On Sunday, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky sparked outrage when he compared the Russian invasion of Ukraine to the Holocaust during a speech to the Israeli government.
“This Russian invasion of Ukraine is not just a military operation, as Moscow claims. This is a large-scale and treacherous war aimed at destroying our people. Destroying our children, our families. Our state. Our cities. Our communities. Our culture. And everything that makes Ukrainians Ukrainians. Everything that Russian troops are now destroying. Deliberately. In front of the whole world,” Zelensky said.
“That is why I have the right to this parallel and to this comparison. Our history and your history. Our war for our survival and World War II.”
“Listen to what the Kremlin says. Just listen! There are even terms that sounded then. And this is a tragedy. When the Nazi party raided Europe and wanted to destroy everything. Destroy everyone. Wanted to conquer the nations. And leave nothing from us, nothing from you. Even the name and the trace. They called it ‘the final solution to the Jewish issue.’ You remember that. And I’m sure you will never forget!” Zelensky added. “But listen to what is sounding now in Moscow. Hear how these words are said again: ‘Final solution.’ But already in relation, so to speak, to us, to the ‘Ukrainian issue.’”
“I appreciate the President of Ukraine and support the Ukrainian people in heart and deed, but it is impossible to rewrite the terrible history of the Holocaust,” Israel’s Communications Minister Yoaz Hendel tweeted. “Genocide was also committed on Ukrainian soil. The war is terrible, but the comparison to the horrors of the Holocaust and the final solution is outrageous.”
“If Zelensky’s speech was given… in normal [non-war] times, we would have said it bordered on Holocaust denial… Every comparison between a regular war, as difficult as it may be, and the extermination of millions of Jews in gas chambers in the framework of the Final Solution, is a total distortion of history. The same is true for the claim that Ukrainians helped Jews in the Holocaust…”
“The historic truth is that the Ukrainian people cannot be proud of its behavior in the Holocaust of the Jews,” Yuval Steinitz, a Likud MK, said. “None of that changes the fact that despite the outrageous use of the Holocaust, we must continue humanitarian aid to the citizens of Ukraine suffering from the war and pray for its end to come soon.”
“I don’t understand Ukrainian, but if the translation I heard is accurate, Zelensky asked us to treat the Ukrainians like they treated us 80 years ago. I’m sorry, but I think we will have to reject that request. We are, after all, a moral nation,” said Simcha Rothman, a Religious Zionist MK, on the subject of Zelensky’s reference to Ukrainians who saved Jews during the Holocaust.
This is an excerpt from The Daily Wire.
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