While the American president draws criticism for his response to the violence in Charlottesville, some in Israel are weighing in and pointing directly to the danger posed by neo-Nazis and white supremacists in America.
Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial institute issued a statement Monday expressing its concern with the “images, hateful rhetoric, and subsequent violence emanating from the rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.” Yad Vashem added that “in our post-Holocaust global society, there is no room for racism or antisemitism,” the organization said.”
Also speaking out in Israel was the Jewish Agency for Israel. “There is no place for such hate speech or violence in any democratic society, and I am confident that American authorities will do everything in their power to bring the perpetrators to justice,” the group’s chairman Natan Sharansky said.
And Naftali Bennet, Israel’s minister of diaspora affairs and leader of the right-wing Jewish Home party was even clearer in his message to the White House: “The leaders of the US must condemn and denounce the displays of anti-Semitism seen over the past few days.”
Contact Nathan Guttman at guttman@forward.com or on Twitter @nathanguttman