The Palestinian Authority’s Foreign Ministry deleted a statement it published on the web on Sunday, denying that Hamas killed at least 350 partygoers at the Re’im music festival massacre when it infiltrated southern Israel on October 7.
The PA on Monday, however, did not issue any statement publicly or retract its charges. The PA has yet to condemn the October 7 attack in which Hamas massacred over 1,200 in southern Israel and took over 239 hostage.
It had falsely alleged in its statement that “preliminary Israeli police investigations” showed that Hamas was not to blame for the attack. The accusations against Hamas for the music festivals deaths, it charged, are a ploy used by “the occupation to justify its aggression against Gaza.”
PA President Abbas denies 10/7 massacre & blames Israel for atrocities.Weeks ago - he repeated traditional Holocaust denial, blaming Jews/Zionists for it; peddled systematic severing of Jewish indigeneity & connection to ancestral home Israel & ME. Not moderate. Antisemitic. pic.twitter.com/WUN0Meorp4
— מיכל קוטלר-וונש | Michal Cotler-Wunsh (@CotlerWunsh) November 19, 2023
Netanyahu hits back
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blasted the “utterly preposterous” PA statement, explaining that it was “a complete reversal of truth.”
He noted that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas [Abu Mazen] “who in the past has denied the existence of the Holocaust, today is denying the existence of the Hamas massacre, and that’s unacceptable.”
“My goal is that the day after we destroy Hamas, any future civil administration in Gaza does not deny the massacre, does not educate its children to become terrorists, does not pay for terrorists and does not tell its children that their ultimate goal in life is to see the destruction and dissolution of the State of Israel.
“That’s not acceptable and that is not the way to achieve peace,” Netanyahu said.
Opposition leader and former prime Minister MK Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid) said he backed Netanyahu’s firm “condemnation of the abominable and false announcement by the PA Foreign Ministry.
“Those who deny the massacre make themselves complicit in the worst crime against the Jewish people since the Holocaust,” Lapid stressed.