A few weeks ago, on Tuesday August 16, Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority, was in Berlin seeking help and support from the German government. The cause of the Palestinian people has of course been rather beleaguered since other Arabs finally realised that they had a lot more to gain from positive engagement with Israel. Even Turkey, which has stood up for the Palestinians in the past, has just restored full diplomatic relations with Israel.
Abbas’s visit came at a sensitive time, however, approaching the 50th anniversary of the Munich massacre of September 5 and 6, 1972. Terrorists from the Palestinian Black September gang, with the help of German neo-Nazis, attacked Israeli athletes at the Munich Summer Olympics, murdering six Israeli coaches and five athletes. The crime was all the more shocking because ever since antiquity, athletes have enjoyed special immunity and have been free to travel unhindered to international competitions.
Abbas should have realised that the anniversary would be raised. At a joint press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, a reporter asked him whether he would apologise – both to Israel and to Germany – for the Munich massacre, giving him an excellent opportunity to be diplomatic, conciliatory, perhaps to reassert the justice of his cause, and yet acknowledge that times had changed and affirm his commitment to peaceful solutions. Instead, he turned an opportunity into a catastrophic diplomatic failure. He started to rant about Israeli massacres, and concluded by claiming that the Palestinians had suffered “50 Holocausts”. Of course, these remarks were denounced by the German government and opposition parties, as well as by the Israeli government. Abbas will continue to be haunted by them, for as the Latin proverb says, words spoken cannot be recalled.
Read the article by Christopher Allen in The Australian.