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Ziad al-Bandak, advisor to Mahmoud Abbas, recently visitedAuschwitz, the Nazi extermination camp. He was strongly
denounced by Hamas, which has issued statements denyingthe Holocaust.
Ziad al-Bandak, advisor to Mahmoud Abbas, at Auschwitz, the Nazi extermination camp(Picture from Hamas' PALDF forum website, July 28, 2012).
Overview
1. While in Poland, Ziad al-Bandak, political advisor to Mahmoud Abbas with the rank
of minister,1 paid a visit to the Nazi extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau on July
27, 2012. He viewed the prisoner barracks and gas chambers, and lit a candle and laid
flowers at the memorial site. He was the guest of a private Polish organization whose
objective is to promote tolerance (Al-Ayam, July 28, 2012). The visit received scant
coverage in the Palestinian media. It is an extremely rare occurrence for a
Palestinian public figure to visit a concentration camp. The last time a
representative of the Palestinian Authority in Poland visited Auschwitz was in 2007,
when he made a joint visit to the camp with the Israeli ambassador.
1 Ziad al-Bandak, is a Christian engineer from Bethlehem. In July 2009 Mahmoud Abbas appointed him to the post ofpresidential advisor with the rank of minister of local and international relations with Christians (Wafa News Agency,July 19, 2012).
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2. Ziad al-Bandak's visit was strongly denounced by Hamas. Sources within the
organization severely criticized the Palestinian Authority for the gesture and
represented it as an attempt to appease the international community and as a gesture
to the so-called Israeli "occupation." The visit was exploited by Hamas once again to
state that the Holocaust was "an Israeli invention," a ploy to receive international
recognition (Hamas' Felesteen, July 29, 2012). The Hamas-affiliated Felesteen website
posted an article by a journalist based in Qalqilya and affiliated with Hamas in Judea
and Samaria, which represented the visit as "a stab in the back" of the Palestinian
people.
3. In our assessment, al-Bandak's visit and that of the PA representative to Poland
indicate that the PA under Mahmoud Abbas, as opposed Yasser Arafat, is an example
of limiting the use of anti-Semitism as a political weapon. However, anti-Israeli andanti-Zionist incitement, which centers on delegitimizing the State of Israel as the
national home of the Jewish people, continues unabated and accompanies the
PA's political campaign against Israel. Hamas, for its part, is unwavering in its anti-
Semitic propaganda, anchored in its 1988 charter, which includes libelous myths from
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Hamas propaganda includes Holocaust denial and
minimization, which was the basis for its strident criticism of al-Bandak's visit to
Auschwitz.2
Ziad al-Bandak visits Auschwitz (Picture from the PALDF forum website, July 28, 2012).
2 For further information about Hamas anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial, see the March 8, 2011 bulletin "The battlefor the character of education in the Gaza Strip."
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Appendix
Hamas Denounces Visit
4. Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said that the visit did not in any way benefit the
Palestinian cause, and only "the Israeli occupation, which spreads lies about the
Holocaust" benefitted. He added that it had been proven that the Israeli version was a
lie and that Israel "exaggerated" what happened during the Holocaust for the sake of
international sympathy, which over the years became sympathy at the expense of the
Palestinians (Hamas' Felesteen, July 29, 2012).
5. As to the Palestinian Authority, he said that its attempt to use the visit to appease
the international community would not succeed because over the past decades the
international community had manifested a consistent lack of fairness with regard to thePalestinian cause. He added that the PA's state of bankruptcy was what had forced it
to take the step [of sending a representative to Auschwitz], and warned that such acts
were liable to cause a genuine crisis because the PA offended the sensibilities of
the Palestinian people (Hamas' Felesteen, July 29, 2012).
6. Fayez Abu Shamala, former Khan Yunis mayor, wrote a column condemning the
visit, entitled "Ziad al-Bandak's tears on Jewish graves." In it he criticized the visit,
saying that by sending his political advisor to Auschwitz, it was as though Mahmoud
Abbas had himself visited the concentration camp. He was quick to note that al-Bandak
had not yet paid a visit to his Palestinian brothers imprisoned in Israeli jails. He also
called for him to be brought up on charges of "treason" (Al-Waqa website, July 28,
2012).
Holocaust Denial Article
7. Ziyad al-Bandak's visit to Auschwitz triggered a vituperous Holocaust-denial article,
which was posted on Hamas' Felesteen website. Written by a journalist named Issam
Shaur3 and headlined "Ziyad al-Bandak stabs the Palestinian cause and people in
the back," it asks what kind of twisted logic prompted such a visit, which supports the
Jews and their crimes. He asked, "Who believes that Hitler murdered six million Jews?
We don't believe it and the Jews don't believe it. The world lives with hypocrisy and the
fraud called the Holocaust, and it is worse when a senior Palestinian figure cries over
the remains of the Holocaust lie. By doing so, the PA nullifies all the crimes and
injustices carried out against our Palestinian people by Israel the occupier, because
3 Issam Shaur is a Qalqilya-based journalist known for his Hamas affiliation and his regular columns in the Hamaspaper Felesteen. He was detained a number of times by the Palestinian Authority security services, primarily becausehis articles are particularly critical of the PA's policies.
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when Ziyad al-Bandak cries, in private or in public, his tears emphasize the fact that
the Jews are the victims" (Felesteen, July 29, 2012).