PA: Only 1-2 Mil. Jews Died During the Holocaust

The Palestinian Authority (PA) celebrated Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day by denying its scope, Palestinian Media Watch revealed Sunday - claiming that instead of six million Jews killed by the Nazis, there were only 1-2 million. 

"Estimates regarding the number of Holocaust victims differ," an Op/Ed penned by columnist Omar Hilmi Al-Ghoul for the official PA Al-Hayat Al-Jadida claimed. "The supporters of the Zionist movement have exaggerated the number of victims, claiming that it amounts to 6 million, whereas others, unbiased researchers, have estimated that there were between one and two million Jewish victims."

"Regardless of the number, the bottom line is that a catastrophe that harmed the Jews in Europe occurred, due to matters concerning the relations between the European nations and the Jews living among them," he continued. 

He then accused "Zionists" of orchestrating the Holocaust in order to establish the state of Israel. 

"The Zionist movement wanted to achieve a series of goals: First, to take advantage and use this [the Holocaust] to blackmail the European states financially and politically to make them support the Zionist colonialist project," he said. "Second, to bully the Jews to immigrate to the Israeli ethnic cleansing state, which was [then] in in the preparatory stages of establishment."

"Third, to increase the Jews' suffering and abuse in order to take advantage of the world's compassion for them."

PA officials have publicly denied the Holocaust as a matter of principle; Chairman Mahmoud Abbas wrote his doctoral thesis on the subject, and it is an official text used in PA schools.