The “genocide” in Gaza is a horrific tragedy that must be considered as evil, or worse, as the Holocaust, according to the tacit argument of the Palestinian Authority’s president, Mahmoud Abbas, whose career is marked by repeated denials of the Nazi attempt to destroy the entire Jewish genus. 

“What Israel is carrying out is not merely an aggression,” Mr. Abbas told the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday. “It is a war crime and a crime against humanity that is both documented and monitored. And it will be recorded in history books and the pages of international conscious as one of the most horrific chapters of humanitarian tragedy in the 20th and 21st centuries.”

The Department of State denied an entry visa to the 89-year-old Mr. Abbas, who annually attends the UN meeting of heads of state. In response, the General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a resolution to allow the Palestinian figurehead to speak via a video connection from Ramallah. 

Mr. Abbas spoke from his office, backed by two flags of Palestine. He wore a lapel pin depicting a key, symbolizing the Palestinian Arab “right of return” to homes they have abandoned or were forced to leave in Israel’s 1948 war of independence, known in Arabic as the Nakba, or catastrophe. Resettlements of millions of Arabs in today’s Israel would negate its status as the Jewish homeland. 

“We are ready to work with U.S. President Donald Trump and with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and France, the United Nations, and all partners to implement the peace plan that was approved in the conference that was held on the 22nd of September in a way that would lead towards a just peace and regional cooperation,” Mr. Abbas told the UN assembly. 

America was absent from the Monday conference, organized by France and Saudi Arabia, to promote Palestinian statehood. Mr. Trump publicly berated President Emmanuel Macron, arguing that recognizing “Palestine” now would reward Hamas for its October 7, 2023, atrocities. In a meeting with Arab and Muslim leaders, the president presented an American plan to end the war in Gaza, which the participants welcomed warmly, two Arab diplomats tell the Sun.

Mr. Trump’s plan reportedly entails an immediate release of all 48 hostages, including 20 living ones; a permanent cease-fire and a gradual Israeli withdrawal from the Strip, except for a narrow security area, and a takeover of Gaza by a Palestinian force boosted by troops from Arab countries. A Gulf-financed rehabilitation of the devastated Strip would follow. 

In his speech, Mr. Abbas delineated his own plan, centered on Palestinian statehood: “Today, we say clearly, peace cannot be achieved if justice is not achieved, and there can be no justice if Palestine is not freed.” East Jerusalem, he vowed, will be the capital of the state. “Jerusalem is the jewel of our heart and our eternal capital,” he said. 

Such a line is seen by critics as Mr. Abbas’s habit of inverting the millennia-old Jewish struggle for statehood, centered on their ancient capital. A biblical psalm recited worldwide by Jews for more than 2,000 years reads: “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill.” 

The increasing use of the word “genocide” to describe the Israeli war in Gaza, similarly, is seen as an attempt to invert the massacre of Jews at the hands of Nazis and their collaborators during World War II. The term “genocide,” now enshrined in global treaties, was coined after the Holocaust by a Jewish-Polish lawyer, Rafael Lemkin, who was trying to define the Nazi horrors and their unique attempt to destroy a whole people. 

In his 1982 dissertation at a Moscow university, later published as a book, Mr. Abbas argued that Zionists were Nazi collaborators. The future Palestinian leader also claimed that the slaughter of six million Jews was a “myth.” He argued that no more than a few hundred thousands were killed. In a carefully constructed 2014 statement, though, Mr. Abbas said that he heard from Israelis that six million Jews perished, so he said, “I can accept that.”

Yet, four years later Mr. Abbas denied the Nazis committed genocide, claiming that European Jews were executed because of their “social role related to usury and banks.” Also, during a 2022 visit to Germany he dismissed the killing of Israeli athletes in the 1972 Munich Olympics. Israel, he said, has committed “50 massacres, 50 holocausts.”

At the conclusion of Mr. Abbas’s much-anticipated address Thursday, delegates in the UN hall erupted in the longest applause for any speech there to date.