The Real Dispute Driving the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
As the U.S. moves its embassy to Jerusalem, and the tragedy at the Gaza border escalates, Israelis and Palestinians continue to contest each other’s rights not just to that city, but to legitimacy itself.
On April 30, Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority, provoked an international uproar when he delivered a speech before the Palestinian National Council in which he blamed the Holocaust on Jewish “social behavior” like greedy banking practices. The European Union promptly denounced Abbas; former Secretary of State John Kerry tweeted that there can be “no excuses for antisemitism” [sic]; the dovish Jewish organization J Street warned that “diatribes like this” undermine legitimate Palestinian aspirations; and a New York Times editorial called for his resignation. In fact, Abbas’s contempt for Holocaust historicity was hardly new: His 1982 doctoral thesis trafficked in outright Holocaust denial, questioning the number of victims and claiming that Zionists collaborated with the Nazis.
But the
