Paris City Hall has decided to withdraw the Grand Vermeil Medal, the French capital’s highest honor, from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. A decision taken by Anne Hidalgo after the president “justified the extermination of the Jews of Europe”, the town hall told AFP on Friday.
“The comments you made are contrary to our universal values and the historical truth of the Shoah, you can therefore no longer claim this distinction,” announced the mayor of Paris in a letter to Mahmoud Abbas. The letter was published Thursday evening, September 7, on X (formerly Twitter) by Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (Crif).
Mahmoud Abbas gave a speech at the end of August in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, in which he notably asserted that “Hitler did not kill Jews because they were Jews.” Hitler “said he fought the Jews because they were loan sharks and tied to money,” he claimed.
“You […] justified the extermination of the Jews of Europe during World War II with a manifest desire to deny the genocide” perpetrated by Nazi Germany, wrote Anne Hidalgo. “I condemn in the strongest terms your words, no cause can justify revisionism and negationism,” she added.
On Wednesday, Ms. Hidalgo condemned “with the greatest firmness” the “anti-Semitic comments made by Mahmoud Abbas” on X, without mentioning the distinction given to the president of the Palestinian Authority in 2015 during a visit to Paris. “My thoughts and support go to the Jewish community in Paris, as well as everywhere in the world,” she added.