Live Update arrow right icon From the Liveblog of Saturday, January 27, 2024

Sky News sorry after presenter compares idea of ‘voluntary relocation’ of Gazans to Holocaust

By ToI Staff 27 January 2024, 2:43 am 5 Edit

Sky News issues an apology following an earlier interview with Likud lawmaker Danny Danon in which a presenter compared his comments on voluntary “relocation” of Gazans amid the war, to how Jewish people were treated during the Holocaust.

The presenter, Belle Donati, “made a comparison between Mr. Danon’s comments on Israel’s war with Hamas and the treatment of Jewish people in the Holocaust. Sky News recognizes the complete inappropriateness of this comparison and the offensive nature of those comments.”

“Sky News would like to apologize unreservedly for the comparison and to Mr. Danon personally for making the comparison,” says another presenter reading the Sky News statement.

During the interview Danon was discussing an idea he outlined in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece he co-wrote in November urging “countries around the world to accept limited numbers of Gazan families who have expressed a desire to relocate.”

In her questioning, Donati falsely claimed Danon “suggested the ethnic cleansing of some of Gaza’s population,” to which he objected and said he was speaking about “voluntary immigration.”

“I think anyone in the world who voluntary [sic] wants to move to another country should be eligible to do that,” he says while Donati appears impatient, looking offscreen.

“Yes, the sort of voluntary relocation of many Jewish people during the Holocaust,” she opines, trying to move on quickly to another question.

“How can you compare that, shame on you for that comparison,” Danon says. “That is a shameful and antisemitic equation…This is pure antisemitism.”

In a post later on X, Danon called Donati an “insolent interviewer.”

Most Popular