Labor chief Gabbay slams Netanyahu over Rwanda genocide resolution

Amid a diplomatic spat between Israel and Poland over legislation in Warsaw that would criminalize blaming Poles for Nazi atrocities, Labor Party chairman Avi Gabbay slams Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government for “imitating” those attempts to rewrite history in its own support of a controversial Rwandan move to rename the day of memorial for the 1994 genocide in the central African country.

Speaking at his weekly faction meeting, Gabbay says that Israel must do all it can to prevent the Polish proposal to ban the use of the phrase “Polish death camps” from becoming law.

“This parliamentary effort to change the past will not succeed,” he insists, saying that the law will allow anti-Semitism to flourish.

But Gabbay also takes aim at the Israeli government for supporting what he suggests is a similar attempt to whitewash history.

“The State of Israel must place utmost importance on its foreign policy but that interest must not come before the truth and we must oppose the far-right parties that spread the message of hatred of foreigners, fear, segregation, hunting down internal enemies, marking rivals as traitors and using democracy in order to destroy it,” he says.

“After we got used to ‘fake news,’ they’re now trying to rewrite history. That is the case with this legislation and it is also the case with the proposal put forward by Rwanda last week,” Gabbay charges.

Israel has backed a UN resolution pushed by Rwanda to designate a day of commemoration for the country’s genocide as specifically against the Tutsi ethnic group, supporting a move widely seen as downplaying the deaths of thousands of Hutus during the 1994 genocide.

Yesterday it was reported that while the resolution was opposed by the US and European countries, it won support from Israel as part of a quid pro quo for Rwanda accepting African migrants the Israeli government wants to deport to the country under a new Knesset law.

Gabbay says that Israel “must not learn from or imitate” the methods of European far-right parties, which he likens to those of the Rwandan government.

“It is in complete opposition to the Zionist vision and to our Declaration of Independence,” he says.