Senior officials believe ousting of Dani Dayan from Yad Vashem off the table – report

Amid a growing outcry over alleged attempts by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to oust the head of Yad Vashem, unnamed senior officials reportedly said Sunday that they believed Dani Dayan would remain in the job.

According to the unsourced report by Channel 12 news, the apparent assessment that there has been a change of heart leading to a decision to “take the matter off the table” came after officials from the United States and the European Union, and over 120 Holocaust educators, all expressed their dismay.

According to an earlier report by the network, Education Minister Yoav Kisch has been seeking to remove Dayan for several months and finally sent him a letter accusing him of mismanagement at the Holocaust memorial museum he leads. Kisch confirmed the existence of the letter to the network.

Dayan has refuted Kisch’s allegations of mismanagement and threatened to take the matter to Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara.

The report also tied Kisch’s move to the fact that on Holocaust Remembrance Day, the museum hosted singer Keren Peles, who has spoken out against the government’s judicial overhaul legislation, a move that allegedly angered the premier’s wife, Sara, even though Dayan reportedly booked Peles months before the overhaul was unveiled.

Netanyahu responded to the allegations for the first time before boarding a flight to Cyprus on Sunday, claiming that the previous unity government had replaced every political appointee who was aligned with the right and his Likud party, and yet no one accused it of politicizing those offices.

“There is no politicization, but unfortunately, there is no shortage of fake news,” he said, standing beside Sara.

Sara Netanyahu used the opportunity to deny the report that she had been angered that Dayan invited Peles to perform at the Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony.

Over 120 Holocaust educators from around the world issued an open letter over the weekend expressing “great concern” over the government’s alleged desire to remove Dayan.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration defended Dayan, suggesting that Netanyahu’s government was trying to politicize the Holocaust museum by ousting its leader.

“My research and advocacy about the Holocaust dates back to the 1980s; I have long valued the work of institutions like Yad Vashem. Yad Vashem’s painstaking and invaluable research on the Shoah is in no small part due to its professionalism and independence,” tweeted US antisemitism envoy Deborah Lipstadt.

US Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues Ellen German tweeted, “The US values the crucial work of Yad Vashem and its director’s leadership as we work together on Holocaust education, remembrance, and research. Maintaining the independence of such institutions around the world is key as we face efforts to distort/deny the facts of the Holocaust.”

The posts represented somewhat rare examples of US officials weighing in on an internal Israeli matter, indicating the extent of the alarm in Washington over what it sees as an attempt to weaken the independence of Yad Vashem. The US has long relied on the institution as an ally in the fight against antisemitism.

The rhetoric used by the two Biden administration officials appeared to even mirror messaging it has used to chide the record of countries like Hungary and Poland that have been accused of presenting an altered version of their respective roles in the Holocaust.

Also on Sunday, the European Union’s coordinator on combating antisemitism, Katharina von Schnurbein, expressed her support for Yad Vashem, calling it a “key partner” in Holocaust research.

“Its expertise and independence of its leadership are essential in times of Holocaust distortion and attempts to politicize Shoah remembrance,” she tweeted.

Dayan, a former head of the Yesha Council for West Bank settlers and former Israeli consul-general to New York, previously ran for the Knesset with Gideon Sa’ar’s opposition New Hope party but failed to win a seat. He was appointed head of Yad Vashem in 2021 by the previous government under then-prime minister Naftali Bennett.

Netanyahu and Kisch were hoping to replace Dayan with Keren Barak, a former MK for their Likud party, according to Channel 12.

Kisch recently had to backtrack on an attempt to install political appointees on the board of the Israel National Library after a massive outcry alleging the move would destroy the independence of the national institution.

On Saturday, the 35th week of mass demonstrations against the government’s judicial overhaul focused on education, with protest leaders calling Kisch the “worst education minister in history.”