Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Israeli premier warns against schisms
JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett delivered a stark message Wednesday as the country ushered in its annual Holocaust memorial day, warning Jews against letting internal divisions tear society apart.
Speaking at Yad Vashem, Israel’s memorial to the 6 million Jews slaughtered by the Nazis and their collaborators, Bennett also called on the world to stop comparing the Holocaust to other events in history. He spoke after leaders in both Ukraine and Russia drew parallels between their ongoing war and the genocide during World War II.
“As the years go by, there is more and more discourse in the world that compares other difficult events to the Holocaust. But, no,” he said. “No event in history, cruel as it may have been, is comparable to the extermination of Europe’s Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators.”
Bennett’s speech, coming on one of Israel’s most solemn days of the year, came in a deeply personal context as well. On Tuesday, his family received a letter with a live bullet and a death threat. Israeli authorities tightened security around the premier and his family and were investigating.
“My brothers and sisters, we cannot, we simply cannot allow the same dangerous gene of factionalism dismantle Israel from within,” Bennett said.
Bennett did not explicitly refer to politics. But he leads a narrow coalition that recently lost its parliamentary majority. His government is made up of eight parties that have little in common beyond their shared animosity to former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Netanyahu, now the opposition leader, has worked hard to deepen divisions within the coalition.
Bennett’s government was formed after four inconclusive elections, underscoring the fissures in society over key issues, including the conflict with the Palestinians and relations between religious and secular Jews.