July 28, 2015
The B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission (ADC) has strongly criticised Republican Presidential Candidate and former Governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee for stating in an interview that President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran will “take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven”
Dr Dvir Abramovich, Chairman of the ADC, issued the following statement:
“The ADC has time and again denounced the exploitation and distortion of the Holocaust for political aims and has registered its disgust when such offensive terminology has been employed by politicians. While Mike Huckabee is entitled to criticise the nuclear agreement with Iran, it is outrageous to imply that President Obama is leading Israel to a second Holocaust. Despite serious differences between the Netanyahu government and the Obama administration, there is no doubt that the U.S is still Israel’s greatest and most reliable ally. By using this inappropriate and inflammatory comparison of Obama to Hitler, Huckabee is poisoning what is a serious debate that needs to be conducted in a thoughtful and civil way. Invoking the Holocaust to attack the President’s foreign policy does a tremendous disservice to history and is an insult to the memory of those who perished at the hands of the Nazis and those who survived. Such ignorant remarks only fuel the gross trivialization of the Holocaust, and we urge Mike Huckabee to apologise for his insensitive statement and to refrain from using such rhetoric in the future.”