The Palestinian Authority’s Finance Ministry put out a statement on Sunday, denying terror group Hamas was responsible for at least 350 partygoers slain at the Re’im music festival massacre.
The statement says that “preliminary Israeli police investigations” showed that Israeli claims in the media were false, followed up by saying that this was then 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
The statement continues by claiming that the investigations showed that Israeli helicopters bombed Israeli civilians on October 7 and that this caused “great destruction.”
Palestinian Authority invokes the ‘Hannibal Directive’
They claim this was after the Hannibal Directive was activated, which they claim allowed “the occupation police and army to kill everyone”.
The Hannibal Directive dictated that terrorists suspected of kidnapping Israelis are targeted even at risk of harming the hostages, the IDF canceled the directive in 2016.
They then call on the UN and other country leaders to follow up on this investigation and alter their positions accordingly.
Netanyahu hits back
Prime Minister Netanyahu responded later that day, “Today, the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah said something utterly preposterous. It denied that it was Hamas that carried out the horrible massacre at the nature festival near Gaza. It accused Israel of carrying out that massacre. This is a complete reversal of the truth.”
“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.”
Mahmoud Abbas received his doctorate from the Soviet Academy of Sciences’s Institute of Oriental Studies for his 1982 thesis titled The Relationship Between Zionists and Nazis, 1933-1945, in which he questions not only the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust but questioned whether the gas chambers even existed.
Netanyahu continued “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.”
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