Honduras President Backs Out Of Israel’s 70th Birthday Celebration
Image by youtube
JERUSALEM (JTA) — The president of Honduras canceled a trip to Israel and his participation in the torchlighting ceremony at the annual Independence Day ceremony amid calls for the invitation to be rescinded.
Juan Orlando Hernandez withdrew on Monday following the rescission calls over accusations of gross violations of human rights in his Central American country. Hernandez had confirmed his participation in the Mount Herzl event last week.
Saying the Honduras leader would not be attending, Israel’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it “regrets his not coming and welcomes the friendship between the two countries.”
Some reports said that Hernandez had reconsidered his participation due to the criticism of his government, while others said he was reconsidering due to the political controversy between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the speaker of the Knesset, Yuli Edelstein.
Tamar Zandberg, chairwoman of the left-wing Meretz party, in a letter to Culture Minister Miri Regev, said including Hernandez in the ceremony is a “scandalous decision that legitimizes a president responsible for gross violations of human rights in his country, solely to provide an excuse for Netanyahu to attend as well.”
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
