Mahmoud Abbas’s Latest Anti-Semitic Rant Should Come as No Surprise

Last month, the Palestinian Authority president gave a speech simultaneously absolving the Nazis of anti-Semitism and arguing that the Holocaust was justified. The speech attracted widespread media coverage, condemnation from the European Union, and even an open letter of denunciation from a group of Palestinian academics. (The past statements of such signatories as Rashid Khalidi does, however, raise questions about the writers’ sincerity.) Perhaps the most puzzling reaction came from the veteran American Middle East hand Martin Indyk, who said he was “despairing about how to respond” to this “profoundly anti-Semitic diatribe” from someone he considered “a personal friend for three decades.”