From the Liveblog of
Wednesday, March 15, 2023
Minister to opposition: Stop comparing me to Goebbels, ‘your families burnt there’
Public Diplomacy Minister Galit Distel Atbaryan causes an uproar when, as she addresses opposition lawmakers in the Knesset and upbraids them for comparing her to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, she says that “it was your families that burned there.”
“They call me the propaganda minister — Goebbels here, Goebbels there,” the Likud minister says in a speech yesterday that was widely shared today.
“For years I have safeguarded the memory of the Holocaust… and it was your families that burned there,” she says, apparently referencing the European origins of many opposition lawmakers.
Following an outcry, Distel Atbaryan writes a lengthy Twitter thread today saying she “stands by her words” and was only trying to say that Jews in Israel should not use Holocaust comparisons.
She says that by doing so they are also likening Goebbels to her, and thus minimizing his crimes.
“I see how in the last few hours the media (meaning leftists) are going out of their way to turn my words around and I beg them — don’t do it,” she writes. “Not for me, but for the six million members of our people.”
