Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo has stripped Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas of the French capital’s highest honor after he made remarks about the Holocaust.
Abbas could no longer hold the Grand Vermeil medal after he “justified the extermination of the Jews of Europe” in World War II, her office said.
“The comments you made are contrary to our universal values and the historical truth of the Shoah,” Hidalgo said in a letter to Abbas sent on Thursday. “You can therefore no longer hold this distinction.”
The text of the letter was published on social media by Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF), an umbrella organisation representing French Jews.
“This important decision honours Paris and the city’s ongoing commitment against anti-Semitism,” he tweeted.
In recent remarks that were widely condemned, Abbas claimed Jews had been murdered in the Holocaust because of their “social role” and not religion, saying it was “not true” that Adolf Hitler “killed the Jews because they were Jews”.
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He claimed Europeans targeted Jews “because of usury and money”. Abbas made the comments during a speech late last month before senior members of his Fatah party in Ramallah, and a video of the event surfaced this week.
“You […] justified the extermination of the Jews of Europe during World War II with a clear desire to deny the genocide,” Hidalgo said in the letter.
“I vehemently condemn your remarks, no cause can justify revisionism and negationism,” she added. Abbas had been given the award during a 2015 visit to Paris.