German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was quick to condemn Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas’s accusation that Israel had committed “50 holocausts” against the Palestinians. But if Scholz were truly disgusted by Holocaust distortion, he could immediately announce that Germany will cease all aid to the Palestinians until they publicly commit to eradicating all forms of Holocaust distortion and misappropriation.
As Palestinian Media Watch has conclusively shown, Abbas and other P.A., PLO and Fatah leaders regularly distort the Holocaust, accuse Jews and Israel of acting like the Nazis and invoke Nazi terminology to describe the alleged actions of Israelis towards the Palestinians.
Abbas’s Fatah Movement even made an anti-Semitic “educational documentary” about the Holocaust, in which they claim that the Jews placed themselves in ghettos “out of arrogance and disgust for non-Jews,” and that in these ghettos they “schemed to exploit the others’ material and human resources.” The Jews, according to Abbas’s Fatah, were hated “because of their racism and their filthy behavior.”
Fatah added that during the Holocaust the rich Jews “led the project to enslave humanity and exploit it, while trading in the blood of their own people, enjoying their weakness, and creating ties with those [Nazis] who burned them, in order to turn them into a tool of production and to accumulate wealth.”
Despite the multiple similar outrageous remarks made by the PA/PLO/Fatah organizations and their leaders in the past, Germany has remained one of the biggest, if not the biggest, donors to the PA/PLO.
According to the E.U. aid tracker, from 2011 through 2020 Germany was the biggest E.U. donor country to the Palestinians, donating over €1.3 billion.
In fact, according to the European Union, annual German aid to the Palestinians via the E.U. mechanisms grew from €83.44 million in 2015 to €197.6 million in 2020.
And the German aid keeps flowing.
In addition to the aid Germany gave the PA/PLO via the E.U. system, it has also donated tens of millions of additional euros since the beginning of 2021.
Just last month, P.A. Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki announced a new agreement between the German government and the PLO totaling €20 million, according to official P.A. TV.
In September 2021, Germany committed to donate approximately €100 million to the P.A., according to Palestinian daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida.
In August 2021, Germany, together with others, gave a €25 million grant to the P.A. education sector.
“[P.A.] Minister of Education Marwan Awratani signed a €25 million grant with German [KfW] Development Bank in Palestine Office Director David Kunze, which is being given by Germany in partnership with Ireland, Finland, and Norway, in order to aid the [PA] education sector,” reported Al-Hayat Al-Jadida on Aug. 27, 2021.
In April 2021, Germany, together with others, concluded a number of agreements with the P.A. in the amount of $52 million.
According to a post on the Facebook page of the P.A. Prime Minister’s Office, Germany committed to give the P.A. aid totaling approximately €56 million for 2021.
The German aid to the Palestinians carries substantial influence, and if the Germans, and in particular Chancellor Scholz, are truly disgusted by the manner in which the PA/PLO/Abbas’ Fatah distort and misappropriate the Holocaust, they should condition future German aid to the P.A. on the complete eradication of these heinous expressions.
IDF Lt. Col. (res) Maurice Hirsch is the director of legal strategies at Palestinian Media Watch.
This article was originally published by Palestinian Media Watch.
