July 29, 1998
The claim by Palestinian Authority cabinet minister
Hanan Ashrawi that no Palestinian Arabs have distorted or denied the
Holocaust is the latest is a long list of statements by Ashrawi that have
played fast and loose with the facts.
Ashrawi’s latest remarks came in response to the Zionist
Organization of America’s campaign protesting the numerous statements by
Palestinian Arab leaders and the official Palestinian Authority media
distorting or denying the Holocaust.
For example, an article in the official PA newspaper Al-Hayat
Al-Jadeeda on July 2, 1998 charged: “The truth is that the persecution of
the Jews is a deceitful myth which the Jews have labeled the Holocaust and
have exploited to get sympathy”; in January, PA Communications Minister
Imad al-Falouji and PA general-secretary Ahmed Abdel-Rahman were among the
leaders of a rally in support of Roger Garaudy, who was on trial in Paris
for denying the Holocaust; on August 25, 1997, a program broadcast on PA
Television claimed that: “no more than 400,000” Jews were killed by the
Nazis; and in a speech on May 10, 1997, the eve of Israeli Independence
Day, Yasir Arafat said that the anniversary of the creation of Israel is
“Palestine Holocaust Day” and “the Palestinian people were subjected to the
worst holocaust in history.” (Ha’aretz, May 11, 1997)
Yet Ashrawi claims such denials never happened. The New York Times
reported (July 24, 1998): “In a telephone interview, the Palestinian
Authority Minister for Higher Education and Research, Hanan Ashrawi, said
she knew of no Palestinian officials who had made statements distorting the
Holocaust. ‘We don’t deny the Holocaust,’ Ms. Ashrawi said. ‘We don’t
denigrate it.'”
In her interview with the New York Times, Ashrawi also falsely
claimed “that the Palestinian Authority had no official newspaper and that
the editors of Al-Hayat Al-Jadida were completely independent.”
In fact, the Israeli Government describes Al-Hayat Al-Jadida as
“the official PA newspaper”; AIPAC’s newsletter, Near East Report (July 13,
1998) calls it “the official PA newspaper”; the Jerusalem Post routinely
refers to it as “the official PA newspaper”; and Yigal Carmon, a former
adviser to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who runs the Middle East Media and
Research Institute which monitors the Palestinian Arab media, Al-Hayat
Al-Jadida is completely controlled by the PA and its staff receive their
salaries from the PA.
Previous statements by Ashrawi:
- “Any kind of Jewish immigration into Israel is going to take
place at the expense of the Palestinians, particularly given the fact that
the settlement policy is still ongoing.”–From Ashrawi’s remarks at a meeting of the Center for Strategic
and International Studies in Washington, D.C., October 9, 1997 - Ashrawi was interviewed on the PA’s official radio station
“Voice of Palestine” on August 12, 1997 (transcript provided by the Israel
Government Press Office). She was asked, “To the best of your knowledge,
is it possible to extradite a Palestinian to Israel?” She replied: “This
is simply impossible. It has never happened and will never happen. The
Palestinian leadership is determined and has taken very clear decisions on
this matter. It has never happened that the Palestinian security or
military forces have extradited a Palestinian to the Israeli authorities.
It is unthinkable and is not even being considered.” - “In This Side of Peace, Ashrawi repeatedly denounces
Israeli assaults on Palestinians, but in describing 30 years of
Mideast history she never mentions a single PLO terrorist attack. There is
no reference to the fatal attack on 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich
Olympics in 1972. Or to the 1974 hostage-taking at a Ma’alot school in
which 24 people were killed and 64 wounded. Or to the 1976 Entebbe
hijacking in which four Israelis and seven terrorists were killed as
Israeli forces rescued more than 100 hostages. Or to the 1978 Coastal Road
Massacre, in which 21 Israelis died after terrorists commandeered a bus on
the Haifa-Tel Aviv highway.”–Natalie Weinstein’s review of Ashrawi’s book, This Side of Peace,
in the Jewish Bulletin of Northern California, June 9, 1995 - “I don’t know of any Arabs that have demanded Israel be thrown
into the sea. The only ones I have ever heard say that were Israelis
supposedly quoting Arabs.”–Ashrawi, speaking in Detroit, quoted in the Jerusalem Post, June 2, 1995
- In an interview on the McNeil-Lehrer News Hour on September 3,
1993, Ashrawi was asked about the PLO’s murder of hundreds of Palestinian
Arabs, some of them accused of ‘collaborating’ with Israel. She replied
that the murders were “a ticklish issue..they can’t just be dismissed as
acts of violence.” - Referring to the Palestinian Arab intifada , which
included thousands of Arab firebomb attacks against Israelis as well as
shootings and stabbings of Israelis, Ashrawi said:- “Only the voice of power works…We’ve been very reasonable and
very gentle and nonviolent, and look what they got us: more suffering for
our people…”— Ashrawi quoted in the New York Times, August 23, 1992
- Violence “is not what the uprising is about…it is essentially
a human voice, a real cry from the heart…There were, of course,
individual acts of violence…Desperate people commit desperate acts.”— Interview with Ashrawi in the New York Times, Nov.17, 1991
- “Only the voice of power works…We’ve been very reasonable and
