The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, took away the Grand Vermeil medal, the highest honor of the French capital, from the president of the Palestinian National Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, because he “justified the extermination of the Jews in Europe.” This was announced by the city hall of the French capital on Friday, AFP and Agerpres cites.

“The statements you made contradict our universal values ​​and the historical truth about the Holocaust, so you can no longer enjoy this distinction,” the Paris mayor said in a letter addressed to Abbas on Thursday.

The letter was published Thursday evening on the X platform (formerly Twitter) by Yonatan Arfi, president of the Council of Representatives of Jewish Institutions in France (Crif).

In late August, Abbas gave a speech in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, in which he also declared that “Hitler did not kill Jews because they were Jews.” Hitler “said he was fighting the Jews because they were usurers and were attached to money,” Abbas said.

“You justified the extermination of Europe’s Jews during World War II with an apparent desire to deny the genocide” perpetrated by Nazi Germany, Anne Hidalgo wrote.

“I strongly condemn these statements, no reason can justify revisionism and denial,” she added. Ann Hidalgo “condemned in the strongest terms the anti-Semitic statements of Mahmoud Abbas” on Platform X on Wednesday, without mentioning the award the Palestinian Authority president received during his visit to Paris.

“I think and support the Jewish community in Paris and around the world,” said Anne Hidalgo.

Mahmoud Abbas also caused a scandal in Germany after last year’s visit to Romania

Last August, the 87-year-old Palestinian leader found himself at the center of renewed controversy after he said during a joint press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz that “Israel has committed 50 mass murders in 50 places of Palestinians since 1947.”

“50 mass murders, 50 holocausts,” he noted. His words were in response to a journalist who asked him if he would apologize to Israel on the 50th anniversary of the attack by Palestinian terrorists on Israeli athletes who participated in the 1972 Munich Olympics.

His spokesman, Steffen Hebestreit, announced the end of the press conference immediately after Mahmoud Abbas answered the question, which was previously announced as the last.

A spokesman for Chancellor Scholz later said he was outraged by Abbas’s statement.

“Especially for us Germans, any relativization of the Holocaust is intolerable and unacceptable,” the German chancellor later said to the Bild tabloid.

Yair Lapid, Israel’s prime minister at the time, also responded with a tweet:

Mahmoud Abbas, who accuses Israel of committing “50 holocausts” while on German soil, is not only a moral disgrace, but also a monstrous lie. During the Holocaust, six million Jews were killed, including one and a half million Jewish children. History will never forgive him.”

This incident occurred less than a month after Abbas made an official visit to Romania at the invitation of President Klaus Iohannis. The President’s administration then noted that the visit reflects and confirms the “strength” of bilateral relations between Romania and Palestine, which it called “deep” and “long-lasting”.