Combating Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances of the country’s interior ministry. “A painting belonging to the international painter Picasso was seized from their possession, estimated at millions of dollars,” Colonel Bilal Sobhi, director of the anti-narcotics media office, said in a statement to INA. He added: “The drug trade is linked to many crimes, including murder, theft, kidnapping, rape, gang formation, corruption and family breakdown, until it reaches the antiquities trade.” The raid that led to the discovery of the painting was part of the ministry’s ongoing security operations that began in July. Details about the painting, its ownership history and how it was authenticated have yet to be released. By Amarachi Orie, CNN
Photo of the day
title: “Mahmoud Abbas Fury Over Palestinian Leader S 50 Holocaust Statement Klmat” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-10” author: “Kurt Wertz”
Abbas had been asked by a journalist whether he would apologize for the massacre at the 1972 Munich Olympics, when members of the Israeli team were taken hostage by Palestinian gunmen, at the time part of a splinter group of Abbas’s Fatah party, which led to the deaths . by 11 Israeli athletes and coaches, and a West German police officer, after an armed confrontation.
This September marks 50 years since the Munich attack.
Scholz did not immediately react to Abbas on stage, but later tweeted: “I am disgusted by the outrageous comments of Palestinian President Mahmoud #Abbas. For us Germans in particular, any relativization of the uniqueness of the Holocaust is unacceptable and unacceptable. We condemn any attempt denying the crimes of the Holocaust.” Germany’s ambassador to Israel, Steffen Seibert, tweeted that, “What President #Abbas said in Berlin about ’50 holocausts’ is wrong and unacceptable. Germany will never tolerate any attempt to deny the unique dimension of the crimes of the Holocaust.” Israeli leaders also widely condemned the remark, with Prime Minister Yair Lapid saying: “Mahmoud Abbas accuses Israel of committing ’50 Holocausts’ while stood on German soil is not only a moral disgrace, but a monstrous lie.”
“Six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, including one and a half million Jewish children. History will never forgive him,” Lapid wrote.
Israel’s defense minister, Benny Gantz, called Abbas’s words “abhorrent and false.” “His statement is an attempt to distort and rewrite history,” Gantz said.
Global figures also criticized the remarks. The US State Department’s Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism, Ambassador Deborah E. Lipstadt, called them “unacceptable,” adding that “distorting the Holocaust can have dangerous consequences and fuel anti-Semitism.”
Abbas’s staff sought to clarify his comments on Wednesday. “President Mahmoud Abbas reaffirms that the Holocaust is the most heinous crime to have occurred in modern human history,” his office said in a statement.
His response “was not intended to deny the particularity of the Holocaust, which was committed in the last century and is condemned in the strongest terms,” he added.
“What is meant by the crimes that … Abbas spoke of are the massacres committed against the Palestinian people since the Nakba by Israeli forces, crimes that have not stopped to this day,” the statement concluded. This refers to the establishment of Israel in 1948, called al-Nakba or “the catastrophe” by Palestinians, after more than 700,000 Palestinians were either expelled or fled their homes during the resulting Arab-Israeli war.
This is not the first time that Abbas has made comments that are considered anti-Semitic. As a doctoral student in the Soviet Union in the 1980s, Abbas wrote a thesis alleging a secret relationship between Nazis and early supporters of a Jewish state, according to Reuters. His claims resurfaced as an issue in 2018, when he said that Jews living in Europe had suffered since the 11th century “not because of their religion. [but] it was because of their social profession.’
“So the Jewish question that had spread against the Jews all over Europe was not because of their religion, it was because of usury and banking,” he said during the opening address to the Palestinian National Council (PNC), the de facto parliament for Palestine. Liberation Organization.
Following mass outrage, Abbas later apologized for his comments, saying he condemned anti-Semitism and calling the Holocaust the “most heinous crime in history.”
CNN’s Abeer Salman and Amir Tal contributed to this report.
Digestion
Syria denies abducting or “hiding” an American citizen
The Syrian government has denied that it “abducted” or “hided” American citizen Austin Tice, who went missing in the country a decade ago.
