Paris mayor revokes Mahmoud Abbas’ top honor after he spreads Holocaust falsehoods
“With manifest will, you denied the genocide of the Jewish populations of Europe by the Nazi regime and its allies,” Anne Hidalgo wrote to the Palestinian leader
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas receives the Grand Vermeil Medal, highest honor of the City of Paris, in honor of his work for peace by Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo in Paris, Sept. 21, 2015. (Onur Usta/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
By Ron Kampeas September 8, 2023
(JTA) — In a blistering letter, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo told Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that he no longer deserves a medal she gave him eight years ago — her city’s top honor — because of what she called his willful Holocaust denial.
Hidalgo’s letter to Abbas, delivered on Thursday, comes after U.S., German and Israeli diplomats as well as U.S. Jewish groups across the political spectrum condemned a speech Abbas delivered in which he peddled falsehoods about the Holocaust and distortions about Judaism and the Jews.
Abbas said that Adolf Hitler and antisemites before him hated and persecuted the Jews not because of who they were but because of “their role in society” having to do with “usury, money, and so on and so on.”
“On Sept. 21, 2015, I received you at Paris City Hall, in the presence of my executive and the leaders of the council’s political factions,” Hidalgo wrote. “On that occasion I bestowed upon you the Grand Vermeil de Paris medal, the city’s highest distinction. The positions you hold contradict our universal values and the historical truth of the Shoah, therefore you may no longer maintain this distinction.”
It was not clear from the letter whether Hidalgo expects Abbas to return the medal. Her letter was posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, by Yonathan Arfi, the president of the CRIF, the umbrella body for French Jewry. “This important decision honors Paris and its constant engagement against antisemitism,” Arfi wrote.
In her letter, Hidalgo made clear that she does not accept that Abbas was misunderstood, as he has claimed when in the past he made similar statements offensive to Jews. She said that “with manifest will, you denied the genocide of the Jewish populations of Europe by the Nazi regime and its allies.
“As you know, the Shoah is part of Paris’ history,” she wrote, using the Hebrew term for the Holocaust. “In our city, during the Second World War, tens of thousands of Jewish children, women and men were rounded up, deported and exterminated in death camps.”
Hidalgo said the city would maintain its sisterhood relationship with three Palestinian cities — Bethlehem, Jericho and Jenin — in the spirit of advancing Middle East peace.
Abbas, 87, delivered the speech last month to a body of his political party, Fatah. It was translated and posted on social media on Wednesday by MEMRI, a pro-Israel group that tracks depictions of Jews and Israel in the Arab world and translates material in Arabic. Other agencies verified the translation.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
