“The Holocaust was the most heinous crime to have occurred against humanity,” read the announcement disseminated by the office of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas April 27, the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day. Abbas’ statement is surprising; not because of the timing — during a severe crisis with Israel — but because of the claims and speculation that he is a Holocaust denier himself.
The perception of Abbas as a denier of the Holocaust is common mainly among right-wing Israeli activists. It's based on excerpts from the doctoral thesis he wrote at a university in Moscow at the beginning of the 1980s. This work, titled, "The Connection between the Nazis and the Leaders of the Zionist Movement (1933-1945)," was the basis for the book he wrote and published in Jordan in 1984, titled, "The Other Side: the Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism."
