ADL slams Gaza-Holocaust comparison

The Anti-Defamation League slams South African’s ruling party, the African National Congress, for comparing Israel’s Operation Protective Edge to Nazi crimes.

“It is irresponsible and unacceptable for a high-ranked representative of South Africa’s governing party to engage in such extremist and incendiary anti-Israel invective,” says Abe Foxman, the ADL’s national director, a Holocaust survivor.

On Thursday, the party’s deputy secretary-general, Jessie Duarte, said she was “reminded of the atrocities of Nazi Germany” and accused Jerusalem of turning the Palestinian territories into “permanent death camps.

Duarte is entitled to her opinions and policies, Foxman says. “However, when a high-ranked representative of the governing party perpetuates offensive comparisons of Israel to the Nazis, it reveals gross ignorance about the Holocaust, offends survivors of the Nazi genocide, and undermines the respectability and responsibility of the ANC itself.”

The ADL joins the South African Jewish Board of Deputies and the country’s Zionist Federation in calling for an apology from the ANC.

– Raphael Ahren