Mahmoud Abbas
Mahmoud AbbasReuters

The Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist organizations on Saturday strongly condemned Germany’s announcement about an investigation against Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas over Holocaust denial, claiming Germany caved to an “Israeli-led incitement campaign”.

On Friday, German police opened an investigation against Abbas after he said Israel committed "50 holocausts" against Palestinian Arabs during a meeting in Berlin with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

Husam Badran, a spokesman for Hamas, said in a statement quoted by the PA’s official Wafa news agency that “Hamas rejects and condemns the German Police’s announcement of opening an investigation into President Mahmoud Abbas in light of his remarks relating to the crimes of the Israeli occupiers against the Palestinian people.”

“Once again,” Badran added, “the international powers prove their bias towards the Israeli occupation and their denial of the historical rights of our Palestinian people, and their suffering for more than seven decades, which began with the uprooting of our people from their land and forcing them to live as refugees in exile. This is in addition to dozens of massacres against Palestinian civilians, women, children and others, and the arrest and injury of hundreds of thousands of our people over the years.”

The Hamas official said that no matter how these powers try to distort the truth and turn a deaf ear about what has befallen the Palestinian people and deal in double standards, they will not obliterate the Palestinian narrative, no matter how long it takes, and they do.

Khaled al-Batsh, a senior official of the Islamic Jihad, also denounced the German investigation against Abbas, claiming that what the PA chairman had said “is part of the national Palestinian narrative that our people are defending against the entire world in order to expose the crimes of the occupiers.”

Prime Minister Yair Lapid blasted Abbas over the comments, saying, “Mahmoud Abbas accusing Israel of having committed ‘50 Holocausts’ while standing 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,” he added.

Germany’s ambassador to Israel, Steffen Seibert, also condemned the PA chairman and tweeted, “What President Abbas said in Berlin about ‘50 holocausts’ is wrong and unacceptable.”

“Germany will never stand for any attempt to deny the singular dimension of the crimes of the Holocaust,” stressed Seibert.

A statement from Abbas' office later clarified that he "reiterates and emphasizes that the Holocaust was the most abominable crime that occurred in humanity's modern history."