JERUSALEM — The Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, accused Israel of carrying out “50 Holocausts” of Palestinians as he stood alongside the German chancellor in Berlin, then walked the comments back on Wednesday in the face of an international outcry from leaders and officials who denounced the remarks as antisemitic Holocaust denial.
Mr. Abbas, the 87-year-old president of the Palestinian Authority, was speaking during a joint news conference with Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany on Tuesday night. The comment that caused the uproar was a response to a reporter who asked Mr. Abbas if he was ready to apologize for the killings of 11 Israeli athletes by the Palestinian Black September group at the Munich Olympics in 1972.
Germany is planning to mark the 50th anniversary of the Munich terrorist attack in the fall.
Mr. Abbas replied that Israel had committed 50 massacres in Palestinian-populated areas from 1947 until today, adding for emphasis, “50 massacres; 50 Holocausts,” using the English term for the Nazi genocide during World War II.
Soon after, the German chancellor strongly condemned Mr. Abbas’s words and on Wednesday morning, he tweeted in English, German and Hebrew to say he was “disgusted by the outrageous remarks made by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.”
He went on to say: “For us Germans in particular, any relativization of the singularity of the Holocaust is intolerable and unacceptable. I condemn any attempt to deny the crimes of the Holocaust.”
Prime Minister Yair Lapid of Israel also decried Mr. Abbas’s comments as “not only a moral disgrace, but a monstrous lie. Six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust,” he said, “including one and a half million Jewish children. History will never forgive him.”
Benny Gantz, Israel’s defense minister, who hosted Mr. Abbas at his home in central Israel a few months ago, described the Palestinian leader’s words as a “despicable and false” attempt “to distort and rewrite history.”
And Deborah Lipstadt, the United States special envoy for monitoring and combating antisemitism, wrote on Twitter that Mr. Abbas’s statements were unacceptable.
“Holocaust distortion can have dangerous consequences and fuels antisemitism,” she wrote
Outraged Israeli officials reached out early Wednesday to Palestinian counterparts with the message that Mr. Abbas should retract or clarify his remarks.
The Palestinian leader issued a clarification of his remarks later on Wednesday that was carried by the official Palestinian news agency, Wafa.
It did not include an explicit apology, but said that Mr. Abbas reaffirmed that the Holocaust “is the most heinous crime in modern human history” and said his remarks in Berlin were “not intended to deny the singularity of the Holocaust.”
The clarifying statement went on to say that Mr. Abbas had been referring to “the crimes and massacres committed against the Palestinian people” at the hands of Israeli forces over the past 75 years.