Background: Tice, a freelance journalist, was arrested at a checkpoint near the Syrian capital Damascus in August 2012 while reporting on the country’s civil war. US President Joe Biden said last week that the US government knows “with certainty that he was held by the Syrian regime”. The Syrian Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that accusations against the Syrian government that it “captured” Tice are false. The ministry added: “Syria confirms that any dialogue or official communication with the US government will be public and based on respect for the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic and non-interference in its internal affairs.” .
Why it matters: Relations between the United States and Syria have been strained since the start of the Syrian conflict, and Washington has imposed sanctions on several regime officials and militia leaders. He continues to call for a political solution to the war, which has raged for more than 10 years. Securing Tice’s release would also be a boost to Biden’s domestic popularity, as his administration has come under fire for not doing enough to repatriate Americans stranded abroad.
Israel and Turkey to restore full diplomatic ties Israel and Turkey will restore full diplomatic ties between the two countries, including the return of ambassadors and consuls general to their respective posts, Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid announced on Wednesday.
Background: Turkey expelled Israel’s ambassador to the country in 2018 in response to the killing of 60 Palestinians by the Israeli military during protests along the Gaza border, which were sparked by the opening of the US Embassy in Jerusalem. Israel in turn expelled Turkey’s ambassador to Israel. Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s visit to Turkey in March, followed by visits by the foreign ministers of both countries, helped defuse tensions after more than a decade of strained relations. Why it matters: Israel enjoys improved relations with regional countries without any progress toward a two-state solution with the Palestinians. The Biden administration has increasingly made clear that it views the Abraham Accords — a series of normalization agreements signed between Israel and Arab states — as a key element of its Middle East diplomacy and has encouraged other regional states such as Jordan and Egypt to work more closely within its framework.
State Department receives Iran’s response to EU nuclear deal proposal, spokesman says As efforts to revive Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal continue, a US State Department spokesman said on Tuesday that he had received Iran’s response to the latest draft of the Vienna deal presented by the European Union.
Background: Last week EU officials sent the US and Iran what they called the “final text” of a renewed deal to curb Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. On Monday night, Iran responded in writing to the proposal, meeting a deadline set by the bloc. While Iran’s written response has not been made public, the country’s chief negotiator tweeted that a deal was closer than ever, but not yet done. Tehran is seeking guarantees that it will be compensated if a future US president pulls out of the deal, a regional diplomat told CNN on Tuesday. The State Department spokesman did not specify US sentiment after receiving the Iranian response. Why it matters: Efforts to revive the deal, which former US President Donald Trump pulled out of in 2018, have been ongoing for months, with negotiations between the US and Iran brokered by the EU and Qatar. Iran said any final deal would have to protect the country’s rights and guarantee the lifting of sanctions, which could free up tens of billions of dollars in oil and gas revenue and boost Iran’s struggling economy. And with energy prices soaring after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a renewed nuclear deal would help lower prices and pump more barrels into Europe.
What to watch
Iran is seeking assurances that the U.S. will not withdraw from a renewed nuclear deal if political disagreements with Tehran arise in the future, Mohammad Maradi, an adviser to the Iranian negotiating team and a professor at the University of Tehran, tells CNN’s Becky Anderson.
See the report here:
Around the area
A painting believed to be by Pablo Picasso and estimated to be worth millions of dollars was found during a drug raid in Iraq, authorities said. The allegedly stolen artwork was discovered on Saturday in the possession of three people in Diyala province in central-eastern Iraq, the state-run Iraqi News Agency (INA) reported. The suspects were arrested on suspicion of involvement in drug trafficking and transportation, according to the General Directorate for Combating Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances of the country’s interior ministry. “A painting belonging to the international painter Picasso was seized from their possession, estimated at millions of dollars,” Colonel Bilal Sobhi, director of the anti-narcotics media office, said in a statement to INA. He added: “The drug trade is linked to many crimes, including murder, theft, kidnapping, rape, gang formation, corruption and family breakdown, until it reaches the antiquities trade.” The raid that led to the discovery of the painting was part of the ministry’s ongoing security operations that began in July. Details about the painting, its ownership history and how it was authenticated have yet to be released. By Amarachi Orie, CNN
