Simon Wiesenthal Center Denounces Depiction of Israeli Leaders in Nazi Uniforms On Israeli Facebook Posting

November 30, 2014

This outrageous act by an Israeli simultaneously desecrates the memory of the Shoah and demonizes fellow Jews for the “crime” of refusing to endorse proposed legislation.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center denounced a Facebook posting in Israel that depicts President Reuben Rivlin, Finance Minister Yair Lapid, and Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, police chief Yohanan Danino, and former minister Michael Eitan in Nazi SS uniforms. 

“The Simon Wiesenthal Center deals on a daily basis with Holocaust denial and the co-opting of Nazi imagery enemies of the Jewish people by neo-Nazis, Islamists, and academics who seek to demonize and de-legitimize the Jewish state around the world,” said Rabbis Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper, Dean and Founder and Associate Dean of the leading Jewish Human Rights NGO dedicated to preserving and teaching the legacy of the Nazi Holocaust. “Now, we are apparently witness to such a desecration by an Israeli who is upset about a pending bill before the Knesset. We denounce such behavior in the strongest terms. He has not only desecrated the memory of the victims of the Shoah, he has sought to dehumanize fellow Jews because they hold different views than the author. No one should forget that in the time leading up the assassination of the Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin, similar images were circulated in Israel,” they added.

“Israel is a strong democracy and as such we call on leaders on all sides of the political divide to denounce this act and to emphasize that such hate has no place in the political and social discourse of the Jewish State,” Hier and Cooper concluded.

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The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino).