The Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, has decided to revoke an award that was given several years ago to Mahmoud Abbas: “Paris revokes Mahmoud Abbas’ honorary medal, cites Holocaust denial,” Jerusalem Post, September 8, 2023:
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo on Thursday revoked the prestigious Medal of the City of Paris awarded to Mahmoud Abbas in 2015, according to an open letter she wrote to the Palestinian Authority president on Thursday evening.
In the letter, obtained by Israeli and French media, Hidalgo wrote that she is revoking Abbas’ medal, known in French as La médaille Grand Vermeil de Paris, due to his recent comments in which he expressed a “clear desire to deny the genocide to which the Jewish populations of Europe were victims at the hands of the Nazi regime.”
Elder of Ziyon has taken satisfied note here of this decision:
This revocation of the award – which was given by the same Anne Hidalgo -is more effective than a hundred condemnations from a hundred world leaders.
Abbas doesn’t care about condemnations from anyone. Whether it is an editorial in the Wall Street Journal, or a comment on his conduct by an Arab leader, or denunciations of him by the US Envoy on Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt, or members of the terror groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, it’s all water off a duck’s back. These do not bother him. But the revocation of a medal from the City of Paris is a very big humiliation, a public shaming on the world stage of the rais in Ramallah. Though Abbas has received other awards from other cities and organizations, none were close in prestige to La médaille Grand Vermeil de Paris. Now, in the full view of the world, it has been revoked, in a very public humiliation of the Palestinian leader.
Here is what the Mayor of Paris said and did after becoming aware of the contents of Abbas’ recent speech to the Revolutionary Council of Fatah. “Paris strips Abbas of top medal: ‘You justified the extermination of Europe’s Jews,’” Times of Israel, September 8, 2023:
…Abbas could no longer hold the Grand Vermeil medal awarded to him in 2015 after he “justified the extermination of the Jews of Europe” in World War II, Hidalgo’s office told AFP.
“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.”
In his speech to Fatah, Abbas repeated the unfounded claim that Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler had Jews slaughtered because of their “social role” as moneylenders, and insisted that it was “not true” that “Hitler killed the Jews because they were Jews.” There is more on this here:
While Abbas made the remarks during a speech late last month before senior members of his Fatah party in Ramallah, 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 her letter.
“I vehemently condemn your remarks, no cause can justify revisionism and negationism,” she added….
Elder of Ziyon adds:
To be sure, it [the revocation of the award] is overdue – Abbas has said many antisemitic things between 2015 and now – and his Holocaust denial PhD. thesis should be enough to make anyone reluctant to ever award him anything. But even so, this revocation is welcome and important.After all, many prominent people have condemned Abbas before for his previous antisemitic statements, and it meant nothing. Abbas ignoring condemnations makes him look stronger to his people.
But revoking an award directly strikes at the honor/shame mentality. He was proud of that award.
Abbas has now been publicly shamed — and even more humiliating, shamed by a woman, Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo — who was revoking the very award that she had given him in 2015. It never should have been awarded in the first place. As long ago as 1982, in his doctoral dissertation at Patrice Lumumba University, which he then turned into a book on the Holocaust, “The Other Side: The Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism,” Abbas had been a Holocaust-denier, or rather, a Holocaust-minimizer, who claimed that “at most” 800,000 Jews might have been killed. Furthermore, Abbas had in that book claimed that Jews were killed by Hitler not for being Jews, but for their “social role” as dealers in “money and usury” — the same charge that he made on August 25 at a meeting of the Revolutionary Council of Fatah. And finally, he had claimed that the Zionists worked hand-in-glove with the Nazis to scare Jews into leaving Europe for Mandatory Palestine. He even claimed that “Ben Gurion and Hitler were friends.”
It is too bad that Anne Hidalgo was unaware in 2015 of Abbas’ views on the Holocaust; had she then been aware, she would certainly not have awarded him the medal that she has just now revoked.
Abbas is inordinately proud of all his medals and other awards, devoting a page of his website to a display of all of them, as can be seen here. Elder of Ziyon provides a partial list:
In 2017, Abbas received the German Steiger Award. However, it looks like the award is no longer given and its webpage has been deactivated.
In 2013, Abbas received the Mediterranean Award for Peace in Naples. I cannot find too much information about that award.In 2007, he received the Crans Montana International Economic Forum award. Its website barely mentions it now.
These organizations should revoke those awards now. Even if the awards are meaningless – and most of them are – everything is about symbolism, and the most effective weapon the West has against Palestinian intransigence and antisemitism is shame….
Anne Hidalgo has shown the way. Now it’s time for all those other award-bestowers who once chose to honor the antisemitic, Holocaust-minimizing, Hitler-defending Mahmoud Abbas, to go and do likewise.
Barbara says
Having an award taken back is far more humiliating than never having received the award. Perhaps others will follow suit. At least it will be a wakeup call to acknowledging the truth.
No Ben Gruen and Hitler were not friends. Hitler however was friends with the leading Imam.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/full-official-record-what-the-mufti-said-to-hitler/
Wellington says
Why was it ever given in the first place?
The West in our era is largely led by dummies or worse than dummies.
Scotsman48 says
Old fat ass Abbas has it all backwards, Ben Gurion was never friends with some evil person like Hitler however the Mufti of Jerusalem was most certainly a good friend of Herr Hitler and even today islamic nutters love Hitler and claim the only thing Hitler did wrong was his inability to ”finish the job”
Some years ago a group of young muslim guys stood outside the Main Berlin Train Station waving the Nazi Flag, doing the Nazi salute and had a sign close by stating ”Hitler was correct”, in German, and the local Police stood by and did nothing even though they knew this was illegal, however Im pretty sure if such an action was being done by some German youth they would be arrest in a heart beat.