The Other Side: The Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism

Abbas attended at Patrice Lumumba University to prepare and present his doctoral thesis. The institute's director at the time, Yevgeny Primakov, one of the Soviet masterminds of active measures and academic research, such as Operation INFEKTION, supported a Soviet specialist on Palestine, Vladimir Ivanovich Kisilev as Abbas' dissertation adviser. They communicated mostly in English and Arabic.[4] In an interview with the magazine Kommersant 20 years later, Kisilev remembers Abbas as a well-prepared graduate student, who came to Moscow with an already chosen research topic and a large amount of already prepared material.[4]

The title of Abbas' thesis is The Connection between the Nazis and the Leaders of the Zionist Movement or, in Russian, "Связи между сионизмом и нацизмом. 1933–1945".[19] In 1984, a book based on Abbas' doctoral dissertation was published in Arabic by Dar Ibn Rushd publishers in Amman, Jordan under the title al-Wajh al-akhar : al-`alaqat al-sirriyah bayna al-Naziyah wa-al-Sihyuniyah.

In the doctoral thesis, Abbas describes the number of Jews murdered in the Nazi Holocaust as agreed upon by mainstream historians, six millions, as a "fantastic lie".[5][6][7] In the book, he wrote:

It seems that the interest of the Zionist movement, however, is to inflate this figure [of Holocaust deaths] so that their gains will be greater. This led them to emphasize this figure [six million] in order to gain the solidarity of international public opinion with Zionism. Many scholars have debated the figure of six million and reached stunning conclusions — fixing the number of Jewish victims at only a few hundred thousand.[11]

In the book, he wrote:

Following the war, word was spread that six million Jews were amongst the victims and that a war of extermination was aimed primarily at the Jews . . . The truth is that no one can either confirm or deny this figure. In other words, it is possible that the number of Jewish victims reached six million, but at the same time it is possible that the figure is much smaller, below one million.[20]

Abbas quotes historian Raul Hilberg to support his allegations that fewer than one million Jews were killed.[20][21][22][23] However, Rafael Medoff of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies denied the assertion that "The historian and author, Raoul Hilberg, thinks that the figure does not exceed 890,000", and said this is "utterly false". He wrote that "Professor Hilberg, a distinguished historian and author of the classic study The Destruction of the European Jews, has never said or written any such thing."[11]

Abbas raised doubts regarding the existence of the gas chambers, quoting Robert Faurisson, on the nonexistence of gas chambers.[20]

Additionally, he stated that the much smaller number of Jews which he reportedly admitted that the Germans did massacre were actually the victims of a Zionist-Nazi plot:

The Zionist movement led a broad campaign of incitement against the Jews living under Nazi rule to arouse the government's hatred of them, to fuel vengeance against them and to expand the mass extermination.[8]

The thesis also discussed topics such as the Haavara Agreement of 1933, in which the Third Reich agreed with the Jewish Agency to enable Jews to emigrate from Germany directly to Mandate Palestine, which he sees as evidence of collaboration.[4]

A global survey of Holocaust denial, published by David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies in 2004, describes the book as "denying the Holocaust".[24]

After Abbas was appointed prime minister of the Palestinian Authority in 2003, the Israel Defense Forces removed excerpts from the Abbas book from its website, including quotes questioning the use of gas chambers and talking of less than one million victims.[8]

According to the Anti-Defamation League, the Simon Wiesenthal Center called for Abbas to clarify his position on the Holocaust in 1995, but he did not do so at that time.[25] Abbas' reported defence when asked about the book was telling: "When I wrote The Other Side… we were at war with Israel. Today I would not have made such remarks… Today there is peace and what I write from now on must help advance the peace process."[14][26]

In his May 2003 interview with Haaretz, Abbas stated:

I wrote in detail about the Holocaust and said I did not want to discuss numbers. I quoted an argument between historians in which various numbers of casualties were mentioned. One wrote there were twelve million victims and another wrote there were 800,000. I have no desire to argue with the figures. The Holocaust was a terrible, unforgivable crime against the Jewish nation, a crime against humanity that cannot be accepted by humankind. The Holocaust was a terrible thing and nobody can claim I denied it.[13]

According to the Ma'an News Agency, in an interview in 2013, Abbas defended his doctoral thesis regarding the relationship between the Zionists and the Nazis and said he "challenges anyone who can deny that the Zionist movement had ties with the Nazis before World War II."[15]