Mahmoud Abbas and the Art of Getting Away With Murder

After Mahmoud Abbas shared his unorthodox account of the Holocaust last week—arguing, among other gems, that it was the “social behavior” of the Jews that brought about their great calamity—condemnations were fast and furious. “Let Abbas’s vile words be his last as Palestinian leader,” thundered The New York Times, sounding more like Michael Corleone giving Frankie Five Angels his next hit job than the editorial board of the Paper of Record. J Street, the progressive Jewish lobby, issued a strong condemnation that addressed Abbas’s remarks as both “incendiary” and “offensive.” Even the United Nations Security Council, that pro-Israel bastion, flirted with a denouncement, an effort that was finally aborted when Kuwait objected on the grounds that protesting Holocaust revisionism was, you know, “one-sided.”

The sound and the fury were not in vain: Sensing the ground shake under his feet, Abbas apologized. “If people were offended by my statement,” he said, “especially people of the Jewish faith, I apologize to them. I would like to assure everyone that it was not my intention to do so, and to reiterate my full respect for the Jewish faith, as well as other monotheistic faiths.”

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