The B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission (ADC), Australia’s leading organisation combatting anti-Semitism and hatred in all its forms, has denounced Venezuela’s UN Ambassador Rafael Ramirez for comparing Israel’s actions towards the Palestinians to the Nazis’ policy of extermination. During a speech to an informal meeting of the Security Council, Ramirez asked members: “What does Israel plans do to with the Palestinians? Will they disappear? Does Israel seek probably to wage a final solution? The sort of solution that was perpetrated against the Jews?”
Dr Dvir Abramovich, Chair of The ADC, issued the following statement:
“We should not have to say this, but there is absolutely no comparison between Israel’s actions to defend its citizens from terrorism and the Nazis’ industrial and deliberate murder of six million Jews and millions of others in the Holocaust. The hostile remarks by Ambassador Rafael Ramirez— who knows very well that there has never been an Israeli policy or plan to exterminate or expel the Palestinians— serve to perpetuate the reprehensible and patently offensive equations that we have seen far too often at the U.N, and betray a gross ignorance about the Shoah. They are also deeply hurtful to the memory of the victims, the survivors and their families, and to the entire Jewish community. When an ambassador of a U.N member state makes such extremist and crude charges, that link the victims of Hitler’s barbaric regime with the Nazi perpetrators, he not only undermines the credibility of this institution, but brings shame on it.”
The Anti-Defamation Commission, founded in 1979, is Australia’s leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through educational programs that combat bigotry, prejudice and all forms of hatred.
For further information please contact Dr Dvir Abramovich on (03) 9272 5677
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