Saturday, September 9, 2023

Paris strips Abbas of top medal: ‘You justified the extermination of Europe’s Jews’


Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo has stripped Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas of the French capital’s highest honor after he made remarks about the Holocaust that repeated antisemitic tropes, her office said Friday.

Abbas could no longer hold the Grand Vermeil medal awarded to him in 2015 after he “justified the extermination of the Jews of Europe” in World War II, Hidalgo’s office told AFP.

“The comments you made are contrary to our universal values and the historical truth of the Shoah,” Hidalgo said in a letter to Abbas sent on Thursday. “You can therefore no longer hold this distinction.” READ MORE