WHY IS ABBAS GETTING A FREE PASS ON HIS HOLOCAUST DENIAL?

The silence is deafening as Holocaust denying political leader gets free pass By Neal M. Sher and Morton A. Klein

Despite the smiling images from Sharm el-Sheikh, the fact is that Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority, has taken no demonstrable steps to dismantle and disarm the vast Palestinian terror networks, end the incitement, or arrest terrorists. And, although his rhetoric even after his election has been troublesome (calling for a "big jihad", referring to Israel as the "Zionist enemy", making it clear he will not use force against terrorists and endorsing the policies of Yassir Arafat), the Administration and Congress are falling over themselves to throw vast sums of money his way. President Bush has promised $350 million to Abbas, more than four times that given by the Clinton Administration.

Just as Abbas' troubling words and lack of anti-terror action have been ignored, so has another distinctly dark part of his pedigree: the undeniable fact that he is a blatant and unrepentant Holocaust denier. In 1984, he wrote "The Other Side: The Secret Relations Between Nazism and the Leadership of the Zionist Movement". In this pseudo-historical account, which was based on his 1982 PhD. dissertation, Abbas contended that Zionist leaders gave the green light to the Nazis to do as it pleased with the Jews as long as immigration to Palestine was allowed.

Moreover, he endorsed the outrageous contention that the Jews intentionally inflated the numbers of those slaughtered in order to engender support for the State of Israel. Citing other historical quackery, Abbas suggested that the number of Jewish victims might have been as few as "only a few hundred thousand". And worse, he embraced the discredited work of Robert Faurisson who shamelessly insisted that the Nazis did not use gas chambers

It's bad enough that the mainstream press has not taken him to task. But how in the name of the memory of martyred 6 million can one explain that Jewish leaders, Holocaust scholars and advocates have given him an unprecedented pass on so important an issue? It's beyond disappointing: it's downright offensive and sets a dangerous precedent.