Lapid slams Likud party over Holocaust memorial day antics
‘If (Menachem) Begin was alive, he would never have allowed this to happen,’ says Yesh Atid party leader, the son of a survivor
Yesh Atid party leader Yair Lapid on Saturday slammed the Likud party for holding a festive retreat on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, saying it undermined the work Israel had done to get the nations of the world to acknowledge the murder of six million Jews.
“It’s insufferable,” Lapid, the son of a Holocaust Survivor, told a gathering in Givat Shmuel, outside Tel Aviv. “The State of Israel fought a long and drawn out campaign for there to be an International Holocaust Remembrance Day, so that the nations of the world would stop for a moment and acknowledge that there was the Holocaust.”
Prime Minister’s Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party drew widespread condemnation for holding a retreat for party activists in Eilat that began on the memorial day.
“This year I visited the concentration camp where my grandfather was murdered. I stood there with my sister in the gas chamber where he was killed and I physically knew that he had scratched the doors with his last breath because he knew that his son was outside waiting for him,” Lapid said.
Lapid’s father Yosef (Tommy) Lapid and his grandmother escaped the Nazis from the Budapest Ghetto after being issued a visa by Swedish Diplomat Raoul Wallenberg.
“So the State of Israel goes and convinces the world that they need to mark the Holocaust and the ruling party in Israel has a ‘Likudiada’ exactly on this day,” Lapid said, adding that if Likud founder Menachem “Begin was alive he would never have allowed this to happen.”
International Holocaust Remembrance Day is marked on January 27, the day of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp. Israel also has its own Shoah Day, marked later in the year.
Culture Minister Miri Regev on Friday defended the Likud’s decision to hold the festive retreat, saying that thanks to the political event, the memorial day has never had so much exposure.
“International Holocaust Remembrance Day has never been covered as much as it has this year — thanks to the ‘Likudiada,’” she said from the conference in the resort city.
She noted that the retreat’s schedule for Friday began with a minute of silence, adding the day was marked in the Knesset this week and that members of Likud hold the solemn day dear to their hearts.
As such, Regev said, there was no room to criticize the party’s actions.
“When it comes to Likud, people are always after us,” she said. “I don’t remember anyone deciding that there can be no events or celebrations on this day.”
