Evoking Adolph Hitler in a speech is seldom if ever a good idea, as the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, is finding out. America, Germany, and the European Union on Thursday condemned Mr. Abbas’s recent comments about the Holocaust.

Mr. Abbas was accused of distorting history and promoting antisemitic stereotypes in a speech last month at his Fatah party’s Revolutionary Council. Mr. Abbas said that Hitler killed European Jews not because of antisemitism, but because of their “social functions” in society, such as money lending. 

“These people were fought because of their social function related to money, usury,” Mr. Abbas said in the speech. “From Hitler’s point of view, they were sabotaging, and therefore he hated them.”

Adding insult to injury, Mr. Abbas also said fallaciously that “the truth that we should clarify to the world is that European Jews are not Semites. They have nothing to do with Semitism.”

Antisemitism, though, is not hatred of Semites. It’s hatred of Jews. In any event, the Palestinian leader, now 87, outlined a discredited theory that Ashkenazi Jews are descended from but an ancient Turkish people who converted to Judaism.

The speech was translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute, a think tank in Washington founded by Israeli analysts. MEMRI translates speeches from Arabic and other languages for Western audiences.  

In the Holocaust, more than 6 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis and their allies. Hitler considered the Jews to be an inferior race and viciously promoted antisemitic stereotypes to incite and try to justify violence against Europe’s Jews as the Third Reich carried out the genocide.

Washington’s special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, Deborah Lipstadt, said she was appalled by what she called Mr. Abbas’s “hateful, antisemitic remarks.” In a post on X, she said that Mr. Abbas had maligned the Jewish people and distorted the Holocaust. She called for an immediate apology.

Germany’s ambassador to Israel, Steffen Seibert, said Mr. Abbas’s speech was “an insult to the memory of millions of murdered men, women and children.” Added he: “The Palestinians deserve to hear the historical truth from their leader, not such distortions.”

In a statement, the European Union said the comments “trivialize the Holocaust and thereby fuel antisemitism.” The chairman of Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, Dani Dayan, accused Mr. Abbas of Holocaust denial and distortion and promoting antisemitic stereotypes.

Mr. Abbas has previously faced accusations of antisemitism. Last year, Chancellor Scholz, the German leader, condemned him for accusing Israel of committing “50 Holocausts” against the Palestinians. Mr. Abbas later apologized.

Mr. Abbas also apologized in 2017 following a speech that said Jewish money lending had caused animosity toward them in Europe and dismissed the Jewish connection to the Holy Land. At the time, he condemned antisemitism and called the Holocaust “the most heinous crime in history.”

Mr. Abbas, in his doctoral thesis in the 1970s, also questioned the extent of the Nazi genocide. He has since distanced himself from those assertions. Mr. Abbas’s spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, condemned the “rabid campaign” against the Palestinian president.

He said Mr. Abbas’s position is “clear and documented, which is the complete condemnation of the Holocaust and the rejection of antisemitism.”

That position, though, increasingly looks unclear at best, and Israeli’s ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, was swift to call it out. Writing on X, Mr. Erdan said, “This is the true face of Palestinian ‘leadership,’” adding, “Just as Abbas blames the Jews for the Holocaust, he also blames the Jews for all the Middle East’s issues.”