Yad Vashem Condemns Charlottesville Attack

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By Nathan Guttman August 14, 2017

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 [email protected] or on Twitter @nathanguttman

Nathan Guttman, staff writer, was the Forward’s Washington bureau chief. He joined the staff in 2006 after serving for five years as Washington correspondent for the Israeli dailies Haaretz and The Jerusalem Post. In Israel, he was the features editor for Ha’aretz and chief editor of Channel 1 TV evening news. He was born in Canada and grew up in Israel. He is a graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.