Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas gave an antisemitic speech that was widely covered in the Israeli and right-wing press, not so much in the Western media.
i24News briefly summarizes what he said about Jews:
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas made controversial statements Monday evening suggesting the Holocaust was not due to anti-Semitism but rather to the Jews’ “social behavior, [charging interest], and financial matters.”Giving his own “history lesson” of pogroms in Europe during the start of a four-day session by the National Palestinian Council in Ramallah, Abbas highlighted that “such pogroms did not take place in Arab nations, which had Jewish communities."There obviously were pogroms in the Arab world against Jews, although not to the extent of pogroms in Europe. But a few of them are notable to mention in context of Abbas' speech.
In 1834, there was a huge Arab pogrom against Jews that lasted 33 days in the town that Mahmoud Abbas was born in, Safed (Tzfat.) Chances are some of his relatives participated in it.
This source says 500 were killed:
In 1834 the local Arabs rebelled against the new Egyptian governor who ruled Ottoman Palestine between 1831 to 1841. The rebellion against this governor, Muhammad Ali, expanded to include attacks against the Jews of Palestine. While the Jews of certain cities like Jerusalem were spared, Tzfat was not. A Safed Islamic clergyman named Muhamad Damoor incited the Moslems to attack the Jews of Tzfat. On June 15, 1834, local Arabs and Bedouins, including the Arabs who lived in the Arab Quarter of Tzfat itself, invaded Tzfat’s Jewish Quarter.I couldn't corroborate the 500 killed, but many were.Here's another description:
The Arabs destroyed homes, plundered synagogues and businesses and burned much of the city. Eyewitnesses described scenes of torture, and murder over the course of 33 days. Historians estimated that over 500 people were killed and many others were blinded and maimed.
The Palestinian Arabs of the Eastern Galilee took advantage of a regional crisis, the war between Egypt and Turkey, to attack their Jewish neighbors and strip them of everything they had: clothes, properties, houses, and the like. In the process people were beaten in the streets, many times to death, synagogues destroyed and holy books desecrated. An entire community of 2,000 souls (Kinglake says 4,000) was forced into hiding for 33 days, in caves, ruins, inhospitable mountaintops, and basements. In that mayhem there were good Arabs who saved lives, like the people of the village of Ein Zeitim and a few individuals, Muslims and Christians from the city itself, but there were also the double crossers who promised to help for a large sum of money, only to hand over the Jews to the rioting mob outside the hideout. For 33 days the lives of the Jews of Safed had practically no value, and anyone of them who showed his or her face in public was at risk of been beaten to death, sometimes by people they knew as neighbors or business associates.
This is a classic pogrom by any definition.
But what about the 1929 riots that killed scores of Jews in Hebron, and the earlier massacre in 1921?
Abbas actually mentioned them in his speech - admiringly - calling the Arabs who butchered Jews "revolutionaries."
Abbas is an antisemite who considers Arabs butchering Jewish woman and children "revolutionaries" - and then tells people that Arabs always treated Jews well.
By the way, when Abbas pretended to walk back his Holocaust denial in 2014, the New York Times wrote a major story about it. Now that he shows that he is an antisemite who blames Jews themselves for being slaughtered, the NYT (as of this writing) has not said a word.