Hamas: PA official's Auschwitz visit served Zionists

Spokesman Barhoum calls Abbas aide's visit to site of Nazi death camp "a marketing of a false Zionist alleged tragedy."

By KHALED ABU TOAMEH
Train to Auschwitz 390 (photo credit: REUTERS)
Train to Auschwitz 390
(photo credit: REUTERS)
The Holocaust is a lie and any visit to a Nazi concentration camp serves the Zionists, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum was quoted Wednesday as saying.
Barhoum’s comments came in response to a visit to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland by Ziad Bandak, an adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Bandak’s visit to the former concentration camp was the first of its kind by a PA official.
It was initiated by a group advocating tolerance between groups of people in Poland.
Barhoum was the only Hamas representative to condemn the visit to Auschwitz.
He said that the visit was “unjustified and unhelpful.”
The visit, he added, has only served “Zionist occupation.”
Barhoum said that the trip to Auschwitz was aimed at “marketing a false and ostensible tragedy” – a reference to the Holocaust.
The Holocaust, he added, “came at the expense of a real Palestinian tragedy.”
Barhoum said that the visit to Auschwitz reflected the PA’s state of “bankruptcy.”
The PA is looking for anything to rid itself of the crisis it is facing, he charged.
The Hamas spokesman also accused Israel of “exaggeration” regarding the number of Holocaust victims in a bid to win the sympathy of the world.